One suspects that the goal of the U.S. venture is not purely humanitarian. The humanitarian justification is likely - at least in part - a cover for an attempt to establish a bridgehead of U.S. military and political influence in Georgia to thwart the advance of Russian power.

If so, the Bush administration is taking an extraordinary risk for very limited stakes. There might be some places in the world that are less relevant than Georgia to the security and liberty of the American people, but it would take a concerted search to find them. The conflict in Georgia is a tragedy with murky roots, and one certainly grieves for the innocent people caught up in the violence. But it will solve nothing for the United States to blunder into that conflict. Bush's hasty, intrusive humanitarian-aid mission creates precisely that danger. 

A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit policy research group in Washington, D.C., concluded that Cover Florida, a health plan recently implemented to provide coverage to some of Florida’s 3.7 million uninsured, is not likely to succeed ...

Why was the failure of Cover Florida inevitable?  Because it avoided the tough questions.  Like so many political creations, it tried to please everybody.  It tried to reduce the number of uninsured without spending any real money, imposing any rules - or goring anyone's ox.

Here's a simple rule of thumb:  If the private sector could solve the problem of the uninsured on its own it would have done so already. It didn't need Gov. Charlie Crist or the Florida Legislature to encourage it.

Cover Florida attempted to incubate inexpensive insurance plans that low-income Floridians could buy for $150 a month and up.  But economics is, in its own way, as inelastic as physics.  A plan that costs that little, and that receives no government subsidies, simply can't provide very much coverage.

Besides, $1800 per year is a lot of money to lower-income people - more, in fact, that they can afford.  Most uninsured Floridians are in lower income brackets, and people in these brackets are rational economic actors like everyone else.  To the extent that they're aware of Cover Florida, they'll look at the premiums and find them unacceptably high.  Or if they get past that, they'll look at the out-of-pocket costs and see that this plan won't protect them from the risk of financial catastrophe ...

... which is, after all, the original concept behind the invention of "insurance."

Here's the bottom line:  There was no way Cover Florida could provide a meaningful cost/benefit choice for uninsured Floridians.  Not without introducing something new into the equation: new revenue sources, new processes ... new something.  And any plan like this will have low participation, which means adverse selection.

Gov. Crist made sweeping claims for Cover Florida:  "Competitive negotiations" would produce "an affordable, quality insurance product for Florida's uninsured citizens."  They would have "a robust set of benefits" with "no mandates for participation and no tax dollars."

Sounds too good to be true ... and it was.  A similar program called Health Flex had already failed in Florida, which raises this new initiative to the old definition of insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result."

The problem of the uninsured will never be solved by "press-release policymaking."  There are more than 40 million uninsured Americans, and sometimes it seems as if politicians have uttered a buzzword for every single one of them.

I'll close with a defense of people I've disagreed with over the years:  Those of us who are health policy wonks have had more than our share of internecine battles.  I may think the folks at the Cato Institute are unrealistic about the free market, or that too many Democrats turned "shared responsibility" into an onerous burden for the working poor, or that some single-payer advocates are so inflexible it becomes counterproductive.  And they may all think far worse of me (if they think of me at all.)

But these sorts of policy debates need to happen if meaningful change is ever going to take place.  Everybody I've just named is willing to look past the bromides and feel-good cliches in order to fight the difficult fights.  They're all willing to confront tough issues and struggle with hard choices in order to come up with real solutions.

I'll take that over political happy-talk any day.

(Original reporting from the Orlando Sentinel via CovertheUninsured)

It’s true that scientists don’t know exactly how much world temperatures will rise if we persist with business as usual. But that uncertainty is actually what makes action so urgent. While there’s a chance that we’ll act against global warming only to find that the danger was overstated, there’s also a chance that we’ll fail to act only to find that the results of inaction were catastrophic. Which risk would you rather run?

Firey points out that Krugman fails to apply this argument to other areas, having dismissed similar points made about reforming social security.

In Krugman’s view, policies to address Weitzman’s 5 percent risk of ecological disaster by the early 23rd century (Weitzman’s time frame, which Krugman didn’t specify) are responsible and moral, but policies to address the economic crisis of Social Security’s insolvency in less than four decades’ time are unnecessary and overly pessimistic.

Taranto, in turn, points out the deep similarities between Krugman's argument and Pascal's Wager, including the same flaws of false dichotomy and using infinite (or large unknown) outcomes to sidestep any actual issue of probabilities.

Another problem with Pascal's Wager is that it presupposes only two possibilities: Either God exists more or less as Christians conceive of him, or he doesn't exist at all. But from a standpoint of pure logic, this is completely arbitrary. What if God exists and it is Muslims or Mormons or atheists who go to heaven?

Krugman's thinking is similarly binary: Either global warming is true and the stakes are enormous, or it isn't and they are trivial. But how do we know that global warming won't turn out to be beneficial, or that efforts to avert it won't have catastrophic consequences?

One difference between Pascal's Wager and Krugman's is that whereas Pascal was making a case for individuals to embrace faith, Krugman is arguing for collective action--which is to say, he wishes to use the power of government to impose his beliefs on others.

Both articles are worth a read.

p.s. esta outra tradução também é um belo bem público do Cato.

[audio=http://www.catomedia.org/archive-2008/hba-06-06-08.mp3]

Video kan findes på Cato Institutes hjemmeside.

All civilized people, including politicians, should not do what they are not legally allowed to do.  And according the constitutions (which I understand most politicians have not read), politicians are not allowed to do very much. 

Citizens, on the other hand, and according to the same federal and state constitutions, are authorized (by authority of the constitutions that grant politicians their station) to do practically anything they choose as long as they don’t impinge upon others’ rights and powers.

Citizens have many and undefined rights and powers, while politicians have few and tightly defined rights and powers.  Such an arrangement works better than anything else ever tried.  And it’s the law.

Politicians have no legal authority at all in what we buy, eat, smoke or drive.  They have no authority at all in what we say, who we hire, who we fire, who we meet or who we love.  They have no authority at all over our property unless they buy it at a fair price (there can, legally, be none of today’s popular “asset forfeiture”).  

Powers not specifically granted are specifically denied (see amendment 10 of the USA Constitution and Article 1 Section 25 of the Indiana Constitution).  And all other rights and powers are reserved to the states and the people (ultimately, the people).

The fact that politicians act like they have other legal powers is due to the fact that we, as a nation, act like fools in the voting booth.

So it’s wrong to think that “policymakers should” be moral about the way they regulate our eating, smoking, shooting, speech, hiring/firing, etc.  They have no authority to do those things at all.

It’s not just that they’re doing it badly, or that they don’t have the proper frame of mind.  They have no legal authority.

In other words, you have just as much right to regulate politicians’ consumption as they do to regulate yours.  In fact, you have much more power than they do.  You can fire them. 

Doggone it, you should.

the freakonomics blog posted this week on the cost effectiveness of airline security in terms of money spent per passenger on two air security measures:

since 9/11, the u.s. has spent $6 billion a year on aviation security to prevent a similar attack. the two most direct efforts to prevent airliner hijackings have been the hardening of cockpit doors and increased presence of air marshals on flights. these measures alone have cost the government and airlines $1 billion a year. is that money well spent?

[steven] levitt has wondered about the costs and benefits of airline security before. now mark stewart, a civil engineer at the university of newcastle and john mueller, a political science professor at ohio state university, have run some numbers.

their study, which considered the lives of airborne passengers and potential victims on the ground, found that hardened cockpit doors cost roughly $800,000 per life saved. at the same time, they calculate the air marshal program to cost roughly $180 million per life saved (assuming, that is, the marshals aren’t grounded when their names come up on the terrorist no-fly list, a problem the washington times reported on earlier this year).

the federal aviation administration considers any innovation which costs less than $3 million per life saved to be cost-effective. by that metric, hardening cockpit doors seems to be cost effective, while the air marshals program is not.

simply put, putting federal air marshals on air planes is a waste of money. the research suggests that the $180 million per person spent for air marshals could be better spent if distributed to other, already effective measures, or if put toward innovative security procedures.

later that same day, the cato institute's blog featured an article on security procedures at airlines and how very lax they are. cato writer jim harper explained:

[...] a new policy that has the transportation security administration doing deep dives into people’s public-record dossiers when they arrive at airports without government-issued id: “the new rules went into effect june 21, and in the first five days, 1705 people out of 10 million attempted to fly without identification and 59 of those were denied access to the plane.”

fifty-nine refuseniks in five days works out to more than 11 terrorist attacks thwarted per day.

of course, these weren’t actually terrorists. these were people whose papers weren’t in order. when this happens, tsa employees at its operations center in virginia dig into public records databases and relay questions to screeners at the airports. if a traveler passes the test, he or she can fly. if the database information is wrong, or if the traveler is forgetful, he or she is stranded.

does this really make sense? on the one hand, we have a report on the cost (in)effectiveness of some standard tsa security measures. from that report we can get only a rough idea of the huge amounts of money spent per passenger on these measures, and from those data extrapolate the vast amounts of money spent for other security measures. and now, on the other hand, we have reports claiming that security can be side-stepped by something as simple as a web search.

it seems a little masochistic on the part of the tsa to set up cost-effective security measures (and dump ungodly amounts of money into cost-ineffective security measures), only to then make government issued id non-mandatory:

now, those who left their license at home or had it stolen have to answer a series of questions relayed to the screener by employees in tsa's operations center in virginia, where employees have access to databases of public records, including those compiled by data giant lexis nexis.

the idea is for screeners to know that the person holding a boarding pass in the name of buster brown, actually is that person. for travellers without id, they better hope that the notoriously inaccurate private dossiers about them are correct.

the process of comparing answers to public records already caused a flare-up after one traveler was asked whether he was registered as a democrat or a republican, which tsa spokesman christopher white called a "day one mistake," where a tsa employee looked at the available public records and asked a question off of the information in the files compiled by lexis nexis and others.

another traveler recently reported that officials looked at the tax returns she was carrying with her, that the screeners had the ohio dmv pull up her photo and that she was asked questions about her family, according to a story from the lawrence journal world.

i don't know how comfortable i feel with allowing airport personnel to have access to my dmv records, voter history records, former addresses and contact information, and all the other myriad pieces of information floating around out there attached to my name. and i'm not so sure that i'd be able to prove that i am who i say i am based on a recital of my personal history. i've lived in seven different apartments in two states and two countries in the last seven years, and definitely can not remember my address at each place. i don't remember what my kindergarten teacher's name was, i don't recall the license plate number of the first car i drove, and i'm sure that there are clubs and organizations that i've never heard of who have my name on their membership lists. 

but you can bet a terrorist posing as me would've done his homework, and would be able to recite with confidence all the data needed to prove that he is me.

edit: for a first-person account of the ass-clownery that is airport security, click here and prepare to feel really, really safe.

I watched this yesterday and was impressed by the simplicity and force of his arguments. I have defended loosening immigration laws long before I was a libertarian and such a solid defence of immigration from a libertarian position (not that libertarians have been noted for being anti-immigration) is a welcome addition to the tangled debate. I immediately purchased the book after watching and eagerly await its arrival.

Debatten er blevet skudt igang af advokat Robert A. Levy, der er hovedmanden bag ovennævnte retssag, der -- ved højesteretsdommer Antonin Scalias skarpe pen -- fik cementeret, at retten til at bære skydevåben, som formuleret i USAs forfatnings anden vedhæftelse, er en individuel (menneske)ret, som er hævet over enhver delstatsret.

Det bliver spændende at se, hvilke reaktionsessays der kommer til Levys. Rigtigt spændende. M.a.o. er der lagt op til solid hyggelæsning, når regnen signer ned.

Men hvad er det så for en håndbog? Hvad skal man bruge den til? Hvorfor er det en god ide?

Håndbogen er inddelt i en lang række (omkring 70) konkrete politiske emner/problemstillinger, som politikerne i Washington kedser om hver eneste dag. For at bogen hele tiden kan være relevant opdateres og genudgives den hvert 2. år.

Under hvert emne er der en lang række fakta og ikke mindst løsningsforslag, som er funderet i grundholdningen om, at en begrænset og tilbageholdenden statsmagt er en bedre statsmagt. Den viser hvilke konkrete ulemper der rent faktisk er ved "big government". Så på mange måder kan man egentlig godt kalde håndbogen for en instruktionsmanual som pejler vejen til et samfund, bestående af ejere og ikke lejere.

Til emnet Tort Reform (dvs. ændringer af delstats og føderal lovgivning for at begrænse sager om absurd store erstatningsbeløb (de såkaldte punitive damages, eller på dansk: erstatning som pålægges en som en straf udover den normale erstatning man skal betale.)) giver håndbogen konklusionerne på forhånd og uddyber dem derefter:

State legislatures should

• enact punitive damages reforms,
• eliminate joint and several liability,
• require that government pay all legal costs if it loses a civil case, and
• outlaw contingency fees paid by government to private attorneys.

Congress should

• constrain courts’ long-arm jurisdiction over out-of-state defendants, and
• implement class action reforms.

Klart og tydeligt.

Danmark har p.t. to borgerlige tænketanke: Den objektivistiske Copenhagen Institute (COIN) (tidligere: Markedscentret), som beskæftiger sig med emner som jeg selv synes er utroligt spændende, men også er lidt mere "højtflyvende" end dem danmarks anden tænketank, CEPOS (Center for Politisek Studier) beskæftiger sig med: Konjukturer, skat og integration.

Netop fordi CEPOS behandler de emner er tanken om, at CEPOS skulle udgive en tilsvarende håndbog heller ikke så far-fetched at det gør noget. Ja, CEPOS burde faktisk udgive sådan en bog.

1. Adolfo, conte-nos um pouco sobre você, sua vida acadêmica e sua vida "política".

R) Sobre mim mesmo: sou torcedor do Londrina e do Fluminense, minha família era de classe média até que meu pai teve um derrame. Daí em diante fomos pobres mesmo. Eu trabalhava durante o dia e cursava economia a noite. Na minha época de mestrado eu não tinha dinheiro sequer para pagar aluguel, assim eu morava na minha sala de estudos na UnB. Essa fase difícil passou, hoje trabalho regularmente pelo menos 14 horas por dia. Acordo antes das 7:00 e vou dormir depois da meia-noite.

Vida Acadêmica: terminei meu doutorado em economia na UnB em dezembro de 2000, aos 28 anos de idade. Aos 30 já era Diretor da Graduação e do Mestrado em Economia da Universidade Católica de Brasília. Aos 32 fiz meu pós-doutorado com o Professor Walter Enders, e aos 34 tive o prazer de dar aulas na Universidade do Texas – Edinburg. Eu criei e fui o primeiro editor da Revista Brasileira de Economia de Empresas, também fui o editor da Planejamento e Políticas Públicas (PPP). Atualmente tenho 25 artigos técnicos publicados em revistas científicas, ou aceitos para publicação (11 internacionais e 14 nacionais). O que na área de economia é uma bela marca. Além disso, também sou autor de um livro sobre os determinantes da riqueza de uma nação. Além do Brasil, também trabalhei com economia no Japão, Estados Unidos e Angola. Atualmente sou técnico do IPEA (antes de terminar o mestrado, aos 24 anos, fui aprovado no concurso do IPEA) e professor da UCB.

Vida Política: não sou filiado a partido político e não tenho ambições eleitorais. Mas luto diariamente para manter vivas as idéias em que acredito. Acredito que o indivíduo ou sua família, e não o Estado, é a unidade básica de uma sociedade. Acredito no direito a liberdade de escolha, na liberdade individual e na propriedade privada.

2. Há anos temos no Rio Grande do Sul um evento chamado "Fórum da Liberdade". Tenho a impressão de que este fórum não transcende sequer a cidade de Porto Alegre. Eventualmente o IL-RJ promove eventos com o Liberty Fund, o IL-RS promove um ou outro curso e uma pequena manifestação anual, o Dia de Liberdade dos Impostos. Recentemente, o Instituto Millenium tentou trajetória similar, mas não promoveu muitos eventos ainda. Se somarmos a estes três think tanks o Ordem Livre (que só existe virtualmente) e o IEE - que se restringe a empresários - não temos nem uma dezena de ONG's liberais. Direto ao ponto: você acha que liberalismo no Brasil só se restringe a empresários, como apontam os adversários do liberalismo?

R) De maneira alguma. Acredito que boa parte dos empresários brasileiros é CONTRA o liberalismo. A FIESP por exemplo não é liberal. Liberal é quem defende a competição, a liberdade de escolha e a propriedade privada. A FIESP não defende a abertura dos mercados brasileiros, tal como boa parte dos empresários prefere um Estado grande protegendo suas ineficiências. Liberal no Brasil são os consumidores que querem ter o direito de comprar produtos melhores e mais baratos. Quem mantém vivo o liberalismo no Brasil são indivíduos comuns, sem o apoio de grandes grupos ou de interesses ocultos. Por isso acredito que os Blogs e a internet foram a salvação do liberalismo brasileiro, sem essas ferramentas estaríamos ainda mais isolados.

3. Uma outra crítica: até hoje, não vejo nada comparável à quantidade e/ou qualidade das pesquisas acadêmicas (ou semi-acadêmicas) de instituições como o Cato Institute, uma Heritage Foundation ou mesmo o American Enterprise Institute, para citar apenas os mais famosos entre nossos liberais. Você acha que o liberalismo brasileiro tem aversão à pesquisa? Por que tão poucos "working papers" nos think tanks liberais brasileiros? Seria apenas falta de recursos?

R) Creio que o problema vai além da falta de recursos, ele reside na falta de conhecimento. Os institutos liberais que operam no Brasil parecem não acreditar muito no poder da pesquisa acadêmica, preferem se concentrar em artigos para jornais ou revistas. As pessoas que estão a frente de tais institutos simplesmente parecem não dar valor à pesquisa acadêmica, o que é uma pena. Assim, preferem contratar pessoas com um perfil que dificilmente as habilitariam a pesquisas científicas.

4. Já que falamos de entidades liberais, vamos discutir, agora, um ponto que tem pouco a ver com a pesquisa científica e mais com a mobilização de pessoas. Você promoveu, no último sábado, uma passeata liberal em Brasília. Houve algum apoio - divulgação, esforço em comparecimento, networking, etc - destes órgãos à sua passeata? Por outro lado, você prefere não ter o apoio dos mesmos? Por que será que - esta é uma impressão minha - o liberalismo brasileiro não consegue atingir tantos cidadãos comuns quanto empresários? Será que podemos jogar a culpa sempre na "doutrinação das esquerdas"? Ou há algo inerente à (in)ação dos nossos amigos liberais?

R) A única pessoa que me ajudou na organização do evento foi um aluno da graduação (Nilo). Na divulgação, o Instituto Federalista (IF) divulgou o evento em seu site. Talvez outros Institutos tenham feito o mesmo, não sei. Acredito que a maior parte das organizações liberais no Brasil não apóia iniciativas que não partam delas mesmo. De qualquer maneira, tais organizações são tão inoperantes que não creio que elas façam alguma falta. O seu blog e o do Tambosi têm muito mais poder de penetração junto ao público do que os sites dos Institutos Liberais. O Liberalismo não atinge o cidadão comum simplesmente porque o cidadão comum NÃO É exposto ao liberalismo. Por exemplo, eu só fui conhecer a obra de Hayek depois dos 30 anos de idade. Entre numa livraria e peça um livro de Hayek, ou Von Mises, ou Friedman. Você verá que tais livros ou não estão disponíveis ou custam 60 reais. Peça um livro de Marx e você encontrará pilhas deles a 10 reais. O que falta é divulgar as idéias liberais. Essa é uma tarefa extremamente difícil, pois os professores do ensino médio e fundamental são basicamente marxistas. O mesmo se repete nas universidades. Assim, as idéias liberais ficam completamente de fora da formação educacional de um aluno brasileiro.

5. Acho que você foi o único liberal que conseguiu, em muitos anos, fazer duas discussões liberais seguida de uma passeata em um curto espaço de tempo. Que balanço e perspectivas você pode nos apresentar sobre o liberalismo no Brasil?

R) O liberalismo irá triunfar no Brasil, só que isso não irá acontecer nesse natal. Hoje passamos por uma época nebulosa onde o Estado tenta comprar a todos com bolsas e subsídios, isso fortalece a posição do Estado junto aos formadores de opinião. E estes se encarregam de divulgar as belezas da intervenção estatal para o grande público. A única maneira de combatermos isso é divulgando nossas idéias para o grande público, e a internet nos dá essa chance. Acho que o Brasil irá enfrentar tempos difíceis nos próximos anos. Acredito que as coisas irão piorar, mas cedo ou tarde o que parece impossível hoje será a solução de amanhã. É disso que temos que nos conscientizar, minha geração não verá a vitória do liberalismo. A tarefa de minha geração é manter viva as idéias liberais para que a próxima geração, tendo contato com tais idéias mais cedo, possa combater de maneira efetiva os males associados a perda da liberdade individual.

6. Fique à vontade para concluir, Adolfo

R) Eu só tenho a agradecer você pela gentileza de sua entrevista. Saiba que são pessoas como você que fazem a diferença.

Comentários

Caro leitor, como os que me conhecem sabem, tenho uma boa relação com vários liberais das instituições citadas acima. Eu mesmo já fiz um ou outro trabalho para eles. Também é fato que nunca escondi deles minhas críticas (até porque liberalismo não é religião). Os pontos que o Adolfo destaca são importantes. Eles mostram que existe, primeiro, uma boa pergunta acadêmica: "quais os incentivos que regem as ações dos think tanks liberais no Brasil"? Em segundo lugar, é possível fazer mais sozinho do que em grupo (algo que qualquer aluno de economia que já estudou bens públicos e variantes sabe), inclusive quando se fala de liberais brasileiros. O problema de ação coletiva existe aqui.

Gostei também do insight do Adolfo: o consumidor é o grande liberal brasileiro, embora nem sempre tenha consciência disto. Mas se assim o é, Adolfo, por que o mesmo não se manifesta como tal? Por que esta insistência em se identificar com seu algoz, o Estado?

Note, leitor, a história de vida do Adolfo. Nada diferente do que a de muitos brasileiros. Liberalismo, na prática, é coisa que qualquer um tem em sua vida, em maior ou menor aspecto. Quem luta para se sair bem na escola não quer seu sucesso roubado por colegas picaretas. Já o discurso liberal, este cabe na boca de muito empresário nem sempre liberal de fato. Há que se distinguir entre o liberalismo de balcão (ou de quermesse, como diria o Alex Schwartsman) e o liberalismo legítimo.

Meus amigos liberais têm ouvido muitas críticas cretinas e injustas. Estas, desta entrevista, não fazem parte desta besteira destrutiva que temos por aí. Aliás, são muito mais um alerta do que uma crítica. Ou os liberais prestam atenção nisto, ou estarão entregando o poder aos inimigos dos indivíduos por muitos anos...é o que penso.

Here's an except that is characteristic of his analysis (my emphases):

Copyright enforcement weakens general law enforcement. And it’s expensive. The proposed ACTA treaty would create international legislation turning border guards into copyright police, charged with checking laptops, iPods, and other devices for possibly infringing content, and given the authority to confiscate and destroy equipment without even requiring a complaint from a rights-holder.

It’s characteristic of the dishonesty found in copyright law that the ACTA has been promoted as a treaty aimed to save people from dangerous fake medicine, which has very little to do with issues like “ISP responsibility.” While patents, trademarks, and copyright are significantly different in many respects, copyright industry lobbyists prefer to present their draconian enforcement strategies as a matter of “intellectual property” in general.

The real dispute, once again, is not between proponents and opponents of copyright as a whole. It is between believers and non-believers. Believers in copyright keep dreaming about building a digital simulation of a 20th-century copyright economy, based on scarcity and with distinct limits between broadcasting and unit sales. I don’t believe such a stabilization will ever occur, but I fear that this vision of copyright utopia is triggering an escalation of technology regulations running out of control and ruining civil liberties. Accepting a laissez-faire attitude regarding software development and communication infrastructure can prevent such an escalation.

This argument underscores several reasons why it is completely disingenuous to equate strict IP enforcement with anything resembling a "free market." Such an equation was an integral part of the Washington Consensus obsession with "strong property rights" and infiltrated the global trade regime with the formation of the WTO and the TRIPS agreement.

It is high time to unbundle reigning notions of property and consider whether digital, informational assets deserve comparable treatment as scarce, physical resources.

Make no mistake: ACTA is an attempt to take corporate welfare for the copyright and trademark industries to a global level. As such, it threatens the wealth, welfare, and stability of the global political economy.

Cheers to Fleischer for providing another clear and articulate statement against ACTA. The question remains, will the USTR, EC, Japan, and the other ACTA negotiating parties listen?

http://revista.libertaddigital.com/articulo.php/1276234906

I know how that sounds... I claim a high level of patriotism, and then "store" the Constitution - one of the nation's most recognizable symbols not to mention the bottom line law of the land - in the least reverent spot in my home. And that wasn't my original intention when I picked up this copy, but I guess I'm not all that big on original intent anyway.

A couple years back, I worked (in a fairly tangential way) on a campaign for the ACLU. We were supplied with boxes of these pocket Constitutions, and for several weeks afterward, I carried my copy in my purse before banishing it to that drawer. Now, truth be told, my purse equals my silverware drawer in terms of junk storage, but there seemed to be something symbolically respectful, even patriotic, about carrying the Constitution with me at all times. Bob Byrd does it; so does Dennis Kucinich, and it always seemed to be kind of a quirky, intellectual demonstration of patriotism for them.

And I'm sure it still is for the thousands of people who carry the Constitution with them today. I love the Constitution, just as I love the American flag. But just as displaying the American flag (whether on a bumper sticker or a lapel pin) can be interpreted as support for war or support for the Bush Administration, the exaltation of the Constitution now strikes me as representative of a specific ideology - and one that I don't always agree with.

That argument goes something like this: The Constitution fully contains the values of this country, and absolute faithfulness to this document is THE most important qualification for holding office in the United States.

I'm guessing that the current "fad" among liberals (and yeah, I think in large part, it is a fad) for blind defense of the Constitution as written is largely a reaction to the events of the day: The Bush Administration tramples the Constitution as a means to reach their ends, we need to stand up for the Constitution. The Social Conservatives want to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, we need to stop them from messing with the Constitution! Civil liberties being violated? Hey, that's unconstitutional. And liberals become Constitutional guardians - a step or two behind pledging to appoint only "strict constructionists" to the bench and measuring the worth of every policy proposal against its adherence to an 18th century rulebook that was deliberately written to be altered.

But that's so short-sighted.

Twenty-seven amendments, and only one that had to be repealed (18th amendment established prohibition, 21st amendment repealed it... or as every high school student is taught as a memory cue: "18 you can't drink, 21 you can.") That's 25 amendments that were widely considered success stories. Amendments that did things like abolish slavery (13th), enfranchise African-Americans and later women (15th and 19th), enact a federal income tax (16th), outlaw poll taxes (24th) and lower the voting age to 18 (26th).
So, I guess it's a good thing we didn't have all these Constitutional purists around then... and by "then," I mean throughout American history.

And think of the things that could still be done... we could abolish the electoral college, add a "Right to Vote" to the Constitution, mandate a year or two of national service for young Americans, grant Congressional representation to D.C., and declare access to health care and education to be constitutionally protected rights. If anything, it should be easier to amend the constitution, at least from a progressive perspective.

Maybe I'm kind of an old-fashioned lefty, but I still buy into that "living, breathing document" thing. I mean, if we always played by the rules, we wouldn't even have a constitution, since its ratification violated the law as laid out in the Articles of Confederation (the Articles required ratification by all states to make any changes; the Constitution required ratification by only 9 of the 13 states). So yeah, sometimes you have to take a pretty loose interpretation of the rulebook for the overall good of the country - a lesson certainly learned by FDR. Complained one conservative commentator last year:

During FDR's presidency, the federal government grew exponentially in size. The federal government usurped traditional state power; it regulated minute details of Americans' everyday lives. The American governmental structure changed fundamentally – yet no constitutional amendment justified that change. Instead, FDR claimed authority in the original text of the Constitution. The American people never had to face the fact that by approving FDR's program, they were altering the Constitution. FDR never had to face the political fallout of altering the Constitution.

Yay FDR... right? He was aggressive in responding to national needs, and he became one of the greatest (okay, THE greatest) President in our history. But today's ideological descendants of FDR are equally likely to view his extra-constitutional measures with a great deal of skepticism: Aren't these the same arguments the Bush Administration makes in order to wiretap without a court order/detain citizens without due process/etc? The fresher facts trump the history, and to steal a cliche, we re-frame our ideology to fit our fear rather than our hope.

I just don't know that I'm ready to let the sins of a few (and ok, Bush clearly wasn't the first President to bend the constitution toward an immoral end) take away the possibility of making real progressive change in the future. I know it's a risk. I know that for every proposal to amend the constitution to make health care a right, there will be a proposal to ban same-sex marriage; I know that for every FDR who stretches constitutional power to create a more just society, there will be a GWB who stretches it to dance around civil liberties. But its a risk I'm willing to take. More than that, it's a risk that progressives have traditionally been willing to take, and up to this point I'd say it has balanced out pretty nicely.

Of course, even if the tide turned back and we once again left the grumpy constitutional elitism to the Right, I'd probably still have to keep my copy in the silverware drawer. I mean, as I mentioned before, it was produced by the Cato Institute! And that... I cannot abide.

So, anyway, this study, which was scientifically conducted in my head after years of observation of different jobs, determined the top ten easiest jobs in the world. For those of you in these jobs, don't be resentful; be thankful you don't have to work for a living.

10. Bush's speech writer: You don't have to come up with anything profound; he's going to botch it anyway. "Where wings take dream." "Put food on your families." "Fool me once, can't fool me again." Oh, just shut up and run out the clock.

9. Lifeguard at the baby pool: If anyone needs an explanation for this one, go ahead and do us all a favor and step in front of a bus.

8. Height regulation enforcer at the fair: There's only one question on that application: "Can you say repeatedly with as redneck and disinterested a voice as possible 489 times a day, "Got to be 42" tall. Just look at the wooden cartoon dog's hand"?

7. Vanna White's job, or more correctly stated, Toucher of Lighted Rectangles: No commentary needed.

6. Any government job: I'm not talking about elected officials and agency heads, but the paper pushers with benefits coming out the wazoo, who do nothing, but still act pissed when you show up at their window. I had to renew my license some time back. The worker, whose only function in life from what I could tell was to take a rubber stamp, slightly dampen it in ink, and then place it on a sheet of paper, was beside herself that I had the gall to ask her to do just what I described.

5. Whoever fills up the holy water fountain in Catholic Churches

4. Volunteers in the Mimes For Blind People Program: Ok, neither this job nor this program exists, but I start laughing just thinking about mimes performing for blind people. "What's he doing now?" "How the hell should I know? I didn't even know you were there until you said something."

3. Robin of Batman and Robin Fame: Sure, the cartoonists, or whatever they're called, gave him a "Kapow!" every now and again, but everyone know Batman did all the work.

2. Tight ends coach: "Catch. Block. Whew, I'm calling it a day. Who wants a cold one?"

1. Drummer in a country band: It's hard to put sounds into words, but listen to any country song; I don't care if it's a ballad or that new stuff they call country, the drummer has the same beat, "Bomp. Shish. Bomp. Shish." It's basically bass drum, cymbal, bass drum, cymbal.

Artiklen er prydet med libertarianske citater fra senator Vinick (a.k.a. Alan Alda).

Det kan læses her.

I've been reading several articles on the pros/cons of adjusting the payroll tax cap (also known as FICA). As of right now, the employer must withhold 6.2% of an employee's wages and pay a matching amount in social security taxes until the employee reaches $102,000 for the year (in 2008). The total is 12.4% for the employee and the employer. Once that amount is earned for a given year, neither the employee nor the employer owe any additional social security tax for that year. Just under 6% of U.S. wage earners make more than $102,000 in wages, so many economists believe that raising the cap on the payroll tax to $200,000 would generate more income for the Social Security program and would not impact low-wage-earners in America.

Here's a pro argument for adjusting the cap upwards:

Let's remind ourselves that Social Security, which cut poverty rates among the elderly from 35% in 1960 to 9.4% in 2006, is no Robin Hood plan that robs the rich to pay for the retirement of the working class. Rather, it is a mildly redistributive public retirement program financed by contributions from the wages of working people. In fact, Social Security taxes fall far more heavily on the poor and working class than on the well-to-do. Payroll taxes are a fixed 12.4% (actually 6.2% on employees and 6.2% on employers); they are levied only on wage income, not on property income; and the cap on wages subject to the tax (the subject of the debate between Clinton and Obama) means that while most workers pay the tax on every dollar of their income, the highest earners pay it only on a part.

The con arguments against raising the payroll tax cap are even more political and partisan (if you can believe it) than the argument above. Those arguments can be found on the CATO Institute website, which is very thorough and goes into great detail about why Social Security is a failed American benefit. Basically, there's a real push to privatize social security because the government shouldn't be in the business of investing your retirement money or redistributing income & wealth.

So what do you think?

• Is there really a social security crisis?
• Should we raise payroll taxes to pay for it
• Should we privatize social security?

Furthermore, does it benefit Human Resources professionals to get into these political discussions? What do we need to know about this issue? What do you know about this issue that other people don't know?

Educate me, please.