30 January 2010

Jerome David

I had lunch on Thursday in a place called Urban BBQ. It's located right next door to a purveyor of fine beers that had a truly impressive selection of craft ales. Not knowing what I was doing, I picked out a Mont Blanc blond, a six of 14er ESB, and a Belgian-style ale from Argentine made by a brewery named "Jerome." (I got the Cerveza Diablo.)

As we made our way to the front to pay, one of my friends found out from his phone that J.D. Salinger had died.

I got home that night and thought about that famous Jerome some. I drank the Jerome ale. I had much too much homework to do, but I still set aside some Friday metro reading - Seymour, An Introduction.

A lot of people talk about how the last novella in the Glass family saga is dark, disjointed, and of course, serves as the final coda for Salinger's most challenging and (to some) infuriating characters. I always enjoyed "Raise High the Roof Beam" and "Seymour" because of the tone, the playfulness, and Salinger's refusal to put any meat on Seymour Glass's skeleton. But as I reread it this time, I also realized that there's something else that happens in "Seymour": it's Salinger erasing himself shortly before he disappeared. Here he confuses his own biography with Buddy Glass's and suggests that Salinger's body of work is in fact Buddy's.

At this point, it doesn't seem to me merely chummy to mention that I've written about my brother before. For that matter, with a little good-humored cajoling I might conceivably admit that there's seldom been a time when I haven't written about him, and if, presumably at gunpoint, I had to sit down tomorrow and write a story about a dinosaur, I don't doubt that I'd inadvertently give the big chap one or two small mannerisms reminiscent of Seymour - a singularly endearing way of biting off the top of a hemlock, say, or of wagging his thirty-foot tail. Some people - not close friends - have asked me whether a lot of Seymour didn't go into the young leading character of the one novel I've published. Actually, most of these people haven't asked me; they've told me. To protest this at all, I've found, makes me break out in hives, but I will say that no one who knew my brother has asked me or told me anything of the kind - for which I'm grateful, and, in a way, more than a bit impressed, since a good many of my main characters speak Manhattanese fluently and idiomatically, have a rather common flair for rushing in where most damned fools fear to tread, and are, by and large, pursued, by an Entity that I'd much prefer to identify, very rougly, as the Old Man of the Mountain.


RIP.

29 January 2010

First "holy shit" moment in public policy

So, the scuttlebutt about social welfare spending in the US is that the American welfare state is small – somewhere around 15% of GDP whereas for European and in particular Scandinavian countries, it accounts for about 30% of GDP.

Well, some people have long argued that the way in which OECD used to compile this info (measuring direct government spending) doesn't capture the American reality. Check put page #28 in this document
(it’s actually page 29 in the .pdf, but because of the cover page it’s numbered 28.)

You see that the US leads all countries in what is called private social spending. This takes up a couple of different forms, but mostly it means tax revenue that the federal government is foregoing. What does this include? Well, tax deductions, for one.

While spending on section 8 housing is a small percentage of government entitlement programs, the revenue the government gives up on mortgage interest deductions is huge. (And who does that benefit? The little guy or the medium guy?)

We may spend little per capita on welfare programs, but not once you consider that there’s a child tax credit in the tax code too. Similarly, we have two big sources of income that are not taxed: health benefits (which are considered part of your income in European countries and are taxed – so every dollar you get in health, the Swedish government gets, say, 25 cents of the money back that it’s giving you. It’s just a book-keeping thing that OECD statistics don’t capture very well.) The other is your pension plan – your employer is giving you a ton of money that, as long as you wait till you’re a certain age to use, will not be taxed as income.

So, the issue isn’t that the US spends little, it’s that the US spends weirdly, disjointedly – if you buy the argument that foregone revenue to the fed = federal spending. (Most people do, and I include myself in that category if you limit the rationale to this area of discussion. The problem here is the presumption that the lack of revenue is a form of spending. Then isn't not spending also a form of revenue? Didn't the U.S. then make billions of dollars by not heeding Lieberman's call to bomb Yemen? Also, the Ron Paul-types will object to the presumption that government has any right to my income in the first place – how dare they count money they’re not taking from me, which is rightfully mine, as foregone revenue? In any case, next time you look at your pension plan statement, thank the federal government for not taking a chunk out of it, and thank yourself and all the other taxpayers for allowing you to do that.)

Now, there’s a good argument for enacting social policy through the tax code. For one, you can encourage things you’d like to see – people buying homes and having kids – without setting up a whole separate office or program to administer it. It’s cost-effective in that sense – it’s just one more line on the tax form, and the IRS is already set up to look at that form anyway.

Now, the big problem with spending federal dollars this way is that administering benefits through the tax code is inherently regressive. This is the lightbulb moment for me:

If you’re taxed at the 36% marginal tax rate, each additional dollar of “income” via pension plans or health benefits that does not get taxed is worth 36 cents to you, right? If they taxed you on those dollars as income, you’d be losing 36 cents on the dollar. Yay for you and the high wage earners! But what if you are at the 22% rate? You’re already making less, and you’re “saving” less – only 22 cents – from not having those dollars taxed as your income would be. Inherently, administering benefits through the tax code means that those who are well-off will benefit the most, those who are so-so off will only benefit so-so, and those who don’t itemize to begin with or who can't wait a whole fiscal year to get a government entitlement are up a creek.

Now, think about the fact that many of these programs, as currently set up, date back many many decades. Think about the babyboomers, about the greatest generation, about the expansion of the middle class, and about how those interests have developed over time. Government spending is path-dependent – once you’ve carved out a trail of spending, it becomes easier to justify that path as the way to spend money.

First-movers, in economics-speak, have tremendous advantages: they stake out a claim to that benefit, and once they’ve benefitted from it, financially, they are better armed to fight for the preservation of that benefit. When you start to think about US social spending in that light, you begin to see that our strata of the middle class has a lot to gain from this system, and that we would lose a lot from a more progressive way of spending (ie, direct government spending.)

And while this may all be painfully obvious to some people, I didn't put it all together until just over a week ago. Which goes to show just how grad school can make you smarter, I guess.

21 January 2010

why doesn't the iphone have a setting...

That keeps wi-fi mode but turns off all phone-like features? Airplane mode means no wi-fi, and when you’re out of the country and don’t want to pay roaming, you turn off airplane mode to use wi-fi at your own risk (god forbid someone should call or send you a text while you’re trying to check email.) Who do I hate for this? Apple or AT&T?

 

 

 

08 January 2010

This is what happens when you have a conversation with some random person at a brewpub and become facebook friends.

You find that you are "friends" with this kind of brilliant, nuanced person:

I'm annoyed today because I found out that Stupid Democrats of NJ want to pass a bill in which illegal aliens get to go to college on OUR (NJ) tax payer dollars!!

Can we say WTF?!?

Now, if we are going to allow them to apply to a NJ school - OK.... Are we setting them up to be caught and departed? NO!!! Why would I want my tax monies going to stupid illegals who shouldn't be here unless they come through the proper channels (which would make them LEGAL aliens)???

We all know that this isnt a set up to catch them, we know that we are going to give them free education as well as free medical (if the other stupid bill gets passed).

Is this country that fucking dense?

Oh!! and as for other Obama- What a fucktard! Lets give all them terrorist rights??? Lets allow them access to a lawyer.. so that they remain silent!!! Nice fucking job Obama...

I bet if it was his daughters in peril he would be fucking water boarding the shit out of these terrorist...


Im not a Bush supporter, but you alllll know if Bush was President, these fucking terrorist would be in Guantanamo Bay being water boarded until they spoke! We would have information on those 300 possible future terrorist the underwear bomber was talking about until he was read his RIGHTS!


Stupid Democrats choose an ultra left wing idiot as Presidents.... Hope having civil union rights was worth terrorist having fucking rights.
(FYI- im all about gay and women rights.... But not at the cost of security... I rather a mean republican or not so left wing democrat-- that scares the shit out of the other nations)

Those are my thoughts!


De-friend, de-friend.

03 January 2010

Guanabara

It's always interesting, that flight down to Rio. I feel like there are several different versions of me on-board: Brazilian-born yanks fighting their way home for the holidays. We are of course yankee-fied in different ways, to different degrees, but there's a feeling that we're on this long commute back at the end of the day.

Rio is peaceful. We are quoting Jobim - New York is shit, but life is great. Rio is great, but life is shit. I probably got that wrong.

Amusing too how quickly we forget that the heat and humidity are oppressive. It's hard to envision doing anything, but we trudge outside, almost killing the sweet dog Gabriel in the process.

Pictures to follow, eventually.

Today we had home pedicures - you can get any service in Rio performed at home, don't you know. At night, we cozy up in the A/C with dad's blu rays and some wine. Or, for me, Macallan 18. One of these days we will break the go-to-bed-at-3-am-wake-up-at-noon cycle, but not just yet.

Mostly, we hope Monday arrives soon, so most people can go back to work and we can enjoy mostly empty beaches. We are going to the Botanical Gardens today to avoid the beach crowds and get some good walking time in before we collapse in a sweaty puddle at Porcao.

The colors, though. It's easy to forget just how many colors you see routinely here. Even when they are tiny and red, like the speedos on a heavy-set older man, or tiny and yellow, like dental floss bikinis on a blonde - but especially when they are greenish and faint, like the african palm trees out front that grow for twenty years, blossom once, and then die.