Month: December 2004

US Social Security

John Quiggin8 Comments

I’ve read lots of pieces on proposals to reform the US Social Security system, both positive and critical. Unfortunately, most of them include claims that are at best half-true and most of the rest assume a high level of knowledge of the issues. Over the fold, I’ve added a lengthy piece trying to explain the issues. Although I’m actively involved in debate on some of them, I’ve done my best to give a neutral presentation, at least until the final assessment of the proposals currently being discussed by the Administration and Congressional Republicans. This is primarily a matter of political judgement and can be summed up fairly quickly.

The Republican proposals involve accounting transfers amounting to trillions of dollars between different government accounts and newly created individual accounts. These transfers will almost certainly be packaged up with substantive changes to the Social Security system. Whether you support them depends on which you think is more likely:

* The transfers will be used to facilitate tough but necessary increases in contributions relative to benefits, eliminating the funding deficit. In doing this, the President and Congress will demonstrate their commitment to promoting the long term interests of the American people, even at the expense of short-term political pain

* The transfers will provide an ideal opportunity for all manner of pork-barrelling, from handouts to existing retirees to cosy deals for Wall Street investment banks, with accounting tricks being used to provide cover for a claim that the system has been restored to solvency

You may be able to guess which of these I think more likely, but you’ll have to read (or scroll) to the end to find out.
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Windschuttle on White Australia

John Quiggin110 Comments

I see that Keith Windschuttle has turned his attention to the White Australia policy which, not surprisingly, he defends as a “rational and, in a number of ways, progressive, product of its times”. Although the story is somewhat garbled, it seems likely that WIndschuttle’s defence is that White Australia was not premised on racial superiority, but on the doctrine of “separate but equal” treatment used in the case of Plessy vs Ferguson to defend the Jim Crow laws of the American South and, in its Afrikaans form, as the theoretical basis for apartheid (separate development).

I feel sorry for anyone who defended Windschuttle’s earlier campaign defending the treatment of Tasmanian Aborigines on the assumption that he was an honest seeker after historical truth, rather than, as is now clear, a consistent apologist for racism, happy to use racist arguments in support of his cause. I’d welcome comments from anyone honest enough to retract their previous support for Windschuttle.

I’ll also be happy to publish comments from anyone seeking to use quibbles about the definition of “racism” to claim that a policy that openly defined itself in terms of skin colour was, in some sense, not racist. However, if you want to make such a claim, be aware that it has previously been made by the defenders of Jim Crow and apartheid, and don’t whinge when you get lumped in with them.

A public job application

John Quiggin9 Comments

So Ziggy Switkowski is out as CEO of Telstra with a golden handshake of only $2.1 million. This seems a little unfair – executives with far worse records have got much more – but executive compensation remains a mystery to me. Perhaps the new book Pay without Performance will help me here.

Ziggy was a mate of Richard Alston (whose admiring assessment is currently enjoying top billing under my photo) but it seems that Peter Costello is less impressed. Since most of the internal candidates are implicated in Switkowski’s bad decisions, his replacement seems to be a bit of a problem.

On reflection, I’ve decided that I would be a great choice for this job. On almost every issue Switkowski and Alston got wrong, I was on the public record pointing this out and advocating something more sensible. For example:

* I said in 1996 that partial privatisation was ‘the worst of all possible worlds‘, as Costello now agrees[1]

* I opposed the great cable race between Telstra and Optus in 1996 and 1997

* I condemned Switkowski’s offshore ventures which were later closed down with huge losses

* I proposed selling off the dotcom part of the business in March 2000, just before the crash

* I attacked the idea of buying newspapers and TV stations, which ultimately sank both Switkowski and his CEO Bob Mansfield.

Based on this track record, I ought to do pretty well as CEO. But wait, there’s more! If I stuff up, I promise to leave with a token payment of $999, 999.99. That’s right! Less than a million dollars!

Please write to the shareholding ministers, Coonan and Minchin to support my candidacy.
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Comment spam attack

John Quiggin13 Comments

Comments are currently turned off due to a massive attack of comment spam. I’d just like to repeat my observation that spam is financed, to a significant extent by major corporations, which deserved to be sued into bankruptcy and beyond. If there are any underemployed trial lawyers out there, please consider a class action. I’ll be happy to join up.

update 6:30 Comments have been restored! Death (or lengthy terms of imprisonment and crippling financial penalties) to spammers !

Anne Applebaum can’t tell left from right

John Quiggin11 Comments

Columns in the Guardian by Jonathan Steele and John Laughland, asserting that demonstrations against the rigging of the Ukraine election were a Western-funded plot, have been the subject of a lot of criticism here and on other blogs. As far as Laughland is concerned, there’s a good rundown on his views and assocations (which could broadly be described as lunar right) from Chris Bertram and more, in the Guardian itself, from David Aaronovitch.

Now we get this column from Anne Applebaum (reprinted in the SMH with the appropriately paranoid headline The plot against Americaclaiming that Steele and Laughland are part of a leftwing plot

The larger point, though, is that the “it’s-all-an-American-plot” arguments circulating in cyberspace again demonstrate something that the writer Christopher Hitchens, himself a former Trotskyite, has been talking about for a long time: At least a part of the Western left — or rather the Western far left — is now so anti-American, or so anti-Bush, that it actually prefers authoritarian or totalitarian leaders to any government that would be friendly to the United States.

Applebaum is generally well-informed and, while she does not name either Steele or Laughland, she says “Neither author was a fringe journalist”, which implies some familiarity with their positions. In any case, she presumably reads The Guardian. Why then doesn’t she acknowledge that the views they put forward draw the (minuscule) support they have attracted from the right as well as the left ?

Weekend reflections

John Quiggin7 Comments

Following last week’s stuffup, when I thought I had posted, but didn’t, this purportedly regular feature is back.

It’s your chance to make comments on any topic of your choosing, to be written and read at the leisurely pace of the weekend. I welcome pieces a little longer than the usual comments, but not full-length essays. If you want to draw attention to something longer, try an extract or summary with a link. As usual, civilised discussion and no coarse language.

More from Tarik Amar on the Ukraine election

John Quiggin5 Comments

The Ukraine crisis is dragging on, and could still collapse into violence, but I’ll restate my view that the likely outcome is a new runoff election, which Yushchenko will win. He almost certainly had a majority to begin with, and has generally behaved in a statesmanlike manner after the election, while Yanukovich has floundered, and generally looked like the thug he apparently is.

I’m appending another eyewitness report from Tarik Amar, forwarded by Dan Hardie
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Spin doctors Moscow style

John Quiggin2 Comments

There’s a fascinating piece in the Moscow Times about the spin doctors from Moscow who tried to boost Yanukovych’s campaign. As we know, failed campaigns produce recriminations, and these are vitriolic. But I was particularly struck by this piece, regretting the poor targeting of xenophobia

The campaign, Markov said, was too concentrated on the media, and too few public figures were recruited to speak for Yanukovych. The campaign also relied too heavily on anti-American rhetoric, which works in Russia, but not in Ukraine, he said.

“Russians consider themselves equal to Americans, but Ukrainians do not. They don’t see anything wrong in having a big brother taking care of them. … I told them to use anti-Polish rhetoric, since Ukrainians consider themselves equal to that country,” Markov said.

Thse guys sound as nasty as Karl Rove, but not nearly as competent.
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