Dependency Ratio Hits WSJ

Earlier this week I criticized an article by Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. In the article Gladwell criticized the notion of a company defined-benefit pension plan. It could never work because of the natural changes in the “dependency ratio” between workers and non-workers.

But I critiqued the notion that the dependency ratio is out of our control. The dependency ratio is only fixed because we chose to fix it, politically. When it comes to the crunch, children could work and so could older people (Disclosure: I’m 60).

Not, you understand, that I’d like to be working at 70. I’d hate it.

Today Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, gets his say in the Wall Street Journal. Right on Malcolm, he writes.

[I]t makes no sense to transfer these obligations [of pensions and health insurance] to individual households. We need to... protect and develop well-funded public programs which cover every man, woman, and child in America.

Well, you can see where Ron is going. More taxes and more political control in America. But it doesn’t change the basic problem. Whatever benefits are promised or are paid, they have to come out of the present economy. And the more you “fix” things with public programs and the like, the more of a crash you’ll get when extravagant promises can’t be paid.

That is why it is a good idea to get people to declare, by their spending and savings patterns, just how much a retirement pension and health care means to them.

Everyone is in favor of a pension or health care that costs them nothing. The question is, how much are people prepared to sacrifice for future income and health care?

President Bush Makes His Case

Yesterday at the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City President Bush began a series of speeches to bolster support for the war on terror.

Earlier in the week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld created controversy by delivering a “bad cop” speech accusing the president’s critics of “moral confusion.” But a day later Mr. Bush got to make “good cop” in which he laid out his case in positive terms without descending to blaming his critics.

In The New York Times Anne E. Kornblut and Sheryl Gay Stolberg made it clear that Bush’s attempt to link all fronts in the war on terror together was wrong.

In making the case that the war in Iraq is “the central front in our fight against terrorism,” the president linked Iraq, the summer battles between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the growing nuclear threat in Iran under the general rubric of his freedom agenda.



At the same time, he placed various factions of terrorists — Sunnis who swear allegiance to Al Qaeda, Shiite radicals who join groups like Hezbollah and so-called homegrown terrorists — under one umbrella.



Experts said that might be overstating the facts.



“‘Network of radicals’ suggests they are actually connected in some practical fashion, and that’s obviously not the case,” said Steven Simon, a State Department official in the administrations of President Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush’s father.

Well, maybe. But there is no doubt that we are engaged in a war against all of these forces, all of whom regard the United States as the Great Satan and all of whom are actively using military force against the United States.

And that is a truth that hardly needs overstating.

It is true that President Bush is trying to gin up support for his policies right before an election. But since the ongoing war requires the continuing support of the American people, he is bound to work to secure our approval at election time. It is by elections, after all, that we the people set the broad outlines of the policy of the government of the United States.

Democrats Spoil Presidential Politics. Again

We don’t usually do David Broder here at the Road to the Middle Class, for obvious reasons. But today he writes about the Democrats latest attempt to game the presidential primary calendar.

Call me conservative, but when I came to the United States I quickly grew to love the primary season and its calendar.

It started slow with the New Hampshire primary and slowly gathered steam until the Oregon primary and then the granddaddy of them all, the California primary when the nominees would usually be decided.

It was long enough almost to qualify as a professional sport. And about a month after the California primary would come the playoffs: the National Conventions.

But then came George McGovern, who rewrote the Democratic Party rules after 1968 and ran for president in 1972. Ever since then the Democrats have been fiddling with the rules to try and game the system. Or as Broder puts it:

When they started tinkering with their rules after the 1968 election disaster, they unleashed a fierce competition among the states to be at the head of the line, where the contests have the greatest impact on weeding the field and crowning the eventual winner.



What was lost in all this was any sense of public deliberation about the choice of the next president. In the general election, people have two months or more to evaluate two or maybe three candidates. In the early primaries, eight or 10 people may be vying. What is most needed is time -- and a place -- for them to be carefully examined.

Maybe that is just what the Democrats intend. They don’t want a process of “public deliberation.” They want a quick decision in favor of a candidate preferred by the Washington elite. And then back to business as usual.

The beauty of the old presidential selection process was its deliberation. (OK, I know, it really only lasted from 1952 to 1968.) Different states came up every week or so, and each state required a different strategy. And usually the best man won.

What I want to know is: Why shouldn’t Republicans work with the states to go back to the old schedule, celebrating the slow advance from bud to bloom throughout the spring? Democrats be damned for their hot-house forcings. Let’s watch political nature in all its loveliness, natural and organic, the Whole Foods way.

Costco vs. Wal-Mart

Some of you may have noticed that the two big box retailing champs, Wal-Mart and Costco, have differing political profiles. The Wal-Mart and the Walton family are associated with the Republican Party and union busting, while Costco and CEO Jim Sinegal are associated with the Democrats and are much more employee-friendly. Here is an ABC News puff-piece on Costco and Sinegal.

In fact there is a big difference in worker pay. Costco pays about $17 per hour and Wal-Mart pays about $10 per hour, according to Tim Worstall.

Well, that does it. Clearly Costco is higher and nobler, more sensitive and more compassionate. But how does Costco do it?

Costco has sales of $51 billion, 110,000 employees (45% part time, similar to WalMart isn't it?) and WalMart has sales (in North America) of $191 billion and 1.3 million associates. So Costco has sales of some $465,000 per employee and WalMart $147,000 per employee.

And that is the point. Costco is a warehouse store, where you buy huge sacks of stuff rather than onesies and twosies. It has a business model that requires a lot fewer employees. And when Costco delivers about 3 times the sales per employee as Wal-Mart they can afford to pay more to each employee.

But that raises the question. Is it better for Costco to hire a few people at high wages or for Wal-Mart to hire a bunch of people at lower wages? You make the call.

Unfortunately, whatever call you make, ultimately the market will decide. Because it answers the big question, the only question that really matters: what do the customers want? Do they want to buy at a warehouse store or at a Wal-Mart big box?

By the way, even though Costco is said to be a friend of labor, only 18 percent of Costco employees are unionized.

Suppose Omar Was Bombing Abortion Clinics...

The MSM reaction to the San Francisco hit-and-run motorist yesterday was Ho Hum. No need to put Afghan driver Omeed Aziz Popal on the front page with his car in front of the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

It’s like the Seattle gunman a few weeks ago. Nothing to report there really. Anyway, the South Asian suspect Naveed Afzal Haq supposedly converted to Christianity lately.

Then there was the North Carolina chappie, discussed by Shannon Blosser. Mohammad Reza Taheri-azar rented an SUV and drove it close to the student union at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in the hope of hitting people.

Now imagine if these oppressed Muslims were instead middle-aged white guys driving SUVs into abortion clinics.

Yes. There wouldn’t be any problem about getting their exploits on Page One. There wouldn’t be any problem about declaring their acts as hate crimes. There wouldn’t be any problem getting MSM news anchors to put on their deepest frown as they anathematized the dastardly white bigots. The horror. The outrage. The end of civilization as we know it. The right-wing hate.

But who cares about a few Jews being killed in Seattle and San Francisco?

Things You Are Not Allowed To Say: Part XXXIX

Nearly sixty years ago, feminist Simone de Beauvoir bemoaned that the female was the victim of the species. What she wanted was to become a real human being, with a life of the mind, creating, reading, and writing.

Don’t, advises Michael Noer in Forbes, marry a woman like that.

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman with a career.

Of course, the usual suspects are mortally offended at that. How dare Noer say that, they say, echoing the manipulative power of women down the ages. So Forbes got up Elizabeth Corcoran to pen a riposte.

Girlfriends: a word of advice. Ask your man the following question: When was the last time you learned something useful, either at home or work?

Er, what does that have to do with the big question that is nagging in the back of every young man’s mind? And what might that be?

It’s pretty simple. In today’s world, as a result of the feminist revolution and the cultural power of liberals, women can and do dump men for any reason (and two thirds of divorces are initiated by women). That usually means that they waltz off with the house and the kids and the husband/father gets stuck with the child-support payments.

So the question that any sensible guy would ask himself is: how do I work the odds on this unfavorable situation.

The obvious thing is: don’t marry a woman like Simone de Beauvoir or her followers. Don’t come within a country mile of Elizabeth Corcoran. Don’t marry a woman who has things on her mind other than home and children. If you are the marrying kind.

This shouldn’t be so shocking, after all. Men and women are completely different and in normal intercourse don’t have too much to say to each other. So unless they are embarked upon a shared life project—making a family, for example—then the chances are that after the sexual attraction has worn off a bit then the desire to stay together will wear off a bit. And your average feminized career women will soon be saying: shape up or ship out.

That is easy to say, but as every wise woman knows, it is a life time project to get a man to shape up and make a contribution that comes close to hers.

But this is America, land of the free and the brave, quivering under the knout of the social liberals. There are just certain things you are not allowed to say.

You are not allowed to say that career women are a problem. Didn’t you know? It’s right there in the First Amendment.

Katrina: Who's To Blame?

A year ago New Orleans and Louisiana politicians failed to mobilize for Hurricane Katrina. That was President Bush’s fault. A year later Mississippi’s recovery from Katrina is way ahead of New Orleans. And that is President Bush’s fault too.

How easy it is to be a liberal. Whatever happens, Big Business, or Republicans, or white racists are to blame. Meanwhile a river of tax monies drops into the lap of liberal politicians every day of the year and they can buy the support of the poor, again and again. With no accountability for results.

There are three reasons for the debacle of Katrina. We all know what they are:

1. If you want to know what is happening, don’t listen to the mainstream media.
   
2. If you want prompt, flexible response in emergency, don’t give the job to government.
   
3. If you want healthy, vibrant cities, spend tax dollars on infrastructure not on social programs.
   

All those rules were violated in New Orleans.

When I first came to the United States in the mid 1960s I was impressed by the heroic level of infrastructure. But then came the Great Society and the diversion of tax revenues into social programs. But it wan’t till the energy price shocks of the 1970s that government really started to skimp on infrastructure. Initially, it was a temporary thing, to get over the budget crises of the era. But the level of spending was never restored.

Today, as Nicole Gelinas observes in City Journal:

Public officials have unfortunately lost interest in such rational infrastructure investment, doubtless because entitlement spending has consumed budgets as well as politicians’ attention. As the American Society of Civil Engineers warned last year, “congested highways, overflowing sewers and corroding bridges are constant reminders of the looming crisis that jeopardizes our nation’s prosperity and our quality of life.” As entitlement spending has gobbled up the federal budget, spending on infrastructure has fallen to about half where it was as a percentage of GDP 40 years ago; state and local infrastructure spending lags as well.

Today, of course, Democrats are baying for investment in infrastructure, as if it wasn’t their complaints about “paving over the nation” wasn’t the cause of the problem in the first place.

But don’t look for them to propose backing out entitlement spending to make basic investment in infrastructure.