I generally find the New Republic to be a bit too left-leaning, but I enjoyed this Health Care Policy discussion by Jonathan Cohn.
Here's a summary:
In order to cover his proposed 5K tax credit for health coverage, McCain would tax health benefits. Specifically, while the existing exemption for payroll taxes would stay in place, the existing exemption for income taxes would be repealed. But that would still leave 1.3 trillion dollars that McCain would need to find somewhere in the budget to make his plan revenue neutral. His chief economic adviser suggested that this would be accomplished through "savings" in Medicare. Obama pounced, by equating, against the vociferous protests from the McCain camp, "savings" with "cuts." The McCain campaign is not clear how it intends to skim 1.3 trillion from the current cost of Medicare. (Vague promises to "improve efficiency" and "eliminate fraud" don't sound promising.) Cohn says that no serious economists see the necessary "savings" as realistic. Hence, "cuts" is a borderline fair characterization.
Now, Obama's plan would leave a half a trillion dollar hole in the budget and he would also seek to improve efficiency of Medicare to address that; however, he has been consistent and specific as to how he intends to do so. "Cuts" therefore are substantially less likely.
Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, McCain boxes himself in through the holes in the budget his tax cuts will generate; hence if his "savings" don't work out he has to borrow from China. Obama is not boxed in with respect to tax policy to the same extent.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Videira fails to appear for the Hamilton Reserves against St. Mirren
Accies downed 4-1 by St. Mirren.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Michael Videira in Reserves against Celtic
Videira started, and was substituted, in a 4-2 loss to the Celtic reserves.
"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga
The book deals with a serious subject - the plight of the poor in India - in a fast-moving, entertaining, caustic way. The book should be accessible to anyone (which I somehow suspect isn't the case with all Man Booker winners).
The criticism that the Wall Street Journal raised in today's paper is absurd. Somehow, it sees the book as critical of globalization. The book has very little to do with globalization, and if anything it is welcoming of it. It does not neglect to mention the non-stop construction, the call centers, etc. In fact, Balram (a.k.a. The White Tiger), the main character, seizes on the newly presented opportunities. Nor does it maintain, contrary to WSJ's review, that only the "rich" benefit from globalization.
The book is about poor villagers, for whom the reality is that they are predestined to die no better off than they were born, and about one man going to extreme ends to change that destiny. It's about corruption, it's about the millenia old traditions, it's about illiteracy, violence, debt, and religion, and how all these things prevent a poor villager to break out of what Balram calls the Rooster Coop.
I have no quarrel with WSJ's numbers, which indicate that there was a significant percentage increase of Indians living above the poverty line from 1981-2005 (18%). I also think that Adiga could have been more clear about who works at the call centers. (Is there a middle class? In the novel, Adiga talks about "masters" and "servants" and that 99.9 percent are servants while the remainder are masters. In this interview with the Guardian, he claims that 5% of Indians are well-off. The Independent cites him as putting the total of the underclass at 400 million.) But I think he makes it clear that there is a substantial underclass that is far from equipped (what, with debt bondage, disease, oppressive hierarchal societal structure) to benefit directly in a substantial way. The construction workers in the novel, for example, are not part of the modernity which they are building.
The one time I was traveling internationally, I was seated next to an Indian woman, who upon hearing my talk of a culture shock (on a trip to Western Europe!) suggested that for culture shocks, one should head to India. All in all, the book portrays India as a country that would be almost offensive to Western sensibilities. It does however make an eloquent case for the humanity of those for whom the very circumstances of their birth had seemed to take that humanity away. Most compellingly, it shows how a man with, at the outset, at best a mirky understanding of how the world around him works, slowly but surely figures it out, to the detriment of his masters.
The criticism that the Wall Street Journal raised in today's paper is absurd. Somehow, it sees the book as critical of globalization. The book has very little to do with globalization, and if anything it is welcoming of it. It does not neglect to mention the non-stop construction, the call centers, etc. In fact, Balram (a.k.a. The White Tiger), the main character, seizes on the newly presented opportunities. Nor does it maintain, contrary to WSJ's review, that only the "rich" benefit from globalization.
The book is about poor villagers, for whom the reality is that they are predestined to die no better off than they were born, and about one man going to extreme ends to change that destiny. It's about corruption, it's about the millenia old traditions, it's about illiteracy, violence, debt, and religion, and how all these things prevent a poor villager to break out of what Balram calls the Rooster Coop.
I have no quarrel with WSJ's numbers, which indicate that there was a significant percentage increase of Indians living above the poverty line from 1981-2005 (18%). I also think that Adiga could have been more clear about who works at the call centers. (Is there a middle class? In the novel, Adiga talks about "masters" and "servants" and that 99.9 percent are servants while the remainder are masters. In this interview with the Guardian, he claims that 5% of Indians are well-off. The Independent cites him as putting the total of the underclass at 400 million.) But I think he makes it clear that there is a substantial underclass that is far from equipped (what, with debt bondage, disease, oppressive hierarchal societal structure) to benefit directly in a substantial way. The construction workers in the novel, for example, are not part of the modernity which they are building.
The one time I was traveling internationally, I was seated next to an Indian woman, who upon hearing my talk of a culture shock (on a trip to Western Europe!) suggested that for culture shocks, one should head to India. All in all, the book portrays India as a country that would be almost offensive to Western sensibilities. It does however make an eloquent case for the humanity of those for whom the very circumstances of their birth had seemed to take that humanity away. Most compellingly, it shows how a man with, at the outset, at best a mirky understanding of how the world around him works, slowly but surely figures it out, to the detriment of his masters.
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