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Welcome
to REASON Express, the weekly e-newsletter from REASON magazine.
REASON Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor
and draws on the ideas and resources of the REASON editorial staff. For
more information on REASON, visit our Web site at www.reason.com.
Send your comments about REASON Express to Jeff A. Taylor (jtaylor@reason.com)
and REASON Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie (gillespie@reason.com).
REASON Express
August 28, 2001
Vol. 4 No. 35
1) Commission Debates How to Slow the Social Security Train Wreck
2) Save That Federal Tax Cut: Your Governor Needs It
3) NATO, Balkans, More Fooling Around
4) Quick Hits
- - Index Influx - -
Members of the Social Security commission must be fervently wishing for a
time machine. That way, they could go back in time and intercede in those
COLA wars of the '70s and '80s that set the federal program's
"cost-of-living" increases unsustainably high. And that way,
they wouldn't have to slog through changing how future benefits are
adjusted.
Wise commission members understand that benefits must be tied to inflation
instead of some cobbled-together "wage growth" number. Even at
that, the traditional CPI number probably overstates inflation.
Still, as the commission is doing the equivalent of a two-minute drill on
a
long field, changing the rate of increases may not be enough to save the
system. Explicit benefit cuts might have to enter the picture.
The commission faces a tough cash-flow problem that begins to take its
toll on
the system in about 20 years. After that, the system rapidly falls apart,
as
there are simply not enough workers to pay for the benefits. Creating
private
accounts now can help current workers, but to the extent that their pay-in
to
the Ponzi scheme is reduced, the payout pot still shrinks.
Sooner or later the commission will have to come to grips with the fact
that
they'll have to back Social Security's obligations with something other
than
Treasury IOUs if they want to tide the system over until the private
accounts
can do the heavy lifting. Whether that means investing in
government-backed
mortgages, state and local bonds, both, or some hybrid, taking some of the
burden off current and future workers will be a necessary part of reform.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/a
rticles/A48865-2001Aug22.html
Rhys Southan finds the Social Security Administration has one of the worst
government Web sites for kids at http://www.reason.com/hod/rs082701.html.
****************************************************
- - Local Lumps - -
State tax hikes are rapidly depleting the supposed stimulative effect of
President Bush's once-and-future tax cut.
For example, North Carolina pols are trying to pass a half-billion-dollar
tax
increase that would give the state the highest tax burden in the
Southeast--on
par with such tax-hungry states as Massachusetts, Maryland, California,
Pennsylvania, and Illinois. The $250 per household increase would come as
the
state's unemployment rate has inched above the national rate for the first
time in over a decade. This double whammy saps the confidence and darkens
the outlook for families trying to plan for the future.
For the time being, Tennessee may have avoided imposing an income tax, but
lawmakers there still think revenue increases are the only way to close
budget shortfalls. Other states are on the brink of turning to big tax
hikes if rosy
revenue projections born of the recent boom years do not pan out. Right
now,
most are tinkering with small increases in excise taxes.
This state of affairs reveals that very few states have actually tried to
restrict budgets to needs. As revenue grew through the late '90s, so did
government spending. Gold-plated services became the standard with very
little tough questioning about where it all might lead.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0824/p1
s2-usec.html
*************************************************
- - Disarming Dance - -
Somewhere in the middle of the nation's collective A-section came the news
that NATO is deeply involved in trying to disarm combatants in Macedonia.
Ever
since the Balkans heated up, the U.S. has kept a small tripwire force in
the country. Now soldiers from other NATO countries are pouring in with
the expressed aim of disarming Albanian fighters who oppose the
government.
Trouble is, there is wide disagreement over just how many arms need to be
removed. The government says 80,000, the rebels 2,000. NATO has settled on
3,500, or one gun for every NATO trooper in country.
This, needless to say, has left the Macedonian government unimpressed. The
entire NATO operation seems to be a PR move intended to get the parliament
to accept a peace agreement drafted by NATO.
In the meantime, Russia fears the NATO operation will turn into a de facto
enforced partition of the country. This isn't completed crazy, as previous
Balkan operations have focused on separating the combatants and then
declaring
"democracy."
http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/08/23
/13172.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A54712-2001Aug23.html
************************************************
QUICK HITS
- - Quote of the Week - -
"I saw the teeth, and he was snapping. My nerves went bad, and I was
sweating.
That's when I called on the Lord," Jerry Williams after his
12-year-old niece
fished a foot-long piranha out of the Ohio River.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,32
924,00.html
- - Going to Kansas City - -
Minors in Kansas City, Missouri, risk arrest if they are caught downtown
after
midnight. Parents can be fined up to $500 for a second violation.
http://www.ljworld.com/section/stateregio
nal/story/64182
- - Cable Access - -
Cablevision must give federal investigators info about its subscribers'
Net use without informing the targets, a judge rules. Name, address,
identifying
numbers, and usage habits all must go the feds secretly, he explains,
because
the Net falls into the category of "other services" provided by
the cable
company. In contrast, records of any pay-per-view porn purchased would
trigger federal privacy statues and the customers would have to be
notified.
http://www6.law.com/lawcom/displayid.cf
m?statename=NY&docnum=82724&tab
le=news
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