Quotation Of The Day: The Effect Of The Sequester On Native American Tribes Edition

From this New York Times article:

The tribes contend that the federal government does not just disburse money to them through federal programs. It meets its nation-to-nation treaty obligation to provide certain services to American Indians. Viewed in that light, a cut is not just a cut but a broken legal promise, and one in a long line of them.

“The tribes in this country, the federally recognized American Indians and Alaska Natives, have the world’s first prepaid health plan,” said Stacy Bohlen, the executive director of the National Indian Health Board, an advocacy organization based in Washington that has argued vocally against the cuts to Indian health programs. “They paid for it with their lives, and their land, and their culture, and the forced abrogation of their future.”

But on the reservations, a sense of resignation has set in.

“It’s one more reminder that our relationship with the federal government is a series of broken promises,” said the Rev. George Winzenburg, the Catholic priest who serves as president of the Red Cloud Indian School. “It’s a series of underfunded projects and initiatives that we were told would be funded to allow us to live at the quality of life that other Americans do.”

A Chart About The Poor And Spending

The poor spend nearly 80% of their income on essentials, food at home, housing, utilities, clothes, transportation, and health care. Based on these averages, a person making $200,000 puts away $31,800 a year for retirement. Nearly one-third of American households earn less than that.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Credit: Lam Thuy Vo / NPR

 

Will States Save Medicare?

At South Dakota Politics, Dr, Blanchard repeats the conventional wisdom when he asserts,

The Social Security system as it exists is unsustainable. Medicare is much more so. Pointing out the role that demographics is playing in this drama is merely pointing out the hard facts. If we don't reform these systems, they will collapse. Probably a lot more of the economy will collapse with them.

I'm unsure about the answers to Social Security and Medicare.  South Dakota's efforts to deal with the issue have been problematic and I'm not sanguine that the initiated measure to raise the state's sales tax a penny to help deal with the shortage will pass in November.  If it does pass, I expect the legislature to alter the law to lessen its impact.

I suspect that Blanchard agrees with with Reihan Salam whom Elias Isquith claims is" the smartest right-wing pundit of his generation." Salam asserts,

So if Ryan is essentially matching the White House on how much he intends to spend on Medicare over the long term, how does he constrain the growth of federal spending more than the president? According to Obama, he does this by starving programs for the poor, like Medicaid and food stamps, and subsidies for higher education, among other things.

One view of the Ryan approach is that state governments and voluntary organizations will pick up the slack for meeting the needs of the non-elderly poor. State governments that do a good job of crafting cost-effective solutions will, over time, beat out state governments that don’t, as households and firms migrate over time to those jurisdictions that offer the best services at the lowest cost. Moreover, the most successful state policies will presumably spread, just as the best management practices tend to spread across competing firms in a given industry.

Ryan has also suggested that his approach, in particular his approach to tax reform, will encourage more rapid economic growth, and that this in turn will translate into increased household income growth. Increased household income growth will make families less dependent on safety-net programs. And when families spend their own money on things like medical care, education and housing, they tend to be somewhat more cost-conscious, thus curbing cost growth in these all-important domains.

The last paragraph is bit of boilerplate; if one creates the right tax policy, especially the right tax cuts, one will spur the economy to new heights has been a mantra since the early 1980s. The middle paragraph contains the intriguing idea that federalism, if left to prosper, will help solve the Medicare problem.

Conor Friedersdorf asks the question that nags at at me every time someone claims federalism can solve budget woes, especially those attached to Medicare or welfare.

Is that true?

When it comes to job creation or building good transportation infrastructure or maintaining a clean environment or establishing a regulatory environment where affordable housing thrives, I have no trouble believing that successful state governments attract residents and that their practices tend to be noticed and mimicked elsewhere.

But caring for the non-elderly poor seems as if it might be different. If a state designs a program that poor people regard as especially beneficial to their interests, wouldn't a lot more poor people move to that jurisdiction? Isn't there a perverse incentive to adopt programs that repel rather than attract the non-elderly poor, who can be a drain on public resources when present in sufficient numbers and are everywhere objects of prejudice no matter how small their population?

 The South Dakota vote on Initiated Measure 15 seems a perfect test case to answer Friedersdorf's question.  I suspect that Salam will be seen to be overly optimistic about voters' willingness to provide and maintain a social safety net.

Income Inequality Through Satirists' Lenses

Conor Friedersdorf has a great essay illustrating that Jon Stewart is a better satirist than Rush Limbaugh.  Given my attitude toward Limbaugh, I obviously believe that Friedersdorf damns with faint praise.  If fact,  Stewart and his running mate Stephen Colbert frequently rise to the level set by Jonathan Swift.

Recently both Stewart and Colbert have taken to the same subject matter that motivated Swift to pen his most famous satirical essay, "A Modest Proposal."  Swift's speaker begins,

It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads, and cabin doors, crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time in strolling to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who as they grow up either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.

I think it is agreed by all parties that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom a very great additional grievance; and, therefore, whoever could find out a fair, cheap, and easy method of making these children sound, useful members of the commonwealth, would deserve so well of the public as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

In short the poor are responsible for their own condition and need to take charge of their lives.  Swift's black humor allows him to satirically suggest that the Irish sell their young as a food source for the rich.

Last night, Stewart takes on this sort of "class warfare."
                       

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Steven Colbert takes on the same targets.

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Is This What’s the Matter with South Dakota?

Yes, I stole the idea for this post’s title from Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Frank contends that Kansas, a solid red state voting pattern is “self-defeating.”

Second, I want to add the caveat that Richard Florida does in his piece “The Conservative States of America”: “this analysis only points to associations between variables; [and does] not make any claims about causation. . . . Still, a number of intriguing findings cropped up.”

According to Professor Florida, South Dakota is among the most conservative states in the country. Over 45% of our residents consider themselves conservative. Mississippi is the most conservative state, and the only one to have over 50% of its residents self-identify as conservatives.

Florida’s research found the following correlations. His article contains statistics and graphs that support his conclusions

Not surprisingly, states with more conservatives are considerably more religious than liberal-leaning states.

Conservative states are also less well-educated than liberal ones.

States with more conservatives are less diverse.

Conservative states are more blue-collar.

States with more conservatives are considerably poorer than those with more liberals. . . . While rich voters trend Republican, Gelman and his colleagues found, rich states trend Democratic.

Conservatism, at least at the state level, appears to be growing stronger. Ironically, this trend is most pronounced in America's least well-off, least educated, most blue collar, most economically hard-hit states.

Liberalism, which is stronger in richer, better-educated, more-diverse, and, especially, more prosperous places, is shrinking across the board and has fallen behind conservatism even in its biggest strongholds.

Several obvious questions arise from Florida’s research.

First, why does the current "trend stand. . .  in sharp contrast to the Great Depression, when America embraced FDR and the New Deal”?

Second, are South Dakota’s residents poorer than the national average because they are conservative or are they conservative because they are poor?

Third, does Governor Duagaard’s and the Republican legislature’s assault on education funding really stem from budgetary concern or does it stem from an antipathy toward education?

Fourth, will states like South Dakota become more blue collar, less well- educated, and poorer?

Fifth, will social issues driven by religious zeal continue to dominate South Dakota's politics?

Finally, if the thesis of Florida’s most well-known work The Rise of the Creative Class is correct, creativity and diversity are inextricably linked. If that’s the case, does South Dakota have the diversity to develop the creativity to solve many of the problems confronting the state?