Privatizing Pensions--Chile

I'm old enough to remember when the right was pushing the idea of privatizing pensions, pointing to the success of Chile's system.  (They'd been advised by Chicago-school economists, 
and see this.)

But the NYTimes today reports that the system is under fire, because the benefits received under the system don't replace more than 36 or so percent of wages and for other reasons.

We liberals will doubtless say "we told you so", which is always fun.  But the better lesson might be to always be careful of reforms sold as panaceas, from whatever side.  Humans tend to run from one side of the boat to the other, whether under the grip of enthusiasm or despair.

(I wonder how New Zealand's economic reforms, particularly of the agricultural economy, are faring these days?)

Different Platforms

From a piece at  Monkey Cag:

The [Democratic] platform mentions whites only in the context of their greater wealth, lower arrest rates and lower job losses.
In contrast, the Republican platform never refers explicitly to Latinos or people of color, and refers to African Americans or Hispanics only once and then in the context of seeking to reduce federal expenditures on primary and secondary education. It refers to women only in the contexts of the military and the pro-life position on abortion. In short, the Democratic platform takes an implicitly negative position on the relative economic fortunes of white males, while the Republican platform takes a neutral one.

Terrorism, What I Wrote 10 Years Ago

vIt's not quite 10 years since I (very tentatively) ventured a prediction on terrorism.  My complete post of Sept 30, 2006:

Saturday, September 30, 2006

What Does The Future Hold?

The Times has an analysis of the new legislation on terrorism which includes these thoughts:

How the measure will look decades hence may depend not just on how it is used but on how the terrorist threat evolves. If a major terrorist plot in the United States is uncovered — and surely if one succeeds — it may vindicate the Congressional decision to give the government more leeway to seize and question those who might know about the next attack.
If the attacks of 2001 recede as a devastating but unique tragedy, the decision to create a new legal framework may seem like overkill. “If there is never another terrorist attack and we never obtain actionable intelligence, this will look like a huge overreaction,” said Gary J. Bass, a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton.

The last paragraph is what I'm inclined to think.

Obviously we've had terrorist attacks since.  I think, however, if you'd told the US in 2006 that deaths in the US from terrorism would be low, we'd have been very happy.  (Can't find a handy up-to-date source for these deaths, but I'm going to say 2006 through 2015 saw fewer than 30 such deaths per year, at least for deaths from terrorists with some affiliation to Islam.)

Number of Nuclear Test: the Country Which Is Sixth

North Korea, according to this Vox piece.

When Republicans Hated Lincoln

Lincoln is our secular saint, but there was a time when Republicans hated him.

Terminology: Clinton Versus Hillary

It seems to me when this presidential campaign began, the customary reference was to "Hillary" or "Hillary Clinton" and usually a reference to "Clinton" meant her husband.  These days though I think I see a presumption that "Clinton" will refer to Hillary; that's the default these days.  Maybe it's like "mail"--it's almost like you should use "snail mail" if you mean USPS.

Clinton and the Good Old Days

“I hope I will be the last American president who can ever say that when I was a small child, I spent some time on a small farm that didn’t have indoor plumbing. In the wintertime, the outhouse is way overrated. "

From Atlantic report on Bill Clinton and the campaign trail. Some more:

The idea of hope—as in The Man From Hope, rather than the Shepard Fairey poster—kept coming up. “Growing up in a post-9/11 America, there’s a lot of cynicism and vitriol,” Jay Rora told me. “The Clinton administration was a time when people had hope.”
For an older observer, the idea that the era of Monica, government shutdowns, and Dan Burton’s backyard demonstrations was an age of optimistic comity in politics might seem peculiar. For Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, these rosy impressions are highly welcome, even if they come at the expense of thinking about the Big Dog as a mummified relic.

The Lesson of Self-Sufficiency in Food: Boredom

Modern farmer describes an attempt by a man to eat only food grown on his land.  Some caveats: some grocery items and the trial lasted only 100 days.  His family was less enthusiastic.   The big downside: boredom.  100 broilers were to provide meat for a year, but his kids got tired of a chicken and veggie stir-fry after 3 days.

That's the point of our modern food system: incredible variety.  Back in the day we ate lots of potatoes, a lot of roast beef, and a lot of overcooked vegetables.  No more.  No more that is unless you voluntarily trade variety for other benefits.

Schafly: Losing the War?

I first became aware of Phyllis Schafly from her anti-LBJ diatribe.  Needless to say, I was not impressed.  She is widely credited with stopping the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70's, and pulling the Republican Party to the right.  Corey Robin has an interesting take here.

I won't speak ill of the dead, but I'll muse on the significance of the ERA defeat.  It seems to me that American society has essentially evolved to where it would have been had ERA been passed. Yes, it's been a piecemeal progress, but progress it has been.  If I'm correct, it makes you wonder about the circumstances under which a constitutional amendment is vital, and when it's not.   

Notes of a Political Pollee

I was polled yesterday by one of the national pollsters, a rather interesting process.  Obviously the polltaker was being paid by how many people she could work through, because she was a very fast talker, which combined with some deafness on my part meant I didn't catch the full name of the poll (not Gallup, etc. but somewhat familiar) nor could I catch some of the options.  That was particularly true when she rattled off a list of issues and asked my top one. I thought she wanted one, but maybe she was open to more.

I've talked to pollsters in the past--I suspect they pass around the list of <s>suckers </s> people willing to talk to them.  Some of the pollsters were obviously just trying to identify whether I was going to vote and who for; a few were more consumer-oriented, including one which took 40  minutes or so, putting me off the process for some time.  But yesterday I was in a good mood so I answered. It was thorough, getting a lot of data, both demographic and political.