Boosting DC Revenues

There are a couple of ideas floating around in my head for a while to boost revenues in the District--and make people's lives a bit easier.

 

Here they are:

1.  Get rid of SmarTrip cards.  For those of you not from the District, SmarTrip cards are the local reusable, rechargeable public-transportation cards.  The kind of thing you leave in your wallet so you don't have to fiddle with crumpled up bills every time you get on a bus or a metro. 

 

So why get rid of them?  Because the same functionality should be in DC ID cards.  This way, people who live in the district and who ride the metro regularly will just be able to use his/her ID card or driver's license. 

 

This would be a good thing because there are a lot of people who live and work in the District who don't pay taxes in the District--because they manage to retain residency "back home".  But if we start getting people who live in the district to actually assert that they live here, I think the District's revenues would go up (or, everyone's taxes would decrease a bit).

 

What about people who live in Maryland and Virginia?  I'm glad you asked.

 

2.  (This isn't particularly original, but it's been percolating for a while anyway.)  Many people commute from Maryland and Northern Virginia into the District for work.  They like suburban living, and the lower taxes out of the District.  That's all well and good for them, but they are clogging the streets and making the commute longer for those of us who actually want to live in the District.  So I propose another idea that will help lower congestion, reduce traffic, free up more parking, and raise revenue for the District.  A driver-fee for those driving into the District with vehicles plated in Maryland or Virginia.  Nothing extravagant.  Maybe about $8 a day.  Or, for those looking to be frugal, a monthly pass for $120.

 

I can hear the complaints coming: it's undemocratic.  It's not fair to charge people to drive to work.  We have to drive. 

I disagree.  I know very few people who drive within the city to get to work.  Most DCers I know take transit.  Because it's faster and it's cheaper.  The majority of people I know within the District don't even own cars.  So why should we be subsidizing the convenience of your commute from the 'burbs--when part of the reason you left the city in the first place was to avoid paying taxes?

 

What else? Oh, yeah.  If all the people living in 'the burbs' had to start thinking about ways to make public transit better--instead of simply building wider roads--I have a feeling that the transportation system would get a lot better in a hurry.  As to those who say that this is an economic hardship on those who can least afford it?  I doubt it.  Most of the people I see riding the bus every day look like they spend more of their time behind a restaurant stove then a mahogany desk.  So they wont be paying this anyway.

Terrors of a One-Story!

A doctor from a suburban D.C. country wrote an Op-Ed in the Washington Post today about the problem with American "boys."  Except he isn't actually talking about boys, he's talking about men.  According to the author, 1/3 of men between 22-34 live with their parents.  Based on the census, this means that nearly 10 million men are living in their parents' basement.

 

He doesn't offer any definitive causes, or any probably solutions, but I think it's important that it is at least being addressed.  As a man in the age-bracket, and who is not living at home--but has several friends in the described condition--I'm going to toss out some ideas why this trend is happening.  As usually happens here, these are theories and conjectures based on nothing but my own belief.  Very little data has been acquired or analyzed to arrive at these positions.

 

1.  Social Connection.  I think that many young men feel little connection to a social group.  My sense is that having a social connection is a motivating factor to do something.  It allows one to see that other people are doing things--some enjoying what they do, others not--but this at least offers some sense of a mirror to help one navigate through one's own life.  Without social connection, it's harder to find that motivation.

 

2.  Surrender.  Many young men (and women) have grown up in households watching their parents attempt to achieve.  Not necessarily wealth, or success, or greatness.  But achieve comfort, or happiness, or stability.  And for many of our parents, these things were either unachievable or simply remain unachieved.  It doesn't take too much to conclude, then, that it's not worth it.  Why spend one's entire life working hard and getting frustrated in an attempt to 'be happy' if you've already found something that's comfortable?

 

3.  Male-lion syndrome.  One of the info-points touched on in the op-ed is that many young women are also living with their parents--but frequently do so while pursuing some other goal: school, or saving money to start a business.  Young men pursue these goals less often, and just list-about.  I don't consider these two data-points independent.  I think, for many men, the idea of being the "bread winner" is an important piece of their psychology.  So when young men see the women they know pursuing goals they either don't have, or don't believe they can achieve there are mixed emotions: The first is happiness for the friend who is achieving something great.  But the second (and I'm willing to guess this frequently is completely unnoticed by the men themselves) is a sense of loss.  Loss in the sense that our women friends are moving "beyond us" in what they do.  Their success makes us feel less capable of maintaining relationships with them--after all, it's men who should be successful, right?

 

It's something my friend Genya writes about from time to time in her blog--from the perspective of one of the highly talented, highly educated women in the world, who experiences men's lack of ambition from a different side.

Communism, not just for the Communists any more

It looks like those in and around my generation in France may be attempting to revive communism.  Or if not communism, then at least the Iron Rice Bowl.

 

French youth have been protesting a law, passed out of the French Assembly, that would make it easier for employers to (among other things) fire those under 26.  Because apparently, it's really hard.  But it sounds like its not just hard to fire those under 26.  It sounds like it's hard to fire anyone in France.  Several generations of strong unions--and the union-culture considering the getting of a job a lifetime appointment--have pushed the French economy to the breaking point several times in the recent decades.  (For more, see "The Commanding Heights" by Daniel Yergin.)

 

It's interesting that since the new year both segments of France's youth population have been rioting in the streets.  First it was the children (or grandchildren) of North African immigrants who believe they should have the opportunity to become French citizens and participate in the economic and political transactions of the country; and presently, the "French" youth who are terrified that they wont be able to receive lifetime appointments from their employer (who apparently is expected to operate more like a politburo than a business, but I digress).

 

There are, of course arguments to be made in favor of the present French system.  Many of them involve preserving French culture and traditions.  But the downside to that is that the French will preserve them as they currently exist for a couple of years and then lose them into the depths of the past, or allow changes bit-by-bit and continue to have a working economy.  Ultimately, I guess it's their choice.

The Christians and the Pagans sat together at the Table...

Thanks to Dar Williams for the title of this post.  And thanks to the "War on Christians" for giving me reason to use it.  Check it out in the Post, the Lawrence Journal World, and the Post again (via the SF Chronicle).

 

According to Tom DeLay, Sam Brownback, and a host of other well known figures, there is a War on Christians.  They claim it is being prosecuted by "radical secularism."

 

I'm not going to go into full force here--I have constraints on my time, after all.  But I do want to pick at the crux of these two sentences:

"War on Christians," and,

"Radical Secularism."

 

War?  I don't think so.  No more than our invasion of Iraq should be considered a war against Islam.  In fact, even less so.  I'm not sure if anyone's noticed recently, but there are guns and bombs and bullets and bodies in Iraq.  Some of them caused by U.S. led military forces.  Most of them not.  BUT, I'm not seeing any bullets or bombs directed at Christians in this country.  At least not expressly because they are Christian.  Further, how much accommodation, affirmation, and acceptance does the Conservative Christian movement need before it stops proclaiming that it is oppressed?  (And for the record, I don't find it coincidental that the same people who spent the 1990s belittling the "feel-good" movement of PCism are the very same people who are now embracing it for their own ends.)

 

Lastly on this, I can understand Christians feeling they were persecuted when they were forced to battle lions in the Coliseum.  I can understand them believing there was a war against Christianity when the Caliphate rampaged through Europe, or even when the U.S. backed government of a sovereign country views conversion to Christianity as a capital crime.

 

Radical Secularism?  According to Dictionary.com, Secular has several meanings. The first two are pertinent to this discussion:

Worldly rather than spiritual.

Not specifically relating to religion or to a religious body: secular music.

 

I'm not sure what's so radical about that.  I believe it was Jesus who said, among other things, that to enter the kingdom of heaven one should renounce the worldly and follow him.  He also said that before removing the spec from someone else's eye, we should make sure to take the plank from our own.  It's been a while since I studied the Bible closely, but I don't remember anything in the New Testament about raising a faux-holy fervor every time the world doesn't accommodate our specific demands on it.

 

Maybe if those who spend so much of their time and effort demanding the rest of us live up to/accommodate their religious belief system actually went about practicing the supposedly world-bettering tracts they are so quick to assert, the world would actually be better.  Just a thought.

 

 

 

 

News and Views from Dongbei

There are a couple of stories floating around the net that I want to bring up here. I've decided that just citing the post and BBC is probably very little value-added for all my loyal readers out there. I know who each and every one of the 12 of you are!

First, sad news. There was a tragedy in Meihekou, Jilin province.


It was reported in Xinhua, Agence France Press, and a few others. Aparently a friendly card game turned not-so-friendly, and the insulted party came back with a grenade. It went off. 4 people died.

I spent Lunar New Year 3 years ago with a friend of mine and her family. It was a nice town--and it seemed to be on the verge of being able to prosper. Additionally, there is a community of Benedictine Sisters in Meihekou who run a hospital. These things are always terrible to read about. But having been in the town makes it even worse.

In other news, it appears that China may be preparing to annex North Korea. At least this is the position put forward by columnist Han Ki-heung. Following a fall and early winter of positive statements between China and North Korea, he seems convinced that China is attempting to pursue a policy of economically integrating the DPRK into the regional economy of China's North Eastern three provinces of Jilin, Liaoning, and Heilongjiang.

Whether this is true or not remains to be seen, but it is a phenomenon, which if true, is likely to backfire on the Chinese. The South Koreans are remarkably sensative to their position between China and Japan in Asian affairs, "the shrimp caught between two whales." I can only assume that North Koreans--possibly more patriotic and jingoistic than even the Chinese themselves--would take such affront to that type of Chinese action as to spoil the possibility of China and North Korea having reasonable relations into the futre.

Drat! One-upped again!

It looks like the U.S. attempts to set China apart as a big scary monster have been made to seem like efforts of "girlie men" by the Macho Macho Man, himself--Silvio Berlusconi.

 

What could a rough-and-tumble Italian billionaire have done to ruffle Chinese feathers?  Definitely nothing as bad as publishing a dubious drawing of the Prophet in his newspaper.  No, instead he claimed that during the cultural revolution under Mao, the Chinese boiled their babies to use as fertilizer. 

 

I guess we misunderestimated the strategery of our President when we thought no one else talked as good as he does.

Specialized Obsolescence

Global Specialization.  How the specialization of market niches is bringing the world closer together—and closer to conflict.

 

The process of specialization, of the evolution of economies from generalists to specialists isn’t a new phenomenon.  It’s not even remarkable.  Adam Smith described it/prescribed it in 1776 with the seminal tract on economics.  It has been explored and tweaked by the likes of David Ricardo and Allyn Young. 

 

For a long time, large countries had economic advantages over small countries—not just because they were likely to have more resources (the U.S. has more space to fit trees, iron ore, gypsum, oil, and arable land than Ireland does, for example)—but also because the size of the economy allowed for great specialization.  The guy the mined the ore didn’t also have to smelt it, and then turn it into a kitchen knife.  One person for each process meant that each process was done better (and cheaper) than if one guy did all three processes. 

 

The lowering of international tariffs and the subsequent increase in trade has allowed countries that are not large to specialize and compete with countries that are large: South Korea and Japan have economic power unimaginable based on size, only 80 years ago. 

 

There is a broader problem here that I don’t know is being considered—but I would love it if someone could point me in the right direction to learn more about the thinking that is happening—and that is the consequence of national-specialization on the stability of the international order.

 

The world, for a long time, consisted of a couple of super powers who did everything well, quite a few middling powers who did many things decently, and a bunch of bottom-countries who might have done one or two things well, but mostly just trundled along from one day to the next.  Not so any more.

 

We have ultra-specialist countries/jurisdictions now in several sectors.

 

Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai are international Trade specialists.  The Swiss, and Caymans do banking.  India is cornering the market on anything between front desk and delivery-of-finished product.  Countries in the Gulf region are specialists in Energy.  Korea and Japan are specialists in electronics and automobiles.  China specializes in low-cost consumer goods.  Insofar as it has a specialty, the United States specializes in information: collecting it, storing it, analyzing it.

 

What concerns me here is that we are moving towards conditions for monopoly.  Just like JP Morgan built an unprecedented financial empire over a century ago because he had the most control over a highly desired commodity within a single market—Oil in the U.S.—the specialization of the world’s countries makes it increasingly likely that one of them, by design or by coincidence, will start exerting undue influence over the world. 

 

I don’t know how it would happen—exactly.  I don’t know what it would look like, or what sector it would be in (or I’d be rich and not have time to write this blog).  But I think there is value in stopping to consider the fate of animals that become extreme specialists in their ecosystems: when the eco-system changes, the animal likely dies.  In the example, the world economy is the eco-system, and single-market countries are the uber-specialized animals.  Is there value in a diversified economy, even if there isn’t profit?

 

Too little, too late?

Interesting news out of China today.  Not the kind you'll find on Xinhua, the BBC or in the NYTimes.  This is news in the best of Chinese tradition: word of mouth.  The following paragraph floated across my inbox this morning, and lends a Chinese perspective (translated through a couple of non-Chinese) about the state of affairs in China.

"Then he talked about the developing ; social unrest. People can no longer afford to go to the doctor; doctors are constantly receiving kick-backs from the pharmaceutical companies to prescribe the most expensive medicines and from the hospitals to prescribe CAT scans and X-rays that the poor cannot afford. Housing is becoming prohibitively expensive and developers just move into areas, pay off local government and party people and take over land that has been part of families’ and community holdings for generations and the poor are left with no place to go... A fascinating evening with a really great guy who has a tremendous heart."

 

The man presenting this opinion isn't some disgruntled peasant, shoved off his land for development.  He's a well-educated professional living in a (big) city.  By nature of the work he does, though, he comes across people from across the social and economic spectrum.

 

China's leadership has recently begun taking steps to attempt to ameliorate the condition of those living in rural China.  Repealing the agricultural tax, holding local elections, putting more government investment into rural areas.  But a hallmark of Chinese actions since the arrest of the Gang of Four has been "baby steps."  Everything done slowly, little-by-little.  Statements like the one I read this morning make me wondering when "little by little" turns into "too little, too late?"