Discuss!

by hilzoy

Per Francis' request (in comments), here is Atrios' list of things liberal bloggers agree on:

• "Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration


• Repeal the estate tax repeal


• Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI


• Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)


• Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation


• Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there's probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.


• Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code


• Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.


• Reduce corporate giveaways


• Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan


• Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.


• Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too.


• Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his neverending stupidity


• Paper ballots


• Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.


• Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.

I'm sure I could think of a few more things. I left off foreign policy because I find that most people who write about it imagine they're playing the game of Risk. It's nice to have nice bumpersticker doctrines which are ultimately meaningless, but basically "put grownups in charge" is my prescription. Kick the petulant children out.

...adding a few more things which would be obvious if we weren't living in the Grand and Glorious Age of Bush:

• Torture is bad
• Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
• Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
• Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
• Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time "just because" is bad

...oh, and I meant to include:

• Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens."

Leaving aside the Jeff Goldstein part. I agree with all of these. Do you? Discuss.

Comments

[moe99]

I agree with every proposal. But the main issue is when do the Democrats get enough discipline to formulate and stay on the message? I don't think it's as much a matter of spine as drastically trimming a bunch of overgrown, unjustifiably so, DC egos.

Oh, and fire all the frikkin' consultants. And take any party managerial posts away from Chuck Schumer.

[KCinDC]

I agree with it all as well, but I'm a little worried about "simplifying" the tax code, since the Republicans have managed to tie that phrase so closely to the idea of reducing the number of tax brackets (which has nothing to do with the real complication of the tax code) and instituting a less progressive "flat" tax.

[KCinDC]

Speaking of consultants, this Salon article made me hate Bob Shrum even more.

[Jackmormon]

Maybe we're going to have to import our reasonable conservatives to argue with. Here's Dan Drezner's take on The List.

[Steve]

I agree with all of that, except for "killing" faith-based funding. I don't think it needs to be killed (and I find the idea politically tone-deaf); what we need to do is end the sham that the Republicans have made of the concept where it basically becomes a funnel to send government money to certain groups that turn out the Republican vote on election day.

The idea that a flat tax is "simpler" is one of those widely-held myths that just boggles me. How do so many people fall for this one? When I explain that it's all the credits and deductions that make your taxes complicated, and that progressive vs. flat makes no difference because you just look your tax up in a table anyway, they always agree; but for every person I persuade, there are a million more who don't get it. I just don't understand how the flat-tax fanatics have sold so many people.

[Slartibartfast]

Simplify

Hey, Atrios and I agree on something!

and increase the progressivity of the tax code

Oops. Guess the devil's not in the details on this one? I could possibly be persuaded on some of this, but...for me, the devil is in the details.

I consider myself fairly reasonable on the issue of tax policy (YMMV), but it's going to take a little more than "hey, let's make taxes more progressive" to get my support. And no, I'm not adamantly opposed to raising my own taxes; I've voted to do so when there was a specific reason for doing so.

As for the rest, some of them I am not all that concerned about, while others I am (dishearteningly) in agreement. Faith-based initiatives just never appealed. Reduce corporate giveaways I'd amend to remove, but I'm not sure what "corporate giveaways" refers to. Underfunding pensions ought to come under SEC regulations (it's just another way of lying to the shareholders), but that's just ignorance combined with not having considered it for long. Drug policy: amen. Paper ballots: I've always been opposed to electronic balloting, but as in other areas, the devil is in the details. Does Atrios propose putting this in the Constitution?

The FICA wage cap is questionable, depending on what he means by this. Putting Goldstein to death for stupidity is just one of the many, many stupid things Atrios has indulged himself in.

Otherwise, ANOTHER STUPID OPEN THREAD.

[Slartibartfast]

After reading the Drezner link, it looks as if he and I are mostly in agreement. I swear I wrote all of that before clicking on it.

[Slartibartfast]

Clarification: I'm not opposed to paying IN more to FICA, but if I wind up getting more in payments out because I paid more in, that does me a lot more good than anyone else. As I already have a 401k plan, that's not something that I think is going to do me all that much good, so: if that's the plan, NO.

[bleh]

Steve: I think "flat" = "simple" in that it's easy to understand, and "simple" = good in that there is a (in many ways well-founded) impression that the tax system is rigged in favor of those (and only those) who can afford to pay expensive accountants.

As to The List, which seems to be taking on political characteristics unrelated to its actual content (Liberal Litmus Test, sigh), imho it may be useful as a starting point for the distillation of a message around which Democrats can coalesce, but said distillation had better start soon, and it had better do some serious reduction in volume. Laundry lists do not a campaign make; if anything, they're baggage that weighs it down.

Here's a question for those pondering The List: what are the common THEMES? E.g., individual rights, fairness, a healthy and well-educated citizenry. If we can come up with a short list of those, say 3 to 5, along with some gut-punching specific examples (along the lines of Republicans taking the "traditional values" theme and illustrating it with an anti-gay-marriage-amendment proposal), then we've got something.

[Steve]

Drezner's take provides a lot of useful food for thought. It's certainly more grownup than Goldstein's take, not that Atrios didn't poke Goldstein with a pointy stick first.

I think the larger point is that this is, essentially, the liberal agenda, and that there's nothing radical about it - just some mainstream ideas, where "mainstream" may or may not mean the same thing as "majority." Maybe gay marriage is the only part that would be considered "radical" by some, but that's only a national political issue because the Republicans put it there, so i don't give it much weight.

Mainstream liberal thought is so far to the right of where it was a few decades ago that it blows my mind sometimes. I remember a Daily Kos diary about how John Roberts had opposed the "comparable worth" theory, which was a substantial movement in the 70s, and virtually every Kossack was like "but Roberts was right, comparable worth is a crazy idea, that's not how our country should work." Of course, Republicans still run on the same old liberal caricatures, but the shift away from radicalism is truly striking.

[Donald Johnson]

Would faith-based funding include government support for homeless shelters at churches? The Manhattan church I used to attend had a homeless shelter and my impression (perhaps wrong) was that it had some government support (this was pre-Bush, btw, but I'm not sure about the government support). We volunteers would spend the night there and talk to the guys, but we didn't proselytize. One of our "graduates", so to speak, was a devout Muslim and I heard he later came back and was a volunteer himself.

Anyway, I don't see that there is anything wrong with that kind of government support (assuming we had it).

[Francis]

since I asked for it, i may as well jump in:

universal health care -- bad.
universal health care insurance -- good.

someday i'm really going to learn more about labor law. but this list seems remarkably weak on improving the ability of the middle class to negotiate better wages.

the thing i find most troubling about the various graphs posted by delong and angry bear is the extent to which growth in the income is inuring to the benefit of very few. why is that? what role can govt play in giving labor more power?

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I tend to agree with drezner's take on most of it, but I'll expand on a few points.

Universal Health Care. For a huge number of reasons I'm deeply skeptical. As with the discussion on Social Security I'm open to the government doing something about the harm most people complain most about--in the case of Social Security I'm all for anti-poverty efforts in the case of health care I'm all for some sort of catastrophic health care insurance.

Increased CAFE standards. As an environmental measure they are unnecessary. Pollutants can and already are plenty regulated. As a gas efficiency measure, we welcome high gas prices which will do a much better job than an almost instantly outdated government standard.

Faith-based funding--this is a Congressional corrective to the Supreme Court making crap up. If you don't like the details I'm happy to let you work it out in the legislatures. But since I'm really not happy with the Supreme Court pretty much ignoring one half of the balancing clause in the 1st amendment on this topic I'm not going to get involved.

Reduce Corporate Giveaways. Sure. I think nearly ALL subsidies should end.

We've talked this week about the Medicare drug plan so I won't repeat myself.

Company Pensions--I suspect this is a holdover from union fantasies about the past. Fact One--you really can't expect to work at the same place your whole life any more. Fact Two--lots of companies aren't going to survive to your retirement. Those two facts suggest that retirement should attach to the employee and move with him. Talked about 'properly' funding a pension is looking at the problem completely wrong. Get retirement benefits with short-to-medium vesting schedules which are portable when vested.

This goes straight into drezner's comment on 14. "Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes. If it would fund the transition funds to an actual private pension system, yes. But I suspect that this is not what Atrios is thinking, so no." If you want people to be vested in their retirement the most secure way to do that is to actually make it belong to them. You don't need fancy rules about intergenerational promise-making if you actually make the money belong to the individual. If you want to run Social Security as an anti-poverty program (its major justification anyway) great. If you want to force people to save for their own retirement with their own money, great. There isn't a need to mash it all together in one big program. It is like a hide-a-bed, mediocre couch and awful bed.

[hilzoy]

bleh: I keep meaning to write a post on what unifies my political views, but what with grading and buying a house, I haven't done it yet. The mid-level version is: people who work hard and play by the rules should do OK. The rather more abstract version is: what matters to me is freedom, everyone's freedom; but it's important to understand freedom not as non-interference but as actually being able to live your life as you see fit.

(Elizabeth Anderson had a good post on this at L2R. She says:

"If the only kind of freedom that matters is that no one intentionally interfere with one's formal freedom of action, and not that one's opportunity set be large and full of worthwhile options, then freedom-lovers would have to oppose traffic laws, stop lights, and so forth, for interfering with freedom of movement. The result of a lack of such laws, however, is not actual freedom of movement, but, in areas of high traffic density, gridlock. (And, in areas of high traffic flow, grave danger.) To be sure, in a state of gridlock, one has the formal freedom to choose any movement in one's opportunity set--which amounts to being able to rock forward and back a couple of inches from bumper to bumper, getting nowhere. Some freedom! By contrast, if we give up certain formal freedoms--to run red lights and stop signs, to drive indiscriminately across lanes--we get in return a vastly expanded opportunity set, including the ability to actually get to places one wants to go, more safely and quickly than if we hadn't given up those freedoms. The point of formal freedom of movement--the right to move around, without coercive inteference by the state or other people--is that it is instrumental to expanding actual opportunities to move around where one wants to go. Merely formal freedom of movement, with nowhere to move to, or nowhere worth moving to, is not an end in itself. Different configurations of formal freedom of movement--different traffic laws--are justified by the extent of the opportunities for safe freedom of movement they enable. Give up a little freedom-as-non-interference, get a big bundle of freedom as real opportunities to move around to worthwhile places in return. A pretty spectacular bargain in terms of freedom, if you ask me."

I want the laws, and government action, to be structured to provide freedom (the freedom to decide how to live one's life, or what Anderson calls 'freedom as opportunity') for anyone who works hard and plays by the rules. (And for others, like e.g. kids, who have a good reason for not working hard, and who we shouldn't always expect to play by the rules. Being a good kid is one thing; being a Stepford Child is another.)

[KCinDC]

Slartibartfast, Atrios specifically said "imprison". The idea that he called for putting Goldstein to death is entirely a product of your unhinged, uncivil imagination.

[nick]

"Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad"

Greatest analogy ever, imo.

[Slartibartfast]

Wow, the irony. I get called unhinged, and the very next name-calling is uncivil. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

But, to be sure, yes, correct: Atrios didn't say put Goldstein to death. My bad. It wasn't intentional.

[KCinDC]

I realize it wasn't intentional, Slartibartfast. I was just joking with the "unhinged, uncivil" comment. Sorry for any confusion.

[liberaljaponicus]

from Drezner's list

12) Paper ballots. Oh, please. With the obvious caveat about protections against fraud, this one falls under "leave the states alone" for me.

I was struck by the disdain that he treats the question of ballots, arguing that it is a 'leave it to the states' sort of thing. Even if you regard the question of vote fraud skeptically, the ability to forget what went on the Florida in 2000 tends to remind me of what conservative live and die by, which is (at least to my jaundiced eyes) the ability of ignore actual facts on the ground in place of a convenient veil over what actually is happening. (apologies to any actual conservatives damaged in the making of that comment ;^) Oh, there's not problem with people getting disenfranchised and besides, we should leave it to the individual states. Not meaning to wave the bloody t-shirt of civil rights, but the glibness with which that plank is pried out and tossed on the scrap heap is striking.

[ral]

Slarti, good to see you. (whew, that's a relief)

[nick]

Francis wrote:

"universal health care -- bad.
universal health care insurance -- good."

Is the distinction something like the difference between offering health care through government run hospitals as opposed to, say, providing health care through subsidized HMO costs or some kind of voucher program?

[Slartibartfast]

Oh, ok. So hard to tell the kidding from the real scrum, sometimes. Guess I'm still prickly; no idea when that's going away.

Still, I'll strive to remain hinged. Or to become more firmly (yet still freely) hinged.

[john miller]

A few thoughts, off the top of my head and written, like most of my comments, off the cuff.

I generally agree with the list with the following exceptions.

I agree with raising the minimum wage, but am not enough of an economist to judge the efficacy of indexing it to the CPI. I think the hard part there would be the frequent raising or lowering of the wage, which might be difficult to coordinate.

I agree with Francis that Universal Health Insurance is a more appropriate phrasing.I do believe in the single-payer system, even though I work for a major health insurance company.

I do know that many in the insurance industry did like Kerry's proposal of coverage of bills over $50,000.

In terms of "decriminalization of drugs", I would wnat to know just what is meant by that. If it means making use of drugs legal, I would be opposed. If it means working more toward treatment of drug users rather than jail-time, specially for first offenders or those who never did receive treatment, I would be in favor of that.

Would not favor decriminalization of the drug selling activities.

Not in favor of killing faith-based funding, except in those situations that are mentioned in the second part, which is that in order to receive assistance there is a faith litmus test.

I am not sure what is meant by corporate giveaways. If it is subsidies, then I am somewhat in agreement. If it means major tax breaks to industries that are already extremely profitable, then I am totally in agreement.

As mentioned by Atrios, this does not include foreign policy issues. And that is probably because it is where there is the least real understanding, and also where there is the greatest disagreement.

One other thing that is missing from the list is more and better care for those we send into harm's way.

[KCinDC]

Have the Scientologists figured out how to get their hands on the faith-based funding yet, or are they so rich they don't consider it worthwhile? The Moonies, of course, have been onto it for some time.

[hilzoy]

For what it's worth: I took 'universal health care' to mean 'universal access to health care', including universal health insurance. (Partly because there is nothing like agreement among left bloggers on anything else.)

And 'more decriminalization': again, this can't mean 'total decriminalization' if it's supposed to capture consensus. I am in favor of letting marijuana be treated like any other drug as far as its medical use is concerned. As I understand it, cocaine is legal as an anaesthetic in some opthamological operations, and that doesn't seem to have harmed anyone.

I firmly believe that marijuana should be treated more in line with other, similar drugs, the way alcohol might be had it been discovered recently. Whether the best approach to this is to decriminalize use and possession of small quantities is a wonky matter that I'll leave to Mark Kleiman.

I also think that both the sentencing guidelines and some of the tactics in the war on drugs (e.g., some of the property seizure stuff) should be changed, and that much, much more treatment should be available. (I mean: isn't everyone better off each time an addict goes straight? Wouldn't all of us rather not be mugged or burglarized than be mugged and burglarized and then have the mugger/burglar locked away forever? And wouldn't we all rather that person be working and paying taxes than using our tax dollars up?)

If there was anything approaching consensus on something more drastic, like decriminalizing cocaine, I'd be dumbfounded.

[lily]

There's nothing on the environment, global warming, or energy independence.
Also, if thre was anything about restoring bi-partisan professionalism to government agencies, I didn't see it.

[Tim]

FWIW, I agree with it all. Moreover, since I see peak oil in the rear view mirror, about half of it is inevitable in the next ten years.

[Steve]

Sebastian said:

Fact One--you really can't expect to work at the same place your whole life any more. Fact Two--lots of companies aren't going to survive to your retirement. Those two facts suggest that retirement should attach to the employee and move with him...

[on Social Security]If you want people to be vested in their retirement the most secure way to do that is to actually make it belong to them.

But see, by your own logic, Social Security is the most logical way for the government to provide for your retirement, because it's like a pension plan that follows you from job to job, and because the U.S. Government will, in fact, be around for your whole life!

See, Social Security is akin to a traditional, defined-benefit pension, while a private account system is more like a 401(k). And the reasons why defined-benefit pensions are being phased out don't apply at all to Social Security, but the reasons why defined-benefit pensions are a GOOD thing are still true.

The most prominent point is that none of us know how long we will live. You might retire and die a year later, or you might live on for 30 years. So, to be safe, your retirement planning has to assume the latter scenario. In a system of private accounts, each and every person has to assume they will live a long retirement, and they have to save enough money to provide for that long retirement.

But in a defined-benefit plan, you can spread the risk. There doesn't have to be enough money saved up to provide for a 30-year retirement for each and every person; some will live shorter, some will live longer, and you can spread the risk and avoid making everyone engage in unnecessary saving for a 30-year retirement that may never come.

The same reasons why defined-benefit pensions are going out of style are the reasons why universal health care is a good idea. In a world where you worked your whole life at one job with employer-sponsored health care, it really didn't matter. But people are more transitory now, they move from job to job, they go for periods of time without a job. They want to know that their families can get health care no matter what's going on with their job at a particular moment. Meanwhile, big employers like GM are being driven out of business by the increasingly exorbitant cost of employer-sponsored health care. Particularly when we want to keep our big job providers viable and competitive with foreign companies that don't have to deal with health care costs, we need to take these expenses away from the big employers and spread the cost out so society as a whole bears it.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"But see, by your own logic, Social Security is the most logical way for the government to provide for your retirement, because it's like a pension plan that follows you from job to job, and because the U.S. Government will, in fact, be around for your whole life!"

Except you have to rely on the government for it, and like taxes that can change in unpredictable ways. See for example the ever changing retirement age. And I don't want the government to "provide for" everyone's retirement. Rich people can provide for their own. Middle class people can provide for their own. I see no more reason for the government to "provide for" everyone's retirement than that it should provide for everyone's food or everyone's car or everyone's house. If you see something as a necessity and poor people can't get it, the government can provide it at the necessity level. Beyond that it is far better to enable people do their own thing.

[Uncle Kvetch]

Well, I was going to ask Hilzoy why there were scare quotes around "gay marriage," but I see that's how Atrios wrote it. Odd, that.

That extremely minor quibble aside, I agree with everything on the list.

Would faith-based funding include government support for homeless shelters at churches? The Manhattan church I used to attend had a homeless shelter and my impression (perhaps wrong) was that it had some government support (this was pre-Bush, btw, but I'm not sure about the government support).

Donald, my understanding is that church-based charities have always been entitled to government funding, provided they keep the charities completely separate from religious activities. Catholic Charities (and Catholic hospitals) have received government funding for years in this way. The difference in the Bush approach is that government funding can now go to organizations that incorporate "faith" into the actual charitable work: i.e., an evangelical Christian drug treatment program that views prayer and scripture reading as part of the treatment.

The potential implications of such a shift aren't difficult to foresee.

[Jesurgislac]

It's a horrid habit of many UK governments - both Conservative and Labour - to adopt political ideas from the US, no matter how obviously stupid. (Possibly the most catastrophic was the adoption of criminalization of addiction: until the mid-1960s, anyone who had become addicted to heroin could simply go to their doctor and receive the drug they needed on prescription. The law was changed even though the British government could look at the catastrophic failure of criminalizing addiction in the US, which failure has - in both countries - now gone a long long way beyond catastrophic.) If this list were implemented, it would be the first (I think) instance of a US government adopting British ideas, well-tried and proven to work.

Well, aside from the item about Jeff Goldstein, which I trust is just kidding.

[Steve]

If you see something as a necessity and poor people can't get it, the government can provide it at the necessity level.

Social Security is, in fact, provided at a necessity level. No one pretends that a monthly Social Security check is enough to provide you with a comfortable retirement - but it's a basic benefit level that keeps a lot of people from starving. Rich people already provide for the vast bulk of their retirement.

Except you have to rely on the government for it, and like taxes that can change in unpredictable ways.

I really don't think there's any sense in which you can say a government program is more volatile than a private investment. I see ERISA cases every day from people whose 401(k)'s dropped like a lead balloon. And you can have even larger problems, like the S&L crisis, or like when you find out that a whole bunch of 401(k) investors got tricked into a Ponzi scheme. Compared to those possibilities, the fact that the retirement age or benefits schedule for Social Security might undergo minor tweaks represents an incredibly minor level of uncertainty.

[CharleyCarp]

• Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
o Not everything in the bill is bad, and many of the other policy prescriptions here should mitigate the worst impacts of the new law. I’d deal with this one later, not sooner.
• Repeal the estate tax repeal
o Absolutely
• Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
o Sure
• Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
o Those who would say it ought to be about coverage, not state supported health care, have the better of it in my view. I’d favor something like a german system – employer mandate to provide minimum level of insurance, state-paid insurance for the unemployed, availability of private insurance for those who pay for it.
• Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation
o Yes to CAFÉ. The reast is pretty vague, but I’m inclined to err on the side of preservation here.
• Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there's probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.
o Yes.
• Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code
o I don’t think the tax code actually needs much simplification. Each complexity has a purpose. Sure, there’s no problem with dealing with each of them separately, with reference to the particular policy at play. But simplification for the sake of it? Cheap pandering. I’m not in favor of increasing income tax progressivity beyond allowing Bush tax cuts to expire.
• Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.
o Yes to the second. On the first, I would simply restore the status quo of 2000.
• Reduce corporate giveaways
o This is too vague for comment. Individual programs should be judged on their merits.
• Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan
o No opinion.
• Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
o I don’t think we can change settled expectations of secured creditors in this way. Also, I think this is a good way to end all pensions. I’d like to see pensions fully funded, but think this might be better done through GAAP and the tax code, rather than the bankruptcy code. I’ve actually pretty leary of much on this one – unintended consequences are likely to swamp the expected benefits.
• Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too.
o Decrim use, growth, of mj. I have a young colleague who says that all drugs should be decriminalized for Boomers.
• Paper ballots
o Maybe, I don’t know.
• Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obviously details matter.
o I think this should best be dealt with by raising wages.
• Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
o Absolutely. I wish it was possible to have a kind of a grand bargain on SS. I’ve got no problem with means testing benefits, but only if the funding of benefits is going to keep pace with needs. I’m afraid that it won’t, and that the people who would like to agree to means testing now can’t bind their future selves well enough so that a deal can be struck. Without a deal, I’d rather stick with the inefficient but better system we have now, than what I’m afraid we’ll get if we let people who don’t believe in government design a new system.
• Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens."
o Gay marriage yes. I’m not sure how much political capital I’d want to spend on citizenship for foreign spouses. (As folks may recall, I have one). This just doesn’t seem like a burning issue to me.
• Foreign policy stuff
o Agree completely.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"No one pretends that a monthly Social Security check is enough to provide you with a comfortable retirement - but it's a basic benefit level that keeps a lot of people from starving."

Great. Continue to give it to them. Don't give it to anyone else.

[double-plus-ungood]

Should I live to a hundred, I will never, never understand the obgoing concern that many Americans have over the government providing universal access to healthcare. Never.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Heck, maybe we should raise the benefit slightly for the poor and cut if off for everyone else (this is a long term view because we can't just cut it off for people in their late 50s or 60s if they have been relying on it as a part of their retirement all this time.) Again, we provide basic food help to people of any age in need, but no one suggests that the best way to do that is to pay middle class and rich people a food stipend every month.

[Slartibartfast]

Should I live to a hundred, I will never, never understand the obgoing concern that many Americans have over the government providing universal access to healthcare. Never.

I feel exactly the same way.

[KCinDC]

I’d favor something like a german system – employer mandate to provide minimum level of insurance, state-paid insurance for the unemployed, availability of private insurance for those who pay for it.

I think the link between employment and health insurance in the US causes a lot of problems -- for one thing, forcing people who have medical problems to stick with an employer to avoid losing coverage. How does the German system deal with that? Are there laws forcing insurance companies to accept people insured by other companies without jacking up their rates?

[LizardBreath]

Because god forbid an elderly person should be more comfortable than barely not starving.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Should I live to a hundred, I will never, never understand the obgoing concern that many Americans have over the government providing universal access to healthcare."

Ever been to the HUD housing projects? Ever dealt with the IRS after they made a mistake? HMOs can be annoying to deal with, but not nearly as much as the IRS.

[LizardBreath]

And yet people with Medicare are generally satisfied with it.

[Dantheman]

My thoughts in CAPS:

Undo the bankruptcy bill enacted by this administration
YES.

Repeal the estate tax repeal
ABSOLUTELY.

Increase the minimum wage and index it to the CPI
YES. IN RESPONSE TO DRENZER'S COMPLAINT ABOUT WAGE-PRICE SPIRALS, WHY DOES IT ALWAYS SEEM TO BE THE WAGE SIDE THAT IS EXPECTED TO TAKE A HIT TO BREAK THE CYCLE?

Universal health care (obviously the devil is in the details on this one)
UNIVERSAL INSURANCE, ABSOLUTELY. SINGLE PROVIDER, NOT CONVINCED AS YET, ALTHOUGH I THINK IT WOULD BE BETTER THAN THE STATUS QUO.

Increase CAFE standards. Some other environment-related regulation
INCREASING CAFE YES. OTHER ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION DEPENDS ON WHAT IT IS. I REFUSE TO PLAY THE PIG-IN-A-POKE MARKET.

Pro-reproductive rights, getting rid of abstinence-only education, improving education about and access to contraception including the morning after pill, and supporting choice. On the last one there's probably some disagreement around the edges (parental notification, for example), but otherwise.
YES.

Simplify and increase the progressivity of the tax code
WHILE I AGREE WITH CHARLEY CARP THAT THE COMPLICATIONS ARE THERE FOR WHAT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD REASON AT THE TIME, MANY OF THE REASONS ARE OUTDATED AND CAN BE REMOVED. NOT IN FAVOR OF A MEAT-AXE APPROACH, BUT RATHER A SCALPEL. MORE PROGRESSIVE IS A NECESSITY, THOUGH.

Kill faith-based funding. Certainly kill federal funding of anything that engages in religious discrimination.
NO TO FIRST, YES TO SECOND.

Reduce corporate giveaways
YES.

Have Medicare run the Medicare drug plan
YES.

Force companies to stop underfunding their pensions. Change corporate bankruptcy law to put workers and retirees at the head of the line with respect to their pensions.
YES. WHILE I UNDERSTAND SEBASTIAN'S POINT THAT EMPLOYER PENSIONS ARE GOING THE WAY OF THE DODO, THAT IS NO REASON TO ALLOW THE EMPLOYER TO RENEGE ON WHAT THEY AGREED TO, OFTEN GETTING OTHER CONCESSIONS IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR PENSION PROMISES.

Leave the states alone on issues like medical marijuana. Generally move towards "more decriminalization" of drugs, though the details complicated there too.
YES.

Imprison Jeff Goldstein for crimes against humanity for his neverending stupidity
NOT TAKING THIS SERIOUSLY. HE WOULDN'T BE MY FIRST CHOICE IF SUCH PENALTIES EXISTED, EITHER.

Paper ballots
YES.

Improve access to daycare and other pro-family policies. Obiously details matter.
YES ON IMPROVING ACCESS TO DAYCARE. NEED DETAILS ON OTHERS.

Raise the cap on wages covered by FICA taxes.
THIS IS MY ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT FOR CONSIDERING ANY TINKERING WITH SOCIAL SECURITY. WHEN THE LAST GRAND BARGAIN WAS STRUCK IN 1983, THERE WAS AN ASSUMPTION THAT A SPECIFIC PERCENTAGE OF WAGES (90%, IIRC) WOULD BE COVERED. THIS LEVEL NEEDS TO BE RESTORED, AND IF SO, SOLVENCY FOR THE NEXT 75 YEARS IS LIKELY.

Torture is bad
YES.
Imprisoning citizens without charges is bad
YES.
Playing Calvinball with the Geneva Conventions and treaties generally is bad
YES. ADD STATUTES (FISA, ETC.) TO THIS LIST.
Imprisoning anyone indefinitely without charges is bad
YES.
Stating that the president can break any law he wants any time "just because" is bad
WORSE THAN BAD.
Marriage rights for all, which includes "gay marriage" and quicker transition to citizenship for the foreign spouses of citizens."
YES TO FIRST. UNSURE ABOUT SECOND.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"YES. WHILE I UNDERSTAND SEBASTIAN'S POINT THAT EMPLOYER PENSIONS ARE GOING THE WAY OF THE DODO, THAT IS NO REASON TO ALLOW THE EMPLOYER TO RENEGE ON WHAT THEY AGREED TO, OFTEN GETTING OTHER CONCESSIONS IN EXCHANGE FOR THEIR PENSION PROMISES."

How do these issues come up? In bankruptcy or worrys of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy lets companies 'renege' or at least drastically discount their payment promises to all sorts of people. (Interestingly enough see how this meshes with complaints about the bankruptcy bill for individuals). Putting pension claims above other creditors will make it very difficult for companies to go through a reorganization and emerge as an ongoing venture. Now if you think it would be better for these companies to just go out of business entirely, so be it. But realize that the pension isn't getting paid then either.

[double-plus-ungood]

Ever been to the HUD housing projects? Ever dealt with the IRS after they made a mistake? HMOs can be annoying to deal with, but not nearly as much as the IRS.

No, I haven't, but I have lived for the last thirty-seven years under state-provided healthcare, and I can say with some confidence that it works relatively well.

[Dantheman]

"How do these issues come up? In bankruptcy or worrys of bankruptcy. Bankruptcy lets companies 'renege' or at least drastically discount their payment promises to all sorts of people."

Initially, there's a world of difference between bankruptcy and "worries of bankruptcy". In the first case, creditors of equal classes are being treated equally, so the employees get a small preference (i.e., ahead of the unsecured claimants, but behind the secured ones) for unpaid wages, and are otherwise treated the same as the other unsecured creditors. In the second case, they are being asked to sacrifice when no one else is.

Second, unfortunately, those are not the only times that companies choose not to meet their pension obligations. Healthy companies have been doing it too, simply because they know there is no penalty for doing so (and to the contrary a reward for not doing so, as they can use the monies for other things, including paying dividends to shareholders).

[Francis]

Putting pension claims above other creditors will make it very difficult for companies to go through a reorganization and emerge as an ongoing venture.

this is an empirical claim that will require substantial evidence.

but since we don't have any, as a matter of policy and common sense pension claims should come first. After all, a pension is nothing more than an income stream for work already long since done. In that way, a pension obligation looks a lot like an upaid tax obligation. (And what comes absolutely first in bankruptcy? tax payments.)

and if the company can't afford to live up to its pension obligations, the pension benefit guaranty corporation (ie, all the other corporations playing by the rules, backed by the US taxpayer) pick up the tab, after a big haircut is imposed.

the reason, by the way, to give soc.sec. to everyone is that ex ante no one knows where they're going to end up. will you be disabled in the next five years, SH? outlive your savings?

if you want to tax ss distributions on the back end, i'm not thrilled with the idea but i could live with it, so long as there's a sizeable deduction. i'm not sure how much revenue we'll get out of it, though. If we're trying to not give too much money to the elder wealthy, then an estate tax is far more logical.

[Steve]

Putting pension claims above other creditors will make it very difficult for companies to go through a reorganization and emerge as an ongoing venture.

This doesn't make any economic sense to me at all. Because the law gives someone else's claims priority over yours, you're going to just veto the reorganization and force the company to go out of business?

What this type of reform definitely would do is make it harder for companies that offer a defined-benefit pension to secure credit. That's a problem.

[Slartibartfast]

After all, a pension is nothing more than an income stream for work already long since done. In that way, a pension obligation looks a lot like an upaid tax obligation.

I find myself, wonder of wonders, absolutely locked in agreement with Francis.

[cleek]

tax SS payments? wow. now that's some double taxation!

[Steve]

if you want to tax ss distributions on the back end, i'm not thrilled with the idea but i could live with it, so long as there's a sizeable deduction. i'm not sure how much revenue we'll get out of it, though. If we're trying to not give too much money to the elder wealthy, then an estate tax is far more logical.

It seems conceptually difficult to me to means-test a program for retirees because you can't simply look at their tax returns. You could be living off savings or a tax-free annuity. What would we do - require everyone who wants Social Security payments to submit a statement of assets and liabilities each year? I don't see why the same people who fought for welfare reform suddenly want to turn Social Security into welfare - unless their ultimate goal is the same in both cases.

[Bruce Baugh]

The more I see careful, courteous arguments against extending Social Security and such, or in favor of rolling them back, the more they help me realize: I do in fact want to see a lot more universal benefits. I'm firmly convinced from my own experience that the stresses of dancing on the edge of eligiblity deform society in a bunch of bad ways, and I suspect that the costs of simply covering folks would end up with many fewer opportunities for abuse and waste than trying to ever more strictly enforce whater guidelines one might draw about whom we deign to deem worthy.

Spending time in hospice visits has only einforced my general inclination of recent years. There are times when people shoul have no uncertainty at all that important basics will be covered. They shouldn't have to settle for their dying loved ones going off without dignity simply because, oh, look, you choose your employer badly twenty years earlier - and never mind that you never did have a voice in the management, and all that. We're a wealthy land. We can do it. We should do it.

I find that the older I get, the more interested I am in actually existing people's dignity and security than I am in the theoretical benefits of casting them all into the snow. I tend to figure that the rugged self-reliant ones will find a way to prosper. I'm concerned about those who don't have those qualities, but who are equally my fellow citizens and human beings.

[Slartibartfast]

That aside, I work for a company that offers both pension and match of 401k contributions. The pension is going by the wayside (meaning, for now, no new enrollments) but people already vested continue amassing pension pay for years of service. I fully expect that in a couple of more years, the company will offer cash buyouts for the pensions, and if the offer is right, I'm going with it. I'm not sure how that'd work, tax-wise, but I guess I'm going to find out.

[javelina]

Nick already said it for me upthread - "Calvinball with the Geneva Convensions" - the absolutely, positively perfect choice of words! I am going to be happy abt this all day.

I agree w/ the list. Except for the Goldstein thing - let him stew in his own juices. Although, ewwww.

P.S. Bill Watterson, come back.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"the reason, by the way, to give soc.sec. to everyone is that ex ante no one knows where they're going to end up. will you be disabled in the next five years, SH? outlive your savings?"

My anti-poverty Social Security would do that right? Once again I'm for food stamps but I'm not for a food stipend to the middle class or for rich people. Are you for that? Why not?

[Steve]

We don't need to determine ex ante whether someone will need food stamps down the road. We can go by whether they're hungry right now.

We also shouldn't want to enact any means-tested retirement program that will encourage people to blow through their savings, knowing that government will be there to pick up the tab once they run out. Under Social Security, your payments are based on what you put in, and that's all you get.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Steve, "This doesn't make any economic sense to me at all. Because the law gives someone else's claims priority over yours, you're going to just veto the reorganization and force the company to go out of business?"

and Francis, "Putting pension claims above other creditors will make it very difficult for companies to go through a reorganization and emerge as an ongoing venture.

this is an empirical claim that will require substantial evidence.

but since we don't have any, as a matter of policy and common sense pension claims should come first. After all, a pension is nothing more than an income stream for work already long since done. In that way, a pension obligation looks a lot like an upaid tax obligation. (And what comes absolutely first in bankruptcy? tax payments.)"

You don't seem to be thinking about why secured claims come first. Secured claims are secured by collateral. The reason secured claims get priority is so that the holder of the collateral won't foreclose on the collateral. This is important for things like machinery or commercial property. If you want to be a continuing company you can't have your crucial machinery or plant forclosed. If we changed the rules on forclosure such that claims with collateral did not get priority, commercial loans with collateral would not be substantially less than commercial loans with collateral. I'm sure you see how that could be damaging to the economy.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"We don't need to determine ex ante whether someone will need food stamps down the road. We can go by whether they're hungry right now.

We also shouldn't want to enact any means-tested retirement program that will encourage people to blow through their savings, knowing that government will be there to pick up the tab once they run out. Under Social Security, your payments are based on what you put in, and that's all you get."

Food stamps exist now. People don't blow through their savings so they can get valuable food stamps because they want better food and other good things. The key is to set the level of the benefit at 'ok' but not 'great'. (I suspect that would be somewhat higher than the actual benefit available now). Middle class and rich people aren't going to want to settle for 'ok'. There may indeed be people who blow through their savings on two-year trips through Europe and then live on SS. A) They can do that now. B) Do you believe welfare queens were a high-frequency problem? If not, why are you raising an identical concern in this context?

[hilzoy]

Completely OT: I just got back from closing on my new House (OMG!!! Debt!!! Anxiety attack, since I am very financially cautious!!!), and checked in, and noticed that we seem to be getting hits from Pajamas Media. When I went to see why, I found this, which makes it look as though I posted something there. In fact, I have precisely no desire to be affiliated with PJM (for all I know they feel the same about me; they've never asked.) Would it be pointlessly obnoxious to email them to ask what's up?

I need netiquette advice.

[hilzoy]

Oops: the link in the last comment should be this.

[Steve]

The issues are far different. In retirement, you have essentially a fixed pool of savings, and you have to decide how to allocate it.

Let's say you're 80, and you have no idea whether you'll live 5 more years or 15 more. Ordinarily, you'd plan a conservative strategy; under a means-tested system, you can afford to spend more aggressively, because you have a safety net. It's not a question of people intentionally gaming the system, it's a question of the effect at the margins from putting the wrong incentives in place.

Where is the money going to come from to pay for this, by the way? Under the present system, you get your own money back. If you don't have participants paying into the system, it becomes just another entitlement program that comes out of general revenues and gets paid for with the taxes of non-participants.

And politically speaking, it's clear beyond dispute that the best way to ensure Social Security remains viable is to resist any and all attempts at means-testing. You think Social Security is unreliable now because they might tinker with the benefits schedule or retirement age? Try turning it into an entitlement program that could be wiped out at a moment's notice if there's a turnover in Congress.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

I think the front page links there function as a sort of aggregator. You could ask them to preface it with a "Seen around the net...." or something like that for clarity.

[Bernard Yomtov]

You don't seem to be thinking about why secured claims come first. Secured claims are secured by collateral. The reason secured claims get priority is so that the holder of the collateral won't foreclose on the collateral.

But aren't there many unsecured claims that come ahead of pensions? A fairly small portion of corporte debt is actually secured.

Do you believe welfare queens were a high-frequency problem?

Symbolically, they were.

[Jackmormon]

No, I think you're within your rights to ask them to cut that out, particularly since PJM is a for-profit venture.

Or because PJM was intended to be a for-profit venture, or, at least, that's what they said when it was launched.

[Bernard Yomtov]

By the way, I would add to the list:

Require that states provide and distribute voting equipment among precincts in such a way that all voters face the same expected waits to cast their votes.

This is not difficult, and goes to fundamental fairness of our elections.

[Steve]

Require that states provide and distribute voting equipment among precincts in such a way that all voters face the same expected waits to cast their votes.

I'm kinda surprised no court (that I know of) has ever made this ruling as a matter of constitutional law. After all, we know from Bush v. Gore that it's unconstitutional to use different recount methods in different counties. Why should it be permissible to have a 5-minute wait to vote in one county and a 3-hour wait to vote in the next?

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Where is the money going to come from to pay for this, by the way? Under the present system, you get your own money back. If you don't have participants paying into the system, it becomes just another entitlement program that comes out of general revenues and gets paid for with the taxes of non-participants."

You don't get your own money back now. That money isn't being saved for you in a special vault. It is being spent on farm subsidies and the war in Iraq.

As for incentives, how does that function differently than now? Social Security means that everyone can spend more of their own savings because they can fall back on Social Security. You just spread it out over more time and ensure that if they die early they have more personal money to pass on to their heirs.

[Slartibartfast]

I'd ask them to take it down, hilzoy. I mean, if they'd done something that was more overtly a trackback, that'd be different. This looks like a contribution.

[Dantheman]

"You don't seem to be thinking about why secured claims come first. Secured claims are secured by collateral. The reason secured claims get priority is so that the holder of the collateral won't foreclose on the collateral.

But aren't there many unsecured claims that come ahead of pensions? A fairly small portion of corporte debt is actually secured."

No, all unsecured claims are treated the same. However, there is another class of claims in between secured and unsecured, called priority claims. These are claims which have no specific claim on any specific asset, so they are not secured, but have been given favored status anyway, as there are reasons why they should be paid in full rather than getting pennies on the dollar as most unsecured claims get.

An example related to this discussion is wages. Since we do not want employees who have no control over a company harmed by its bankruptcy and thereby encouraged to abandon ship at the first sign of trouble, a small amount of wages (single digits of thousands per employee, IIRC) are treated as priority claims. Unpaid taxes are generally treated as priority claims (unless they are a lien on an asset, as real estate taxes are), and there are gradations of priority among them.

[Steve]

You don't get your own money back now. That money isn't being saved for you in a special vault. It is being spent on farm subsidies and the war in Iraq.

Your 401(k) isn't saved in a special vault either. My point, though, was something different: that only people who pay into the present Social Security system get anything out of it. Make it into an entitlement, and now millions of taxpayers are paying for a program they get nothing out of, and it becomes politically undesirable.

As for incentives, how does that function differently than now? Social Security means that everyone can spend more of their own savings because they can fall back on Social Security.

It functions differently because current Social Security payments amount to the exact same sum of money whether you blow through your savings quickly or not. There is no added incentive to spend your savings more quickly.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"It functions differently because current Social Security payments amount to the exact same sum of money whether you blow through your savings quickly or not."

But if you spend all your money you have to live off of the SS outlay. In either case if you are foolish about your personal savings you have to live off the outlay.

But under the current system we are additionally paying people who are in absolutely no danger of the problem you profess to guard against. Above that we are paying a vast amount of money to people who aren't anywhere near to having used all their savings and are therefore not near to experiencing the problem you want to guard against.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

Is there a right to not spend your own money on your retirement?

[Francis]

Basic liberal principle: Certain kinds of risk-sharing are essential tenets of a healthy society.

[snark: want anarchy? move to Somalia.]

applied principle: Employer-based health care insurance has failed. Every other industrial country has some kind of government-sponsored health care insurance that provides better or equivalent societal outcomes at a much lower cost. Single-payer insurance, delivered by a special-purpose federally chartered insurance company (see fannie mae, freddie mac) is the best idea going.

Applied principle: Between globalization, monetary policy at the Fed and improvements in health care, our society is guaranteed to have a substantial number of elder poor who were unable to save enough for retirement. Add in corporate bankruptcies that destroy pensions, disability and death of a spouse and there is substantial justification for a mandatory government-sponsored pension. There is no effective way of means-testing pension payouts, because it would require determining a retiree's wealth, which would be tremendously intrusive and unfair.

[Bernard Yomtov]

And politically speaking, it's clear beyond dispute that the best way to ensure Social Security remains viable is to resist any and all attempts at means-testing.

Raising the cap on FICA wages, if you don't change benefits, is a sort of means-testing, and of course increasing the tax on benefits is another. The benefits already are somewhat taxed even at unspectacular income levels, though not as much as regular income.

To do what we think of as means-testing, where people fill out special forms listing their income, assets, etc. seems to me to be an idiotic idea on practical grounds alone. Do we really want elderly people who have suffered some sort of financial reverse - think Katrina - to suddenly have to run around filling out papers and presenting documentation and waiting for their benefits to be raised? Not to mention that the financial status of retirees is a complex matter not easy to fit into simple formulas.

[Sebastian Holsclaw]

"Do we really want elderly people who have suffered some sort of financial reverse - think Katrina - to suddenly have to run around filling out papers and presenting documentation and waiting for their benefits to be raised?"

Then why do we pay unemployment instead of just paying everyone a monthly stipend?

[Chuchundra]

What's your proposal, Sebastian? I've been paying into Social Security for 20 years with the promise that I'll have those benefits when I retire.

Does that all go poof now?

[Bruce Baugh]

Sebastian, I'd like to note that the guaranteed minimum income was a proposal of Milton Friedman's. It might be wrong, but it is not inevitably starry-eyed leftist stuff.

In any event, there is an obvious difference between unemployment and retirement: one is much more foreseeable and expected than the other. People seek help after setbacks like unemployment and floods because we don't readily predict in advance who's going to suffer from them. Retirement, on the other hand, we can see coming, and have policies in place for.

I hate to sound as callous to a dear value as I do sometimes these days, but fi the cause of liberty were to really require leaving more people to readily avoidable misery individually and greater social stress and chaos collectively, then my answer is not "bring on the misery, stress, and chaos", but "then liberty's going to take one for the team". I do not recognize the social utility in leaving our most vulnerable people abandoned, and when it comes ot it, I don't see the utility in leaving others to a lot of avoidable risks, either. In a great many things, I think universal coverage would be simpler to administer, cost effective, promote wholesome values (by removing incentives to lie and distort one's situation at the thresholds of eligibility, and by removing incentives to seem strong and courageous by cutting off others' help, a grave sin in my creed), and reduce class tensions at a time when they're far too high. Basically, I buy Bismarck's reasoning, and I've yet to see it adequately addressed, let alone refuted.

I find liberty enhanced in a society whose members do not fear misfortune or decline, and who are therefore able to choose a course of action rather than thinking whose they must kowtow to for the sake of survival.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Then why do we pay unemployment instead of just paying everyone a monthly stipend?

Because:

Unemployment is not means-tested. You just have to show you lost your job under the appropriate circumstances.

You receive unemployment for a limited period and the benefits are prescribed amounts. Means-tested social security would be an entirely different matter.

Few of the people filing for unemployment are old enough to have difficulty getting around, getting the needed forms, etc.

[DaveL]

Slarti,

I fully expect that in a couple of more years, the company will offer cash buyouts for the pensions, and if the offer is right, I'm going with it. I'm not sure how that'd work, tax-wise, but I guess I'm going to find out.

Lump sum distributions can be rolled over tax-free to an IRA, 401(k) plan, etc. Under current rules and current interest rates, the lump sum is usually a better deal, although you have to watch to make sure the lump sum includes any subsidies that you could receive with an annuity (e.g., subsidized early retirement benefits that are more valuable actuarially than the normal retirement benefit). That may change depending on the outcome of current Congressional tinkering, so take this FWIW.

[kenB]

I think the difficulties of means-testing for seniors is being exaggerated -- it's been done for Medicaid for a good long time, and now there's the low-income subsidy for part D coverage. The governments and HMOs hire "facilitated enrollment" people to mitigate some of the concerns listed above.

I heartily agree with the last four sentences of Sebastian's 12:06 PM (not to say that I don't agree with any of the rest of it) -- the current SS is a frankenprogram. I suspect that even the people defending it here wouldn't design it this way if we were starting from scratch. Do you folks really think that the only way to get a safety net for needy seniors is to pay a huge bribe to the comfortable?

[Nell]

I'd add public campaign financing (for federal elections). Any liberals here disagree with that? We'll never get to a lot of the other good stuff until pols are freed from the corporate feedbag...

[Bruce Baugh]

Yes, Ken, as a matter of fact. I think that the less people with money feel connection to a program helping others, the more willing they are to twist and axe it, and I think history bears this out as a valid generalization. Universal programs enjoy much greater support and resilience. If I wee doing it from scratch, I'd certainly shoot for universal coverage, and pitch it as a thing we do for Americans because we can and should, regardless of what work and fortune have brought them.

[Chuchundra]

Roosevelt himself said that if SS was only for the poor, it would become an impoverished program. Making it a universal benefit has ensured its survival and health for over 70 years.

Compare it the way welfare is treated. Nobody says that we need to get people off of Social Security and reduce the size of the program. It would be political suicide.

[Slartibartfast]

Thanks, DaveL. Good to know.

[Steve]

I'd add public campaign financing (for federal elections). Any liberals here disagree with that?

The problem with public financing, which is a commendable idea in theory, is what we think of now as the 527 problem. I'm not enough of a First Amendment absolutist that I think you can't regulate the speech of candidates; but you're never going to be able to stop well-heeled folks from spending all the money they want in order to promote their favorite candidate. Even if we assume there would never, ever be any coordination with the actual campaign, George Soros is always going to spend lots of money to get Kerry elected, Dr. Evil is always going to spend lots of money to get Bush elected, and I'm not sure what you could possibly do about it. So I need to see a plan that addresses this issue before I get on board.

[Chuchundra]

Steve, no public financing could (or should) prevent independent people or groups from independently spending their money to promote the candiate they like.

What it will prevent, I think, is direct fundraising by the candidates themselves. Fundraising dinners, coffee with the candidates, pay-for-access and wink and a nudge quid-pro-quo would be either eliminated or severely curtailed. The evil in the system isn't the money itself. Its what the pols have to do to get the money.