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Small Biz Bill Heads to the Prez

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The New York Times summarizes the newly passed small business jobs bill, which contains, among other eye-glazing but possibly helpful things, this:

“Deduction for health insurance costs. The bill would permit self-employed business owners to deduct their family’s health insurance expenses from their self-employment tax income in 2010.”

A break on my self-employment tax? You don’t say. Awesome. How about a permanent break on this yucky tax? Pretty please?

All Workers Are Not Equal When it Comes to Extending the Retirement Age

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In Washington, federal commissions may be as common as geese flyovers—though a goose, at least, tends to arrive at her destination while a blue-ribbon panel tends to twist in the wind—but that hasn’t stopped people from taking the work of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform quite seriously. The non-establishment left wing is so worried that the commission will focus almost solely on cutting Social Security by extending the retirement age to 70 that it has taken to calling the panel the “cat food commission” (as in, these 18 men and women would gut retirement benefits so much so that seniors will be forced to survive on cans of Friskies).

Leaving aside the hyperbole, no doubt designed to generate at least some interest in another boring D.C. commission, The New York Times ran an article yesterday that pointed out how very serious that change—a dramatic four-year rise in the retirement age—would be to a certain sector of the labor force: those whose work, day in and day out, is primarily physical.

The article focuses in on 58-year-old Ohio resident Jack Hartley, who assembles tires, which sounds like back-breaking work:

Mr. Hartley performs these steps nearly 30 times an hour, or 300 times in a shift. “The pain started about the time I was 50,” he said. “Dessert with lunch is ibuprofen. Your knees start going bad, your lower back, your elbows, your shoulders.” He said he does not think he can last until age 66, when he will be eligible for full Social Security retirement benefits. At 62 or 65, he said, “that’s it.”

It would be one thing if blue collar workers like Hartley were represented on the commission—which must achieve consensus among just 14 of the 18 members for their recommendations to be voted out—but they’re largely not. (Perhaps that’s why raising the retirement age has become a “consensus” position for “fixing” Social Security.) Andy Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union, is probably the only one on there who truly understands people who scrub, hammer, and lift for a living. The rest are mostly members of the federal policy and legislative elite. They may hoof it for votes during election years and work out at the gym, but they surely don’t have to break a sweat—or risk breaking their backs—to get their jobs done.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that type of work, but it behooves (behoofs?) the people who are going to make these possibly fateful decisions to learn about the full impact on the 8.5 million workers like Hartley. After all, Social Security is hardly in immediate trouble—it’s solvent until nearly 2040 and then it will still be able to pay 80 percent of benefits.

It’s Medicare, the other pink (or in-the-red) entitlement in the room, that needs a whole lot more fixing and a whole lot more attention by this commission.

After all, as someone once said (on the Internet), “Whether a fellow winds up with a nest egg or a goose egg depends a heap on the kind of chick he married.” It may also depend on the kind of commission he formed.

For Youth, It’s a Great Depression

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Please check out my story about youth unemployment at Youth Today, which also recently re-did its website. Here is the lede:

“Unemployment among teens and young adults is the highest it has been since the government started keeping records and represents conditions of a depression rather than just a deep recession. Perhaps more troubling, the effects of these depression-like conditions could have broad implications for these young people, including lower future wages, that could persist for a decade or more.”

Politics Blogging: “538”=NYT

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I doubt my few readers get their political junk from Blog Alley, but if you do, the polling guru Nate Silver (previously of the sole-proprietor blog www.fivethirtyeight.com) has now been co-opted by the New York Times. This is pretty great because it seems like Nate gets to do his ‘stats thang’–which is quite reliable in terms of polling analysis–in front of a much, much bigger readership.

Go Nate!

Here’s the page to bookmark for rational polling analysis:

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com.

 

 

Parts of Speech: Ending Iraq Combat Operations, in Words

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Part of Obama’s Oval Office address that I found poetic and very meaningful:

“Two weeks ago, America’s final combat brigade in Iraq -the Army’s Fourth Stryker Brigade -journeyed home in the pre-dawn darkness. Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of vehicles made the trip from Baghdad, the last of them passing into Kuwait in the early morning hours. Over seven years before, American troops and coalition partners had fought their way across similar highways, but this time no shots were fired. It was just a convoy of brave Americans, making their way home.

 

Of course, the soldiers left much behind. Some were teenagers when the war began. Many have served multiple tours of duty, far from their families who bore a heroic burden of their own, enduring the absence of a husband’s embrace or a mother’s kiss. Most painfully, since the war began fifty-five members of the Fourth Stryker Brigade made the ultimate sacrifice -part of over 4,400 Americans who have given their lives in Iraq. As one staff sergeant said, “I know that to my brothers in arms who fought and died, this day would probably mean a lot.”

Those Americans gave their lives for the values that have lived in the hearts of our people for over two centuries. Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew. They stared into the darkest of human creations -war -and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.

In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation. Every American who serves joins an unbroken line of heroes that stretches from Lexington to Gettysburg; from Iwo Jima to Inchon; from Khe Sanh to Kandahar – Americans who have fought to see that the lives of our children are better than our own. Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be travelling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.”

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