Found this via Brea Grant’s blog. It’s a good song, and the rest of the album is pretty good. You can get the album, Re-arrange Us
(PS. Don’t forget to watch Brea Grant on Heroes in a few weeks, and check out other books and music she likes over at Coolspotters. And, no, I’ve got no connection to her, business or otherwise. Just a fan since I saw her on Friday Night Lights.)
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Mark Cuban (yes, that Mark Cuban) writes about why he believes social security privatization a la Bush won’t work. It’s quite long (it includes one of the pieces he references via Andrew Sullivan) but worth the read.
And, boo, weblogs, inc for not supporting trackbacks or pingbacks.
December 18th, 2004 at 2:02 pm
Ok, so I am not smart when it comes to these things (esp economics). So, could someone answer some questions for me (or help explain this in a basic way)? From what I understand, Bush wants to allow a small portion of what we put aside for our SS to be used for private investment.
1) Would this money be mandated to invest by the government or would we just receive a little bit more take home and be expected to invest it?
2) If we are just give extra money to take home and are “expected” to invest it on our own, what would happen if after 40 years some people didn’t? Would we have to implement programs to help cover the costs for them, or would they just be out of luck and have to deal with whatever situation they have?
It seems to me after reading through this blog, you could make more money if you did invest it on your own in private funds (which is the basis for most retirement systems now and give a larger portion of money to retirees than SS). I understand that there maybe some exceptions where some people invest in options that lose money or don’t gain. But, on average, it seems private would make more than SS. The problem to me seems (and please correct me if I am wrong), that the average person (that doesn’t make over 60, 70, 80+ k) would probably not invest it or end up investing it correctly. I know my mom falls into this category. She makes about $15000/year and if she took home an extra 1-3%, there is no way that it would go into a separate investment account if it was solely left up to her to do so. So, I believe the average salary right now is around 33k/year (give or a take a little), and I can’t see a majority of these people doing this with an extra $25-50 a paycheck. Which would mean that these people would have less money when the retire than if all the money is just left in SS as it is now (even at a lower rate than private funds would have got them), and since we are a country that is “somewhat concerned” with our elderly and wanting them not to live in total poverty, we would have to then come up with a program to supplement their living.
How far am I off base and what am I missing? Thanks for the help.
December 18th, 2004 at 10:04 pm
We get a lot of traffic, so having trackbacks means that all the spammers in the world would come to our blogs at weblogsinc.com and try and link to their Viagra blogs.
Trackbacks in the blosphere are basically dead… no major blog has them anymore and if they do they are abused to the point of being worthless. I think the best thing to do is just search Technorati, Feedsteer, etc.
December 18th, 2004 at 11:55 pm
the spam problem is, of course, the same for trackbacks as it is for comments. Enable one, enable them all IMHO. I can think of at least one major news site (News.com) that is putting some effort into trackbacks and pingbacks.
Can you comment on how much traffic you get compared to some of the top tier political blogs (Instapundit, Daily Kos, Eschaton, etc)? Of those three, Eschaton uses Haloscan for their comments and trackbacks. Kos only has comments, and Instapundit has no user or community participation. I chose these because they all use sitemeter so you should get a good idea about their traffic.
Slashdot does not, of course, but it hardly qualifies as participatory journalism as they investigate little and merely point. If we’re comparing to that site and those type of blogs, I suspect you might be right. However, the News.com example might be another way to look at the benefits of trackbacks.