One Person One Vote Died a Year Ago today

In an important landmark case Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U.S. 533 (1964), the Supreme Court established one of the most significant voting rights rulings impacting our Republic since the enfranchisement of woman and the election of U.S. senators by popular vote. Both of these occurred earlier in the century.  Basically, Reynolds v Sims established the means to ensure  that the United States was a truly representative form of government.  It provided a legal way to enforce the idea that legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly as representatives of the people. Because of this, all elected officials should be elected in a free and unimpaired fashion. One Person one vote is a bedrock of our political system.

That was until one year ago today, when the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee declared the voters of Michigan and Florida to be one half of a person. This decision, done in a closed room behind close doors, was done in the name of party unity and led to the famous “party unity my ass” uttered at The Confluence that led to the PUMA movement. It led to spontaneous outrage across the country.

What began as a Democratic Party initiative to change the caucus and primary schedule to appease some special interest groups, wound up as a means to disenfranchise two states as Florida and Michigan were selectively punished for their decisions to change the dates of their primary caucuses. While other states similarly changed their dates, these two states were singled out for retribution. This was a stinging indictment of our entire political system for those of us that supported Hillary Clinton and were still stinging from the earlier disenfranchisement of Florida under the Bush v. Gore ruling that essentially gave us a President who mostly likely did not win the election. Every one knows how well that worked out.

Here are some reports from the day. This one is from MSNBC’s Chuck Todd called Nothing is fair about Florida and Michigan. Here was his suggestion for the situation at the time.

Why not consider punishing the party leaders and not the voters? Couldn’t the committee take away the states’ superdelegate votes? After all, it wasn’t the voters who demanded the states break party rules, but rather the leaders of the respective state parties.

Of course, this is too logical. The likely ruling on Saturday will probably highlight the party’s inability or reluctance to punish the superdelegates. There is a challenge from a Florida superdelegate claiming the party violated its own charter by stripping the state of both pledged delegates and superdelegates. Most members of the Rules Committee I’ve talked to indicate that he may be right. Keep in mind members of the Rules committee are all superdelegates themselves.

The Golden Rule could apply: Do unto other superdelegates as you would want done unto you.

The second idea the committee should be considering but isn’t reflects everything we’ve learned throughout this long primary season.

As many have noted, census data for each state have been remarkably determinative of results since Super Tuesday. In fact, the support groups for the two candidates have been incredibly stable. Why not apply what we’ve learned about the support groups of both candidates and split the delegates accordingly?

Of course, we found out soon enough that the party leaders did have their agenda and it was to ensure that we had their Candidate. We’re still unraveling the reasons for this travesty. We endured sexism, misogyny, and race-baiting through out the entire election cycle. We will be paying for this most undemocratic of decisions for years to come. We could have had a President that supports Abortion Rights and Universal Health Care. We could have had a President that refused to vote for FISA. We could have had a President that wasn’t controlled by lobbyists, Wall Street Fat Cats, and was a policy wonk extraordinaire. Instead, as Ted Ralls of Common Dreams, puts it, we got this:

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory …From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied …Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now–before he drags us further into the abyss.

I don’t know about you, but I WILL NEVER FORGET THIS DAY OF INFAMY.

What’s our Return Policy?

State of Disbelief sent me this link earlier today.  I very rarely  just post some one else’s stuff outright, but this column by Ted Rall is just is beyond belief.  I’m looking forward to her comments and background work over on The Confluence later, hopefully, today.[UPDATE:  LINK] But right now, I’m pretty speechless.  Let’s just file this under Buyer’s Remorse.  Ted, talk to me, why didn’t you do your homework earlier now that we’re stuck with him? We couldn’t even get Bush impeached and we still can’t get his war criminal cabinet investigated and there’s a majority of Dems in Congress?  You think any one’s going to seriously discuss resignation with  Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi on the Flight Deck?

Published on Thursday, May 28, 2009 by TedRall.com

An Early Call for Obama’s Resignation

With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?

by Ted Rall

We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama’s inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn’t have the ‘nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he’s dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now–before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama’s plan for “preventive detentions.” If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in “prolonged detention.” Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama’s shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what Orwell called “thoughtcrime”–contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven’t done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to “preventive detention” is an outrage. That the President of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed Bush, I won’t follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.

“Prolonged detention,” reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon “terrorism suspects who cannot be tried.”

“Cannot be tried.” Interesting choice of words.

Any “terrorism suspect” (can you be a suspect if you haven’t been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners “cannot be tried”?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this “entirely new chapter in American law” in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: “Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted.”

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a “lack of evidence” are innocent. They walk free. In countries where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders whose only concern is staying in power, “tainted evidence” is no evidence at all. If you can’t prove that a defendant committed a crime–an actual crime, not a thoughtcrime–in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush’s lawless behavior, to have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should resign.
© 2009 Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.

The Wrong Right Wing Stuff

I inadvertently stepped on a right wing meme back last September when I implied that Fannie and Freddie did their share in contributing to the current financial meltdown. I used figures to show that the problems in the mortgage market were occurring equally in the subprime as well as the prime market. What happened is that I said was associated with the oft -repeated Republican talking point that the CRA (Community Reinvestment Act) caused the meltdown in the mortgage. I still think that was a wild shark jump, but I was called things I won’t repeat here because of that big leap.  I was channel surfing last night and heard Glenn Beck (Mr. Emotional Basketcase) repeat this nonsense yet again. So, let me use real research to put clip the right wings off of that one.

Today’s WSJ overviewed a study by the Minneapolis Fed (yes, the peer reviewed, use data kind, not the say what you want to get ratings type of study) and concluded that the CRA did not contribute to the mortgage market meltdown. Let me just add here that I worked for the Fed and the Minneapolis Fed has one of the more conservative research agendas and economists.  Most famously, they’re home to Robert Lucas and Thomas Sargent’s work on Rational Expectations.  These guys are freshwater economists.

At the center of much of the shouting is the the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), a 1970s-era law that pushed banks to lend to low-income households. Some — mostly conservatives — contend that the government program, coupled with securitization from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, played a role in the surge in risky home lending that formed the root of the financial crisis. Liberals counter that the Fannie/Freddie/CRA argument is a red herring that tries to pin a market failure on government interference.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis took a look at data on subprime — referred to as “high-priced” — loan originations and performance at CRA-regulated lenders and their affiliates and institutions not covered by the law. Here’s one of the central findings:

In total, of all the higher-priced loans, only 6 percent were extended by CRA-regulated lenders (and their affiliates) to either lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods in the lenders’ CRA assessment areas, which are the local geographies that are the primary focus for CRA evaluation purposes. The small share of subprime lending in 2005 and 2006 that can be linked to the CRA suggests it is very unlikely the CRA could have played a substantial role in the subprime crisis.

This report doesn’t represent the first time the Fed has tried to bat down the notion that the CRA played an important role in the subprime mess. Late last year, then Fed Governor Randall Kroszner, a University of Chicago economist and former Bush administration official, echoed the findings of the report saying only about 6% of all subprime mortgages to low-income households trace back to banks that had to meet CRA standards. (Although this Investor’s Business Daily editorial is skeptical.)

Vat tu, Barack?

Yesterday’s Washington Post featured an article proclaiming “Once Considered Unthinkable, U.S. Sales Tax Gets Fresh Look”.

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Common around the world, including in Europe, such a tax — called a value-added tax, or VAT — has not been seriously considered in the United States. But advocates say few other options can generate the kind of money the nation will need to avert fiscal calamity.

At a White House conference earlier this year on the government’s budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama’s policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

“There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. “I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.”

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American — a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

Liberals dispute that notion. “You could pay for it regressively and have people at the bottom come out better off — maybe. Or you could pay for it progressively and they’d come out a lot better off,” said Bob McIntyre, director of the nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice, which has a health financing plan that targets corporations and the rich.

A White House official said a VAT is “unlikely to be in the mix” as a means to pay for health-care reform. “While we do not want to rule any credible idea in or out as we discuss the way forward with Congress, the VAT tax, in particular, is popular with academics but highly controversial with policymakers,” said Kenneth Baer, a spokesman for White House Budget Director Peter Orszag.

Hyperventilation on Hyperinflation?

I’ve taken a much needed break from economics and I’m ready to ease back into the research groove. I’m still focused on currency exchange and things related to the monetary policy so I thought I would bring up one of the current global concerns. Will the incredible amount of expansionary Monetary Policy combined with recent stimulus on the Fiscal side lead to a new era of inflation? This actually has been a point of contention for a few months in the econ and finance blogs, but I really haven’t followed it all that closely because the economy has been in such a free fall and I don’t believe we’ve hit a bottom yet. Under those circumstances, a little inflation actually has benefits for an economy. It can send signal to the production market that the demand for goods is higher than the supply which can gin up production and provide some upward momentum to a recovery. Inflation in this sense is just a mild signal to the economy that eventually sends it towards its Full Employment Equilibrium. Some economists are looking way beyond that and believe that the groundwork set in current policy will go on for way too long. This could result in inflation or even hyperinflation.

Hyperinflation is a different animal and is thought to be entirely the result of the overprinting of money by the central authorities. They physically print way too much money and the value of the money declines. There are many historical examples of this; most notably the Wiemar Republic (pre-NAZI Germany). The best current example is Zimbabwe.

There’s some pretty wild anecdotes about post World War 1 Germany. Families would have to meet their breadwinners at the factory at noon with wheelbarrows ready to catch the morning’s pay so they could rush and buy the daily dinner before prices could change and they couldn’t afford even a loaf of bread. There are also pictures of people (see the one on the left) burning money in stoves to keep warm in the winter since that was cheaper than using the money to buy fuel for the stove. Hyperinflation is inflation that reaches the triple digits annually. Zimbabwe had to stop calculating its inflation rate once it hit triple digits daily! These are both extremes, but there are examples in Latin America and other African nations that show how disrupted an economy can become when money is poured into an economy that is not producing anything to buy. I had a student from Argentina tell me that his parents tell the story of when they had to ensure they had established a price on dinner before they ate or the price would change during the meal.  I’ve also heard similar stories from students from Uganda who returned there over breaks.

Who is Harshing our Memorial Day Weekend? Better yet, WHY?

I was going to try to take a breather and stick to spring cleaning and cocktailing this weekend.  The rest of the world evidently doesn’t know it’s the official start of the US summer!  I suppose one of the things about blogging is its ability to play to the obsessive streak that probably exists in all bloggers. So, let me put this to you, because no one at BJ’s over on Rue Dauphine last night would engage my question. Doesn’t it strike you as being extremely coincidental that the same day North Korea sets off an underground nuke, we also wind up with a fleet of Iranian warships in the Gulf of Aden effectively threatening both Yemen and Saudi Arabia and we get a big no on the nuclear negotiations? I mean, what is up with this? Did the stars align just correctly on a Memorial Day weekend to send all  moonbat dictators on world threat alert?

North Korea exploded a nuclear device Monday morning, startling the world with its second underground test in three years and vexing the Obama administration, which has said it wants to solve the nuclear impasse with North Korea.

The test, described as “successful” by the communist state’s official Korean Central News Agency, escalates a pattern of provocation that this spring has included a long-range missile launch, detention of two U.S. journalists, kicking out U.N. nuclear inspectors, restarting a plutonium factory and halting six-nation nuclear negotiations.

So, the Iranian rationale for sending six warships to the Gulf of Aden is piracy.  However, theses pirates are from Somalia which is not so close to the Saudis.  Some of the problem areas have been near Yemen but more south in the Indian Ocean and out toward the Arabian Sea.  Why are these ships so far north?

Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari announced on Monday that Iran has sent 6 warships and logistic vessels to the Gulf of Aden and the surrounding international waters.

Sayyari, who made the remarks while visiting the development projects and installations of the Iranian Navy here in Tehran, described the measure as “unprecedented in the history of the Iranian Navy”, and added, “This important move indicates the country’s high military capability in confronting any kind of foreign threat along the coasts of the country.”

He expressed hope that the Iranian Navy experts and specialists would continue daily progress in all fields of surface and sub-surface and arms technology and production.

On May 15, Iran dispatched two warships to the troubled waters off the coast of Somalia and the Gulf of Aden to safeguard Iranian trade cargo ships against piracy.

The move was in line with UN resolutions 1838 and 1846 and a request by the Safety Committee of the International Maritime Organization (IMO).

Perhaps this is just a little bit of pre-election posturing by Iran’s ever colorful Ahmadinejad.  Yes, maybe the mullahs have declared jihad on pirates.  However, this news was also announced about the same time they rejected the latest Western nuclear deal.   The most interesting part of the rejection was the challenge from Ahmadinejad to POTUS to engage in a debate on the floor of the UN. (Guess Ahmadinejad watched the Democractic primary debates and decided it would be an easy take down.)

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday rejected a Western proposal for it to “freeze” its nuclear work in return for no new sanctions and ruled out any talks with major powers on the issue.

The comments by the conservative president, who is seeking a second term in a June 12 election, are likely to further disappoint the U.S. administration of President Barack Obama, which is seeking to engage Iran diplomatically.

The United States, Russia, China, France, Germany and Britain said in April they would invite Iran to a meeting to try and find a diplomatic solution to the nuclear row.

The West accuses Iran of secretly developing atomic weapons. Iran, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, denies the charge and says it only wants nuclear power to generate electricity.

Breaking with past U.S. policy of shunning direct talks with Iran, Obama’s administration last month said it would join nuclear discussions with Tehran from now on.

Ahmadinejad proposed a debate with Obama at the United Nations in New York “regarding the roots of world problems” but he made clear Tehran would not bow to pressure on the nuclear issue.

So, FOX news has trotted out John Bolton who of course sees this as a vindication of his overtly militaristic approach to diplomacy.  Thankfully, all he can do is bloviate with the other bloviaters at this point and SOS Clinton is currently on the phone with the other countries involved with the so-called six party talks.  Bolton’s analysis seemed to contradict all that  Bush insistence on the six party talks.

“This is a moment of truth for this administration,” Bolton told AFP.

“They put all of their faith in the six-party talks. The North Koreans have thumbed their nose at the administration and now we have to see what kind of stuff they (the new administration) are made of,” Bolton said.

He urged Obama’s team to first put North Korea back on the list of state sponsors of terrorism following its removal in the waning months of the Bush administration.

Bolton also urged the UN Security Council to expel Pyongyang from the world body as a “persistent violator” of UN resolutions.

Ultimately, Bolton said, North Korea wants nuclear weapons because it is motivated by the desire to preserve its isolated dictatorship, adding it has no interest in nuclear diplomacy.

Excuse me, but if you’re complaining that we’ve had such bad results from the six party talks over the years, isn’t part of that your faulty strategy?  Or are you now saying you were just following orders then?  So, why are all these thing escalating right now?  AND, why are they harshing a perfectly good three day American Holiday?  Inquiring and obsessive bloggers like me, want to know.

A Deadly Unwind

My dad was a small town Ford dealer (Council Bluffs, IA). Dad was fortunate enough to have a very rich mentor that put him into the dealer development program when I wasn’t even walking and so we moved to what I still believe is the middle of no where and put down roots. I don’t know if you’ve got much experience in a small town, but the local car dealers are actually pretty big businesses for them. My dad headed up blood drives and the United Way. He belonged to the Chamber of Commerce. When Dad was younger he volunteered for everything. As he got older, he wrote a lot of checks. He helped my Mom establish a Victorian house museum that still is world-renown. He always bought tons of tickets to the college world series to hand out to every one who walked in the door. He sponsored little league teams and bought advertising in the local newspapers and TV stations. His 50-100 employees were with dad for as long as I can remember. Not only the mechanics and the office folks stayed with Dad, but also the car salesmen. They were my family too. When dad retired in the 1980s after surviving those horrible energy crisis years, I came to look back on how central the car business is to small town America. Actually, Dad also sold a lot of trucks because we lived in farm country.

I’m thinking more and more about this as well as having a lot of discussions with Dad on the unwinding of the great American car companies. In a way, it feels like the unwinding of small America cities and a way of living. Chrysler and GM are dumping dealers all over the country. Most of the surviving dealerships are not going to look like the way dealerships developed when cars and the car industry were the most American of all business. I’m sure it’s going to be much more efficient and I am certain that each of the US automakers over franchised, but still, there is something about a small town car dealership that is not going to be replaceable. In many towns, it is one of the biggest employers and also a huge source of charitable donations.

It is odd that the first two articles that grabbed me this morning as I drunk my coffee were two contrasting views on the wind down of Chrysler. The first one was all about the finance and the bankruptcy and is on Salon. It’s called “Who is Screwing with the bankruptcy laws”. The second was on the front page of the business section of the NY Times. It goes to directly to the heart of the dealer closings and is entitled “Chrysler Francisees Make Case Against Closure”. Both show exactly how ugly the Chrysler bankruptcy  has become.

Women and the Great Recession

Nataliya is a single mother with two children. She runs a small business selling flowers in downtown Uzhgorod, Ukraine.

A colleague of mine sent me a link to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College where they do a lot of research on Gender Equality and Economic Issues. The Institute’s Rania Antonopoulos has just released a very interesting study on The Current Economic and Financial Crisis:
A Gender Perspective. It is an interesting addition to a growing field that finds that “widespread economic recessions and protracted financial crises have been documented as setting back gender equality and other development goals”.   Problems with development goals include food insecurity, poverty and increasing inequality.

I learned that women’s economic and social role in an economy is one of the primary indicators of when and if a country will every creep its way off the bottom of Human Development index when I began to study development economics way back in the late 70s and early 1980s.  Development economics spends a lot of time on institutions these days. I do a lot of my research into the depth and effectiveness of financial institutions. There are also legal institutions (like lack of government corruption and presence of an effective justice system) that make an important difference too.  But, overlying all of these institutional institutions is the society’s treatment of women.  Women’s access to education, birth control, and economic-self determination are essential to a country’s overall development.  This is especially true for developing nations but it holds true for industrialized ones as well.

Antonopoulos poses an interesting question for those of us interested in both eliminating poverty and achieving gender equality throughout the world.  She asks “what macroeconomic conditions must prevail for gender-equality processes to take root?”  and argues that women’s rights can only be achieved if economic development is “broadly  shared”.    I was particularly awed by her treatment of women in her study.

Hence, women in this analysis are not featured as passive recipients of gender-equality policies, but rather as full citizens participating at all levels of economic, political, and social life. As active members of the community, women have a stake in putting forward comprehensive, coherent, and consistent proposals instead of being content with a piecemeal agenda that targets the “poor” and “women.”

I like this definition of equality as ‘full participation’ in all aspects of a community although I would add that as stake holders women (and indeed GLBT and other minorities kept in an inequality gulag) not only should achieve full participation but also full rewards for that participation.

One of the most compelling arguments that she makes for Gender Awareness is that frequently women’s most important roles in the local economy are in nonpaying jobs.  She argues that you really can’t take any policy into full account unless you study the impact on all of women’s contributions to the economy.  That includes work that does not entail monetary compensation but is welfare-enhancing.

While the former (paid work) in the private and public sectors (under formal contracts or informal arrangement) is largely recognized, unpaid work, which includes unpaid family work contributions, subsistence production, collection of free goods from common lands and volunteer work, household maintenance, and unpaid care work for family members and communities, still remains hidden and, hence, outside policy consideration.

These contributions are still the dominant areas for women in traditional societies.  It has been shown that women who

Mrs. Som Neang, age 53, is married and lives with her two children in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. She and her husband, Mr. Ban Boeun, 59, have a small business selling eggs and a variety of vegetables in a busy market.

understand health and nutrition issues as well as women who are educated and value education contribute a lot to an economy when they serve in these traditional capacities.  Educated women contribute through their children who are healthier and go on to achieve better outcomes in life.

There is also impact, however, on women who work outside the homes and women are concentrated in jobs that tend to suffer greatly during bad economic times.  Any time energy or food prices increase, development goals and gender equality goals suffer setbacks. Antonopolous forwards some broad areas where women tend to suffer most from any economic crisis.

“Among the emerging challenges of the current crisis, we now turn to the turbulence in the world of women’s work in four key areas: paid work (especially in textiles and agriculture); informal work; unpaid work; and fluctuations in remittances, including those from women migrant workers.”

Employment is always one of the slowest things to recovery from a macroeconomic downturn.  The last set of recessions resulting from the Asian Financial crisis as well as other country-specific downturns showed that employment recovery has been even more slow than recovery from recessions earlier in the post world war 2 years.  Current data is rich in information on how this impacts women’s equality goals.

Social Security: Reform, Refund, or Opt Out? (Part 4)

The aging burden is upon us and solutions are required quickly.  People are living longer.  There are three responses households face: consume less and save more when young, consume more and have lower monthly benefits when older, or work longer.   They should make these decisions with a combination of their own savings and employer savings plans.  They should plan retirement based on their preference to work and their health.  They should also be able to rely on a minimal public pension plan so that no one fears dying a bag lady. 

Government should respond when the public pension system is out of balance.  There should be a mandated cycle of revision.  The plan should be evaluated at least every five years and changes should be recommended by professionals to policymakers. Responses include: cutting benefits, raising taxes or contributions, subsidizing the program from general revenues or by issuing some form of debt, and generating a higher rate of return on the Trust Fund’s assets.  There is still the question of generational risk-bearing and redistribution answered by the pre-funded or PAYG choice.  Will the bigger burden lie with future generations or current generations?  It appears we must deal with the PAYG choice made during the depression years one way or another.

Social Security: Reform, Refund or Opt-Out? (Part 3)

Lessons from the World

One of the most interesting things about the large number of countries reforming their public pension programs is how dissimilar many are to the United States.  A large number are in Latin America or are Asia countries that are not experiencing the demographic challenges faced by the United States.  Instead, they reform their systems because the old systems have lost their store of value function.  Privatization is required because the trust between recipients and their governments has broken down.  Chile (1981), Columbia (1993), Peru (1993), Mexico (1997), Bolivia (1997), El Salvador (1998) and Kazakhstan (1998)  have the least future demographic problems, are not developed countries, and have had the largest reforms.[1]  The expected retirement benefits in these countries are now derived from the income produced by an asset portfolio in individual accounts.

The most moderate reforms have happened in countries with high per capita incomes and severe demographic problems.  These countries include Switzerland (1985), the United Kingdom (1986), Denmark (1990), Australia (1992), Argentina (1994), China (1995), Uruguay (1996), Hungary (1998), Sweden (1998) and Poland (1999).  These developed countries have adopted systems that blend defined contribution accounts with a defined benefit.  Germany and Japan have serious demographic problems.  They are also highly developed countries.  They—like the United States—have passed minor reforms.  These countries have less suspicion that their government will not provide secure retirement resources somehow.  Traditional PAYG systems require a “social contract.”  Trust between workers of different generations is higher developed countries than in developing countries.  Trust between households and government is also higher.