perfidy

Or if she can, she chooses to do it only with special, made-up numbers! See Jane obfuscate.

50 comments on that article and not ONE person has bothered to go to the IRS web site and look up the actual data? OK, maybe some of them have. Links follow.

It occurs to me that perhaps Jane ought to have done at least that before invoking the all-magic, all-powerful "he's lying" spell, usable by all sides in all political battles.

I've found reasonably complete information, in the form of spreadsheets, for the tax year 2000. It's probably fairly representative, although subject to some change.

http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=96586,00.html

This link will give you an EXE file that decompresses into a series of spreadsheets. These contain plenty of data on income, distributed into fairly narrow bands.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/00inalcr.exe

10 minutes with Excel, and I've found the following:

The average TAXPAYER (not family) with an income under $50,000 pays an average of $2187 in federal taxes. This represents around 13.5% of his income. Since a family of four will have a lot more deductions, the $1600 tax figure seems pretty reasonable to me. According to the IRS spreadsheets, people with incomes below $50,000 pay an average of 13.5% of their income in federal income tax.

Of course, our taxpayer is ALSO paying around 15.8% (his half and employer's half) of his income for the social security boondoggle (which is actually just a flat tax system on the poor, since the money just goes in the general fund anyway). If we adjust the 15.8% for the employer portion (by adding that to total income), it becomes 14.6%.

Add the two of them together, and our guy is paying:

14.6% + 13.5% = 28.1%

Fascinating so far, huh? Our folks under 50k are all paying around 28% of their incomes to the federal government. I'd be pissed off if I was one of them.

So that means are the wealthiest 0.1% of our population are paying more, right? Let's take a look:

In 2000 there were around 240,000 returns filed with incomes in excess of $1,000,000. The average taxpayer in this bracket paid $945,191. Wow. Taxes paid by folks in these bands averaged 30.1% of income. That is ever-so-slightly higher than that paid by our 50k guy. Note that social security payments, as a percentage of income for these taxpayers, are almost non-existent. We can fairly safely factor them out.

If anybody out there wants a flat tax system, I've got news for you: We already have one. People making multi-million dollar incomes pay the same percentage as very hard-working, low-paid folks. And don't cry "investment income" or any such bullshit. All that kind of income has ALREADY been factored out of all of these calculations...taxable vs. non-taxable income.

The bottom line: Clark's numbers are right. He gives the reduction on taxes on those below 50k as around $33 Billion. A 5% tax increase on those over $1,000,000 in income (NOT including that first million), by my numbers, comes to around $35 Billion or so. Seems in balance to me, as of 2000 numbers.

Break out your spreadsheet, and crunch the numbers yourself. You want to leave everything to frickin' pundits and goddamn politicians? Or even worse...bloggers? Like me?

My socialist Canadian education taught me how to use a spreadsheet.

And one other point: If real rich folks use tactics to move more of their income out of the taxable income category, us poor folks win anyway...because to do that, they'll have to invest the money, or put it into non-taxable bonds, or some such thing. These activities benefit the public...

A bold stroke by Clark. A lot of people are going to realize that under this plan, they won't be paying any federal taxes. Damn. Shows you just how much the top end in this country makes...

Want to see a very scary graph? Check this graph. If you're not employed and you're in the population, you're being supported in one way or another...this is the real drag on the economy. I'd sure like to know how many of these people are employable and are not working...

In Cleveland, they're learning that an unregulated utilities market only works if the utilities sector behaves like a... um... market.

Ohio's lawmakers and energy policymakers once thought free-market competition would drive down electric rates as independent generating companies and power brokers competed against utilities for residential and commercial customers.

So the General Assembly in 1999 rewrote state law to eliminate the regulated generation rates under which electric companies had long operated as virtual monopolies.

Told to work out the details, state regulators created a so-called "market development period" that began in 2001 and is supposed to climax in January 2006 with the birth of a robust, competitive market.

But with three years down and two to go, only a handful of outside companies have entered Ohio to sell power.

And the promised deep discounts for residential and small commercial users who signed up with alternative suppliers have not materialized for most customers. In fact, commercial customers of FirstEnergy still pay some of the highest rates in the country.

How this happened is as complicated and thorny as deregulation itself.

Experts say the failure of California's wildly ambitious deregulation plan and the collapse of Enron Corp. helped thwart the growth of a national wholesale market as a source of electricity for power marketers.

The insolvency of nearly a half-dozen other energy trading companies further stunted the wholesale market's growth. That, in turn, made the creation of local retail competitive markets all but impossible.

Moreover, the lack of coherent federal policies spelling out what authority regional transmission organizations should exercise over utilities has kept the movement of bulk power across the nation's electrical grid expensive and unreliable.

Still another part of the problem, say some critics, can be traced to the design of the deregulation law itself and to the rules that state regulators wrote.

The law allowed the monopoly utilities - FirstEnergy Corp., American Electric Power Co., Dayton Power & Light Co. and Cinergy Corp. - to continue collecting for old construction costs, including nuclear power plants, until Dec. 31, 2005. The utilities successfully argued that they had undertaken the construction projects as regulated monopolies and the costs otherwise would be "stranded."

The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio agreed to allow FirstEnergy to collect a total of $8.7 billion to compensate the company for those costs. Always part of the electric bill, the charge now appears as a separate item called a "transition charge" and represents about 30 percent of the bottom line.

And consumers who switch to another power company still must pay the transition charge.

Critics think that's wrong.

Me too. Market solutions to public problems never work if the effort is half-assed. This is a cautionary tale for advocates of market solutions to everything under the sun (me included). Sure, the market could make the world a beautiful place, but only if it works perfectly. Kind of like they used to say about Communism.

The Economist gives us this sobering look at deficits. The numbers are scary enough...the game just can't work the way it does. Maybe our economies can pull themselves out -- inflation can devalue the debt, growth can lessen it, and perhaps those are the restructuring mechanisms that will let us escape.

The dissolution of national finances brings us to a different place, where the common rules simply don't apply any more. We're left with nothing but hands and voices and mouths, demanding more than exists, and a great pent-up pressure inside all of us. In a sense it will break down society. Much of what we take for granted will disappear -- the fundamental financial relationships beneath the structure of our lives will be disrupted.

What happens when a huge generation of retirees demands care and feeding a younger generation burdened by tremendous taxes, a generation that feels betrayed by their elders?

What happens when the gap between rich and poor becomes progressively more unsurmountable?

I think the barriers of civility that exist between us all are in some danger. And perhaps that is a good thing; our politeness and our deference prevent us from saying what needs to be said.

National problems are not being dealt with. They're being swept under the rug. The youngest adults among us, those in their 20s, are the ones who will face the worst of this. Of course, sweeping problems under the rug is nothing new. The sheer scale of what's going on right now is incomprehensible, though...which leads me to a question:

How have civilizations dissolved, in the past? What are the patterns we need to look for? What can we do to stop it?

The leading indicator, in my opinion, will be the number of states that are forced into financial default. California is disturbingly close to this situation...and other states may follow.

Will the governments of those states raise taxes to balance their budgets and make some headway against the deficits? I doubt it. Or maybe some kind of limit will be reached, eventually, where politicians will become sufficiently disgusted with their own behavior that they will once again find an ethical center within themselves, and begin to govern reasonably.

The carrion call of the conservative is the ineffiency of government. I believe it is better to have inefficient but honest government, than a government that is fundamentally dishonest about its intentions. Our current administration demonstrates this amply -- the stated purpose of tax cuts is to "constraint cash flow into the government", which presumably results in smaller government. This is the pretense under which we are sold smaller tax cuts for the friends of the administration -- you know -- the "Rangers" and "Pioneers" whose benefits from the tax cuts far outweight the "donation" costs involved.

The reality is that the current administration has not coupled its tax cutting efforts with any spending discipline whatsoever. And that tells you everything you need to know. It's fundamentally dishonest to tax cut now, and then shove the problem of how to deal with the resulting financial mess into the future.

We once discussed the theme of the Greatest Generation. I am sad to be surrounded by its pale imitation, the Greediest Generation, slick with the sweat of its red-faced and self-righteous petulance, and mountains of debt-ridden possessions...

Matthew Yglesias gives a tight summarization of some basic facts about medical care and costs.

Note the conclusions: Government health care is cheaper than private health care, and delivers better service. It's pretty easy to see why this is so.

The cash flow in the medical system goes something like this: Government pays doctors. Patients pay co-pays to doctors, and insurance premiums to insurance companies. Insurance companies pay (sometimes) doctors absurdly low amounts for services. Doctors pay massive amounts for malpractice to insurance companies. Insurance companies pay out roughly 25% of that in claims.

So, while bitching endlessly about the spiralling costs of medical care (which they pass on to patients, resulting in the world's most expensive health care system), insurance companies are quietly pocketing a big chunk of the money on the back end.

US health spending per capita is $4287. Canadian spending is $2433. Using lifespan as a measure of basic health system efficacy (which seems quite reasonable), the Canadian system delivers better results for around 56% of the money.

Our Minister of Supply-Side Economics, Buckethead, has maintained over and over that the US system is just better. By what measure? The tired saw of "access to health care" comes out over and over again. Yes, if you are a wealthy person, your access to health care is better here. And I've said over and over again that if the Canadian system spent anywhere near what the US system spends, there would be limousines to pick patients up and bring them to the hospitals.

The real question here is why the American system is so shitty, given the rather incredible levels of funding. It's time for a sober dollars-in, dollars-out analysis. Exactly how much of our health care dollars are being siphoned out of the system by lawyers and insurance companies? They are responsible for the situation. They bleat and whine about the benefits of "private medicine", while they hold guns to the heads of sick and dying people all over this country, denying every benefit they can in a pure expression of one of the sickest forms of profitability.

Let's summarize; the American health care system:

1. Delivers poor results, relative to other countries.
2. Is dramatically more expensive.
3. Is ANTI-BUSINESS. Why should a small business have to provide health insurance to its employees? That's just stupid.
4. Is full of insurance-company corruption. Ask any doctor.

If this goes on much longer it will be a serious impediment to the competitiveness of this country. If you want to make the American worker more productive in a global economy, you have to make health care more efficient. The current system is utterly broken.

Vance at Begging To Differ explains a little about the scandal plaguing the mutual fund industry and asks what is to be done, conceding that what will probably happen is the establishment of an industry watchdog composed of industry players. Not incredibly encouraging.

When the Massachusetts District Attorney announced the names of Boston money managers accused of market timing, my heart skipped a beat. I know a couple of those names, because their offices handle my retirement savings. I'm currently in the market for a new home for my Roth IRA. All of this got me thinking.

I'm going to pull Buckethead's chain a little by posing a question. I know B is an advocate of rolling Social Security over to privately-held accounts. I'm also cautiously in favor of such a plan, and have more faith in the viability of my own modest TDA than I have in the chance of my ever seeing a Social Security check. However, scandals like this one worry me. Why is it better to trade a plan like Social Security which is poorly run and plagued with problems, for a private investment plan that also promises to be poorly run and plagued with problems, and offers a potential downside (negative returns) to boot?

Remember, mutual funds have been a fairly sleepy sector of the investment world since the Depression. Their security and the probity of fund managers have been articles of faith with many investors, especially newer and smaller ones. Of course we're all supposed to remember that "past returns are no indicator of future performance," but are we headed toward a scenario where investors cannot trust anybody with their money? That seems like a piss-poor bargain.

The arrogance of money managers, CEO/CFOs, and large investors is boundless, especially when profits are rolling in like crazy. The past few years have seen scandal after scandal after scandal from big business, banking, investment houses, and fund management firms. Each revelation further erodes the faith of the public.

I'm afraid that the net effect of these years of bad news will be to make small investors disillusioned with the market, causing them to either stop saving altogether (especially when times are lean), or to sock their money away in savings accounts, low-risk bonds, T-Bills and other low-return accounts where it really isn't doing that much work.

Of course, if the market rallies like it did in the late '90s all the ugliness of Enron, Fidelity, and Global Crossing will be forgiven, but will that really be much better? For the current scandals to bite hard at the people that caused them, some companies will have to go down in flames. If that happens, we can expect further economic chaos as the market realigns itself. That's probably a bad thing, from an investor-return and economic stability point of view. But if no investment houses learn hard lessons, no big swingers go to jail, and everything remains lovely in happy-puppy land, we're only setting ourselves up for a worse, bigger, more devastating scandal the next time.

Am I being to pessimistic in my cafeteria ramblings? Or am I just being rational and cautious like a good investor should?

[wik] Economist Alex Tabarrok posts an answer at Marginal Revolution: I'm being too pessimistic, but also not pessimistic enough.

No wonder they call it the dismal science.

[alsø wik] Alex Tabarrok's analysis gets a sound and genial fisking from ProfessorBainbridge.

Today is economic arcana day! In't the inter-web grand??

Soros and now Peter Lewis are funding the Dems for millions, now.

I don't see the difference between the GOP, which is funded by a small number of wealthy people, and this tactic by the Dems (being funded by a small number of wealthy people).

Pioneers and Rangers, anyone?

It all amounts to the same thing.

This campaign finance thing is so goddamn easy to fix. Just place a flat cap on the amount of money any one television station or broadcast network is allowed to accept, per reader/watcher in their audited audience (from advertising). Each party must be given the opportunity to spend the same amount, but the total amount spent by all parties must be below the cap.

This will shift many campaign finance dollars into print and other forms (leaflets, whatever). It is good to at least partially abandon television as a medium for conducting democracy; it is a failure.

It will de-emphasize the role of money overall. The good effects are too many to name.

Another huge problem solved! Bring it on.

Yeah, that economy sure is doing great. Personal bankruptcies have hit record highs, and Wal-Mart reports that although people are buying stuff, they are sticking to the cheapest items in a given product class and timing their purchases to coincide with payday, two signs that personal finances remain lean.

Or maybe it's not that rough. But what the hell do I know about money? My net worth is the equivalent of a Zagnut and a cup of coffee.

The most common defense Republicans had on the financial responsibility issue was that things went well in the Clinton era because "the GOP was in charge of congress". Well, they're in charge of everything at the moment, and what do we have? Federal discretionary spending growth of 12.5%. Excluding "one-time" charges (I use quotes because there isn't anybody left who thinks that Iraq and our other little wars are going to be one-time), the growth in spending is still 7.9%.

Compare that figure to an average, under Clinton, of 2.4% per year.

So what is going on?

Clearly the GOP is losing the ability to call themselves fiscally conservative. They're not; clearly they are rather incredibly financially irresponsible. Bush's platitudes about reining in the cost of government were either campaign BS, or he just doesn't have a clue about how to do it.

Here's my hint...bring Clinton back in. He managed to turn everything around once before, and chances are he can do it again.

The most likely effect of this is that the GOP will become even more stridently socially conservative, and will begin to break down the wallsl of tolerance that have existed. With numbers like these, and their credibility being destroyed in virtually every direction, the only way they can hang on to power is by using the mechanisms of fear.

To do that they need to create divisions in the population, reward one side, then malign, punish, or silence the other side. They need to create a series of national litmus tests; where "real" citizens pass, and others don't. Pick your issue: Abortion, Patriotism, Tax Breaks...all of these are being used to create divisions and generate support. It has become clear to me that the cynicism and/or incompetence of those in power is approaching critical levels.

[url="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A28252-2003Nov11?language=printer]Government Outgrows Cap Set by President[/url]

Via some providential linkage, I came upon Management By Baseball, a weblog by a gent who draws lessons from baseball's organizational and managerial behavior and applies them to the regular business world. He's got some great insights and better yet is witty and concise.

His is a competing/complimentary to the "Moneyball" thesis, in that in the MBB model, lessons flow from baseball to biz, and Sabermetric managers attempt to do more or less the opposite.

I love convergence!

Dan Drezner's Brother is a pretty rich guy (investment banker). He wrote there on how most people pay nothing in taxes, except for rich people, and how the heck can we expect rich people to do anything more?

The giant holes in this argument are easy to spot.

Social security is a tax on the poor and middle class ONLY, to the tune of 15.8% of income. Sales tax is usually another 5% or more.

So our "zero tax payer" pays, in fact, around 20% tax right out of the starting gate, even if he's not paying anything in federal income tax because his income is low. He's also paying property taxes, "license fees" (taxes in disguise), and a myriad of other little taxes that really add up.

We need to stop pretending that the social security deductions are any different from our normal taxes. They're not. They're used in the general fund. If we just think of the whole thing (fed, state, SS, etc) as the tax burden, suddenly it doesn't seem like such a great deal to be poor any more. So if we're just going to push them into the general fund, we might as well make it the "flat rate tax" that conservatives have always pushed for so vigorously. Here's your chance! Prove it's what you really want.

You know, the "lucky duckies".

Remember: Take the taxation rate on person X who isn't crazy rich, add 16%, and you know what they're really paying in taxes. Better yet, add another 5% for state taxes, and another two or three for the various "licenses" we need to have. Pretty soon you're talking real money.

Wow. Just wow.

U.S. economic growth surged in the third quarter of 2003 to the fastest pace in nearly two decades, the government said Thursday, in a report that was much stronger than most economists expected.

Gross domestic product (GDP), the broadest measure of economic activity, grew at a 7.2 percent annual rate in the quarter after growing at a 3.3 percent rate in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported. Economists, on average, expected GDP growth of 6 percent, according to Briefing.com.

Hey, that's great news.

Now, could I see a little of that magic, please?

AP is reporting that in the third quarter, economic growth has jumped up to a 7.2% annual rate, more than double the not particularly anemic 3.3% growth rate of the previous quarter. This is the strongest single quarter gain since 1984.

The economy's recovery from the 2001 recession has resembled the side of a jagged cliff; a quarter of strength often has been followed by a quarter of weakness. But analysts are saying that pattern could be broken, considering increasing signs the economy finally has shaken its lethargy and is perking up.

Near rock-bottom short-term interest rates, along with President Bush's third round of tax cuts, have helped the economy shift into a higher gear during the summer, economists say. The next challenge is making sure the rebound is self-sustaining.

Job creation surged to a net increase of 57,000 in September, the first increase in eight months - though job creation is generally a lagging indicator of recovery. The article goes on to list improvements in other economic indicators - drops in unemployment claims, increases in wages and benefits, consumer spending, and business capital spending.

As for the government's role:

Federal government spending, which grew at a 1.4 percent rate, was only a minor contributor to GDP in the third quarter. Spending on national defense was flat. But in the second quarter, military spending on the Iraq war - which grew at a whopping 45.8 percent rate - helped to catapult economic growth.

The evidence suggests that businesses are still somewhat gunshy, and unwilling to trust in the economy's rebound just yet. But if, as economists predict, that the next quarter will show at least 4% growth, I think that we've turned the corner on the most recent cyclical recession.

Of course, one result of a growing economy will be the reduction in deficits as government tax revenue increases. If the typical pattern holds, we will enter a period of economic growth that will last another decade before the next recession. If this growth period is even half as potent as the last one, we should see deficits disappearing again so long as the increases in federal spending stays not to far ahead of inflation.

Of course, it would be better to see a reduction in federal spending. I have played with the budget simulator that Ross linked recently, too - and balancing the budget is simple. As long as you have your priorities straight. I balanced the budget by increasing defense spending and simply halting increases in social spending, while eliminating the department of education and farm subsidies.

And, in answer to one of Ross' claims in the previous post, what are you smoking? Defense spending, including the Iraq War and Veteran's Benefits, is $547.61 billion. Spending for social welfare (Education, Health, Medicare, Social Welfare, and Social Security) is $1.27 trillion. That's almost one and a half times more for welfare boondoggles, not an order of magnitude less.
Huge jails house people who commit crimes. Blacks are in prison because they commit more crimes - generally against other blacks. This is a sad situation, but you can make the argument that social policies dating back to the sixties are partly responsible. When you reduce everyone's taxes by, say 5%, of course the people who pay more taxes will get more money back in absolute terms. But that isn't what happened. After the tax cuts, the wealthiest among us are paying a larger fraction of the total tax collected than before. And it is semantically incorrect to refer to the government as spending money on a tax cut. People earned that money, the government takes it. If the government takes less, it is not spending money.

I agree with Ross that Agriculture subsidies are a travesty, and should go. Likewise with other subsidies. As far as the tax cut, Ross can feel free to give more money to the government, but I'd like to keep mine.

My general view on government spending is that as long as we have entitlement programs that consume vast portions of the federal budget, worrying about nickel-ante programs that cost only millions of dollars is pointless. I really have a hard time getting exercised over the (on the government scale) small expenditures on things like the NEA, NPR, and so on. If the liberals need NPR to get the word out, fine. They can have their All Things Considered and Lake Wobegon Days.

The most important things to spend money on, to me, are those things required by the constitution. Defense, Treasury, Justice and the Courts, the State Department. Once those are adequately funded, we can use leftover funds to do nice things like unemployment insurance, welfare, medicaid, scientific research and the like. (Though they should be reformed, and their budgets should never, ever be indexed to the inflation rate. Each budget should be approved by the Congress, not have built in automatic increases.) With the change the government finds under the couch, it can fund the smaller programs.

A friend of mine once had the idea that we should include a form on the Tax return that lists, to a reasonable amount of detail, the various departments and budget items in the gov't. You can then allocate your tax dollars to them however you like. Items that get no money from the taxpayers are eliminated. The gov't would be allowed discretionary control over tax revenue from businesses and excises, etc. It would be interesting to see what happens.

I've talked about this before, but progressive taxation is an offense to fairness. We are supposed to receive equal protection of the laws, it's in the constitution. Tax brackets are discrimination. There is no reason why if I earn $5000 more in a year, I am affected by a different set of standards than I am now. Everyone should have the same, exactly the same rules to live by.

Some recovery we're having.

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.7 million last year, and the median household income declined by 1.1 percent, the Census Bureau reported today. The worsening economic conditions fell heaviest on Midwesterners and nonwhites.

It was the second straight year of adverse changes in both poverty and income, the first two-year downturn since the early 1990's.

The data, results of the Census Bureau's annual Current Population Survey, the official barometer for measuring income and poverty rates, showed that lingering negative effects of the recent recession cut across a broad swath of the population.

The official poverty rate rose to 12.1 percent in 2002 from 11.7 percent the year before, bringing to total number of people living below the poverty line to 34.6 million.

The median household earned income fell $500 over the same period to $42,400. Per capita income declined by 1.8 in 2002 to $22,794, the first decline since 1991.

I understand that poverty figures lag behind economic cycles. But add to that the continued shrinkage of the job market, the smaller-than-normal recovery in temp jobs created, and the sullen, mulish instistence of the economy not to get out of first gear for the fictional "Average American," and I get the impression that we're in the doldrums for the long haul.

A slow recovery is much better than a collapse, that much is true. But what worries me is the President's continued insistence that tax cuts will raise revenues faster than the defecit can grow. So far, this economic recovery is substantially different than all others recent in that it's much more modest and compartmentalized. Unfortunately, those recent recoveries are the ones on which the President based his numbers, when he wasn't summoning them from fantasy-land.

This is all bad news for those of us who feel that the President's economic plan is playing Russian roulette with investment rates and eventual inflation. In my unconsidered and thoroughly unprofessional opinion, the spiralling deficit, combined with the flatass nonrecovery we're in, is a bad situation to be in what with the wars on and all. Could this be the Greek-Tragedy Wheel of Fate issue that sinks Bush Jr.?

Over in the comments to Johno's health care post, I started talking about poverty. I have been hit by the accelerating catastrophe machine in the past, and know what it feels like. The fear of acquiring lifelong debt for an injury. Having everything come due on the same day, and then have the car break down. But...

We are approaching something unprecedented in human history. A time when all but a very small fraction of Americans are poor not by any absolute standard - but only in relation to other Americans who have more money. It won't take anything miraculous, just the continued moderate growth of the economy. The poverty line in this country is orders of magnitudes larger than the per capita incomes of most nations. There is no starvation in this country. We are in the middle, if you will believe the media, of a nationwide epidemic of obesity. And there do seem to be an inordinate number of lardbodies out there. This is not the sign of a subsistance economy.

The people on the left end of the bell curve here have it hard, but only by comparison to richer Americans. Poverty in the traditional, historical sense is gone.

I think that in the future, when we are richer (and barring insane socialistic or Al Gore presidencies, we will be) we can afford more services for the poor. But on one condition - we don't do it the way we have for the last seventy years.

Instead of providing a nightmarish singlepayer system like in Canada, or nationalized health care like in Britain, why don't we just give insurance vouchers, to preserve the free side of the system? Why don't we give huge tax benefits to those who set up medical savings accounts? (Fuck you money immune from taxation.) Why don't we let people save the money that they pay in Social Security taxes? Benefits yes, but in every case the choice for how to use them should be in the hands of the citizen, and out of the hands of the government.

The Washington Post is reporting that the Pentagon's "black" budget for next year (that's "double-secret" to us Deltas) is a near-record $23.2 billion dollars.

Observations that spring eagerly to mind like Labrador pups called to the feedbowl:

• Wow. At any price, that's a lot of hammers!
• So is that all for Total Information Awareness, or is some of that for field trips, too?
• What does this administration hope to gain from such opacity? Bush & co. have already squandered a lot of goodwill by keeping unnecessary secrets.
• Star Wars, anyone?
   

This interesting article from the daVinci institute details the ten most important financial/money related inventions of the 1900s. Fascinating read, hat tip to slashdot.

In reference to Pythagosaurus' recent post, I have this to say:

There is a list of many things that this administration (or any, for that matter) could do that would be good for business. This item strikes me as being very, very low on that list, if it's on it at all.

I work in the tech industry; and I and many people I know have been screwed by the comp time thingy. Since many techies are salaried, they are already exempt from most of the regulations regarding overtime. If you are an hourly worker, then by all means you should get overtime.

The only way that this suggestion would make sense is if the worker in question could opt between the two, and if he took the comp time, could take the time on his rather than his employer's discretion.

Contrary to received opinion, I am not some sort of conservative robot who automatically says "Labor bad! Business good!" Worker rights are important to me, if only because I'm a worker myself. While I have often complained about unions, especially the teacher's unions (sorry, Mike) it's mostly because they have made nuisances of themselves in recent times. I would certainly not begrudge the labor movement its utility and victories back more than a half century ago, but nowadays they seem to act more as purely special interest groups, lobbying for gains at the expense of the rest of society. Like the AARP.

So, I agree - this proposal is a pile of horseshit.

Diamond John Kerry has begun stumping for an issue with actual, real value! The Boston Globe/AP is reporting that Kerry is attempting to launch a petition against the Bush Administration's changes to overtime regulations.

Whoopee. A damn petition. But it's a good cause, and one that the Democrats have utterly failed to capitalize on in their bumbling assault on Castle Dubya.

In short, the changes to overtime policy allow businesses to reclassify a large chunk of workers (how large? wisdom varies--some say a little over half a million, big labor says 8 million) as exempt from overtime pay. Basically, the new rules would give employers greater latitude in determining whether workers making between $22.1K and $65K per year are vital enough to the function of a business to be exempt from overtime pay.

Instead, employers could choose to issue comp time to workers who work over 40 hours per week.

Though the Department of Labor insists it is not fundamentally changing anything, in separate discussions spokespeople have admitted that it would make it easier for employers to deny lower-paid rank and file workers overtime.

Not such a big deal, right? Weeeeel, I dunno. The 40-hour week plus overtime was one of the great victories of the labor movement in the United States, and any attempt at revising that standard will be naturally met with skepticism. Furthermore, having worked for my share of grasping, greedy, and utterly perfidious employers, I am well aware of the many ways in which business may legally deprive you of your own time. The new rules just make it easier to do so.

The Big Comp Time Scam

Although comp time has been presented as a reasonable alternative to overtime, as it turns out, it isn't such a great deal for workers at all. Although in theory one is able to save up days worked and redeem them almost at will in lieu of spending a vacation day, there are two problems: 1) comp time disappears if an employee is laid off, meaning employers are not obliged to pay for comped hours in severance packages; and 2) comp time is taken at the will of the employer, not the employee.

An example of how this can go wrong: I know of a computer tech at a nonprofit who gives comp time instead of overtime. Currently, he has worked more than 40 hours per week every week for a year straight, and has banked more than 50 days worth of comp time accordingly. But, although he wants and desperately needs time off, his employer will not allow him to use this comp time, arguing "we need you here too badly." They also consistently deny his vacation requests. The upshot is that they employer has gotten an extra ten weeks of work out of this worker for free, and is under no real future obligation to compensate him for this time.

Subheadline #2: obligatory centrist flailing

I'm completely fine with Bush being pro-business-- business makes the world go 'round. But he needs to be verrry careful when making changes to the American work week. Not only is the 40 hour week one of the finest fruits of the labor movement, in more concrete terms a lot of people rely on overtime to survive and raise their families. Changing overtime rules is hitting these good working Americans right where it hurts. Most of the people affected aren't blue-collar workers, but the new-style lowly bluish-white collar administrators and middle managers who are the new Joe Sixpack of the American workforce.

Subheadline #3: a strong stand!

All in all, I don't like the proposed changes because I don't trust business not to exploit the regulations to the limit of the letter. Companies exist to make money, and with few exceptions, there is tension between the need to be far in the black, and the need to retain and treat well good employees. Like in most things, give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

But more importantly, this is the kind of issue the Democrats could really score points on if they could stop drooling on their shirts for a while. If the damn Dems could give up on the "Bush Lied" thing-- which is as endearing now as when the Republicans tried it on Clinton-- and actually got to work on attacking Bush where he's vulnerable, this could turn into an ugly issue. Just harp on the "they're coming for your paycheck" meme a little, and Labor could swing more decisively Democratic than it has for a while.

Not that this will happen. Most of the Democrats presidential contenders are idiots, and even the ones I like (Howard Dean) are silver-spoon babies with no actual affinity for working Americans. Which is why we need Jim Traficant for president!