Search Results for: Clinton

Hillary Clinton’s College Affordability Plan

by philg

Hillary Clinton has proposed to change the way Americans pay for college. The money collected by universities will stay the same, the teaching methods will be unaltered, and students will do the same things for the same amount of time. The big difference is that about $350 billion in additional taxes will be paid by Americans and then the government will make sure that (at least most of) the money gets to the colleges. Paying taxes instead of tuition will make college more “affordable” for Americans, according to Clinton and most of the media (e.g., nytimes), just as Obamacare made health care more “affordable” despite the overall cost remaining roughly constant as a percentage of GDP.

It occurred to me that a politician could promise to raise the average American’s tax bill by $70,000 and then buy each family a Mercedes or BMW at list price. This would be called “The Mercedes and BMW affordability plan.”

One of the interesting provisions of the bill is that, if not paid back via a modest percentage of “income,” loans will be entirely forgiven after 20 years (or 10 years, if working in an official do-gooder job). Consider a Massachusetts citizen who goes through 10 years of college and grad school or professional school, learning a lot of interesting but not very practical material. Towards the end of grad school, the citizen has casual encounters with two different members of the opposite sex earning $250,000 each, and retains custody of the two resulting children. Under the Massachusetts child support system, this will lead to a comfortable $80,000 per year in tax-free payments, none of which count as “income,” plus additional court-ordered amounts to pay for direct expenses of the child, such as daycare while in grad school or college tuition if it isn’t entirely free by then. The payments end when the youngest child turns 23, at which point all of the student loan debt has been forgiven.

What can the well-educated child support profiteer do during those 10 or 20 years post-graduation to maintain skills and also accumulate savings for retirement? How about… work? To get the 10-year “do-gooder” schedule of forgiveness, the citizen starts a non-profit corporation and accumulates tax-free profits inside the corp. (see this article for some numbers on Planned Parenthood, which is apparently able to bank over $100 million per year in profits) Perhaps the citizen pays himself or herself a minimum wage for 10-15 hours per week. After the loans have been forgiven, the citizen can then use the accumulated profit (“surplus” in non-profit argot) to contribute to a tax-deferred retirement account and/or to pay a much higher salary.

What if the citizen doesn’t have any non-profit ideas? The citizen forms a C corporation and works through the C corp., which pays corporate taxes on any profits but retains or reinvests nearly all after-tax earnings. This may not be tax-efficient because if the money is eventually taken out as salary the citizen will also have to pay individual income tax on previous years’ income (this pain could be reduced by moving to Puerto Rico (Forbes)). But, on the other hand, skipping out on hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt should provide a boost to overall financial health. Essentially the citizen meets day-to-day personal expenses from child support and saves for retirement by building up value in the C corporation.

A separate question is how this would work for an American who graduates from college and emigrates to, e.g., Singapore. If he or she renounces U.S. citizenship how does the U.S. then get income data sufficient to calculate the former citizen’s student loan repayment liability?

Readers: What other interesting strategies and outcomes would you expect based on the percentage of income cap and the forgiveness-after-20-years policy?

Related:

Clinton versus Obama; poor state versus rich state

by philg

An economist pointed out that Bill Clinton was practically a libertarian compared to Barack Obama. Both are popular Democrats, separated by just eight years, so how to explain the difference in philosophy?

My answer was that Clinton had come from Arkansas, a poor state (#48 in household income). There wasn’t that much accumulated wealth in Arkansas to ladle out to cronies. Clinton thus turned to the only remaining possible strategy of trying to grow the pie by making an environment more conducive to business investment.

Obama, by contrast, came to national office from Illinois, a wealthy state (#16). By taxing some of the real estate, factory, and other wealth in Illinois it is possible to hand out significant checks to tens of thousands of supporters. Why attempt the hard work of growing the economy when one can simply tax the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower?

Temperamentally we should expect politicians from wealthy states to behave like Saudi princes, assuming that an inexhaustible supply of wealth is their birthright and spending most of their time figuring out how to distribute it.

Bill Clinton’s autobiography

by philg

I’ve been listening to Bill Clinton’s autobiography in an abridged book-on-tape version, read by the author.  He talks about his daughter’s pet frog.  He talks about his family and their struggles with obesity and alcohol and cocaine addiction.  He talks about stopping at McDonald’s for coffee towards the end of his morning jog back in Arkansas.  The book demonstrates how far politicians have come since the days of Nixon (no one dares hope that anyone in our current crop will measure up to an old thinker/writer/doer such as Jefferson).  Nixon was the man who struggled with big issues that were important to all Americans.  You’d expect to find Nixon writing about how he started up the Environmental Protection Agency, got us out of Vietnam, and opened up trade with Red China.  Clinton, on the other hand, seems totally unreflective.  He talks about how people cheered when he got Itzhak Rabin and Yassir Arafat to sign some sort of agreement in the backyard of the White House but not about why, if this was such an important accomplishment, 12 years later the war between Arabs and Jews continues unabated.  He mentions the dates on which he decided to start bombing people in former Yugoslavia but does not take advantage of the distance of a decade to look at the long-term result (as far as I’ve heard, both the Christians whom we bombed and the Muslims on whose behalf we were bombing hate us now).


Clinton rails against the “conservative media” who misrepresented his proposals, much as our current rulers rail against the “liberal media”.  He expresses genuine confusion that the U.S. contained so many angry little people who harassed him by alleging scandals or imagined that they understood his motivations or marriage.  Speaking of “little people”, Clinton never seems to have harbored any doubt, even as a young man, that he was entitled to their vote.  He believed right from the start that he was the best-qualified person for whatever job he was seeking.  Perhaps this is why we’ve had so many presidents from small towns in obscure states and surprisingly few from big cities.  If you grow up as the only smart person in a tiny school you might subconsciously believe for the rest of your life that you ought to be elected governor, president, whatever.  If, on the other hand, you grow up in Manhattan you might remember “hey, there were a bunch of folks in my old neighborhood who knew a lot more than I did and would probably do a better job.”  This might tend to sap your confidence.


If you want to learn about government, foreign policy, management, etc. the book is useless.  If, on the other hand, you’re exasperated at the mediocrity of our current President, this book is a nice reminder that George W. has no monopoly on mediocrity.


[You might ask why I continue to listen.  I’m driving N to Nashua, New Hampshire every morning for helicopter lessons and then SW to Concord, Massachusetts for English riding lessons in the afternoon and therefore am spending several hours every day in the car.]

Hillary Clinton plagues aviation

by philg

After some rich New Yorkers got killed on a helicopter sightseeing flight in Hawaii, Hillary Clinton leaned on the FAA to tighten regulations regarding such tours.  In particular she wants the FAA to eliminate the ability of flightseeing companies to operate under “Part 91” (simple) and force them to operate under Part 135 of the regulations, which is designed for small airlines basically.  This will put about 700 companies out of the air tour business by the FAA’s estimate.  It is unclear that it will increase safety because (a) most of the big helicopter flightseeing operations are already Part 135 (gives them the ability to take people farther than 25 nautical miles), (b) most of the people who’ve been killed on air tours were killed by Part 135 operators, and (c) helicopters tend to be unsafe, even when piloted by experts.


Basically because some rich people got killed in a $1 million Part 135 helicopter Hillary Clinton wants to wipe out mom-and-pop air tour operators who fly little float planes or biplanes under Part 91.  The FAA has no statistics to show that the proposed regulations will make anyone safer and indeed hardly anyone gets killed on fair-weather airplane tours.  Here’s a comment that I submitted to the FAA via their Web site:



It would be nice if all aviation could be as safe as taking a Boeing 747 from one ILS-and-radar-equipped 12,000′ runway to another.  If we were to wrap additional regulations (Part 135 versus Part 91) around helicopter tours could they become as safe, per passenger-mile, as a ride in a 747?  From an engineering point of view, this doesn’t seem like a realistic short-term goal.  The NASA research report “U.S. Civil Rotorcraft Accidents, 1963 Through 1997” by Harris, F.D., Iseler, L. and Kasper, E. (NASA/TM-2000-209597, USAAMCOM-TR-00-A-006) concluded essentially that helicopters were impossible for human beings to control reliably without a lot of help from computers, computers that aren’t available until you get to helicopters that cost $5-10 million, 10 times the price of the helicopters that are typically used by air tour operators.


A pilot operating an air tour of any kind is already subject to more regulation than almost any American doing anything.  She needs to follow rules regarding visibility minimums, airspace, weight/balance, etc.  She needs to make sure that her aircraft is maintained at 100-hour intervals by federally certificated mechanics.  She needs to follow whatever rules are imposed by her insurance carrier.  She and her colleagues for the last 100 years have achieved a remarkably good safety record, partly because most pilots take the regulations seriously but perhaps mostly due to the fact that it is tough to get killed in a well-maintained airplane on a clear VFR day and if you take off and land at the same airport the weather isn’t likely to change from clear VFR to dangerous IMC.


Layering on Part 135 regulations might make people who love regulation feel good but it is tough to see what it will do for the public.  If all the existing Part 91 rules are followed, air tours are already very safe.  Instead of putting resources into processing reams of Part 135 paperwork, why not put those resources into (1) more ramp checks to make sure that air tour operators are actually following the existing rules, and (2) certifying inexpensive helicopter autopilots and stability augmentation systems?


In the United States an incumbent Senator is basically immune to electoral challenge.  Hillary Clinton seems to be in good health.  So we can probably expect to remain in office for at least another 40 years.  That’s a sobering thought for America’s aviators.

Talking with a pro-Hamas college student

by philg

All of my attempts at humor fall flat, as a general rule. In January, for example, I jokingly asked a friend who had visited family in Madrid over Christmas if he’d had to navigate around pro-Hamas protests. He took it as a straight question and gave me a detailed straight answer about the various protests and the parts of the city they’d blocked and what he had done to try to get where he was going.

I needed to talk to a friend’s son regarding an unrelated topic. He’s an avid videogamer and an engineering major at a college in a Rust Belt city whose last period of sustained job growth was during the administration of Gerald Ford. It’s not in Michigan or anywhere else where Islam is the primary religion. He lost years of high school and social life to coronapanic (and, despite diligent masking and meek acceptance of lockdowns, of course got COVID several times). One might imagine that he and his cohorts would have other issues on their minds than the suffering of the noble Gazans… and one would be wrong. I jokingly asked how the pro-Hamas encampments have been at his university. It turned out that he was a regularly attendee at said protests/encampments. “It’s got a really good vibe,” he said, “though only about 50 people actually sleep there every night.”

He took issue with my characterization of the demonstrators as “pro-Hamas”. He said that their goal was to “stop the killing of children.” He agreed that the death of bystanders was inevitable in war and said that he did not think Israel should be allowed to pursue any military activities in Gaza due to the risk that additional children would die. Essentially, the IDF would have to withdraw. I asked “Since Hamas is the elected and popular government of Gaza, doesn’t that mean that Hamas would resume their rule over the territory?” He said “yes” but disagreed that demanding an action that would inevitably ensure continued Hamas rule could be considered a “pro-Hamas” position.

The punchline to the above conversation is that the young man is… Jewish! His mother is Israeli, in fact. She’s an elite wealthy multiple passport European-heritage Netanyahu-hating Israeli, but nowhere near ready to surrender to Hamas as her son is. (Netanyahu’s core support comes from the plurality of Israelis whose ancestors were expelled from majority-Muslim countries, such as Iraq, Iran, Yemen, etc., after 1948. The European-heritage Jews who arrived prior to 1948 are generally much richer if for no other reason than they bought real estate in Tel Aviv before the population grew so dramatically.)

I tried to get him to see that his philosophy, if applied equally to all nations, meant that any army that can surround itself with children becomes invulnerable. Russia could conquer Ukraine, for example, if they just brought some children along to ride in their military vehicles. He more or less admitted that, but stuck to his position that “too many” children had been killed in the recent Gaza battles and, therefore, Israel had to accept defeat and withdraw. (Palestinians themselves do not seem to think that whatever has happened recently is bad enough that they would be willing to abandon any of their military goals. One never hears of Palestinians who say “war is too costly so we will have to compromise for peace and recognize Israel within her current borders.” Instead, they say that they are willing to wage war forever if that’s what it takes to liberate Al-Quds, destroy the Zionist entity, and enjoy a river-to-the-sea Hamas-ruled nation. (cue UNRWA to pay for food, health care, education, etc. until this glorious day arrives))

His siblings also went to public schools in an all-Democrat city and he says that they’re fully aligned with him on the Israel/Gaza issue. My text to his parents: “I would have thought with all of his shooter game experience that he’d believe that sometimes a nation does have to use its military to do military stuff.”

That’s my dive into the wisdom of today’s best-educated youth!

Here’s an example Rust Belt encampment (Syracuse, New York):

Related:

  • “The Adults Are Still in Charge at the University of Florida” (WSJ; Ben Sasse, formerly U.S. Senator from Nebraska and current president at UF): Higher education isn’t daycare. … Higher education has for years faced a slow-burning crisis of public trust. Mob rule at some of America’s most prestigious universities in recent weeks has thrown gasoline on the fire. Pro-Hamas agitators have fought police, barricaded themselves in university buildings, shut down classes, forced commencement cancellations, and physically impeded Jewish students from attending lectures. … universities must distinguish between speech and action. Speech is central to education … The heckler gets no veto. The best arguments deserve the best counterarguments. … we draw a hard line at unlawful action. Speech isn’t violence. Silence isn’t violence. Violence is violence. … universities make things worse with halfhearted appeals to abide by existing policies and then immediately negotiating with 20-year-old toddlers. Appeasing mobs emboldens agitators elsewhere. … universities need to recommit themselves to real education. Rather than engage a wide range of ideas with curiosity and intellectual humility, many academic disciplines have capitulated to a dogmatic view of identity politics. Students are taught to divide the world into immutable categories of oppressors and oppressed, and to make sweeping judgements accordingly. With little regard for historical complexity, personal agency or individual dignity, much of what passes for sophisticated thought is quasireligious fanaticism. … Young men and women with little grasp of geography or history—even recent events like the Palestinians’ rejection of President Clinton’s offer of a two-state solution—wade into geopolitics with bumper-sticker slogans they don’t understand.

WSJ article on the working/chump class

by philg

“The Calls for Help Coming From Above the Poverty Line” (WSJ, April 6):

United Way, the nonprofit that operates about half of the country’s 200-plus 211 centers, and other poverty researchers blame that disconnect partly on the federal poverty line, which they say hasn’t kept up with the real cost of living.

The share of households below the census-designated federal poverty line has barely budged since 2010. Meanwhile, poverty researchers say a large and fast-growing group of people are earning too much to qualify for social services and not enough to afford the basics where they live.

In other words, the working class has been trampled by open borders, just as the Harvard economics eggheads said: “Yes, Immigration Hurts American Workers”.

The trend, which was hugely accelerated starting in 2021, probably isn’t going to be reversed. The question then becomes how should a person of modest means, yet not entitled to “not-welfare”, adapt to a society that has been degraded for the working class?

Humans are social animals and a lot of the misery inflicted on the working class has to do with their standard of living being lower than that of nearby non-working people on what used to be called “welfare” and is now “means-tested”. The working class person will experience pain at the grocery store when seeing a relaxed-from-not-working customer pay for a huge cart of groceries via EBT card, for example.

How about a move to a state where people who work have a higher spending power than people who don’t work? “The Work versus Welfare Trade‐​Off: 2013” (CATO) is filled with pre-Biden dollar figures that are absurdly out of date, but the percentages and rankings are still relevant. Here are the states where a working class American is going to feel the dumbest for not having gone on the welfare career track starting at age 16:

Here are the states where a median worker might enjoy twice the spending power of someone who chooses the relaxed non-working lifestyle:

We then probably want to look at these states to figure out which ones have the best opportunities for free recreation, the best schools for kids so that they can move up, and the best weather. In the report covered by “Surprise: Florida and Texas Excel in Math and Reading Scores” (NYT 2015), Texas, Florida, and Colorado had the best schools among the above states. Florida and Colorado have great weather and free recreation. Florida is ranked #8 for happiness by WalletHub and Colorado is down at #31. So maybe the answer for a working class person feeling like a chump is to move to Florida! (Maybe not to Palm Beach County, though, if envy is an issue!)

The same advice applies to people who are rich, incidentally, if the rich person wants to be in an environment where anyone with a job can thrive and not suffer despair. Inequality isn’t a terrible thing, from a rich person’s point of view, but for those who adhere to the now-obsolete Protestant work ethic, there is value to being in a place where the working people one interacts with are cheerful.

Related:

Which side should we be on in the mostly peaceful Eritrean dispute?

by philg

Apparently, a mostly peaceful conflict between two groups within Eritrea has entitled people from both sides of the conflict to claim asylum in Europe and the U.S. This has resulted in the mostly peaceful conflict continuing in The Hague and in, for example, North Carolina. “Charlotte protesters attack officers, set tractor-trailer on fire in riot at Eritrean ‘cultural event’: police” (Fox News):

The Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department said eight people were arrested Saturday during a 10-hour “protest and standoff” that stemmed from an Eritrean “cultural event.”

Clashes erupted between rival groups of Eritreans, and police confirmed that officers trying to disperse the unlawful crowds were attacked by people wielding sticks, rocks and other items.

Crowds also set a tractor on fire in North Carolina’s largest city, and police seized a total of two firearms over the course of several hours.

There seems to be some confusion regarding what language Eritreans speak:

“The officers were met with violence and hostility, with protesters throwing objects,” the department said in its initial press release. “Over the course of several hours, the CEU gave multiple dispersal orders in English and Spanish and were again met with violence from protesters wielding sticks, rocks and other items.”

What is the source of the mostly peaceful peace?

Tens of thousands of people have fled Eritrea for Europe, many alleging they were mistreated by the repressive government of President Isaias Afwerki. The conflicts underscore deep divisions among members of the Eritrean diaspora between those who remain close to the government and those who have fled to live in exile and strongly oppose Afwerki.

We know how to be on the right side of history (next to Vladimir Putin) with respect to the Israel v. Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, et al. situation. But which side in the Eritrean v. Eritrean peace should we be on? Which side corresponds to Hamas in terms of having created an ideal progressive society?

Related:

  • Wikipedia page on Isaias Afwerki: As a leader of the Eritrean rebellion against Ethiopia’s annexation of the Eritrean coastal region in 1977, Isaias became an icon of resistance. … In his first few years Isaias was hailed as a new type of African president with then-US President Bill Clinton referring to him as a “renaissance African leader”. … In 2009, Isaias advocated for the development of indigenous political and economic institutions… In 2018, Isaias oversaw an unexpected transformation of Eritrea’s relations with Ethiopia. The 20-year stalemate ended after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Abiy signed a “joint declaration of peace and friendship” at a bilateral summit on 9 July, restoring diplomatic and trade ties with Eritrea. … Shortly before Eritrea declared independence, Isaias contracted cerebral malaria and was flown to Israel for treatment. Arriving in a coma, he was treated at Sheba Medical Center, where he recovered after successful treatment. … His training in China made him a great admirer of Mao Zedong…

Maskachusetts dumping migrants into a Black neighborhood

by philg

“[Lockdown and forced vaccination mayor of Boston Michelle] Wu acknowledges ‘pain’ of state plan to use Roxbury rec. center as overflow shelter site” (Boston.com):

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu responded to Gov. Maura Healey’s potential plan to use the Melnea A. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury as an overflow shelter site for migrants. Wu said she is working closely with the state to find solutions amid the ongoing migrant crisis, but expressed some frustration around the idea of using the Cass complex.

“For the first community where this is being proposed to be Roxbury, a community that over so many decades has faced disinvestment, redlining, disproportionate outcomes, it’s very painful,” Wu said during an appearance on WBUR’s “Radio Boston” Monday morning.

Amid historic levels of migrations, the emergency shelter system in Massachusetts has been under stress for months. Healey declared a state of emergency last year, and instituted a 7,500-family cap on the system. For months she has been pressuring federal officials and lawmakers to give Massachusetts more funding to deal with the crisis and make it easier for migrants to obtain work permits.

But the flow of migrants into the state shows no signs of slowing. More than 600 families were on a waitlist for emergency shelter as of Friday, and dozens of families have been forced to sleep at Logan Airport.

When I arrived at MIT in 1979, Roxbury was a Black neighborhood. This history describes what a hater might call a population replacement:

By the early 1970s, a combination of declining property values in Roxbury and rising values in the South End and discriminatory home lending practices had conspired to push Boston’s black community into Roxbury. As Latinos moved into Boston in greater numbers in the 1970s and ’80s, Roxbury became more heterogeneous. In 1990, the neighborhood was 79 percent African American, 14 percent Latino and 3 percent white.

[in 2019], Roxbury is 53 percent black, 28 percent Latino and 12 percent white.

It seems that there is no room for migrants in Weston, Wellesley, Dover, Concord (a sanctuary city), Lincoln, Newton (a sanctuary city), or other nearly-all-white towns with 1-2-acre zoning minimums. Maybe Newton doesn’t make sense because the teachers are on strike and migrants are entitled to a U.S. taxpayer-funded education (teacher strikes are illegal in Massachusetts, but 98 percent of the Newton teachers voted to break the law; apparently, they can’t be fired from their union job even when they violate the law).

Related:

  • America’s Welcomer-in-Chief is visiting Jupiter, Florida today! “President Biden heads to Jupiter, Miami for high-priced campaign events” (WPTV): “On Monday night, the White House announced he “will participate in a campaign reception in Jupiter” at an undisclosed location at 2 p.m. after arriving at Palm Beach International at 12:15 p.m. … Details on the Palm Beach County visit are being kept tightly quiet, but it is likely to be a pricey event.” (a border open to low-skill migration enriches American elites by about $500 billion per year in pre-Biden dollars: Harvard study using pre-Biden levels of immigration as well as pre-Biden dollars (i.e., it is probably closer to $1 trillion/year for the rich today))