Vers une Nouvelle Politique Part V

No American should be denied medical care

This is another self-evident position, and in fact Rall uses it early in the book when he posits three questions, your answers to which indicate whether or not you're a liberal:

• Is it morally acceptable for the head of a corporation to pay himself $40 million the same year his company lays off ten thousand people?
• Should it be legal for a drunken goon to beat someone to death merely because his victim happens to be gay?
• Should American citizens be permitted to die because they're too poor to see a doctor?

Obviously these questions are phrased in a bit of a leading manner; the first could be made less outrageous by not using (realistic) numbers, and the use of "drunken goon" is a little over the top in the second. The third is hard to argue with in any form; while I respect doctors immensely (I would've been one, if I'd ever gone to class) and fully support their right to earn a comfortable living, I support even more strongly the right of a person in need of urgent medical care to get it regardless of ability to pay. The time for haggling is not when someone is lying bleeding to death on the floor in front of you, and it cheapens the practice of medicine to have to consider insurance questions before providing care.

We're not talking about free botox for celebrities here; it's not particularly difficult to decide which procedures and which circumstances should be covered. And yet, at this time, 1 out of 7 Americans lacks any coverage at all. This is morally reprehensible, and as usual, is largely the fault of big corporations.

Rall's suggestion is to nationalize the medical care system - hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies - and retool them into fully subsidized health care centers. He also advocates abolishing the insurance industry entirely, which I think is mildly disingenuous; the insurance industry provides a huge number of jobs, the instantaneous loss of which should alarm a liberal at least slightly, and the costs of this program will initially be reasonably close to present individual health insurance costs (the difference is that costs will be covered by progressive income tax, which means that people who cannot afford care now will get it free or as part of their low taxes, if they are below or near minimum income thresholds).

This, of all the planks discussed thus far, should be the easiest to implement: crunch the numbers, propose the system, and point out that the increased tax burden to pay for this system is LESS than you are currently paying in annual insurance premiums, and we're done. Like most financial systems, the current health insurance system disproportionately benefits the rich, who can choose more flexible plans because even high premiums reflect a smaller portion of their disposable income (employee premiums at a given company are exactly the same from CEO to drone, regardless of ability to afford any plan). By shifting this burden to a tax, lower-income employees pay less proportionally. Given that there is a very loose correlation between age and income (ideally, as you get older, you make more money) and one between age and increasing reliance on medical care (I've used my insurance exactly once in 10 years), this proposal also makes good logical sense and can be easily explained.

One wonders why Clinton wasn't able to pull it off.

Vers une Nouvelle Politique Part IV

No American should be homeless

I can't believe people actually argue this basic premise... I know there are people that consider themselves conservative, and have been told that conservatives are against welfare, etc., but can we please think for ourselves, please? The time it takes these people to rapidly concoct a reason why it's not horrifying that untold thousands have no shelter from the elements could be much better spent considering the fact that people who make all their decisions on paper run the risk of losing their humanity.

I take issue, however, with how slightly Rall supports this point. He advocates building high-quality temporary shelters and permanent low-income housing etc., and rightly observes that the mentally ill deserve better than getting turned out into the street as happened under Reagan. I understand that Rall is trying to put down basic tenets which will be detailed in legislation put forth by this ideal party, but I think these things need to be considered more fully, or we won't be able to uniformly address detractors.

There is something to be said for not wanting neighbors who don't respect their neighborhood, and there is even more to be said for not wanting neighbors who don't respect your individual rights. I realize that some people, forced by circumstance into low-income housing, resent this fact, and that rather than attempting to better themselves, choose to wallow in it. I also think that this could be ameliorated by making low-income housing less cheap and depressing to begin with, and by better controlling the crime that springs up in such miserable developments.

One easy way to accomplish this is by not building concentrated housing projects, where there is nothing visible to aspire to, and where everyone is too busy just trying to live to risk calling the cops. Will people for whom their chief investment is their home resent the imposition of low-income housing on their property values? Surely, and understandably. But what these people need to realize is that the best way to improve their property values is to bring the whole neighborhood up, not to build bigger walls around People Like Us, or around People Like Them. Besides, the super-rich, who can afford to buy hundreds or thousands of acres, can always build bigger walls than you.

Rall further submits that homeless people, who he says liberals have argued should be allowed to sleep outside if they want to, should NOT be allowed to, with the argument, "ordinary citizens should enjoy the ability to walk the streets of their cities without being accosted by aggressive panhandlers." I agree with that statement, but not with the idea that people should be forced into shelters. A lot of people that sleep outside do so because shelters are more dangerous, for much the same reason that ghettoes are more dangerous than low-income housing in a middle-class neighborhood.

Perhaps better shelters will help solve this problem, but until then, unless it can be demonstrated that a particular individual sleeping outside is also an "aggressive panhandler", I don't see a reason why that person should be held to a stricter interpretation of the law than anyone else; if someone exposes themself, or solicits money in an unwelcome manner (ie: begs) or is creating a public nuisance with their smell or whatever, that's one thing. If that person is simply trying not to get shanked for $3 in a shelter, I say let them sleep outside. Also, if you are fortunate enough to live somewhere with endless nice weather and lots of public oceanfront, what do you care if people sleep on the beach? Why do you think Gaugin wintered in Tahiti (I mean, aside from the under-aged prostitutes)?

I had a much bigger problem with a 10-year old boy, walking home from school through my neighborhood yesterday, who stopped as he passed me and said, "excuse me, do you have any spare change?" It was pretty clear that he assumed I would be so overcome by my white guilt that I would dig through my pockets to assuage it. Given that he looked quite well-cared for, I wasn't about to, and I resented the naked attempt to exploit an emotion that he'd obviously been taught I should have.

This plank has good intentions, but a careful survey should be made of current and historical attempts to house and care for the involuntarily homeless and kin-less mentally disabled, and the resultant plan should be carefully monitored to be sure that it is actually serving the needs of all affected, and not just assuaging our guilt.

A Brief Digression...

Before resuming your regularly scheduled liberal rantings...

I went to an AME wedding ceremony on Friday afternoon, and in it there was a passage that said something like "God created man and woman to be brought together in holy matrimony" bla bla bla... and it occurred to me that this passage, and its variations across Christianity, are exactly the reason that narrow-minded and otherwise sheeplike Christians are against gay marriage, because it SAYS SO IN THE CEREMONY...

However, I would like to also observe some words that have been missing for as long as I've been alive (although I didn't know that until I was mocked by the parents of the evil ex-fiancée for self-righteously saying that I didn't want them in mine) which are "honor and obey".

If mainstream Christian vows can change to reflect the fact that women are no longer to be expected to be barefoot cooking and baby-making machines who defer to their superior husbands in all things, why can they not change to reflect the fact that gay people can love each other enough to want to formalize a permanent bond?

Perhaps my thoughts on whether or not gay people (or, well, ANYONE) should bother with religious certification of their decisions can wait for another day...

Vers une Nouvelle Politique Part III

Everyone has the right to the best possible education

Rall makes two main points in this section: that primary and secondary public school financing should be federalized, and that federal funding should be available for any student to any university for which they can qualify.

The first is an attempt to rectify the uneven career preparation provided by under-funded inner-city schools versus flush suburban schools. While I agree that a federal curriculum would help level the playing field for college applications in some ways, there's no way in hell that idea would ever get through Congress. There's hardly a more clear-cut case of States' rights.

Also, the actual problem with "big government" as lambasted by conservatives is that it risks oversimplification of complex issues, and critical programs are in danger of being hijacked by special interest groups. To my mind, the most horrifying example of this would be a federal curriculum that was strong-armed into teaching creationism or intelligent design as scientific fact, or even just teaching them alongside evolution at all. But the reason this wouldn't pass is that, just as I have at least one major flaw I want to see avoided, so too does everyone else in the country. If Kansas or Pennsyltucky or wherever is afeared to teach their kids that they share ancestry with simians, let them choose not to do so.

Furthermore, public school already IS largely federally funded; the problem again is one of over-simplification. While a brand-new suburban school with lots of good little Ivy League-bound sheep students needs money for books and so on, a crumbling 150-year-old inner-city school in the middle of a war zone needs a hell of a lot more money, for a hell of a lot more than just books. Federal funding guidelines do not take these sort of factors into account; the plush suburban schools can always think of a reason why they need more money, and have the luxury of being able to focus on their argument for getting it, whereas PS 666 in Crackton might have more pressing concerns...

I agree that, if we're to be focused on a single national standard like the SAT (which we're not; try applying to a school that requires an ACT score with only an SAT), it would behoove us to have a consistent national curriculum, and maybe we can start by defining a federal minimum curriculum, and then let states expand on it as they see fit. However, the funding problem is not nearly so cut and dried, and has a much greater impact on a child's ability to get anything at all out of public school.

The second is a practical application of Rall's hatred of student loans, which he just finished paying off himself nearing 40 (he went to Columbia), coupled with an observation that since college degrees are necessary for many jobs, college degrees should be more accessible. This is hard to argue with, although for me, student loans were a decent lesson in how to manage debt (which lesson I have never ever ever applied to my credit cards), and I paid them off rather soon after graduation. That said, I certainly know plenty of people who were or are saddled with such debts, especially my lawyer friends, and it's not at all difficult to imagine that there must be a nexus in which one is not eligible for outright grants but still needs nearly 100% tuition assistance for college.These people are well and truly fucked under the current system.

However, outright grants for everyone that can get into college sounds like an awful lot of money, even if we're only talking about State schools, which we're not. As costs for higher education spiral out of rational bounds, this problem is only going to get worse. Rall suggests state seizure of these institutions, but that sounds way too Communist to ever fly, and I don't think it's a terrific idea, regardless.

I don't, unfortunately, have an alternative.

Vers une Nouvelle Politique Part II

Working hard entitles you to a worry-free retirement

Rall proposes a "federalized retirement system funded through an employer tax that will be prudently invested in order to guarantee a post-retirement income comparable to what each employee earned during his or her working career, up to a reasonable limit."

He begins this section with a comment about how the Social Security System was originally designed merely to supplement employer-provided pensions, and is now overloaded and on the brink of bankruptcy. While I've heard varying accounts of the solvency of the trust fund, it's inarguable that the current system is less than ideal.

What Rall doesn't mention here, which I believe he touches on elsewhere in the book, is that the SS (and Medicare) tax is regressive in two important ways: one, the tax rate is the same for all employees (currently 6.2% for employer & employee and 1.45% for Medicare), regardless of income, and two, the tax is only paid on the first several thousand dollars of income (currently $87,900). In other words, the more you make, the less of a burden the tax becomes. The maximum amount paid annually is $5,449.80, so at $100K, the tax rate falls to 5.45%; at $200K, it falls to 2.72%. At $1M, it falls to a negligible 0.545%. For the self-employed, who are essentially both employer and employee, the tax is 12.4%, and it becomes even more rapidly regressive.

Given the meteoric rise of the highest incomes in America since 1930 (when the SSA was created), it is tempting to solve all the problems at a go by merely removing the cap; thus a professional athlete making $5M/year is suddenly paying $310,000/year, which he'd hardly feel, and the system is saved. However, the tax itself is still regressive, because it's much easier to part with 6% of $5M and still be able to buy a couple of mansions than it is to part with 6% of $15K when your rent is $5K a year and you put $20 worth of gas in your tank every two weeks ($520/year).

Granted, the argument that rich people don't use the fund, so shouldn't pay into it, has some logical appeal, but this represents a recurrent problem with our attitude towards government. Our government, streamlined or bloated, exists to protect us all, as a society. If you possess the means to protect yourself from the vagaries of the market and from crime, you still require government to provide national defense. If you are poor, and live in the middle of the huge bulk of our country that is of no strategic importance as a target, the equation shifts, and you need protection from healthcare costs and unscrupulous landlords. In short, we should not expect to decide how the taxes we pay are finally spent. We should be able to voice our opinion, and we can make that opinion as selfish as we want, but we need to remember that it is the responsibility of our government to protect ALL Americans, not just ourselves.

To this end, I agree with Rall; the burden of providing employee pensions can be shifted from employers to the government, but rather than maintaining a separate fund with a separate tax, roll the funding tax into our existing income tax. Corporations with a lot of employees can be expected to pay more taxes, as they have more income, and employees who make more money already expect to pay higher income tax. What's more, by removing the cap on who pays this tax, the rather high 6.2% rate can come down considerably, although I'm too lazy to do the math right now. I think Rall's proposal to put the burden entirely on employers would rub fiscal conservatives the wrong way (after all, they're the ones proposing "individual retirement savings accounts"), whereas mine does not. What's more, if you do a quick calculation to figure out what the overhead of tracking umpteen million personal IRSAs would be, you can see that the Republicans' plan is stillborn logistically.

Next up: public education.

Vers une Nouvelle Politique* Part I

I have recently finished Ted Rall's latest book, Wake Up... You're Liberal! in which he posits that while both our political parties are broken, the one that would require the least modification to be useful is the Democratic. In the conclusion, Rall outlines the major planks of this ideal party. While I'm not in complete agreement with everything he proposes, I'm pretty damn close. At any rate, I thought it might be interesting to put forth his points one by one and add my three and a half cents' worth (inflation, dontchaknow). The first is:

A full-time job should pay a full-time salary

Basically, the point here is that tens of millions of Americans work 40 or more hours a week, and yet still fall below the official Poverty Line. As Rall puts it: "anyone who works full-time deserves to be paid wages that permits [sic] him or her to rent a basic dwelling, drive a modest car, and watch a movie now and then."

His solution is simple, raise the minimum wage so that working full-time at it puts you over the poverty line, and automatically increase both the minimum wage and the poverty line with inflation.

The problem here is that the current poverty line calculation is utter bullshit, and has been for years. Devised decades ago by a government worker for a presentation, and based largely on how much it then cost to buy food, the calculation does not take into account regional fluctuations in housing costs, food costs, commuting costs, or anything else that might allow for a useful figure. Try to sell a house in Little Rock and buy one in San Francisco with the proceeds, and you'll see the problem immediately.

In order for this calculation to be even remotely useful, it needs to be continuously recalculated like the federal COLA and trip expense calculations. While they use a national average for gas prices that screws someone driving in California while helping out those driving in the South, they do consider regional variations in average hotel prices into account, so that the allowable expense for staying in Chicago is noticeably different from the expense of staying in Pigeon Forge. Even so, these rates are so far off what it actually costs to stay somewhere that hotels are obligated to maintain a certain number of rooms at "the government rate" which is 2 or 3 times cheaper than their standard rate. And this calculation is VASTLY better than the poverty line calculation, probably because SES-grade travelers are a lot more vocal (or at least more effectively so) than are poor people. Funny how that works.

So before the minimum wage will mean anything, the poverty level must. However, given that even with our worthless inaccurate poverty level, the minimum wage comes NOWHERE NEAR meeting it, this is a good first step. And while people would dispute that working full-time entitles someone to a car (I would love for people not to NEED cars to work, for one) there are certain realities of working life that all but require minimum wage workers not only to have a car, but to have a RELIABLE car, because if it breaks down, they're very likely to be fired before they can get it fixed.

Meanwhile, the rental business is all about minimizing the number of non-paying renters, and about maximizing the income of the renters you have. When I was working a crap job at a record store right after college (yes, I've always been an overachiever, why do you ask?) I had to have my father put up the security deposit for me, because I spent all my money on CDs and beer. If he was not available, I wouldn't've been able to rent anything, anywhere, and would've been faced with the situation that many low-income workers are, which is to live in a motel at exorbitant daily or weekly rates (compared to monthly rent) until I could somehow save up a security deposit.

Conservatives often complain that raising the minimum wage is a two-fold evil: it will destroy small businesses that cannot afford the increased wages, and it will benefit idle high school students who don't really need the job anyway. As usual, they are completely mistaken.

Take this simple bullshit hypothetical: Acme Widget Co, a small business, has 10 drone workers that make $6/hour for 40 hours/week, or $2400/week total drone payroll. The evil government requires the Acme Widget Co to raise salaries to $10/hour so their workers won't have to eat cat food any more. So now they are paying $4000/week in drone payroll. Now, I'm not sure what the widget market is like, but if they are running so close to the bone that $1600/week will eat up all available profit, maybe there are some other inefficiencies in the company. More likely, the workers will be massively more productive and happier, because they will have more money to spend in their off hours, and better prospects of saving money, which allows them to create their own safety nets, which is what conservatives claim to want in the first place.

As for the greedy high school students, that one's even easier. Those that have the opportunity to escape, like me, will rapidly realize that minimum wage sucks total ass, and will eventually get around to getting a high-paying white collar job where they never have to work again. Those that do not have such opportunities become adult minimum-wage workers. See above. What's more, if you pay teenagers more, they're most likely going to spend more, so where's the harm? It's not like they're hoarding giant piles of money under their mattresses; they return it almost instantly to the economy.

The basic premise that one should not be expected to barely scrape by after working a full work week, however, is a no-brainer. Tune in next time for something about not eating cat food during your golden years...

* with apologies to Le Corbusier, but not really, because he was a lousy architect