Lest you think the police state has somehow been ameliorated…

Rules of American justice: a tale of three cases
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/rules_of_american_justice_a_tale_of_three_cases/singleton/

I recommend reading the full article, but for those of you who can’t wait, here are the new rules our country operates under:

The Rules of American Justice are quite clear:

(1) If you are a high-ranking government official who commits war crimes, you will receive full-scale immunity, both civil and criminal, and will have the American President demand that all citizens Look Forward, Not Backward.

(2) If you are a low-ranking member of the military, you will receive relatively trivial punishments in order to protect higher-ranking officials and cast the appearance of accountability.

(3) If you are a victim of American war crimes, you are a non-person with no legal rights or even any entitlement to see the inside of a courtroom.

(4) If you talk publicly about any of these war crimes, you have committed the Gravest Crime — you are guilty of espionage – and will have the full weight of the American criminal justice system come crashing down upon you.

I guess I should have made my post yesterday in the tiny roll-back the Supreme Court made on the police state sarcastic, but at that moment I actually felt some tiny shreds of optimism. Of course, that was false optimism, at best, as I mention in the article all they have to do is find some judge to sign off on their warrants and off they go. Judges have become so politicized (well, perhaps that is compared to my rose-tinted reading of middle-of-last-century court cases) that it seems more and more they are incapable of issuing rulings that are grounded in law and it is now quite common to see decisions overturned back and forth as a case winds its way up the food chain.

This last part is the really terrifying/telling part:

Part of the DOJ’s criminal investigation in the Kirakou matter included investigating whether criminal defense lawyers representing GITMO detainees, from the ACLU and elsewhere, committed crimes by attempting to learn of the identity of the CIA agents who tortured their clients (so that they could sue or otherwise hold those torturers accountable: exactly what any competent lawyer should do). Although the DOJ ultimately decided yesterday against indictments of those lawyers, the very fact that the DOJ criminally investigated them at all is self-evidently dangerous. About that investigation, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero told Savage that “it — and the Obama-era leak investigations more broadly — had had a ‘chilling effect on defense counsel, government whistle-blowers, and journalists’.” That, of course, is exactly why its purpose.

I really need to get a copy of 1984 so I can get a clear vision for where this is all going.

Wow! Supreme Court rolls back a tiny bit of the police state!

Supreme Court rules warrant needed for GPS tracking
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/judicial/story/2012-01-23/supreme-court-GPS/52754354/1

Actually a bit surprising to me, this verdict, as well as its being unanimous. The other concurring statements are interesting as they served to broaden the protection. Of course, the reality is that the police just don’t want to be bothered with tracking down and consulting a judge, much like the intelligence community finds is so burdensome to consult with a FISA judge (I have read that for all intents and purposes, the FISA judge grants 100% of requests), so this provides no real protection of your privacy, just the requirement to rope a judge into the decision making process. Sort of like those Law and Order episodes when first the prosecutor has to be convinced to consider finding a judge; if you can’t convince them, how the heck do you expect to convince a jury?

So one tiny victory in the battle against the police state! A momentum changing event? I doubt it. The Justice Dept is careful to keep most of their most reprehensible activity from ever being considered by any judge, let alone the SC.

5 Online Petitions That Prove Democracy is Broken – Cracked.com

5 Online Petitions That Prove Democracy is Broken
http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-online-petitions-that-prove-democracy-broken/

Got to be read to be believed…

#5. “Show Us the Aliens”
#4. Energy “Catalizer”
#3. Evil Corporate Cure Conspiracy
#2. Spamming the White House
#1. Internet Users Are Better Than Other People!

I particularly liked this bit in #2:

When Skynet comes online and decides to kill us, we’ll be fine — by the time it digs through all the Viagra ads to get at the nuclear launch codes, spam bots will have evolved and be targeting it with ads screaming “GET A BIGGER HARD DRIVE NOW!”

Cracked is almost always great for a grin, often a chortle, and sometimes muffled snorts as I try to avoid annoying my co-workers. I highly recommend it!

This is something I used to be really interested in

Genetically Engineered Stomach Microbe Converts Seaweed into Ethanol
A genetically modified strain of common gut bacteria may lead to a new technology for making biofuels that does not compete with food crops for arable acreage
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=genetically-engineered-stomach-microbe-turns-seaweed-into-ethanol

I am able to put my finger on what has shifted in my noggin over the years. Back in the late ’90’s biotech was my sole focus (why I started sol-biotech.com, incorporated Sol Biotech Inc. and invested over $20K in laboratory equipment) and when we were living in North Carolina I had actually started to do preliminary work (primarily reestablishing my bench skills, I was amazed at how thoroughly my skills had deteriorated), but once we moved back to the DC Metropolitan Rat Hole I was never able to re-establish myself. Back in North Carolina I had created a business plan to fabricate molecular scale computing devices, but was unable to get anyone interested, perhaps that is a contributing factor. However, my thesis in graduate school (for a year I double Mastered in the MBA program as well as the Biochemistry program) was to design an enzyme from first principles (I won’t bore you with the details of the problems that lead me to abandon the work, except to note that I have subsequently come up with avenues that might lead to success) and I had strong plans to establish myself as a purveyor of custom designed industrial proteins and enzymes. Though I have noted that the state-of-the-art has far and away failed to keep pace with my expectations (meaning there doesn’t seem to be anyone else making industrial enzymes from scratch), I am not sure if that is because the problem is too hard (but clearly not impossible, that I am writing this and you are reading this is absolute proof that it is possible) or if there simply hasn’t been the focus necessary to commercialize the technology (I lean toward the latter, but have been out of the literature for the better part of a decade). Doing stuff like popping genes into e.coli used to be my bread and butter and while I am sure my lab bench skills have deteriorated to the point it would probably take a few months to get up to speed, I do have that lab in my basement I could be doing work in each evening.

I have confused myself. Maybe the lack of success builds on top of itself and I clearly remember long periods of depression after we moved back to the rat hole that were associated with my research interests and perhaps as some form of self protection I have engineered myself to not think about the subject any more (well, I have had many fewer periods of depression since then, so perhaps this captures part of the issue). I am not sure how to remedy the situation (indeed, I find myself lacking interest or energy to even consider the idea of remedy-ing the situation). Even thinking about it now my mind seems to skitter away from the subject and this is even my second attempt to write a blog post about the topic (the first one got deleted).

Oh well, back to aquaponics and proton-boron tabletop fusion…

Yes, but earthquakes are still random!

Math formula may explain why serial killers kill
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/01/18/math-formula-may-explains-why-serial-killers-kill/

Hopefully my title got you to pay attention. The title, though, does point out to what I consider a serious deficiency in the article, the addressing of the ‘so what?’ response. We can’t predict earthquakes, avalanches or stock market crashes, only provide probabilities that such events are more or less likely to happen in any time interval. Other than providing some potentially plausible excuse for why the killer shouldn’t be punished as severely (Oh, we won’t give you the death penalty because you sadistically tortured all those women for all those days, we will just give you a slap on the wrist and send you on your way!) and the (seemingly tiny) potential to help the hunters of serial killers, I see the article as having nearly zero utility. Sort of like observing that it always is cloudy when it rains (except, of course, for those instances when it is sunny when it rains). If it is ever cloudy and doesn’t rain, then what possible value is making the initial statement?

Target going the way of the dinosaur?

Showdown Over ‘Showrooming’
Target Asks Vendors for Help Keeping Comparison Shoppers
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204624204577177242516227440.html

Just like Hollywood and the music industry have failed to grok the Internet, it seems that Target and Wally World are having problems as well. Yes, the raw costs-of-doing-business for Amazon and its ilk are lower, but it seems clear to me that with the bricks-and-mortar advantage of actual customer interaction the big-box stores could easily compete if they had the wit. Sure, some customers will always want to save a few nickels by shopping on-line (I must admit, though, that the sales tax issue creates a very un-level playing field and companies like Amazon should be required to collect and remit sales tax in almost all cases), but those customers should only be looking at a small collection of nickels between price, meaning the bricks-and-mortar stores should be able to get enough of a premium from their customers who want the product now (as opposed to 3-5 days from now (yes, I know, Amazon often gets things faster, but that is because they are smart enough to do a lot of the shipping company’s work for them)) to justify the additional cost of the store. In my mind, though, the management of the big box stores are too brain dead to adjust (see Why Best Buy is Going out of Business…Gradually for an excellent example) and Target’s idea of personalizing their products so identical products can’t be found on-line is missing the whole point. People will pay for superior service, just perhaps not as much as the big boxes traditionally expected. It should be trivial to order product on-line and run into the store and pick it up (immediately if it happens to be in stock, or when it arrives (in 3-5 days or less!)), then the big boxes would be their own showrooms instead of Amazon’s. No retail outfit will ever be able to compete with the costs of an organization like Amazon, but with excellent logistics (I see Wally World as almost there, they just have to shift their attitudes a wee bit and they could grok the situation) and being cognizant to the correct places to save costs (note: that would not be an educated sales force!) they can actually decrease the delivery time (to almost immediate) to the point where the customer decides they are happy to pay a premium to have it now instead of in 3-5 days.

Another interesting, thoughtful WSJ article I expected to hate

The New American Divide
The ideal of an ‘American way of life’ is fading as the working class falls further away from institutions like marriage and religion and the upper class becomes more isolated. Charles Murray on what’s cleaving America, and why.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577170733817181646.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The little blurb that Google presented made me think that this was another condescending article that explained that things were bad because stupid poor people were stupid and poor, but decided to give it a chance. The author deliberately removes race from the discussion, the demographics are all about non-Latino whites (why does anyone think that Latinos are white anyway? they all look fabulously tanned to me!), which should help eliminate some mindless arguments about irrelevancies. It isn’t all fabulous; I particularly thought this was poorly written:

The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending “nonjudgmentalism.” Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn’t hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.

However, the article appears to be chock full of actual stats (I didn’t pursue the numbers (and didn’t notice a link to do so)) and largely appears to be agenda free so presuming the author didn’t simply make the numbers up, it would seem that there is worth in considering what appears to be his thesis: the educated elite needs to rub elbows with the rest of the population and the uneducated, un-elite need to get married and get jobs. I am not convinced that financially things have remained static since the ’60s (the author says wages have remained the same after adjusting for inflation, something that jibes with what research I have done), I believe that actual purchasing power has declined by some 50% over the intervening period, which is one of the reasons why there are so many households that require two incomes to remain solvent.

Anyway, I recommend the article to my reader(s); it gives a thoughtful view of the divide that is settling in to our country, puts the ‘blame’ on likely inevitable cultural forces (as opposed to political forces) and discusses some approaches to ameliorate the effect. I doubt his screed will have any impact, but in my own small (tiny) way, I want to promote it.

Disingenuous at best

Outright distortion and lie at worst:
How Much the Rich Pay
Mitt Romney, the 1% and taxes.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577168683705018156.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Shockingly, the WSJ as issued an article that distorts the truth! I find that so hard to believe!

OK, on the most basic element, the idea is that because corporations are paying taxes on their income (nominally around 35%) when capital gains are realized the income would be taxed again, hence the ultra low rate of 15%. However, that ignores two basic things: first and foremost, many _many_ large so-called ‘blue chip’ (what the hell does that mean, anyway) companies pay well under the 35% rate (indeed, some, like GE, actually pay zero or even get a net REFUND on their taxes from our great government, see Corporate taxes need a level playing field). The second thing that is totally ignored is that the price of the stock (upon which the capital gains are considered) has the taxes built-in to its price so it is a total wash and in the case of dividends, as I mention in my article linked above, they are actually getting HIGHER dividends because of the taxes (taxes being passed directly onto the end consumer, doanchano). So, beyond the total blatant 1% gimme that hedge fund managers and corporate raiders like Romney are taxed at the capital gains rate rather than the true income rate (the silly-assed ‘carried interest’ rule), the investors that actually risked real cash (as opposed to the afore mentioned corporate raiders that ‘earned’ their incomes by levering other people’s money, thus took not one iota of risk) should be expected to pay at least the same rate on their income as everyone else does. The concept of double taxation is a total arm waving smoke screen designed to put the sheeple in their place.

Taxes will be fair if/when people wealthier than I pay at least as much (as a percentage) as I do. Until that point, taxes are, in fact, regressive and any blather to the contrary by such institutions as the WSJ is disingenuous at best, outright, bald faced lies at worst (I lean toward the worst, if that couldn’t be inferred).

Some thoughts for some arguments

I have been busy teaching a class this week (complete with 10 hour days, but at least I get paid for it all) so haven’t had time to troll the news sites as is my wont. I got an email from a friend discussing some discussions he had with his wife and since he knows that I tend to favor his side of many discussions he asked for my ideas for meaningful responses.

BTW, the use of the word ‘argument‘ isn’t meant to be confrontational, though it has developed that connotation over the years. It is more a debate-like element whereby you have researched statements prepared for expected ‘attacks’ (also not pejorative). Anyway, civil debate (so shockingly missing in our society these last couple of decades) doesn’t mean that the people involved lack passion or are not serious and/or fixed in their beliefs. Instead, civil debate means you stick with the subject of the debate and discuss verifiable facts that can be agreed upon. Opinion does not constitute fact, opinion is a colored interpretation of facts. Opinion, btw, can never be wrong as an ‘opinion’ is simply a belief held by someone (articulated or not). So, my intent isn’t to have colorless, passionless calm (boring) discussion of relevant facts, my intent is to change minds through the presentation of facts and an impassioned set of arguments bolstering my opinions I have woven around the facts. This is not to say that I am immune to other peoples arguments, just that I am going to voice my opinions forcefully, just with the caveat that I might change my opinions after exposure to new facts or to arguments wrapped around those facts. So with all that blather out in front, here are some of my arguments based on my friend’s comments…

Military Spending

It is a fact that our country spends huge amounts of our resources on our military. Something on the order of $700 billion dollars each and every year (which, btw, does NOT include the wars!) or around 30% of the revenue (tax dollars) pulled in by our government. I have variously heard quoted that our budget is as much as the entire rest of the world combined or ‘just’ more than the next 10 most expensive militaries in the world (not sure which is more scary). While not exactly a fact, it is commonly accepted as true that in any fight against a sophisticated adversary that adversary is highly unlikely to challenge us directly and instead will battle us on some sort of field where we lack such an overwhelming advantage (such as the cyber area). It is just as commonly held that against any unsophisticated adversary (read Saddam Hussein) fielding a WWII-based army and stupid enough to take our military on directly will be wiped away as so many cobwebs. Where opinion comes in is at what point is massive overkill against unsophisticated adversaries enough and at what point does spending 30% of our taxes developing weapon systems almost certainly to be made useless against a sophisticated adversary a huge and unnecessary drain on our economy (unless you consider it stimulus money to help make the rich already richer, in which case, perhaps 30% is way too low).

I suggest that our plethora of carrier battle groups is well past the point of diminishing returns and more than likely one (or just possibly two) on either side of the country would be more than adequate for any unsophisticated adversary and I strongly believe totally useless against any sophisticated adversary (super sonic missiles are actually quite cheap to deploy (when compared to carrier battle groups) and if, say, the defenses could handle 1,000 simultaneous incoming attacks, simply use 2,000 and saturate the defenses). The original intent of developing long-range fighter bombers was to reduce the reliance of having to reposition carrier battle groups (which while fast in comparison to walking, is very slow in comparison to the flight of even sub-sonic jets) to deliver a pointed diplomatic message. With the capabilities of the new super sonic cruisers coupled with the well established aerial refueling, sending a message from the US heartland to anywhere on the world in a dozen hours or less is quite trivial. Sure waging a war is a bit tricky, but really, in any war with an unsophisticated adversary we are simply going to move in and stage our equipment locally and against any sophisticated adversary, as I have tried to point out, our carriers are such huge, high value targets, that they will almost certainly be taken out even as the declaration of war (presuming they even bother) wings its way across the aether.

Since I am firmly in the belief that any new war against a sophisticated adversary will be largely fought in the cyber realm (meaning the bad guys have a big read button to push that will plunge our infrastructure back into the dark ages in about 300 milliseconds) and while our military has made substantial efforts to harden their systems, knowing how trivial it is to use social engineering to compromise networks, I doubt that anything short of putting AI in charge of our networks (Skynet anyone?) will allow us to respond in enough time to keep our military from being degraded (presuming, naturally, they don’t just sink the carriers to begin with). I am sure that any sophisticated adversary will be a deep student of Sun Tzu and will never, ever take us on at our strengths, so pissing away 30% of our treasure each year to me is a criminal waste of resources (particularly in our struggling economy and with our infrastructure falling to pieces around our ears). Also, all these bases scattered around the globe, while they look great on maps, a lot of the money we send there stays in the local economy (which the Philippines realized too late when they allowed us to leave Subic Bay), meaning that money is being spent to stimulate some OTHER country’s economy, not ours. Sure that is fine for the global economy, but at this time I think we are better focused on trying to jump start our economy rather than sustain others (though that is indeed a rather short-sighted idea; however, there are better ways to stimulate any economy besides creating bombs and tanks).

Social Safety Net

I am a strong believer that when everyone is better off, everyone is better off. Sounds brain dead? Well, if the poorest people are unable to contribute to the economy, then the middle class suffers and indeed even the rich ‘suffer’ (at least insofar as they could be richer still, though I am of the belief that the average rich person (who after all, already has more money than sense (a status to which I aspire!)) is more concerned with keeping others from competing than getting even wealthier). Today the world’s major economies are all run via consumerism, meaning the driving force behind the success (or failure, as we are experiencing) of a country’s economy is the ability of its citizens to purchase goods and services. Hence, when a large enough segment of the population is unable to contribute to the economy by purchasing goods or services then the economy can start a downward spiraling economy which drags everyone else with them (though, as noted, the rich still stay rich so have absolutely no incentive to give a damn).

So, with that as preamble, a weak social safety net means that when the inevitable economic downturn happens the economy launches into a downward spiral making the trough of the downturn much deeper, steeper and wider. So, with nothing more than enlightened self interest (which I firmly believe left the GOP a full generation ago!) one would expect endless champions of a strong safety net. Of course, just like our bloated military, it is quite possible to have too much of a good thing and I cherish the idea (but feel that the reality has left us) that here in the US it is possible, through perspiration and inspiration (and a great deal of luck), to self make yourself into the top of the 1% and I do NOT advocate the European goal of such progressive taxes that some professionals don’t even bother working a full 40 hour week because then they would be working for free.

How much is optimal? That, of course, is an area subject to a huge amount of debate, but I would say that too little is when a modest string of hardships causes the individual or family that experiences it to permanently join the ranks of the poverty stricken. Too much, clearly to me, is when taxes need to get so progressive that the incentive to improve one’s financial situation is removed. The happy middle ground? I think that for the average person that the social safety net should proved complete protection from the average series of average setbacks. Since the average person doesn’t experience much in the way of setbacks, clearly one should be evaluating those of the average who are subject to setbacks in order to form a baseline. You shouldn’t have to become homeless and destitute because you had some unexpected (really, are there any other kind?) medical bills.

This, of course, brings us to health care. It is my firm belief that a weak public health care system causes a huge drag on society and the economy. Just like I believe the average person should have a financial safety net, I also believe the average person should have a health/medical safety net to keep them from becoming long-term disabled. Our current system of socialized medicine (and I am NOT talking Obamacare!) is if you show up at an ER, they must treat you. Thus, the poorest of us (note that it is of ‘us’, they are not ‘them’!), being unable to afford any sort of medical care, then use the most expensive medical care there is (ER visits) and generally only after their condition has deteriorated to the point where the only remaining remedies are expensive treatments. Our societal cost could likely be an order of magnitude lower if, instead of ER visits, these people had ready access to free, full-service clinics.

Conclusion

I am going to have to get back to class here, so I am going to quickly sum up… Those who blather that strong social safety nets are a drain on the economy are clearly not thinking and those who think doing so is coddling the poor clearly haven’t had any cause to attempt to utilize what dribs and drabs our society has provided. Of course there will always be people who try to game the system, but rather than focusing on them (of course, (economical) steps should be taken to minimize it), the focus should be on those who really benefit from the (modest) hand up out of the gutter when they have taken a tumble. Not only is it moral and ethical (subjects I tried to avoid as being too touchy-feely and ‘liberal’) to support those less fortunate than ourselves, but it is also enlightened self interest. Beyond the notion that one day _you_ might need that hand up, if such a safety net helps to keep our economy stronger then we all benefit (even the wealthy; they get an even worse sense to money ratio).

Retirement insurance, or what Social Security ought to be

I was reading an article the other day (which didn’t prompt a post at the time) that discussed the idea of retirement insurance. The basic idea of the article is that the 401K concept is fundamentally flawed for the people who are now being positioned to base their retirement on it exclusively. I was a bit surprised to realize that the original purpose of the 401K was a blatant gimme to rich people (why am I surprised at being surprised?) and only because it was written in such a way (likely by some bleeding heart progressive, damn their souls to eternal hell) that it had to apply to everyone at a given company that people started to consider it as a perk to attract the higher-end employees (such as people in my industry (I be a programmer, doanchano)). Once companies realized that they could foist off their pensions onto 401Ks and save money, pensions went the way of the Passenger Pigeon (note that today Wikipedia has decided to protest the asinine Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) by blacking out their site. I applaud the intent, but it does make it frustrating when I have come to rely on the site for research (yes, I know the info isn’t reliable, but overall it is very helpful as a place to start)). (Regarding pension funding, that is another thing that sticks in my craw: how could any rational government official (i.e., one working for the _people_ rather than the special interests) think it is OK for companies to carry pension funds as assets on their balance sheets and be able to borrow (steal) from it (but then again, that is _exactly_ what our great government did/does with social security, so I guess it is just fair).) Anyway, trying to raise above my digressions, the original idea of the 401K was just another perk for rich people that somehow got bastardized into the only tool for retirement for a huge segment of our nation’s population. The primary problem with the 401K is since it applies to an individual only, if that individual happens to retire just as the market takes a huge nose dive (2008 anyone?), their ability to afford their retirement decreases precipitously. When figuring in the reality that a lot of people near retirement age are forced into retiring during economic downturns, the author indicated that some 40% of people retiring were subject to significant lost income potential due to the dip in the markets.

The author mentioned something about retirement insurance as a way to pool the resources of many people, thus to be able to build a broadly diversified portfolio (and have it managed by professionals) that can weather the inevitable economic downturns without forcing a retiree into a lifetime of (relative) privation. After reading the article and considering it a while I thought the idea had a lot of merit _IF_ it were implemented properly. I discussed the idea with my wife (she says she enjoys my blather on diverse topics, it helps our 2 hour one-way weekly trips to our Virginia house go by a little faster) last weekend and mentioned that if I wasn’t already committed to various projects (my weekends are totally absorbed by greenhouse/pool construction (and when that is done, I will be shifting to aquaponics research) and now my weeks are dedicated (those hours not attributed to working for a living, of course) to learning to build my own heat pumps as well as trying to build a proton-boron table-top fusion device (I am nothing if not eclectic)) I would probably pursue this as a business. I think that if the organization were to operate like a credit union (meaning it was operated with the intent to return any profit to the customer/owners) AND strong steps were taken to limit executive compensation (I know for an absolute fact that there are 10’s of thousands of perfectly qualified MBA pukes that would be ecstatic to work for $250K or even a wee bit less) then the management of the money would be to optimize the long-term value to the shareholders/owners/customers/account holders rather than the short-term benefit of traders (who only make money if they churn) or fly-by executives who are only interested in their platinum parachute and maximizing the value of their short-term stock options. Most critically, the management of the money would not be based on any sort of percentage (really, does it take more time and effort to trade 1 million shares than it does to trade 1,000 shared? maybe it did in the old days before computerized trading, but that was then and this is now) so the costs to manage the money would decrease as a percentage of the portfolio.

Additionally, it could help tame some of the excesses of our broken capitalism through share holder activism. As would be inevitable at some point, the organization would start to have controlling interests in companies (you can’t manage 100’s of billions of dollars without that eventually happening) and by packing the board (who would then shift the focus of the executives) with people who actually give a damn about the long-term health of the company under question (as opposed to raping it for immediate gain as is the standard for today) these companies would shift to being optimized for long-term sustainable growth. Sort of what our country was based on before the corporate raiders learned about the concept of socialized risk, privatized reward.

I would have to run the numbers, but it seems to me that this could also help with unemployment. Clearly it would come at the expense of the long-term value of the portfolio, but when you are starving now who gives a damn about how well you might be able to live in retirement. I suspect (but would have to experiment with a spreadsheet to have confidence) that the organization could provide some assistance to people who have lost their jobs without totally compromising their ability to have an income during retirement (I know from personal experience that the money that comes from the current unemployment is woefully inadequate and no one actually interested in employment would game the system to get that pittance). Since the basic idea is still an individual account, it would help to discourage people from gaming the system as there are no more dollars available in the account than were put in to begin with and so anyone taking money out when unemployed is just pulling money out of their own retirement pocket (the idea of the group management of the money is to diversify to ensure a minimum rate of return).

This product could also act as disability insurance as well as if you become disabled you can simply start to draw your ‘retirement’ early. You would, naturally, get a lot less than you would if you worked until retirement age, but at least you would have something you can count on for the rest of your life. Since it is basically your own money (just managed as a huge pool), by taking disability when you are not actually disabled (attempting to game the system), you are just taking money out of your future self’s pocket, thus this approach would discourage false claims.

What about your heirs? Well, that is probably a sticky point where the naysayers will raise the ugly specter of socialism if we don’t talk about it. EITHER you run the risk of running out of money before you die OR you run the risk of not passing any remaining dollars to your heirs if you die before your actuarial death. You can’t have both. I personally advocate that this retirement account pay you until you die (with some account being take for spouses and dependents up to a certain age) and if you happen to die early, then what remains in your account is left for those more fortunate who live longer. This, btw, is exactly like life insurance in many respects (it just pays out while you are alive instead of to your heirs), so it really isn’t any sort of communism or socialism, just plain old capitalism and average lifespans.

This idea is undoubtedly poisonous to the GOP because it is a bad idea for the 1% who currently suck the blood from our 401K accounts and it is critically clear to me (as an ex-GOP supporter) that beyond the moronic capture of the party by the frothing religious nuts the GOP acts only to bend and twist our government to maximize the returns of the 1% at the expense of the 99%. This should get the full throated support from the Tea Party and the GOP in general because it takes the government entirely out of the equation and puts the money into the markets instead of treasuries (which are nothing more than IOUs anyway). Too bad it will be greeted as socialism (communism if Obama were to suggest such a thing, but I know he won’t since he is bought and paid for by Wall Street (no different, btw, than the GOP heir apparent Romney)) by the oligarchy since it basically (if implemented as I have outlined) strips away the percentage way of ‘earning’ money off the fund (not to mention capping compensation and the ugly specter of share holder activism (how DARE those stock holders interfere with our pigging at the trough?!)).

I expect add to this later (have to actually do some work today!) and will probably build some spreadsheets to see what sort of retirement incomes that I feel could be generated. I would love to have comments from you dear reader(s), preferably here on the post so other(s) could build off it. Though I have no personal intent to build such a system, I would like to have a robust outline that perhaps could be used by someone else to start such a system.