Have Some Compassion For The English Language
That is George Will's plea to Democratic presidential candidates in his column today. He's talking about the mad, Through the Looking Glass twisting of words that today's politicians engage in regularly. That bad habit is the rule of the day for some Democrats.
SCHIP is described as serving "poor children" or children of "the working poor." Everyone agrees that it is for "low income" people. Under the bill that Democrats hope to pass over the president's veto on Thursday, states could extend eligibility to households earning $61,950. But America's median household income is $48,201. How can people above the median income be eligible for a program serving lower income people?
Politics often operates on the Humpty Dumpty Rule (in "Through the Looking Glass," he says, "When use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less"). But the people currently preening about their compassion should have some for the English language.
Clinton's idea for helping Americans save for retirement is this: Any family that earns less than $60,000 and that puts $1,000 into a new 401(k)-type plan would receive a matching $1,000 tax cut. For those earning between $60,000 and $100,000 the government would match half of the first $1,000. She proposes to pay for this by taxing people who will be stoical about this — dead people — by freezing the estate tax exemption at its 2009 level.
A conservative case can be made for something like Clinton's proposal. It is a case for reducing the supply of government by reducing demand for it, and doing so by giving people ownership of enlarged private assets as a basis for their security. It is a case for raising the nation's deplorable saving rate and simultaneously encouraging the nation's economic literacy and temperance by giving more people a stake in equities markets.
Will points out that Hillary Clinton was against investing in private equity before she was for it. When George Bush proposed much the same plan, Clinton stridently opposed it, calling it a "risky scheme." Now, magically, it is the greatest idea since sliced bread. Will goes on to point out the way John Edwards is butchering the real meaning of the words, making them mean what he says they mean, in Iowa.
John Edwards, too, has puzzling ideas. For the entertainment of Iowans, he has reinvented himself as a 19th-century Kansan — Mary Elizabeth Lease, the prairie populist who urged farmers to "raise less corn and more Hell." In August, Edwards urged an Iowa audience to throw off Washington's yoke: "We need to take the power out of the hands of these insiders that are rigging the system against you."
As Will wryly points out, Iowa is getting a bonanza of subsidy money for its agricultural sector in the form of ethanol subsidies. Everyone would love to have things rigged against them that way. I pointed out a few days ago that words have lost all meaning. Will corrects me. They have not lost meaning, they just mean something else entirely, depending on who's talking - and when they're saying it.
By syn, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 7:24 am
This twisting of words is reason why issues such as ’same-sex union between a man and a woman’ or ‘aborting a clump of cells’ should not be argued on a religious level but on a semantic level.
Religion relies on faith, words rely on meaning.
How can laws be constructed using words which have no meaning?
By Gaius, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 7:26 am
Badly, Syn, badly.
By fester, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 11:40 am
Gaius — if you read through standard Dem wonkery since the mid-90s you’ll see a fairly clear distinction between what Sen. Clinton was proposing with the universal 401(K) idea, and what President Bush wanted in the 2005 Social Security debate. President Bush wanted to transfer a portion currently authorized SS income streams to stock market invested accounts. To pay for this, he proposed to reduce the average defined benefit portion of the Social Security benefit once fully phased in from roughly 40% of pre-retirement income to roughly 20% of pre-retirement income. The plan’s intent was for the 20% gap to be made up by the potentially superior growth rate of the private account, although like a private sector 401(K) there is no guarantee of future returns so the risk falls on the individual. This is known as a ‘carve-out’ account.
The Clinton proposal maintains the currently authorized SS income streams to fund the 40% of pre-retirement income in defined benefits. In addition to current income streams, she wants to use additional income streams by changing the estate tax to add on a private account similiar to a 401(K). The amount of money going into the private account is a lot less than the 2005 Bush proposal, but the consumerate risk is a whole lot less.
From an individuals’ perspective, Bush provided a 20% replacement rate plus the potential of more, while Clinton offers a 40% replacement rate plus the potential of more* where more*, all else being equal, is less than more. Holding everything constant, the Clinton plan offers a higher replacement rate than the Bush plan and transfers more risk to the government and its much deeper and easier access to the credit market and temporal smoothing capacity while Bush wanted to shift way more systemic risk to individuals.
By mockinbrd, Wednesday, 17 October , 2007 @ 1:17 pm
Hilary is tryin’ everything now. Honestly, this woman is a “risky scheme”.
I’ve got an idea! Let people voluntarily run savings through an IRA (with raised limits), and let them select appropriate investments. This way, there is no evidence of cattle nearby.
That woman is trying to reinvent the wheel or somethin’ for her own aggrandisement.