Morning Fog

How White Elephants Are Born - And How To Abort Them

Thanks once again to my daily newspaper, I learned recently of the existence of an organization called Consumers for Paper Options.  This, it turns out, is a lobbying group heavily supported by the companies that produce ... paper!   What a shock.  And what does the group want?  To slow or halt the government's transition of records, statements and such (e.g., social security statements) from paper to electronic versions.  Why?  Purportedly, because they want to defend to poor or infirm people who do not have computers and may not be able to receive or access their accounts.

We're quite used to corporations seeking to protect their business interests by arguing that ________ (fill in the blank with anything they oppose because it reduces their market) will harm consumers.  Curiously, they never want anything for themselves.  This is called "corporate responsibility" or "corporate good citizenship."   So there's nothing much new here, except the ground on which the battle is going to be fought this time:  paper.

I confess that, in the rush to push toward electronic documents, I have been a footdragger because of my own concerns that computers and electrons are complex systems that not everyone -- for example, those who suffer from dementia or Alzheimer's -- may be able to master.  I can handle electronic documents now, but what happens when I can't?  So subjectively, it seems there should indeed be a means by which those who don't want, or can't handle, electronic statements, can still obtain the real thing. 

On the other hand, Consumers for Paper Options is pressing for lawmaking action that would require government to keep producing paper statements.  I note that there's no evidence of a push to require private companies to do so!  But even if that were not the case, the legislation CPO is arguing for is a bad idea, because it is inevitably the kind of thing that becomes a straitjacket on the government and a windfall to the industry involved.  We've seen it happen in entire sectors of our economy:  oil and gas; sugar; farming.  And the paper industry already has its own corporate entitlements. 

When we look at the comparative processing costs (9 cents for an electronic transfer, $1.25 for a paper check) and the technology trend line (computers, tablets and smart phones are ever more ubiquitous, and by the way, who's to say that the new generation, which masters computer use at age 4, won't be able to deal with electronic documents even in their dotage?), the answer is obvious (or should be), especially to profit-making companies that would never think of restricting their own options to cut costs:   Don't do it!

The CPO efforts run the risk of creating, right before our eyes, the next USPS-like white elephant.  It can be avoided if legislators will "just say no" to these self-appointed guardians of consumers' rights.  

Entitlements - A House Of Cards?

Shortly after my last post ("Those Pesky Entitlements"), the House of Reprehensibles voted to undo the tiny cuts that Congress had agreed to only a few weeks earlier as part of the big "bipartisan" budget deal.  The Senate, perhaps the slowest-moving force on earth short of geologic change, approved the same unraveling of the carefully wrought deal just a day later. 

On this general topic of entitlement enablers, read Ruth Marcus's "Bipartisan Caving on Military Pension Cut."  

It's all timely further proof, if any were needed, that there is no cure in sight for our burgeoning outlays for senior, military, and corporate entitlements.  These programs are a "house of cards" - not in the sense of a fragile, easily collapsible structure (far from it) - but in the sense of the popular Netflix series, which draws a realistic portrait of how things get done in Washington.

There is no harm - in fact, a lot of good - in guaranteeing that our senior citizens (broadly defined, i.e., to include veterans) should benefit from a system that helps them maintain quality of life in retirement.  However, we need to do a far better job of defining what contribution that requires from them.  And equally if not more important, we need a system by which those contributions are sequestered from Congressional meddling.   How different a picture of Social Security might we have today if the so-called "trust fund" had actually been established and insulated from Congressinal robbery?    

Those Pesky Entitlements

Regular readers will know that Morning Fog has usually defended the expansion of social benefits, including the most recent major effort in the health care arena.  It's a matter of principle but also of national pride. 

In health care, for example, it seems inhumane and immoral to let people die because they have a serious health condition for which they could not afford insurance (that's principle); and we are a rich nation whose people can and do spend billions on pure triviality, so we should not be behind so many others (as we now are) in such areas as infant mortality, hunger, or availability of health care (that's national pride).

But regular readers will also know that Morning Fog supports rationalizing the cost structure of our "entitlements," from social security and medicare to military pensions and subsidies for big oil and big agriculture.  These costs must be reduced and they can be, if we really focus on doing so.   But politicians of both right and left have shown little interest in this. 

Republiconomic commentator Robert Samuelson has written an interesting piece about the costs of entitlements.  Repeating the timeworn truth that we all know (but do not heed), that these programs absorb an increasingly large amount of our national budget, he suggests that while both parties are to blame for ignoring the issue, Democrats should be more interested in controlling costs, because, as the party that believes government does have a purpose, "their unwillingness to discuss Social Security and Medicare benefits candidly is the crux of the budget stalemate. This refusal is rich in irony: The pro-government party in rhetoric has become an anti-government party in practice."

I can buy that -- rich in irony, yes.  I have a few little qualifications, such as Samuelson's omission of the entitlements he likes (military and industry also need to be controlled) and his touching concern for the Democrats' political health ...  but yes, absolutely, the Democrats' responsibility is to find ways to make these programs cost less; they cannot refuse to do so. 

Their problem, however, will be that their political opponents will resist real cost-cutting because the "end of government" is exactly what they seek -  except of course those military and commercial entitlements, which they will seek to increase. 

The sad fact is that we won't be able to deal successfully with government costs until both major parties are prepared to do their share. 

Predicting Human Behavior

Anyone who follows the news lately can't help but have heard something about the notorious Congressional Budget Office report on the long-term effects of implementing the Affordable Care Act. 

What you've heard may depend on whom you've heard.  The rabidly anti-ACA conservative crowd tried to make political hay in the media by touting the claim that the CBO had predicted ACA would cause the loss of 2.5 million jobs.  But nearly everyone else:  the CBO Director, various columnists, the Washington Post's "Fact-Checker" column, and of course, Democratic pols -- has said that's not what the report says. 

In fact, the report says that up to 2.5 million people might consider the provisions of the ACA as a factor in deciding to leave their jobs by retirement or by changing their line of work.  Their jobs will still exist, regardless of whether that's true.   That being the case, we must conclude that those who choose to interpret the report as "2.5 million jobs lost" are malevolent, stupid, or both.  Or, as one columnist, E.J.Dionne, has put it, the opponents of ACA "don't look to a painstaking analysis for enlightenment ... [but] to twist its findings and turn them into dishonest slogans."

The CBO is generally respected as a nonpartisan player in the Washington policy game.  That doesn't mean, though, that their forecasts are more correct than anyone else's. 

Attempting to predict or project how people will react, 5 or 10 years from now, to something they haven't even experienced yet, is a fool's game.  I truly doubt that very many people would actually leave their jobs to avoid making more money just because that would entail somewhat higher costs to them for health coverage.  Of course it must be said also that perhaps some of the report's conclusions that show more favorable effects of the ACA in future could be equally wrong.  The CBO doesn't have a crystal ball (well, maybe it does, who knows?) but in general I think they're better when they analyze actual data from the past and present, rather than trying to predict the future.

The New Racism

New towns and school districts cropping up all over the South ... is it an economic boom?  Nope, it's pretty much the segregation leopard that hasn't changed its spots.  The report I saw relates to Baton Rouge, Louisiana but also points out that throughout Dixie, better-off sections of cities are seeking to - and by and large succeeding in - designating themselves as new towns, or new school districts.

The object is to wall themselves off from poorer school districts; and to take their property tax money out of city-wide public systems and focus it on their own schools.  Some of the more savvy of these groups have probably already figured out that such school systems will increase the value of their property as well.  

Of course parents in the U.S. are fanatic about getting their kids the "proper" education; and I'm sure these parents would claim they only want the best for their kids.  It's not in human nature that they should concern themselves much if that happens to translate into providing the worst for other kids.  So it's obvious that they're not racists, even if schools in the area are 80% black, and even if for some reason this movement just happened to start after many of the desegregation orders began to vanish in 2009.

Columnist Courtland Milloy recently pointed out that racism in the U.S. remains very much alive.  He noted that a high percentage of whites believe that a lot has been accomplished against racism in the past 50 years while African-Americans tend to the view that a lot remains to be done.    I think both views are correct (the glass is half full but it's also half empty).  Now, unfortunately, we need to consider the existence of a group, enabled by the Supreme Court, that thinks a lot needs to be undone.