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Reason Express - May 3, 2005

Reason's Weekly Dispatch
By Jeff A. Taylor and the Reason staff
 

May 3, 2005
Vol. 8 No. 17

In this issue:

1. Socialized Security
2. Search Function and Destroy
3. Timeshifting in Your Seat
4. Quick Hits
5. New at Reason Online - Pinkos See Red in Zebra Tale
6. News and Events

1. Socialized Security

It is not policy-wonk neat or even particularly coherent, but George Bush's "progressive indexing" gambit for Social Security benefits at least puts him back on the offensive. Editorial writers who yearn for an easy to handicap ping-pong match on this nettlesome issue certainly approve of Bush's move, but that is far from enough to secure real reform in the real world.

Bush took Democratic claims that any reduction in the rate of increase of benefits would be a cut in benefits and ran with them. Progressive indexing says: Yep, I am cutting benefits, but I'm going to only reduce the benefits of the well-off. This is the "cost" of Bush's plan, the thing that he was supposedly leaving out when he pitched the issue. So what does this indexing buy him?

Not all that much other than a news cycle's expectation that the Democrats must answer with a compromise of their own. The problem is that they absolutely, as a matter of their political DNA, cannot agree to any kind of personal accounts worthy of the name. Such accounts do indeed take money out of the Social Security system, which of course exists to be controlled by politicians in Washington, preferably Democratic ones. Bush cannot get them to accept a change of this magnitude; the public must demand it.

Unfortunately, Bush's continued focus on the long-term solvency of the program confuses the message. People sense that you can either save the current program or start over, not both. Bush should make clear he is starting over with progressive indexing and personal accounts and force the Democrats to argue for the old system, which every adult American understands is unsustainable.

And one more pitfall awaits Bush on this issue, that of the payroll tax cap. Right now busting that cap, a massive marginal tax hike on productive but not exactly wealthy Americans, is still on the table. The White House needs to make clear that with progressive indexing of their benefits, middle and upper-income Americans have already given to the great SS reworking at the office.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/04/20050428-9.html

Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group, manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software.

2. Search Function and Destroy

It might be crazy talk, but it sure seems that if your current computer interface has a recurring issue with users "losing" files, then you might want to re-work something. Yet Microsoft's expected Windows XP replacement, code-named Longhorn, does not re-work much except the ability to find the files people "lose."

This tells us that building in a more robust search engine functionality is easier and cheaper than making the OS handle files in a more predictable and consistent fashion. That makes some sense, but Microsoft's assertion that Web-based searching will gradually begin to taper off in the coming years sounds downright bizarre.

The Longhorn team holds that as various subscribed "feeds" push info to users, users will have a need to do more and better local searching, with wide open Web-centric searching less common. But this assumes that people will know what they need before they need it; that they will have subscribed to the home appliance feed before that little plastic dealie breaks off the front of their dishwashers. No, this sounds more like wishful thinking from Redmond that somehow Google and Yahoo! will just fade away.

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,120643,00.asp

3. Timeshifting in Your Seat

Move over, timeshifting; you are old hat. Media execs are finally catching on to that people want total control over the media they consume, especially the when and the where. This makes placeshifting hot, the ability to call up the programming you want, anywhere you want.

The networkability of programming will be a crucial factor in determining its value as vast numbers of the public become accustomed to calling up data no matter their physical location. And once the content minders let go of temporal and geographic control, other barriers are soon to follow.

In fact, in some ways the U.S. lags behind in innovative user-defined options for mass media. Soccer fanatics in Britain can use Sky TV to dial up their own camera angles, commentators, and even place wagers on the action. How many billions of dollars do you think a similar functionality for the NFL might rake in each season?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/technology/chi-0505010466may01,1,4154979.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

4. Quick Hits

Quote of the Week

"The irony of the whole thing as far as what really brought me here -- my son is on the border of Iraq and Syria, protecting Iraq from people coming across the border. So why do we have our soldiers, 9,000 miles away, sitting on the border of Iraq and Syria, when our borders are wide open?" -- Mike Gaddy, a rancher from New Mexico who participated in the boarder-watching Minuteman Project in Arizona.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.border01may01,1,5850238.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true

A Quarterly Report

If the Wilson Quarterly says so, it must be true. Big media is over..

http://wwics.si.edu/index.cfm?fuseaction=wq.print&essay_id=120801&stoplayout=true

Retaking Saigon

What was at one time regarded as a fringe view of U.S. military apologists -- that U.S. could've supported the South Vietnamese government indefinitely against communist attacks via supplies and air support -- gets more mainstream support.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/opinion/01morris.html?pagewanted=all&position=&oref=login

Attention Time Travelers

MIT is having a convention. If you miss it, just go back and try again.

http://web.mit.edu/adorai//timetraveler/

5. New at Reason Online

6. News and Events

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