Thanks for the detailed reply. This time, I'll give you one out of three. ;)

Re #2: Uh, no. The 1% number does take into account that the self-employed must pay the employer portion. I'm not sure if you're being coy or if you honestly don't understand the economics here, but Emma Zahn explained it nicely. The basic point is that if you are an employee, economically it doesn't much matter what the employer/employee breakdown is. If the self-employed only had to pay the employee portion, that would constitute a massive subsidy for the self-employed. Now maybe as a public policy matter you think we should subsidize the self-employed; if so, that's fine, but make the case straightforwardly.

Re #1. It's neither here nor there, but there were a great many self-employed in the 30's. Most of them were farmers. Not that this has much to do with Social Security, which didn't apply to the self-employed until the 50's.

Re #3. Eloquently put. I agree with what you said, modulo the payroll tax per my comments above.

Posted at September 28, 2007 3:21 PM in response to How About the Billionaires?

Matt,

One of your issues with Social Security is that it "punish[es] the self-employed (who didn’t even exist in the 1930s)". As Emma Zahn explained in an excellent comment it is true that the self-employed pay more, but the effect is only about 1% of earnings. Sure, that's not perfectly equitable, but is that really such a big deal? (Or are you looking at this ignoring employer contributions? If so, IMHO, that's pure demagoguery.)

Your parenthetical about the 30s is also strange. As Zahn pointed out, before the Reagan era revamp of Social Security under Greenspan, the self-employed actually had a big discount.

This reminds me a bit of the misleading statements that Russert and other pundits are so fond of, that people are living so much longer than they did in the 30's as if the Roosevelt administration didn't know that life expectancy was increasing. In fact, as your colleague Paul Krugman has documented, the FDR era demographers if anything erred a little on the conservative side: In 1934, they estimated that 12.7% of Americans would be over 65 in 2000, the number turned out to be 12.4%.

On a more trivial note, of course the self-employed existed in the 1930's. What you meant to say is they weren't covered by Social Security until 1950.

(You've been very good at replying to questions. So if you already addressed this somewhere and I missed it, my apologies.)

Posted at September 28, 2007 12:10 PM in response to How About the Billionaires?

That kind of levity that's just fine by me. ;)

Posted at September 28, 2007 11:15 AM in response to How About the Billionaires?

I think donor groups, both Democratic and Republican, deserve more scrutiny. So tentative props to you for shedding light on the little-known Democracy Alliance (tentative only because I haven't yet read your book).

And let me wholeheartedly thank you for really engaging the community here and wading into the comments.

On a less flattering note, I just replied to you re levity and the state of our public discourse in an old thread.

Posted at September 28, 2007 9:23 AM in response to How About the Billionaires?

Matt, I would have thought most readers interpreted that as a dig at Clinton and Obama not Kerry and/or his critics. But then again I don't share your miraculous ability to determine what "all but a handful of readers" think.

But my main point isn't your bad boy antics, which frankly aren't that bad by the standards of much of our press corps today. The big story is the outsized role light-hearted, trivial and often false banter by our press plays in our public discourse and influencing our elections. This isn't solely a post-1998 or anti-Democratic phenomenon (think for instance of the outsized role the incessant commentary about Bush Sr.looking at his watch played in the 1992 election), though it is primarily both of those things. The whole Kerry flap for example was monumentally silly. Sure he voted for one version of the bill, before voting against the other. Then again, Bush threatened to veto the version Kerry voted for, before signing the version Kerry voted against. Yet I don't think I ever saw this vital bit of context in all the endless coverage of that remark; would have spoiled the fun I guess. I gave more examples in my previous comment.

The media having fun at the expense of substance -- and often truth -- undeniably changed the outcome of the 2000 election and arguably the 2004 election. You don't need to be paranoid to see it; you just need to be paying attention.

Posted at September 28, 2007 9:02 AM in response to On Innovation and Inertia

Thanks for explaining that, Emma Zahn. I had thought the self-employed effectively paid the same SS as others by paying the usual employee portion plus the employer portion. But you're right there's a correction that comes about in the denominator so that the self-employed are in fact paying a slightly higher rate.

Posted at September 27, 2007 12:53 PM in response to On Innovation and Inertia

Matt,

You've told us a couple of times that levity in political journalism is just dandy and excuses what would otherwise be problematic. You were defending your provocative line on Clinton and Obama's MoveOn votes that "[y]ou might say they voted for it before they voted against it." Your defense seems to be that, hey, the argument I was sorta making may be false, but I think it's funny, so no big deal.

Could you make the general argument for your viewpoint on the "levity excuse" rather than merely pronouncing it ex cathedra? As you may have noticed, many people disagree with you. The press routinely elevates the trivial or even outright falsehoods under the banner of levity. To channel Bob Somerby, if the press hadn't spent much of 1999-2000 pushing light-hearted -- and often false -- trivia (earth tones, Love Canal, Love Story, inventing the internet, etc.) we wouldn't be in Iraq today and we'd be in a much better position on energy independence, the environment, fiscal balance, etc. Or think of Edwards' campaign today where the central issue had been an utterly trivial -- though at least true -- story about a haircut. You apparently disagree, but I don't think that being funny that way is OK.

To be clear, I am not against humor. I'm a big fan of Bob Somerby and he after all is a comedian. I am against using humor as an excuse to promote bad arguments and false or trivial facts. Humor does not wash away sins, not in my book anyway.

Posted at September 27, 2007 11:15 AM in response to On Innovation and Inertia

Todd, what about impeaching Gonzales? (Admittedly that got a little harder after passing this FISA bill, but still.)

Posted at August 7, 2007 6:43 AM in response to Impeachment Pit

I say impeach Gonzales now. The case is (even more) solid on the merits. And he has essentially now defenders other than Bush, so conviction in the Senate is a real possibility. No matter how it plays out, I don't see much downside.

That may -- or may not -- get the ball rolling and make impeachment and conviction of Cheney and/or Bush possible. One step at a time.

I think making Pelosi President by impeaching both Cheney and Bush would be a bad idea, because it would set a terrible precedent of changing the party in the presidency (regardless of the merits in this case). Perhaps Cheney could be impeached and Bush censured or if both impeached a deal worked out to put a different Republican in office.

But all that is getting way ahead of the game IMHO. You will likely only get one shot and conviction for Cheney and Bush is clearly out of reach at the present time. For now, impeach Gonzales.

Posted at July 26, 2007 2:22 PM in response to Impeachment Questions

Another slight difference between Clinton and Libby: Libby was found guilty. Clinton was found not guilty, with 10 Republican Senators voting not guilty on perjury and 5 voting not guilty on obstruction of justice.

Posted at July 2, 2007 4:16 PM in response to Bush Commutes Libby Sentence