Month: February 2011

What If We Scrapped Social Security?

by Conor Friedersdorf

Noah Millman is imagining how it might be replaced:

A key component of the real rationale for a “retirement age” is paternalistic: we can’t trust that people will plan properly, so we need to socialize some economic risks, and we can’t afford to provide “social security” – i.e., lifestyle insurance – from cradle to grave. So we compromise: we provide that insurance to the elderly, who are more vulnerable in aggregate and have less time to “make up” for past mistakes in planning, and withhold it from everybody else. And the result, undoubtedly, is some misallocation of labor resources. But the aging of the population makes that misallocation a bigger and bigger problem, which will require us to revisit that compromise in some fashion.

And there are lots of ways to revisit it. The “raise the retirement age” solution is a relatively regressive one, as Matt is fond of pointing out. But we could revisit it by being less-paternalistic and more progressive. For example, we could enact something like a Guaranteed Minimum Income and abolish Social Security entirely, saying, in effect, we’d rather not provide lifestyle insurance at all (if you want a comfortable retirement, then you’d better plan for it) but we don’t want anybody to live in conditions of true poverty, elderly or not. The strongest arguments against such a scheme are, again, paternalistic – that providing a no-strings-attached income to working-age people creates a very bad incentive structure for individuals who are poor planners, a set that overlaps substantially with the set of people living in poverty.

I must say that this appeals to me. I definitely want there to be a government provided safety net – or universal social insurance if you prefer – that takes care of folks who cannot care for themselves, or those who fall on hard luck, or whatever. But I want to focus redistributed income on actual poor people. I understand why Social Security was adopted, and it was tremendously successful at decreasing poverty rates among the elderly. That's great. But at this point I can't help but wonder why we're redistributing money from poor working people to elderly rich people, given that shifting demographics and a society radically different from New Deal America makes it more burdensome every year.

These are tentative thoughts offered on a hugely complex subject. And I certainly don't want to scrap Social Security without replacing it with something. But if I had a system to design now it would look a lot different.

The Oldest Profession Goes Tech

by Zoe Pollock

Sudhir Venkatesh reports on how the prostitution industry has changed, including the ubiquity of Blackberrys and the rise of Facebook. Money quote:

It’s hard out there for a pimp—especially now. Changes in the sex industry have rendered them superfluous. I met 11 pimps working out of midtown Manhattan in 1999, and all were out of work within four years. One enlisted in the military; two have been homeless. Only one now has a full-time job, working as a janitor in a charter school. I asked one of them how pimping experience helps him in the legit economy: “You learn one thing,” he said. “For a good blow job, a man will do just about anything. What can I do with that knowledge? I have no idea.”

I’m Looking Through You

by Conor Friedersdorf

I'm delighted to report that filmmaker Tony Comstock is guest-blogging for James Fallows this week. Here's an interesting line from his introduction:

We live in an age when extremely graphic, often lurid or even upsetting sexual imagery is but a mouse click away, while at the same time, images that explore and celebrate sexuality in the context of love, commitment, and mutual pleasure are vanishingly rare. This is something that bothers me, and it's something I've devoted a good portion of my professional life to trying to change.
A worthy project.

Groupon And A Greater Good

by Zoe Pollock

Via Alexis, Aaron Bady nails why people are up in arms about Groupon's Super Bowl whale and Tibet ads:

Reading people's complaints about Super Bowl commercials, I'm struck by the feeling that what people are really upset by is the basic fact that the capitalist profit motive is an amoral drive. Yet since that can't register as a scandal — capitalism, you see, is good! — we instead use vague, almost meaningless sentences like "in poor taste." The joke of the Groupon commercials, after all, is the foolishness of people who think commerce can be a form of social good. The joke makes no sense unless you accept the disconnect between selfish-desire (purchasing) and social good (charity).

Side note, Christopher Guest directed them! Monika Bartyze explains the ad concept:

[T]he ads didn't reveal that the site was hoping to help these causes. They're raising money for each cause in their "PSA Parodies," and will match donations up to $100,000 for the three featured charities — Rainforest Action Network, buildOn and the Tibet Fund. On top of that, the site is prepared to offer credits up to $100,000 for those who contribute to Greenpeace.

The AV Club wonders:

If a joke has to be explained, it's not that great of a joke. But does it make a difference if, once the joke is explained, it's pretty funny?

Why Bloggers Avoid Writing About Israel, Ctd

by Conor Friedersdorf

Pejman Yousefzadeh says that I misunderstood and thus mischaracterized his post – that he wasn't at all using accusations of anti-Semitism to bully people who write about Israel and foreign aid. I'll take him at his word, adding only that a lot of others interpreted his post as I did. Doesn't mean we were right, though. Perhaps I'm jaded by having seen this sort of thing before. The last time Yousefzadeh appeared on the Dish, Andrew wrote, "In a response brimming with gratuitous hostility towards yours truly, Pejman Yousefzdeh nevertheless makes a few points worthy of response." That's about how I feel. I'm baffled by the gratuitous hostility, hyperbolic accusations and poor reasoning on display in the initial post.

But there is a nugget of useful debate that can be salvaged. What he and I still disagree about is whether bloggers have a responsibility to Google authors they stumble across, wade through their body of work, and assess their motives before linking or excerpting one of their blog posts. I don't know any blogger who employs that standard, and while I concede that known motives can be a factor in assessing whether something is worth linking, actively launching motive investigations would be a bad idea: it puts the emphasis of discussion in the wrong place, and the extra labor involved in highlighting unfamiliar voices would disincentivize it. The professional blogosphere needs more unfamiliar voices, and fewer link-policemen.

Creepy Furniture Watch

by Zoe Pollock

Robert Krulwich backs away from the disturbing project of artists/designers James Auger and Jimmy Loizeau who make meat-eating furniture, like a fly-eating clock and a mouse consuming coffee table:

They say their furniture is just a newfangled version of all those nature shows on television that show animals hunting in the wild. Having a clock on your wall that "hunts" flies is a kind of theater. … I suppose they are right to make us think harder about who we are and what we want, but I worry a little that Auger, Loizeau, the engineers at Bristol Robotics and robot-makers generally get so excited by the daring novelty of their designs that they fail to notice that they've crossed a line.

"We want robots to be able to get their own energy from the environment," says Professor Melhuish. Fair enough. But giving robots a taste for flesh seems just a touch wrong-headed.