The Ideological Thing
Thursday, December 23, 2004, 01:54 PM - Politics
A couple of post down asked the question about Bush's "ideological thing". Here's an old article by Jonathan Rauch looking at the comparison between Bush and FDR. Definitely worth the read.

In a guest post on Andrew Sullivan, Reihan Sallam talks about the "ideology of self-reliance" (which included the link to Rauch's article). There are a bunch of links there that also are worth pursuing to get at this issue.


TCF on Social Security
Monday, December 20, 2004, 06:34 PM - Economy
The Century Foundation has 12 reasons why privitization is a Bad Idea. My take on the twelve points:

1. Social Security is not just a retirement program. It's also a disability/survivors benefit program. This aspect is not adequately addressed either in plan or rhetoric.

2. Diverting 17% of social security contributions into private accounts will create a crisis, not prevent one. The current system is solvent until, pessimistically, 2042. Privitization will cut this to, optomistically, 2030. (Currently 12% of salary goes to FICA. Privitization will divert 2% of salary. 2% is 17% of 12%)

3. The proposals currently under consideration will add 1% of GDP per year to the national deficit.

4. Privitization has been tried elsewhere and doesn't work.

5. Poor investment decisions by individuals -- not a strong argument, in my opinion, but a real concern.

6. The useful value of a privitized account will depend on whether one retires in an up market or a down one.

7. Brokerage fees will eat a significant portion of the account value.

8. The federal bureaucracy would mushroom to manage all the little accounts which Wall Street won't touch.

9. Young people will be worse off. They're the one's being sold on this, and they're gonna take it on the chin. They will get to pay for the additonal deficit in addition to getting less return.

10. Women will lose. They depend more on survivor and spousal benefits, which are not addressed, i.e. they're eliminated.

11. There's a disproportionate impact on poor, and thereby minority, workers because retirement benefits are based solely on lifetime earnings, unlike the current system.

12. No protection against inflation.


Krugman on Social Security
Monday, December 20, 2004, 01:39 PM - Economy
From Paul Krugman's recent article in the NY Times:
the U.S. news media have provided their readers and viewers with little information about international experience. In particular, the public hasn't been let in on two open secrets:

Privatization dissipates a large fraction of workers' contributions on fees to investment companies.

It leaves many retirees in poverty.

More than 99 percent of Social Security's revenues go toward benefits, and less than 1 percent for overhead. In Chile's system, management fees are around 20 times as high. And that's a typical number for privatized systems.

A reasonable prediction for the real rate of return on personal accounts in the U.S. is 4 percent or less. If we introduce a system with British-level management fees, net returns to workers will be reduced by more than a quarter. Add in deep cuts in guaranteed benefits and a big increase in risk, and we're looking at a "reform" that hurts everyone except the investment industry.

Privatizers who laud the Chilean system never mention that it has yet to deliver on its promise to reduce government spending. More than 20 years after the system was created, the government is still pouring in money. Why? Because, as a Federal Reserve study puts it, the Chilean government must "provide subsidies for workers failing to accumulate enough capital to provide a minimum pension." In other words, privatization would have condemned many retirees to dire poverty, and the government stepped back in to save hem.

For the record, I don't think giving financial corporations a huge windfall is the main motive for privatization; it's mostly an ideological thing. But that windfall is a major reason Wall Street wants privatization, and everyone else should be very suspicious.
One of the things I'm trying to understand is the "ideological thing" of this administration and its approach to Social Security and the economy in general.


More Social Security
Friday, December 17, 2004, 05:26 PM - Economy
From the NY Times:
President Bush said on Thursday that addressing the long-term problems in Social Security would reassure the financial markets...
Seems strange that the main selling point is to reassure Wall Street. I understand corporations playing to Wall Street, but the government?

The assumption, of course, is that privitization will "fix" Social Security. What I'm looking for is an explanation on how privitization is a fix.

The stuff I've read in support of privitization focuses on political theory. Rather than address the financial details, like growing lengths of eligibility, the supporters talk about Social Security as big government intrusion, privitization as promoting individualism and, voila, problem solved. That these are the same people who want to ban books and limit civil liberties, acts which impinge on my individualism, leads me to question their real motives.

That being said, if there is a real crisis, let's deal with it straight up. It strikes me that they are standing around a house with termite damage and saying that if we make it look like a Tudor, rather than a Ranch, the problem will be fixed.


Social Security
Thursday, December 16, 2004, 08:25 PM - Economy
Arnold Kling writes about Social Secuirty. He points out that the problems facing the system go far beyond how the current system is funded. A central problem is that, due to our increased lifespan, the number of post-retirement years that Social Security must support has increased greatly.

In reading around, what I find striking is that administration supporters, such as Volokh seem to spend more time discussing the nature of risk rather than the efficacy of the President's reform proposals. It makes me wonder what's going on.

Perhaps it's because the President's "reforms" do not begin to address the real problems. It leads to questioning the motive for his proposals. It's not hard to conclude that Bush's push is really about killing a core program of the New Deal for nothing more than ideological reasons.


Proportion
Thursday, December 16, 2004, 12:10 PM - Photo
Ha! So much for keeping a browser open at work - the Proportion piece was still there. This was posted December 3.

It's taken a while (about a year...) to consciously realize that the Canon DSLR captures a 1:1.5 image rather than the 1:1.33 image I'd become accustomed to with my previous digital cameras. I backed into the realization while cropping an image, wondering why, one more time, I was chopping off the sides of a picture. I try not to crop pictures; I ascribe to the tradition that one mark of a successful image is that it fills the frame of capture. I'm not a commercial photographer, so I can afford the luxury of notions such as integrity to the format chosen. I own only one format, so I don't have a lot of flexibility here, but it is a conceit to which I have tried to adhere.

Once conscious of the issue, I pursued it.

I started with the camera. I realized that it's an effort to see the full image in the viewfinder of the Canon. I compared the Canon with my old Nikkormat and I found that, with the Nikkormat, I can position the camera more squarely to my line of vision and I perceive the edges of the image through the viewfinder more brightly. And for some reason, I can see the details of lens distortion more clearly with the Nikkormat. The net is that the camera itself does not facilitate (for me, at least) full-aspect imaging.

Then I looked at my results. After studying some of my images, I came to the conclusion that I don't really cotton to the 1:1.5 aspect; it's either too oblong or not oblong enough. For a "normal" image, I prefer the 1:1.33 ratio as a maximum and for panoramas, I prefer ratios starting at 1:2.5.

This all leaves me trying to maintain an integrity to an aspect format I don't much like with a camera that hinders the effort.

That led to thinking about the nature of my images and why I take them. Along with not being commercial, my images also are not photojournalistic. There is no story to tell or support. My images, then, are by and large aesthetic objects.

I'm not sure entirely what that means, "aesthetic objects". Right now, it's more a definition of what they aren't intended to do; they aren't meant to convince nor are they meant to narrate. They are meant to be compelling visual objects in and of themselves.

I have decided that it is time to change notions. For the while, I'm going to abandon the idea of filling the frame and concentrate on this idea of object. The first step is to impose a new regime. What I want to do is create images in what I consider to be a non-photographic aspect and that, to me, is a square (hasselblad notwithstanding) format or crop.


blew it
Tuesday, December 14, 2004, 08:16 PM -
Damn. I was trying to get the comments working, and blew away the December entries.

The key entries I lost dealt with:
1. Proportion of images
2. Managed development vs. xhtml development


Photos
Sunday, November 28, 2004, 04:51 PM - Photo
What are you hearing when the shutter snaps?
Salgado photographs people. Casual photographers photograph phantoms. ... Charity, vertical, humiliates. Solidarity, horizontal, helps. Salgado photographs from inside, in solidarity. ... Salgado's camera reaches in to reveal the light of human life with tragic intensity, with sad tenderness. here.
Is there poetry? What is the light? Where's the good of it, or the bad of it? Snapshot after snapshot after snapshot - what should compel a gaze to return, to become a look, to become a stare?

Are you hearing yourself? Are you becoming a part of the moment? Are you there, somewhere in the picture? Or are you standing back, too, watching your work?



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