Bush says US budget deficit set for big fall

I’m so sick of this sort of thing.

President George W. Bush on Wednesday predicted that the US budget deficit would drop to less than half its 2004 peak by the end of the current fiscal year but warned Democrats against loosening constraints on federal spending.

…

But Mr Bush warned against complacency in the battle to bring the deficit under control, renewing his threat to veto a series of forthcoming spending bills unless Congress reduced its budget demands.

First and foremost, the White House has been busted more than once using non-credible, inflated deficit estimates that it could later brag about ‘beating’ them – while the debt itself continues to deteriorate. White House budget estimates simply cannot be trusted. In a time with escalating oil prices and uncertainty about the US dollar and global rates of inflation, no estimates ought to be trusted to eagerly.

What really gets on my tits, though, is this suggestion – no doubt blithely and without questioning soon to enter the narrative of the mainstream media – that the Democrats, from the political Goddamn wilderness of the last decade, are to blame for (or are somehow not to be trusted with) the US federal budget. Here’s a very interesting graphic put together, of the 2008 US federal discretionary budget. All the bigger circles belong to the military – not including two unmentionably moronic wars, which are funded directly. Click the link for a better view.

Failing that, there is always Ben Cohen’s cookie illustration:

Either way, George Bush talking about the budget deficit belongs in the same rubbish bin as John Howard talking about inflation.

If you like webcomics for the art…

Why not make a day of non-economics posting, while I’m taking charge of your aesthetics?

Have I ever mentioned Penny Arcade to you, before? My archives suggest I have not. They swear, so it’s your own responsibility to beware such, reading it around bosses-in-the-office and/or children. I mention them because Gabe is a phenomenal artist, and Tycho a phenomenal writer. I mention them also because Gabe just posted this online:

Actual Twisp and Catsby ’strips’ (because they do not make much sense, and are a departure from the norm of Penny Arcade) are below:

Aren’t they amazing? The other comic artist, equally fantastic (in both senses of the word), is Kazu Kibuishi, of Daisy Kutter fame. Online, he has a site called Copper (currently on hiatus while Kibuishi finishes his next book) from which I couldn’t possibly select a favourite to show. They are charm such as you’ve never seen manifest before.

Health vs. Politics in US Healthcare

Here are two very simple sets of information for you to consider.

1) OECD Health Data 2006: How Does the United States Compare?

Amongst the Organisation for Economics Cooperation and Development, the US spends a lot more money on healthcare, in total and per capita.

Between 1999 and 2004, health spending per capita in the United States increased in real terms by 5.9% per year on average, a growth rate exceeding the OECD average of 5.2% per year.

Over the past decade, the share of health expenditure spent on pharmaceuticals in the United States increased from 8.5% of total health spending in 1994 to 12.3% in 2004. This remained below the OECD average of 17.7%. In 2004, the United States was the top spender on pharmaceuticals (with 752 USD per capita), followed by France.

The public sector is the main source of health funding in all OECD countries, except for the United States and Mexico. In the United States, only 45% of health spending is funded by government revenues, well below the average of 73% in OECD countries. The public share of total health spending remains the lowest among OECD countries. On the other hand, private insurance accounts for 37% of total health spending in the United States, by far the largest share among OECD countries. Beside the United States, Canada, France and the Netherlands also have a relatively large share of health spending paid by private insurance (more than 12%).

But in terms of health outcomes?

Resources in the health sector (human, physical)

Despite the relatively high level of health expenditure in the United States, there are fewer physicians per capita than in most other OECD countries. In 2004, the United States had 2.4 practising physicians per 1 000 population, below the OECD average of 3.0.

There were 7.9 nurses per 1 000 population in the United States in 2002, which is slightly lower than the average of 8.3 across OECD countries.

The number of acute care hospital beds in the United States in 2004 was 2.8 per 1 000 population, also lower than the OECD average of 4.1 beds per 1 000 population. As in most OECD countries, the number of hospital beds per capita has fallen over the past twenty-five years, from 4.4 beds per 1 000 population in 1980 to 2.8 in 2004. This decline has coincided with a reduction in average length of stays in hospitals and an increase in day-surgery patients.

Health status and risk factors

Most OECD countries have enjoyed large gains in life expectancy over the past 40 years. In the United States, life expectancy at birth increased by 7.6 years between 1960 and 2003, which is less than the increase of over 14 years in Japan, or 8.6 years in Canada. In 2003/4, life expectancy in the United States stood at 77.5 years, below the OECD average of 78.3 years. Japan, Iceland, Switzerland, Sweden and Australia were the 5 countries registering the highest life expectancy.

Infant mortality rates in the United States have fallen greatly over the past few decades, but not as much as in most other OECD countries. It stood at 6.9 deaths per 1 000 live births in 2003, above the OECD average of 5.7.1 Among OECD countries, infant mortality is the lowest in Japan and in the Nordic countries (Iceland, Sweden, Norway and Finland), with rates all below 3.5 deaths per 1 000 live births.

That’s the first set of information. The second,

2) Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised

WASHINGTON, July 10 — Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations.

The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

Dr. Carmona said he was ordered to mention President Bush three times on every page of his speeches. He also said he was asked to make speeches to support Republican political candidates and to attend political briefings.

…

Dr. Carmona testified under oath at a hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee headed by Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California. The topic was strengthening the office of the surgeon general. Dr. C. Everett Koop, surgeon general in the Reagan administration, and Dr. David Satcher, surgeon general during the Clinton administration and the first year of the administration of George W. Bush, also testified.

Each complained about political interference and the declining status of the office. Dr. Satcher said that the Clinton administration discouraged him from issuing a report showing that needle-exchange programs were effective in reducing disease. He released the report anyway.

Dr. Koop, said he had been discouraged by top officials in the Reagan administration from discussing the AIDS crisis. He did so anyway.

All three men urged major changes in the way the surgeon general is chosen and the way the office is financed.

“Compromised” seems rather the understatement. The rest of the article is worth reading. I’m too lazy to go through this linking things, as I usually try to do. It’s hot, I have a headache and I’m also very lazy – did I mention that?

Related to this is the incredibly entertaining exchange between Michael Moore and the utterly non-respectable Wolf Blitzer, which can be found over at Crooks and Liars. Part One here, Part Two here.

Many people love to hate Moore (plenty of whom I know personally), the way he does things and the manner in which he employs statistics. Given the fact that he’s typically correct, and given the likes of the two sets of information above, I’m not one of those people. His willingness to go on people’s TV shows and tell them to their faces (this was not the first such time) that they’re willfully making Americans ignorant only adds to his charm.

For God’s sake buy your kids some other books

I’ve commented previously on my pronounced distaste for Harry Potter. Partly, I don’t like it because it’s bad.

Secondly, I don’t like it because all Harry Potter fans seem to read is Harry Potter. The numbers for which prejudice are now coming in:

Potter Has Limited Effect on Reading Habits

Of all the magical powers wielded by Harry Potter, perhaps none has cast a stronger spell than his supposed ability to transform the reading habits of young people. In what has become near mythology about the wildly popular series by J. K. Rowling, many parents, teachers, librarians and booksellers have credited it with inspiring a generation of kids to read for pleasure in a world dominated by instant messaging and music downloads.

And so it has, for many children. But in keeping with the intricately plotted novels themselves, the truth about Harry Potter and reading is not quite so straightforward a success story. Indeed, as the series draws to a much-lamented close, federal statistics show that the percentage of youngsters who read for fun continues to drop significantly as children get older, at almost exactly the same rate as before Harry Potter came along.

In his original editorial (this is a cached version – for some reason all links I try to follow to criticism of Harry Potter by Harold Bloom fail), Bloom commented,

…a host are reading it who simply will not read superior fare, such as Kenneth Grahame’s “The Wind in the Willows” or the “Alice” books of Lewis Carroll. Is it better that they read Rowling than not read at all? Will they advance from Rowling to more difficult pleasures?

His review was scathing, and the response to it moreso. In a much-later interview, Bloom said,

I wrote the piece, and it was published. It is not an exaggeration to say that all hell indeed broke loose. The editor called me ten days later and said, “Harold, we’ve never seen anything like this before. We have received over four hundred letters denouncing your piece on Harry Potter. We’ve received one favorable letter, but we think you must have written it.” I said, “No, I assure you.”

It never stopped. The damn piece was reprinted all over the world, in all languages. I will never hear the end of it. But of course, the Harry Potter series is rubbish. Like all rubbish, it will eventually be rubbed down. Time will obliterate it. What can one say?

If your kid is reading Harry Potter, they’re probably enjoying it because it barely challenges them more than the films. Much as I’d like to suggest you give them nothing but the basis-story, Tom Brown’s School Days, Kenneth Graeme, Lewis Carrol or CS Lewis, or for older readers Isaac Asimov and JRR Tolkein, it probably won’t work.

Buy your child a single copy of any book from the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchet. It isn’t much more challenging than Harry Potter, will be a good deal shorter, and just might open them up to the rest of Fantasy and Sci-Fi. Lamb’s Tales from Shakespeare is another good bet, for another direction.

My wife will call me every synonym for ’snob’ that she can muster, I’m sure. But at least I’m unapologetic about it.

RailCorp: the buck stops at the mechanic.

Compare these two stories:

1) Hamilton caught cold by lack of chassis savvy

Lewis Hamilton demonstrated a style reminiscent of Michael Schumacher by calmly coming to terms with his disappointment at failing to win Sunday’s British grand prix at Silverstone, shrugging aside the fact that he could manage no better than third place at the chequered flag. There was no rancour or obvious frustration about his post-race reaction.

Instead, displaying his instinctive feel for the situation and considerable common sense, he blamed himself for any shortfall in his performance, taking a leaf out of the seven-times world champion’s book by making it clear that little or no responsibility could be attached to his team.

2) It’s a train wreck

The boss of Sydney’s rail network has condemned his own organisation’s ability to maintain trains properly – and says the workers who look after the fleet are partly to blame.

A week after another breakdown on the Harbour Bridge left the transport system in chaos, Vince Graham delivered a withering assessment of the state of the rail system. Frustrated by revelations it was a routine maintenance job that crippled the network, Mr Graham hit out at the lack of a proper “maintenance culture” that was undermining RailCorp.

One being identifiably a good sport (if in a dumb sport – or rather, game. I think one can gamble on motor-racing), while the other is being identifiably a dickhead. To be fair, I am disinclined to favourable views of RailCorp, but Vince Graham is a dick.

One need not be Harry Truman to understand that it is the job of superiors, progressively all the way to Graham himself, to ensure that adequate maintenance is undertaken. Contracts are won and promise are won at the executive level, after all. It is his responsibility to ensure his promises are kept. Trying to make scapegoats out of workers (and their managers and unions) at a time when they are no doubt under enough pressure and suffering low-enough morale already, is not the behaviour Sydney deserves or should accept from the man responsible for their mass transit:

The president of the Rail Tram and Bus Union, Nick Lewocki, said: “It is a disgraceful exhibition for him to be pointing the finger at the workforce when the real problem is his management style.

“Morale is at an all-time low. The relationship between front-line staff and management is the worst I have ever seen.”

Another couple of pieces of this story that stood out for me were, first:

From this week quality inspectors will audit the maintenance work undertaken by both RailCorp’s in-house teams as well as the private companies that manage heavy maintenance.

From this week? So while blaming his workers, the head of RailCorp has only now taken the initiative to ensure their maintenance work was, in fact, adequate? Secondly,

Mr Graham said the wide-ranging review would include recommendations about whether to privatise all of RailCorp’s maintenance. Private companies already do 70 per cent of the work.

Ah. Privatisation and sub-contracting. Something else we’ve seen on these pages previously. One wonders how many degrees of separation currently exist between the head office and the back work-rooms of RailCorps, and when that little aspect of governance will be addressed.

Howard and Rudd fight over who best understands why you’re broke.

Here is a worthless, truly worthless statistic:

Mr Costello said bureau figures showed that under Labor food prices rose 5.2 per cent a year compared with 2.4 per cent under the Coalition.

Yet it becomes part of the narrative of the election campaign nevertheless. Australian households are wonder where their money is going, as going it must certainly be, on

• Mortgage payments (or rent)
• Keeping the car running
• Credit card payments
• Food and other groceries (partly due to petrol prices, partly due to the freaky weather)
• Fortunately not energy bills, unlike other countries

At the moment food prices are escalating noticably – above the rate of inflation, we are told (and it is true, but…). Now the Consumer Price Index is a funny thing: we hear that the CPI is, say, 2.5%, and get angry when figs are suddenly 50% more expensive. It just doesn’t work that way. For a start, “food” is only a component of the CPI. From the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ March figures, for example:

Food was already 4.6% for the year. Moreover, CPI figures are quarterly. If you are told that the CPI is 2.5% and your grocery bill is going up 10%, that’s fine – the CPI for the next quarter will measure that. But when the Prime Minster says something like,

The Prime Minister, John Howard, said the best way to keep prices down was to keep inflation low.

He assumes you have no brains at all (as, for that matter, so the Sydney Morning Herald, which feels obliged to remind its readers who the Prime Minister is…). The Prime Minister’s ability to “keep inflation low” is very, very minimal, really. The Reserve Bank can use interest rates (as we’ve been discussing) to keep borrowing, investment and consumption constrained, and the government itself can use its budget to cut our incomes (on aggregate). How much effect will these have on increasing petrol prices and/or bizarro-weather jacking-up the cost of fresh-and packaged-foods at our supermarkets? None.

Nor, for that matter, will Kevin Rudd’s plan to pay closer inspection to supermarket pricing. If he wanted to push a policy of watching supermarkets closely, he ought to focus on the downward pressure on prices paid to farmers, not prices charged to consumers. That is where “Big Supermarket” extracts the greatest economic rents.

The difference is that Labor is admitting the plan may have no effect on prices. John Howard is pretending he has an inflation gauge button in his office, that only he knows how to use. Somebody ought to ask him why he hasn’t been using it already, if it’s all so easy…

In fact, there are two halves to the idea of examining supermarket pricing:

Mr Rudd said greater transparency was needed on food pricing. “How much of this is seasonal, how much is being affected by the drought, how much is being affected by normal market conditions?” he asked. “But also whether there are any problems in terms of competition within the marketplace and whether … we’ve got any non-competitive or anti-competitive conduct.”

We’re discussing the latter, which is becoming the election issue, rather than the former, which would give consumers much better information about how prices are determined for food of various types, under various seasonal and macroeconomic conditions. Which would be a very, very good thing.

Meanwhile, Kevin Rudd has at least succeeded in delineating a few more ’sides’ to take for the election.

Woolworths’ head, Michael Luscombe, said his company was confident it would stand up to scrutiny.

…

The Australian National Retailers Association also welcomed the increased scrutiny as an opportunity for the chains to clear their names.

“There is a real need to address the many inaccurate and misleading claims that have been made,” its chief executive officer, Margy Osmond, said.

The Australian Consumers Association backed Mr Rudd. “While the majors can argue about market share figures, the reality is we shop in a virtual duopoly and it is doing us no favours at the checkout,” its spokeswoman, Ria Voorhaar, said.

The NSW Farmers Association said Mr Rudd’s plan would help explain why farmers were not benefiting from price increases but were often blamed.

Fun with Pictaps

Indescribably good fun, even though I can’t draw.

There is supposed to be one right here:

But WordPress isn’t embedding it properly – I suspect it is a flash problem (WordPress automatically strips the code used for embedding flash). Very very disappointing.

So my portrait of my wife (according to her moniker) can be found here instead: http://roxik.com/pictaps/?pid=a768383

The site is really very good fun. Kiss your workday goodbye.