In reverse order of importance:
Lindsay Lohan something something trouble with the law.
Angus T. Jones, the “Half” star of “Two and A Half Men,” told people to stop watching his filthy show. Good for him, although he’s pretty much painted himself into a corner where has to leave it.
Two ticket buyers from Arizona and Missouri picked the winning numbers for a record Powerball lottery, which will give them hundreds of millions of dollars collected from poor people who can’t do math.
The Onion tricked the Chinese again with a satirical article naming North Korea’s Kim Jong Il this year’s “Sexiest Man Alive.” North Korea was apparently too busy announcing the discovery of an ancient unicorn lair to notice the honor.
NASA has discovered lots and lots of ice in the shaded parts of Mercury. My children’s astronomy lessons are going to be so different from mine.
The U.S. birth rate has plummeted to the lowest level on record. This is good for people concerned about poor, young single mothers and bad for people concerned about the sustainability of giant federal Ponzi schemes.
Even liberals are upset that the federal Interior Department has refused to renew an operating permit for a long-standing “sustainable” oyster company. Clearly there must be something else going on, because we have always been assured by such liberals that such regulations are always necessary and good.
Mexico swore in a new President. I wonder if that will have any positive effect on the country’s troubling crime and not-so-troubling economic growth.
A Senate Committee approved a bill requiring warrants for checking e-mails. It still has a few steps to go to become law, but it suggests that privacy advocates don’t need to be so worried about government surveillance; they just have to wait for the government’s intrusions to accidentally (i.e. inevitably) expose its own indecencies.
The Senate passed an amendment to the NDAA forbidding indefinite detention of U.S. citizens that should already have been forbidden by the Constitution. Unfortunately, the wording of the amendment was vague enough and the roll call of supporting Senators was unexpected enough that libertarians and other liberty advocates are confused about whether the amendment is helpful or even hurtful. The convoluted truth may be somewhere between Justin Amash and Mike Lee.
To my surprise and slightly masochistic delight our government is still pretending like it might actually jump over the fiscal cliff. The GOP signaled that they might be willing to accept revenue increases until they were met with an “unserious” Obama proposal that included more stimulus spending, the elimination of the debt ceiling, and unspecified healthcare cuts that were more vague than Romney’s much-accosted budget plans. Clearly everyone’s just trying to make this sequel more entertaining than last year’s debt ceiling debate. I’m grabbing more popcorn.
The eurozone reached record unemployment yet again. Tyler Cowen helps explain why the euro crisis has been staggering on for so long…
The lowered birth rates are good news if they are the result of fewer unplanned pregnancies (and I think they are). The demographic concerns of an aging population are overblown. Japan is doing just fine, even they are a lot older than us (or just about anyone). Social Security a Ponzi scheme? No, it is just a pension. How do pensions work? Ask an actuary. Every actuary I’ve met (and I’ve known some great ones) will tell you that Social Security is just fine. Private pensions get their money from the employees, the business and investments. Social Security gets its money (right now) from its employees (and the surplus of employee contributions). When the money runs out (and we run a deficit) we will simply pay Social Security recipients from the general fund. From a financial standpoint, it makes little difference if taxes are high (or we run a deficit) because we started a stupid war (or two) or because we have to pay the Social Security beneficiaries. It is quite possible that the aging population will result in less crime, which could result in less money being spent on the prison industrial complex. A lot of that money could be transferred to funding our national pension system.
Of course, our medical care system is another matter, and far more complicated.
Furthermore, we can more easily reduce our demographic problem (if you consider it that) by simply increasing immigration. Japan can do the same, of course, but historically, Japan has had trouble assimilating newcomers to its country. The U. S., on the hand, is pretty much a nation of immigrants.
I have heard the non-alarmist arguments about Social Security, and I don’t know how to reconcile them with the alarmist arguments about the hugely shrinking ratios of employees and all that. The whole Treasury IOU thing makes it even more complicated, and I’m not sure I get the interest/investment part of the business analogy what with the government borrowing from itself or whatever.
In general, though, my understanding is that the average beneficiary receives far more in benefits than he pays in, and this is only mathematically sustainable while the incoming population is big enough to cover the difference. I guess we will see what happens as time goes by. I do agree though with those calling for more immigration.
The lowered birth rates are good news if they are the result of fewer unplanned pregnancies (and I think they are). The demographic concerns of an aging population are overblown. Japan is doing just fine, even they are a lot older than us (or just about anyone). Social Security a Ponzi scheme? No, it is just a pension. How do pensions work? Ask an actuary. Every actuary I’ve met (and I’ve known some great ones) will tell you that Social Security is just fine. Private pensions get their money from the employees, the business and investments. Social Security gets its money (right now) from its employees (and the surplus of employee contributions). When the money runs out (and we run a deficit) we will simply pay Social Security recipients from the general fund. From a financial standpoint, it makes little difference if taxes are high (or we run a deficit) because we started a stupid war (or two) or because we have to pay the Social Security beneficiaries. It is quite possible that the aging population will result in less crime, which could result in less money being spent on the prison industrial complex. A lot of that money could be transferred to funding our national pension system.
Of course, our medical care system is another matter, and far more complicated.
Furthermore, we can more easily reduce our demographic problem (if you consider it that) by simply increasing immigration. Japan can do the same, of course, but historically, Japan has had trouble assimilating newcomers to its country. The U. S., on the hand, is pretty much a nation of immigrants.
I have heard the non-alarmist arguments about Social Security, and I don’t know how to reconcile them with the alarmist arguments about the hugely shrinking ratios of employees and all that. The whole Treasury IOU thing makes it even more complicated, and I’m not sure I get the interest/investment part of the business analogy what with the government borrowing from itself or whatever.
In general, though, my understanding is that the average beneficiary receives far more in benefits than he pays in, and this is only mathematically sustainable while the incoming population is big enough to cover the difference. I guess we will see what happens as time goes by. I do agree though with those calling for more immigration.