Commenter JA recently offered that “anyone who compares Social Security (SS) to Bernie Madoff shouldn’t be taken seriously.” Now Bernie Madoff is the latest in a list of various enterprises employing a Ponzi scheme for raising money. The comparison to Mr Madoff is not to suggest that the motives behind the SS program is the same as Mr Madoff’s, but that the SS program has a number of features which classify it as very similar to a classic Ponzi scheme. This BW article is instructive.

Superficially, these critics have a point, and there is a parallel between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. But on a fundamental level, they are very wrong, and it’s worth explaining why.First, the parallel. Social Security taxes current workers to pay Social Security benefits for current retirees. In other words, the new entrants into the Social Security system, the young workers, pay off the previous entrants, the older workers. And despite the fact you have a Social Security “account”, there is no necessary link between what you paid into the system in taxes, and what you receive.

That’s very similar to the structure of a Ponzi scheme, where new investors pay off the original investors. As long as enough new ‘victims’ are brought into the scheme, it keeps growing and growing. But when the new investors runs out, the Ponzi collapses. Analogously, the slowdown in population growth puts pressure on Social Security finances.

But there is one enormous difference between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme: Technological change. Over the past century, new technologies have enabled the output of the country to grow much faster than its population. To be more precise, the U.S. population has more than tripled since the early 1900s, while the U.S. economic output has gone up by more than 20 times.

So SS is in fact a Ponzi scheme with the modification that unlike a standard Ponzi scheme which depends on infinite population size (victim pool) to continue, the SS program depends economic growth to outstrip any demographic changes.

It is curious to me why the left so aggressively defends this program. Time and time again you will find the left defending progressive taxation as opposed to a flat or other non-progressive tax scheme. Yet, here is SS a blatantly non-progressive tax, which they defend conveniently ignoring its very non-progressive nature.

The criticisms of this program from the right center on its size, a 13% tax, and its very poor rate of return (which calculation assuredly uses the wrong figure for the tax amount, i.e., 7.5%). The answer to that from the left, as far as I can see, is to try to buy into the accounting fiction that the 13% is really 7.5%. I think the reply to the second is, “meh”.

From the right’s point of view, the insistence by the left that this program aids the poor and indigent (yet provides universal coverage) seems myopic at best. Nobody on the right would insist that we fail to provide for the retired people without means, yet when one asks why this enormous tax is paying retirement benefits to those who are well off has no answer.

It seems to me a political feasible solution would be the following:

1. No change to the coverage of currently retired people would be made. SS made promises and should therefore make good on those.
2. Currently working people, starting “now” (now = when this change is put in place) would be informed that any new benefits (figured in the fictional accrued that comprises SS) will only be means tested in order for that payment to take place. That is to say, it would be as if you stopped working right “now” and your benefit would be frozen at that point. If you need benefits in excess of that amount, means testing will be required before you will receive money.

The effect of this is that over the next generation (or two) the tax would return to the 3% level at which it began. People will plan for their retirement independently, realizing that SS would be a safety net for retirement. When the “SS” generation expecting “a rate of return” sort of benefit payment are no longer in the working force, the SS tax could be removed from its special tax/payment status and tax and receive its funding from standard mechanisms.

I should point out this is not exactly the proposal I would really prefer, although it might be a stepping stone to the same.

A major speech on health care reform from President Obama is coming.

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will lay out specifics of his proposed healthcare overhaul when he addresses Congress on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said, as the administration sought to regain control of the debate.

"Stay tuned for Wednesday," Biden said in a Thursday speech to a Washington think tank a day after it was announced that Obama would make a rare speech to the joint houses of Congress as he seeks to boost flagging support for healthcare reform.

"It’s going to be a major speech laying out in understandable, clear terms what our administration wants to happen with regard to health care and what we’re going to push for, specifically," Biden said at the Brookings Institution.

Back in July, Obama urged Congress to pass a reform bill before the August recess.  Isn’t it a bit late to be telling us — in September — what he wants?  "Understandable, clear terms" would have been helpful 2 months ago.  Today, it’s damage control.

1. While some on the American left thought speaking out against Bush, part of a “truth to power” legacy … this is what it really looks like.
2. Your government at wurk.
3. Some more climate conversation.
4. Amazingly this isn’t a right wing parody.
5. The WH middle east plan, err, muddled mess.
6. Mr Sullivan and his remarks on Ms Palin put in context.
7. No matter how nutty some, however, are still fans regardless.
8. Ontology and 1+1=2.
9. Two on the gospel message, here and here.
10. Rationing, a term with common and technical uses.
11. A heroic act.
12. Looking at supplemental material suggested for Mr Obama’s kiddie address. One wonders how the left reconciles their anti-establishment roots with Questions emphasized the “importance” of the students listening and doing what the President “and other elected officials say” are “important”.
13. Corruption in plain sight.
14. When Scripture doesn’t match the message you’re peddling … change the Scripture … nobody will notice, but geesh pick a less well known story if you want that to work.

1. Watching the alternative health plans.
2. A weather vane for hate speech finds hatred closer to the center left than the center right.
3. Mr Kennedy and some cold war history.
4. Word, meaning and the burqa.
5. Satire and the President’s address to the children in school. Which brings a question to the left, if this was Bush what would y’all have to say about a TV address to the kids?
6. Sexual harassment and Morocco.
7. A Lockerbie release leak. A change to a more open and honest administration … and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
8. How the East thinks the West looks upon the East. So … did he nail it or not?
9. Shades of V in state government.
10. You don’t have to believe God loves you.
11. A feminist philosophy reading list.
12. Racism in Atlanta.
13. So that’s the sooper-secret plan to curb malpractice costs. Nationalize medicine while putting in place laws immunizing government health care providers from suit.
14. Hayek and the law.
15. Throw the bums out. Make that a tea party platform, for the next N elections, voting for an incumbent is what not to do.

Is health care a basic human right?  Bob Lupton, writing at the Sojourners presumptively-named blog "God’s Politics", thinks so.  I created an account so I could post a comment that includes a question I’ll now formally pose here:

Is food a basic human right?

Food you need constantly in order to live.  Health care you only need occasionally.  (For some, very occasionally.)  So which is more important for life?

Clearly, food is more important for life, and thus shouldn’t we have universal food care before we have universal health care? 

(Before you point to food stamps or the WIC program, understand that they are nowhere near as invasive to the rights of all as ObamaCare would be.  Those programs for the poor do not place any restrictions on my food purchases; on what I buy or where I buy it or what sorts of foods are sold.  ObamaCare would force me to get a certain type of policy as soon as I cross a state line or change jobs.  And there are many other restrictions on people and employers all in the name of covering those not currently covered.  None of these kinds of restrictions come from food programs for the poor.)

So the questions before you are: If you support the health care reform that the Democrats are trying to pass:

1 – Is health care a basic human right?

2 – If your answer to #1 is "Yes", then is food also a basic human right?

3 – If your answer to #2 is "Yes", then why not universal food coverage?  And what, exactly, do you consider a "basic human right" in general?

4 – If your answer to #2 is "No", why isn’t food a right if it’s more important to life?

5 – And finally, if your answer to #1 was "No", then why do you support a program that restricts everyone in order to deal with a few?  Why not a program that just covers the poor, like food stamps do in the area of food?

Your comments appreciated.  And I’ll report back if Mr. Lupton answers my question.

1. Independence day (really).
2. Mr Zhovitis.
3. A trial.
4. A corruption test for Kurds in Iraq.
5. On happiness.
6. Considering Afghanistan … which brings one to be more confused as to why the COIN manual is not more widely read (and therefore discussed) … of its advice and recommendations taken.
7. Torture works, see.
8. Kindertotenlieder, in prose (that’s Gerrman for “Songs for Dead Children”, which is a Mahler song cycle).
9. Heh.
10. Organ tourism.
11. Art and an ethical question.
12. Self-deception and the Christian life.
13. A historical tome on Lenin and the Church.
14. Well, I for one hope the TSA doesn’t get the dreaded memo.

Recently I had a brief conversation with an office mate about some discussion on this blog regarding the noetic and the real. Transcendental and irrational numbers, such as Pi and ideas of continuity, are argued to have a different connection with the real than flying pink unicorns. My interlocutor (and, I should add, good friend) suggested that Wigner, in a rather well known essay, put his finger on one criteria we use sift the noetic universe for those objects there that have more or less connection to reality. That is to say, because of the unreasonable success of mathematics this gives rise to the (not unreasonable intuition) that mathematical ideas are more real or alternatively the more mathematically connected an idea is that it therefore has a larger “real” connection.

Long ago, I had some conversations on free will (see this and this here and finally this). One of the issues regarding will, creativity, and genius is that the human if it is to be regarded as only a meat machine somehow constructs a semiotic (or semantic) scaffold and develops real noetic content in its internal states and thereby in its actions. A clock or even a computer does not in its internal machinations and actions manage to do this. A clock’s and a computer’s meanings are only derived through the agency of a being which has constructed this scaffold, that is the internal states of a clock do not render time unless it is viewed by a creature (like us) who has constructed the semiotic scaffold and does and can attach meaning to physical states.

In the above linked essays, which were admittedly in the form of explorations and not complete or even coherent ideas, the notion that one view of the human creative engine might be viewed as a aesthetic expert system linked/driven to/by a symbolic noise generator for a description of how it works. This engine itself is recursively driven, that is the problems it works on are posed by itself and indeed the programming and improvement of that same expert system is driven by its past results and working.

I’m going to modify that picture slightly and add an additional ansatz and see how that works. The symbolic noise might be viewed as a glimpse into the wilder universe, the one much less reasonable than the ordered one we inhabit, namely the noetic world. This leads me to the ansatz … that the noetic universe is real, just as real as the concrete material world a separate space with its own logic, laws, and evolution. Ideas, a thoughts, a symbols all can be just viewed as individual points (or events?) existing and defining a noetic universe. It is real, but it is a separate space. What we regard as “real” vs “imaginary” or more real vs more imaginary are just metrics for measuring movement or location in the noetic universe. In this view, the wild soup of noetic noise which drives our creative process is a window looking out at the welter and waste of the roiling noetic landscape.

In the material universe, life is a funny anti-entropic cluster of stuff. What would the analogue to life be in the noetic universe? Dawkins meme might be a microorganism in this realm. But microorganisms are not the only living things in our material world. More complex and more evolved, some (like us) are even intelligent. If a Dawkin’s meme is a micro-organism in the noetic universe, what then would one call a thinking self-aware creature in that space? A demon or angel perhaps? And why would we expect that the windows to the other universe is one way?

I should add as a final note, a hat tip to Larry at Rust Belt Philosophy for helping trigger me to try to crystallize into essay form some half-formed ideas that have been batting around my noggin recently … which gave rise to the above essay.

Carrie Prejean, who was essentially fired as Miss California after a politically incorrect answer to a Miss USA pageant question, insists she did not break the conditions of her contract, and is going to court to prove it.

Miss Prejean was fired from her role as Miss California USA in June of this year, following several months of controversy over her answer at the Miss USA pageant regarding same-sex marriage. Lewis claimed Miss Prejean’s termination was due to a violation of contract.  Miss Prejean’s complaint will refute that allegation, and demonstrate that both the chronology and factual evidence clearly show she lived up to all her contractual obligations, but was fired, harassed and publicly attacked solely due to her religious beliefs.

1. Sugar and Ramadan, two things, which I wouldn’t have thought had anything to do with each other.\
2. Poverty and the Arab world.
3. Should one be wary of (faint?) praise of religion from the atheist crowd?
4. Climate humor, heh.
5. Cash for Clunkers … another whack at Detroit. So … did the Dems sell it that way?
6. Some of the political healthcare problems for the left.
7. Healthcare rationing.
8. A Georgian shine (that’s be the other Georgia for the US readers).
9. A Randian quote … and a not unrelated news item.
10. Terror, torture, and George Smiley.
11. If this comes to pass, who will ever vote for the left?
12. Look at their clever choice for financial services, based of course not on any sordid political deals.
13. Can we blame Kennedy?
14. Evil. Here at home.
15. Unfortunate side note for the hypothesis I tentatively rejected in my last night’s essay.
16. As the President and “his minions” decry deceitful arguments from the right … they practice the same.
17. Evangelicals dating.

A quick question. Pseudonymous commenter Boonton offers that the reason that the state should control retirement in a infelicitous manner, i.e., at high cost low return and with standardized returns, is because we only get “one shot” at retirement. The state doesn’t have to provide clothing, lodging, or jobs because if we get a bad job, some bad duds, or make a poor purchase of a car or house, well, it’s not final. We get a natural “retry” for these sorts of things. The choices we make here are non-final and non-fatal.

Yet we don’t get a retry on childhood. Why doesn’t the left push and is not outraged that kids are not being raised by professionals? Why doesn’t left believe the government should take an extremely invasive role in raising children? It’s not like such institutions are impossible. Ethnic Spartan males were removed from the home at 7 … to be raised by the State as soldiers, and not released until they reached the age of 50 or 60 for retirement from their military service. Now, it is certain that the progressive elite of the left don’t idealize Spartan education … but they also almost certainly have a dismal view of the child-raising practices of many parents. So why are we not seeing an institutional push to minimize parental influence? Where are the papers and essays pushing for institutions to remove parenthood from parents and having state supported organs raising them instead? After all kids only get one shot at childhood, “It’s for the children” is a slogan which has been used more than once.

One reason why state controlled/standarized retirement is not a good idea is that people’s family situations widely differ. Close knit large families often will not need nursing home and extended hospice care while others find themselves without family or community on which they can depend. Peoples expectations of a standard of living and how much extraordinary medical care they desire widely differs. Yet, does our SSI take that into account. No. Are the funds extracted in the form of SSI taxation available to bequest to one’s relations if not used? No.

Here is my take on why the left defends SSI so fiercely and why the resist any reasonable suggestions for reform and change of that institution. The progressive left in this country denies the necessity and the good of family and community. They don’t want to depend on their close loved ones and relations in their declining years. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote Dependent Rational Animals, and this title serves as an excellent description of the human condition. The left wishes to institutionalize dependence in a bid for independence. Why do they push for this independence? It is my view that they wish to destroy community and our interdependence and push to move what remains of dependence and need on larger non-local non-family institutional structures because they see that as a road to equality.

What is happening to the Left, the One, and their cherished socialist agenda? In Townhall meeting after Townhall meeting, we see the people voicing their opinions – and their opinions are decidedly against the moves the Obama administration are attempting to make (ref. here).

How has this come about?

From Richard Fernandez,

Somebody believes the left is losing the public policy debate because they’ve got all the flagship institutions. And that’s a liability. Umair Haque, writing in a Harvard Business Publishing article, argues that the right, like al-Qaeda has mastered the art of “5th generation warfare” and is swarming all over the left. He notices that liberals have been losing the debate lately and tries to analyze why. The problem with the left, he seems to think, is that they are responding from a center, sending talking points out to a periphery, whereas the right has discovered how to attack swiftly, from a plethora of directions and in depth. The right is inside their OODA loop and Haque realizes that if this goes on long enough, the left will lose…

Is the swarm simply a swastika-laden Astroturf tactic of the Right, per Nancy Pelosi? Fernandez doesn’t buy such conspiracy theories,

The Republican leadership was in fact the first victim of the revolt from below. Only after the “5th generation” war had ripped through the comfortable assumptions of business as usual did it break out to face the left. To think that the current unrest is the creation of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would be to make a fundamental mistake. Those figures are simply its beneficiaries — and its beneficiaries by accident. If Haque really wants to fight 5G, I would like to propose a different set of rules.

1. Listen to the people;
2. Believe that truth is something to be discovered in dialogue with the public; that the debate is never “over” simply because the great and good say so;
3. Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
4. Accept that facts do matter because reality is authored by something larger than government, greater than the Congress and more lasting than any administration;
5. That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth; and
6. Realize that these precepts are obvious on the face of it though there are none so blind as they who will not see.

I would add that the Republican leadership had also better realize the following:

1. The revolt from below does not necessarily indicate that the people support Republicans vs. Democrats;
2. If they attempt to travel down the same spend-easy path, as liberals tend to rush into, they too will find themselves under harsh criticism (aka peaceful revolt);
3. The people, by and large, are repulsed by any political party’s attempts to increase government intrusion into their lives.

1. A book about strength and forgiveness in Rwanda noted.
2. Violence in Sri Lanka, warning video is unedited and violent.
3. Toward a better small engine.
4. OODA and the healthcare debate.
5. A SCOTUS decision to note for those who use computers.
6. Cool astrophysics.
7. Economics and healthcare … disincentives noted.
8. Earth and solar radiation and a transistor analogy.
9. Retirement and savings and Singapore.
10. Eugenics and the Administration.
11. Brandon has links … (I thought the one on genius very much worth your time … and that was just one of many).
12. Market and Russia.
13. A film reviewed, 12.
14. Another film, Surrogates.
15. Guantanamo and Estonia.

Fr. Jake offers a rhetorical question that nevertheless deserves a response.

I must admit to being simply astounded that anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ would be against providing health care for every child of God.

Unless you cut out the 25th chapter of Matthew, the parable of the Good Samaritan, the year of Jubilee, and various other big swaths of scripture, it is simply impossible to refute the clear message that God has a preferential bias for the poor.

This is dishonest rhetoric. It is true that the Christian eschatological hope is exactly, in part, what Fr. Jake yearns for here, that everyone have succor and find their peace. How could a Christian be against that? [An aside: The Good Samaritan? How is that about poverty? Who is poor in that story?]

Well, first of all it isn’t charity. It is charity when I give to the poor and for other causes. It is not charity when, by force, I take money from my richer neighbor and give it to the poor. The revenue gotten from taxation, while the IRS is in now way anywhere nears as corrupt or likely as rapacious as the average 1st century Middle Eastern Roman tax collector, is not my nor anyone else’s charity. If a person does not pay, like then, that person faces a jail sentence. Charity is a principal virtue for the Christian. Charity cannot be given when there is no choice.

Fr. Jake continues with some statistics, the origin which he may be unaware, which are dishonest as well. “46 million” in this country are without healthcare. If you take out the millions who can afford healthcare but, because they are young and/or foolish and choose to spend their money elsewhere, don’t avail themselves of it … are not part of the crises as is normally considered. They are not the “poor” to which the church fathers sought to aid and of which the Gospels preach. The 46 million figure also includes the illegal residents … which Fr Jake notes “are not covered under this bill.” so then why include them in the 46 millions? Why not use a more accurate figure, which has been estimated elsewhere but is far less than 46 millions. Or “It will not raise your taxes” … which (so far) remains true … unless you consider your employer’s provision of your current healthcare part of your remuneration for your services (which it is) … for that will in fact be taxed. So not raising your taxes requires a particularly narrow evaluation of what “your taxes” means.

Thus while he notes that “a lot of disinformation and likes” have been spread about HR3200. Well, well, a lot of disinformation has been spread in favor of the bill as well. The (pseudonymous) Czar of Muscovy blogging at the Gormogons, has read the entire bill … and found it lacking in many respects, i.e., has quite a number of unmet criticisms. In fact, one might offer, that there is enough here that is objectionable that one might offer that while anyone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ might like to see everyone receive the aid and succor for which their heart yearns … HR3200 is not in no way shape or form the sort of bill by which that goal might be reached.

Furthermore, while yes, detachment from material things is seen as a virtue. I would offer this post from long ago on healthcare in the more abstract. Or here where I wrote:

Fr. Schmemann suggests that counseling and care (of Christians by Christians) at the end of life is incorrectly motivated. What he calls for is that instead of looking at quality of life and extension of the same, the priority of a Christian as he nears the end of his days in this life should be martyrdom. Now martyrdom doesn’t mean dying spectacularly in defense of the faith. It means, essentially witness. In this context, martyrdom means that the end of your life should be sign, a witness of your life in Christ. Extension of life, for a Christian, should be the highest priority, after all there is the life to come. Your life should be an expression and witness to that fundamental ontological freedom.

1. Stalin, a topic that generates heated discussions.
2. Abortion related to collectivization.
3. Giving up on the latest round of healthcare reform … for myself I have difficulty even with his first paragraph. How can anyone honestly regard HR3200 as moving toward a more “free market” approach to healthcare?
4. State aid is not stimulus.
5. Overstating the case? Perhaps but “greatest senator of the age” is a really really low bar in this particular age.
6. New “rather” damning information in the Rathergate story.
7. If you think liberalism is on the rise … you stand in a small crowd, according to one cricket race.
8. A liberal who is conveniently forgetting it was a liberal the last time that brought “guns to a town hall” … and the liberal violence in last election cycle.
9. That stinking feeling … one fix is to, well, ride. After all once your moving that stink is behind you. An yes, That Sinking Feeling was in my recollection a sublime (and hilarious) film.
10. The advantages of public run healthcare, giving birth in elevators.
11. Dress, casual or not.
12. Concern over Russia … my “canary test” hasn’t registered much change … but then I haven’t been doing that for very long yet.
13. One prediction of a second (bigger) crash.
14. A gulag to change its stripes.
15. An astonishing number, 5%. Related remarks here.
16. For myself, I have not seen any “fat” people running sub-3 marathons, fast iron-men or in the cycling grand tours .. have you?
17. Frogs.

School is starting and officials are naturally worried about the potential of a H1N1 flu outbreak. The federal government has tried to provide some helpful advice. But buried in the memo is this brilliant little nugget on how to deal with a student infected with the H1N1 virus:

If close contact with others cannot be avoided, the ill student should be asked to wear a surgical mask during the period of contact. Examples of close contact include kissing, sharing eating or drinking utensils, or having any other contact between persons likely to result in exposure to respiratory droplets.

Kissing with surgical masks on? I suppose it’s too much to ask for the kids to not kiss period.

This is your tax dollars at work.