1, Train the Afgans to defend themselves..
2. Then leave.
Can we do 1..?
oCan we recruit a couple of hundred thousand Afghanis ? Money talks. There are several million poor, unemployed young men. We offer them a salary which convinces enough of them to take the job.
oCan we train that number? In that nine months after Jan 1942 we trained a million draftees and landed several hundred thousands of them in North Africa
oBut these are illiterate people without modern skills. So are the people they'll be fighting. .
oBut will they be willing to fight other Afghanis? Does the sun rise in the east? In Ghost Wars Steve Coll describes an Northern Alliance commander chatting on the radio with his Taliban counterpart.A relative.
2. But if we announce our departure date won't they just wait for us to go?
Hope so. In the interim they won't be killing our guys.What's the problem?
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But,I'm glad Karzai is President- Obviously I didn't say "was elected" just "is ".
Perhaps if we had five years we might establish the sort of efficient , honest government that Sarah Chayes feels is indispensible for success. (The improvement of the PA government of the West Bank seemed equally unlikely before it happened.)
But we don't,.
So rather than laboring to establish something unprecedented an honest efficient Afghan government we need to revert to what did work in the past. The 2001 Northern Alliance defeat of the Taliban wasn't distinguished by its' high moral tone. But by carefully negotiated payments . Followed by hideous treatment of any prisonse.
Neither will honest efficient government be a hallmark of the Karzai regime during the coming 18 months before we head for the helicopters.. But since we are stuck with a scheming deceitful ally, better the Karzai we know than a devil we don't.
At least he'll know better than to spray Agent Orange on the poppies
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If Sam Salesman earned $8200 that was about = to $68K today. And if he got an extra thousand it was taxed 26% almost exactly the same as today.
After that it got a lot tougher back then.
If Sam was earning $12K and he got an extra thousand, Ike's marginal rate went up from 26% to 30%. Today $96K is the equivalent of $12K then. But if Sam scores more than that $96K there's, no increase in the marginal rate.. Still the same 25% rate as at $68K. .Be glad for today's kind hearted IRS..
The next step in 1957 was at $16K - today's $128K. In 57 the next buck was taxed at:
1957 Today
$16K 34% $128K 25% no change
17 34 137 28
. 20 35 160 28
24 42 192 28
26 42 209 32
28 47 224 32
32 50 257 32
47 ? 373 35
100 75 800 35
180 87 1.5M 35
300 90 2.4 35
What do these numbers tell us?
Starting at around $2000 per week we pay lower taxes on each extra dollar than we did 50 years ago.
At $200K /year our marginal rate is about a third less than it was then..
And for the millionaires among us, the comparison is between 90% then and 35% now.
Or comparing not with the past but with one another today if you earn $300 a day now you pay 25% on each extra dollar of income. If you earn ten times that ,say $700K/year. ou pay only 35% on each extra dollar.And or if you earn 100 times that $300/day, say, $7 million you still pay only 35% on each extra dollar.
Or to compare to the past again, in 1957 the marginal rate for millionaires was 90% ; 30% for someone earning $1000 a month. Today the marginal rate for a millionaire is 35% .And still 30% for someone earning $8K/month ( today's equivalent of 1957's $1000).
So the millionaire's marginal rate used to be 3 times that of the middle class. Today it's not even 20% higher.
Do you still think we can't afford Health Care?
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I could say, no comment but that would deprive you of the chance of reading my vaporings.. So I go on..And on.
In case you don't like links or at least that link it shows
year top marginal tax rate on income over
1959 91% $400,000
2003 35 $312,000
Under Ike, americans who earned ,say, $750K with the assistance of their tax advisors were able to chop that 91% rate down to the 51.6% they actually paid..
Under W, 148,000 americans earning $5.5 million -the equivalent of $750K in the fifties-also busily searching out tax havens- actually paid 26.7% in taxes..About $218 billion. If W had taxed them the same as Ike that would have been $421 bn *
With a lightening calculation I find that would have yielded an extra $203 billion without taking a single extra buck from those poor souls who only earned $5,499,999.Never mind the vast majority of us for whom you could deduct the 5 and the 4 from that number.
We're used to the dread phrase deficit spending. Somehow we never hear the phrase deficit tax cutting.
In the words of Vlada...oh well let's just use Lenin: What's to be done? A tax expert once remarked that the tax code is now so complicated it's actually impossible to simplify it. The only way to achieve a predictable result would be go back to an earlier code and then adjust the brackets for inflation.
Back to the future anyone.? Dust off Ike's tax code. For starters. But don't stop there. Even then there were special tax reductions built into the code to promote various worthy causes. If Congress wants to promote a worthy cause, promote away. The old fashioned way. By paying for it.
oPropose an appropriation..If it's worth paying citizens e.g. to insulate their houses it's worth paying all of them to insulate their houses. Not just those who happen to owe taxes I suspect there are a lot of poor folk wasting energy in their chilly houses..
o And vote on it. If the tax payers are footing the bill , they should know what the bill is. And who voted to approve it.
AOBTW with the tax code stripped back to Ike's minus even his tax incentives H&R Block could fold its tent. Everyone could do their own tax returns. Which also might reduce the deficit .There something about doing your own return that causes you to think it ought to be lower.
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*from the Feb 13 2006 edition of Too Much "A project of the Council on International and Public Affairs.
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Check out this post
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Smith believed the Invisible Hand works if it can be protected from the government. And from businessmen.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.A Smith
Smith understood that if greed causes competitive entrepreneurs to work so hard for themselves that the publilc benefits , it follows they'll try to avoid the compettion that benefitted the public. .
The Public be dammed.C. Vanderbilt
Which is why Health Iinsurance is an oxymoron. Particularly when it matters most. With life threatening conditions.
For comparison, think about property insurance. A property insurance company wants to keep collecting premiums. But there's competition .The customers have a choice ( a word we hear a lot of these days). They can go elsewhere If the company stiffs them on a claim they'll move on..So greed works. It causes the company to pay claims. At least little ones.
But the Health Insurance Company ain't gonna collect any future premiums from the customer with a fatal disease.There's no competition.So the Insurer will refuse to pay for the same reason that Smith's businessmen will conspire against the public:greed. To make money.
Except in this case no conspiracy is needed. The customer has no choice. No other company is going to insure a terminal or near terminal patient. Exit Invisibile Hand Greed causes the private Health Insurance industry not to pay ..
The Public Option will pay. Because it will has no choice.We run it. We'll make it.
Which means .
o It will have an incentive to " bend the cost curve".
o And the Health Insurance Industry will have to do the same. It it has to :honor claims instead of stiffing them it will have to join in bending the cost curve . Become part of the solution instead of merely being (a big)part of the problem.
Which is why the Republicans have been whining. Not because the Public Option will introduce unfair competition.Forget unair. Because it will introduce l competition where there is none.
Somewhere in the Great Market in the Sky Adam Smith will be smiling. And if he were in congress, he'd vote Aye.
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Oscar Wilde described fox hunting as the Unspeakable in pursuit of the Uneatable. Which doesn't exactly the status of the Health Care debate but I feel like using it.
Can we stipulate that.....:
o The American Political System is broken,and
o Mr. Market is incompatible with Health Care?
we can't . OK . One more time.Let's try again.
American democracy suffered its first near- mortal wound in September 1960 when Nixon lost the election because he wasn't made up for his debate with JFK. If they hadn't gotten it before, that was the point at which the political strategists of the world grasped that TV trumps policy. He who has the bucks to buy the most air time get's to go to Washington.
The second came with Dump the Hump, the 1968 election when the PSs of the world grasped that there were issues more important to large blocks of voters than having their party win.C.f. Nader 2000 and single issue politics in general And a fair portion of the discussion here...
That first illumination in 1960 handed the legislative process almost entirely over to K Street. The lobbyists with the bucks to pay for airtime. "Almost" because the one counterveiling force is the power of those single issue voters whether that single issue is Choice or Gun Rights. ( One person's noble crusade is another's short sighted over- emphasis - or as we used to say "It all depends on whose ox is gored" ).
So today's would- be D. Websters get to Washington on the wings of corporate $s (however disguised as PACs) and stay there based on their calculus of their exposure to the particular competing single- issue blocks that are currently playing best in their Peoria.
Legislation anyone?
Now on to the Market and Health Care. They're incompatible.Need I say more?
I do? OK.
When Steve or Sally Citizen needs a vital operation everything else falls away in comparison. They'll pay whatever it takes which is usually whatever they have. . Unless they haven't enough. In which case they die.
Why does it take that much ? And why don't they have it? Because the Market is incompatible with Health Care.
All right ,all right I'm about to explain that.Take notes.
The Rotary Club version of the Market is lots of keen sellers competing to offer their wares to the discriminating buyer. The reality of Steve& Sally's situation is , forget discrimination they'll pay anything. And the not- so- keen sellers with whom they have to bargain are an underfunded hospital trying to cover its losses in the ER and a surgeon who went hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt before she saw her first patient and whose motto now is First Do No Operation For Which You Aren't Well Paid..
That's called Fee for Service.
But ,hey, how about distributing the risk. If we each contributed a bit there'd be enough money for S&S when they needed it. ( Well , maybe , depends on the cost, strike that, price of the procedure.) But if we all, say , buy health insurance surely Kevin the kind CEO of Flavius Insurance Co. will take care of us . He can salt our money away in some rewarding investment like credit default swaps and when S&S get the bad diagnosis he'll bargain with the docs to get an economic price which he'll pay from his ever flowing granary of wise investments.
Except that Flavius Insurance is a public co,with shareholders who want to see a steady increase in the share price.so they can buy that time- share in Vail. Or maybe pay for an operation.
And a steady increase in share price requires a steady increase in EPS. And that requires FIC to spend less on paying docs than on it collects from the S&Ss and from those CDSs (AOBTW they haven't done so great lately, or did you notice?) .There are various ways of accomplishing this but the Tried and True solution is reject the claim.And if the customer sues, wait it out. He'll die soon.
Kind Kevin got promoted to his job because the Board liked the "cut of his jib" Translation: his ability to find reasons not to pay claims . And he'll stay in his job just so long as he rejects enough claims so that each quarter's EPS is up a penny.
At every stage the market is a perverse instrument for providing health care.
So both of you readers who made it this far, we have a Potemkin Political System addressing the problem of a fundamental incompatibility between Market Capitalism and Health Care.
Various studies put out annual deaths due to our (lack of ) Health Care non system at something between forty and a hundred thousand per year..Will the bill Obama signs on Jan 15th end fee for service? . Will it eliminate the insurance industry? Pigs could fly.Whatever political skills Harry, Nancy and Barak have- and they have great skills, they aren't that great.
What the bill do is to cut thousand off that obscene total of unnecessary deaths. It will probably elect a republican House as well. But we'll have moved the ball a little way down the field and at some future point another Congress can move it further.. But most important there'll be some thousands of people every year who won't die
It'll be criticized roundly here because of failing to achieve the impossible. But I'll take it.
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Because otherwise there ain't gonna be no health care bill.
Last night was the high water of democratic votes. That train has left the station and now Reid and Pelosi are going to have to compromise sufficiently to get the two Mainers aboard. Which also means Liebernan and maybe even Grassley. Voinevich ? .
And they will. Because they're serious politicians and they know how to count the house.
Any effort we make here on the left to attempt to prevent them doing that will be at best ineffective, more likely counter productive. We can spend the next eight weeks insisting on the impossible and then the 10 months after that whining because we didn't get our way. And then foolishly sit out the election.
Or we can fact the facts that there aren't 60 senate votes for what we want so we have to start wanting what there are 60 senate votes for
.If you want to make it to Dawson you need eight huskies to pull the sled.. And a puppy dog to throw to the wolves
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The bankers got their bonuses because their banks made money . But the banks only made money because the government bailed them out either directly or by its handling of the economy,
Says Wolf "'ordinary people can accept that riisk takers receive huge rewards. But such rewards for those who have been rescued by the state and bear substantial responsibility for the crisis of surely intolerable"
Here's the link.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9d3132c-d55b-11de-81ee-00144feabdc0.html
]]>And also because at this last moment he has justified those, all over the world, who sympathized with us on 9/ll. Remember? .. Over the intervening 8 years we have shamed them, casually thrown away most of that reservoir of good will. Rather than being a "City on the Hill", we've been just another run of the mill country which jettisons its principles precisely when it is time for them to come into play.
A process which we would have completed if we had tried these 9/ll accused in a military forum.
Why is it I'm reminded of the first words of my first OCS class on the military legal system?
The first thing you must understand gentlemen, is that this is not a class in military justice , It's a class in military law.
Thank God.And Eric Holder, we're finally going to do this right.
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Well, almost everthing.
o Investment bankers are motivated to take excessive risks.
Tax every dollar earned over $1,000,000 at 90%. They'll be a lot less tempted.
o Entertainment figures earn as much in a year as Joe the plumber does in a life time
See above
o We can't afford health care/decent schools/you name it
Collect the money from those who have the money..
o The increase in the deficit is undermining the dollar
Increase revenues the old fashioned way. By taxing those who can afford it
o The tax code is an offence to the human race.
Eliminate the serried rows of special arrangements so that any citizen can compute his taxes without assistance.
o Voters have lost interest interest in exercising control over spending
. See above. Not only should every tax payer sign their return. They should certify that they computed it without assistance. That'll catch their attention.
o The alternative minimum tax is unfairly affecting those who should not be subject to it.
No need for it if the tax code is progressive
o We need incentives in the tax code to encourage desirable projects
Collect the $s through taxation. Then if we want to encourage something do it the old fashioned way:let Congress vote to pay for it. Somehow I think fewer projects will seem desirable.
o Lobbyists will distort the tax system in ways the voters can't understand.
See above
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So OK , we agree but the tax code is so complicated that it is literally impossible to unravel.
Uh,uh, We have a perfectly good code. It was in existence on Jan 1 1953. Just get it out of the files.
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And on most other issues.
Turning the pages of the bill , with amused sarcasm he recited case after case of things the health care tzar will supervise.Clearly expecting that we , like him, will be appalled that the Government will actually do something. As opposed to the deeply held conservative position that it should do nothing, merely stand by wringing its hands and hoping for the best.
Today's Times magazine describes the vastly improved results a Colorado medical practice obtains by actually telling doctors what to do. That would no doubt elecit a chuckle from Boehner. Whose idea for controlling medical costs(and outcomes) like his idea for controlling the banking system bears an uncanny resemblence to the(naturally) least effective treatment for prostate cancer:watchfull waiting. Otherwise known as "do nothing and hope the cancer will cure itself ".
It is Adam Smith gone mad. Make no plans, give no directions, hope for the best.
It's not how Boehner conducts his own life. He prepared for his remarks last night. Someone had gone through the bill and selected the pages containing the dire threat that if Health Care passes, the Government will actually take an interest in what the Medical Professions is doing. He didn't just open the bill at random, he had a plan.
In case you wondered why New Orleans and the occupation of Iraq were such disasters look no further. They were the necessary consequences of a philosophy which advocates dealing with all problems by "watchful waiting"..
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When things got complicated in the third act they also got up to date.. The Chinese interrogators wanted information. The lovely Liu refused to tell them what they wanted.
Puccini's operatic solution: they would threaten her with torture.' We have ways of making you talk'. The Milan audience perhaps smiled indulgently. That Puccini !. An operatic solution to move the plot along.
Waterboarding , I thought but Liu beat them to the punch.
What's happened to us? How did we get to a place where the highest levels of our government approve something that ten years ago we'd have scorned as a medeival practice or hokey theatrical plot device? And criticism is classified at best as a sign of almost culpable immaturity and more likely as unpatriotic indifference to the welfare of our troops overseas.
In years of living abroad where, frankly, things were often better run , I could still think fondly of our government as one that was fundamentally decent. Today that seems mostly to depend on which torturer is in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel
Even Puccini couldn't have dreamed up John Yoo.
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The Galleon case and more , the media's treatment of it recalls that piece of hypocricy. The old fashioned work that firm, and Galleon , and all of Wall Streets analysts do is obtaining corporate profit forecasts so they can recommend a buy or sell of a particular stock. That's it. The columns of statistics that typically accompany that key sentence are window dressing and treated as such by the readers.
On those few occasions when they can't obtain it directly from the company, a couple of nights spent at the bar nearest to corporate headquarters will produce it from one or another of the 50 people present that night who know it.
Every firm which issues investment advice and every reporter who covers that activity knows that. When a Galleon case comes along the question is not :Are they guilty.?Of course they are. The question is Why was this particular case brought ?
Obviously I don't refer to the official forecasts published under SEC pressure. I refer to the forecasts in which the company actually believes. And which guide its actions.
Rather than try to restrict such disclolsure the SEC should prohibit any sanction for the disclosurers. All those influential analysts would be freed to go into some legitimate employment as bar tenders or palm readers. .
The columns of statistics which often accompany that key sentence are window dressing and treated as such by the readers.
Every firm which issues investment advice and every reporter who covers that activity knows that. When a Galleon case comes along the question is not :Are they guilty.?Of course they are. The question is Why was this particular case brought ?
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