Opinions from the Left and Right July 30, 2017July 28, 2017 From the left — Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post — The Worst Is Yet To Come: The Court of Mad King Donald is not a presidency. It is an affliction, one that saps the life out of our democratic institutions, and it must be fiercely resisted if the nation as we know it is to survive. . . . From the Reagan right — Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal — Trump Is Woody Allen Without the Humor. In small part: The president’s primary problem as a leader is not that he is impetuous, brash or naive. It’s not that he is inexperienced, crude, an outsider. It is that he is weak and sniveling. It is that he undermines himself almost daily by ignoring traditional norms and forms of American masculinity. He’s not strong and self-controlled, not cool and tough, not low-key and determined; he’s whiny, weepy and self-pitying. He throws himself, sobbing, on the body politic. He’s a drama queen. It was once said, sarcastically, of George H.W. Bush that he reminded everyone of her first husband. Trump must remind people of their first wife. Actually his wife, Melania, is tougher than he is with her stoicism and grace, her self-discipline and desire to show the world respect by presenting herself with dignity. . . . Meanwhile the whole world is watching, a world that contains predators. How could they not be seeing this weakness, confusion and chaos and thinking it’s a good time to cause some trouble? Finally, from the conservative right, via David Brooks in the New York Times: Jeff Flake Plants a Flag Do you ever get the feeling we’re all going to be judged for this moment? Historians, our grandkids and we ourselves will look and ask: What did you do as the Trump/Scaramucci/Bannon administration dropped a nuclear bomb on the basic standards of decency in public life? What did you do as the American Congress ceased to function? What positions did you take as America teetered toward national decline? For most of us, it’s relatively easy to pass the test. Our jobs are not on the line when we call out the mind-boggling monstrosity of what’s happening. For Republican senators, it’s harder. Their consciences pull them one way — to tell the truth — while their political interests pull them another way — to keep their heads down. Some senators are passing the test of conscience — Ben Sasse, Lindsey Graham, Susan Collins, Mike Lee and John McCain. And to that list we can certainly add Arizona Senator Jeff Flake. In a few days he comes out with a book called “Conscience of a Conservative,” which is a thoughtful defense of traditional conservatism and a thorough assault on the way Donald Trump is betraying it. Flake grew up in rural Arizona. “Cattle ranching is the hardest work I’ve ever known and the best people I have ever known have been cattle ranchers,” he writes. He was one of 11 children and his family did not dine out, even once, while he was young. He lost part of a finger and learned frontier self-reliance on the ranch. As a Mormon he learned to be wary of the government, and especially the way it can persecute minorities. He came to Congress in 2001 and earned a reputation as a scourge against federal spending and earmarks and as a champion of tax cuts. But he walked into a Republican Party that was descending from Goldwater and Reagan, his heroes, to Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay. When I had coffee with Flake this week, he spoke about the philosophical and political corruption of the DeLay era with uncharacteristic contempt. Things got worse. In 2016 the Republican Party, Flake argues in the book, lost its manners. “It seems it is not enough to be conservative anymore. You have to be vicious.” And it lost its philosophy. “We become so estranged from our principles that we no longer recognize what principle is.” Flake told me he doesn’t want his book to be seen simply as a broadside against Trump. The rot set in long before, but Trump takes the decay to a new level. On the day in 2015 when Trump endorsed a Muslim ban, Flake tweeted “Just when you think @realDonaldTrump can stoop no lower, he does.” Flake attended prayers at an Arizona mosque that afternoon. At the core of this book is a bill of indictment listing the ways Trump has betrayed the Goldwater Creed: “Is it conservative to praise dictators as ‘strong leaders,’ to speak fondly of countries that crush dissent and murder political opponents …? Is it conservative to demonize and vilify and mischaracterize religious and ethnic minorities …? Is it conservative to be an ethno-nationalist? Is it conservative to embrace as fact things that are demonstrably untrue?” Flake told me he didn’t even tell his staff about the existence of this book until just two weeks before publication because he didn’t want them to talk him out of publishing He began working on it at night during the general election campaign, assuming it would be an autopsy for the party after Trump’s defeat. “It matters more now. It would be easier to wait until after the next election,” he told me, but he wanted to plant his flag at a time when his political future is at risk, at a time when it matters. Frankly, I think Flake’s libertarian version of conservatism paved the way for Trump. People are being barraged by technology-driven unemployment, wage stagnation, the breakdown of neighborhoods and families. Goldwater-style conservatism says: “Congratulations! You’re on your own!” During the campaign, Trump seemed to be offering something more. But Flake is in most ways an ideal public servant. He is an ideological purist but a temperamental conciliator. On spending and free trade he takes lonely principled stands; on immigration he’s crafted difficult bipartisan compromises. In a time when politics has become a blood sport, he’s sunny and kind. “Assume the best. Look for the good,” his parents taught him. But he possesses a serene courage that is easy to underestimate because it is so affable. Most important, he understands this moment. The Trump administration is a moral cancer eating away at conservatism, the Republican Party and what it means to be a public servant. The 52 Senate Republicans have been thrust by fate into the crucial position of responsibility. They will either accept this decay or they will oppose it. They will either collaborate with the Trumpian path or seek to direct their party and nation onto a different path. Flake has taken his stand. As the other Senate Republicans look at his example, they might ponder this truth: Silence equals assent.
I Scream, You Scream . . . July 28, 2017July 27, 2017 . . . but before we do, here is the most amazing card magic ever — four minutes developed after the 2015 Paris terrorist attack. More than two million people have watched; I can’t imagine what the 287 who gave it a thumbs down were thinking? (Thanks, Bill!) And now, in honor of mid-summer (thanks, Tom!) . . . the chemical rundown on ice cream — and sorbet and gelato. Now you know. Bonus item: WHY THE RUSSIANS HAD NO EFFECT ON OUR ELECTION. I just figured this out. Yes, an army of Russian operatives and “bots” were deployed for months to spread false information about Hillary Clinton designed to make people dislike and distrust her. And yes, this once most-admired woman won reelection to the Senate by more than a two-to-one margin and had a 65% favorability during her years as Secretary of State. (Henry Kissinger: “[She] ran the State Department in the most effective way that I’ve ever seen.” John McCain: “Secretary Clinton is admired and respected around the world . . . a very effective Secretary of State.” Condoleezza Rice: “She’s a patriot. […] I think she’s doing a fine job. I really do.” Lindsey Graham: “She is one of the most effective secretaries of state, greatest ambassadors for the American people that I have known in my lifetime.” Paul Ryan: “[If she had become president in 2009], we’d have fixed the fiscal mess by now.”) But to think that the former KGB army that set out to destroy her would have had any impact is to believe Americans can’t tell fake stories from real ones. Clearly, that’s not true. When he gets an email or sees a Facebook post, even the most gullible of Americans can tell which are real and which designed by experts merely to seem real, while reinforcing a false narrative. By way of examples: Despite all the intentional disinformation, virtually no American was duped into doubting Obama’s citizenship (other than 41% of Republicans polled two years into his presidency). Given the all-but-unanimous alarm by the scientific community, almost no American could be made to doubt that climate change is real (other than 43% of Republicans). Because it was simply not true, almost no American who voted to reelect George W. Bush believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11 (other than the majority who did). So why would we think that anyone — let alone a full quarter of one percent of the voters in Michigan — could have been influenced by fake news stories about Hillary? Or by fake Facebook posts? Or by thousands of Russian intelligence officers working for months to give Putin and Trump a win? Put Putin across the chessboard from even the least savvy of our voters and he wouldn’t stand a chance. Have a great weekend.
The Good News: We’ll Get Thru This July 27, 2017July 30, 2017 Or maybe we won’t, but here is constitutional law professor Noah Feldman’s rather brilliant TED Talk. It is the genius of our system, he says, and of the Founders who created it, that we can navigate through the most tempestuous of waters. But still. Our president is “a complete idiot” (Karl Rove), a “dangerous con man” (Marco Rubio), “a national disgrace” (Colin Powell), “a pathological liar” (Ted Cruz), who “seems to feel big only when he’s trying to make other people feel small” (Carly Fiorina), and who is “undercutting everything we stand for” (Lindsay Graham). And those quotes — all true and all from Republicans — were offered before he began proving himself to be even worse than anyone imagined. And before his deep-seated preference for journalist-murdering Vladimir Putin was becoming ever more evident and concerning. Before he took office, he joked he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and not lose voters. Now he seems to believe he could do that and just pardon himself. After treating the Boy Scouts to an endlessly cringe-worthy speech — a record crowd of kids he seemed not to realize hadn’t come for him, but for their annual Jamboree — he beat up on his attorney general, made idiotic statements about health care legislation, and then — having never served in the military himself (despite being in the best health of anyone ever to have run for president), he Tuesday tweeted out a policy that could require expulsion of as many as 15,000 transgender men and women who have chosen to serve. (On which point, I commend Warrior Princess. “To everyone who saw him, he was a hero. A warrior. A man. But underneath his burly beard . . .”) Even Orrin Hatch, an 83-year-old Republican from Utah, knew this was wrong. This can’t go on for four years. But however long it does go on, if Noah Feldman is right, the system will right itself. As my mother used to say, “Let us pray.”
Why I’m A Conservative — And Republicans Aren’t July 26, 2017July 24, 2017 One of your esteemed fellow readers — an Army vet and aviation defense attorney from Ft. Worth, Jim Burt — writes: Harry Truman uttered what could be the entire Democratic Party platform in three sentences: “Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don’t need help. That’s all there is to it.” Jim found that quote on a must-bookmark page with 44 others “to use when describing conservatives and Republicans to your friends,” ranging from Barry Goldwater (“Today’s so-called “conservatives” don’t even know what the word means. . . .“) to Mark Twain and George Carlin to William F. Buckley, Jr. (“A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”) And he adds thoughts of his own: I have occasionally questioned why we let Republicans get away with calling themselves “conservatives” when they don’t seek to “conserve” anything except the bank accounts of the very richest people, and their program is one of the destruction of time-honored programs, practices, and principles. Mitch McConnell’s systematic dismantling of Senate norms is a good example of this. Conservatism in the classic Burkean sense has always been about the recognition of reality over ideology, an expression of disdain or even revulsion for starry-eyed paper programs for the betterment of government or society and a preference for practices and procedures which have been shown by time and experience to work, if not always perfectly, at least adequately. In this sense, “dynamic scoring” of tax cuts on the always-disproven premise that they will actually increase tax revenue by spurring economic growth is the very antithesis of traditional conservatism, as is the dismantling of proven safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid. One Republican politician recently acknowledged that the bank bailout and fiscal stimulus that pulled the world back from the brink of disaster in 2008-2009 were necessary, and that it was perhaps a good thing the Republicans weren’t in power at the time because their principles would not have permitted them to do what was necessary. Prioritizing ideology over facts would be scorned by true conservatives. Unfortunately, too many of the people calling themselves conservatives in the US today are a mix of racists, reactionaries, and radicals with ideological agendas that are not fact-based. Are all of today’s “conservatives” — or Trump supporters — racists or nativists? No! But if someone is a racist or a nativist in America today, they will claim to be a conservative and likely support Trump. Are they all reactionaries who want to return America to a “robber baron” economy? No! But if that is their de facto goal, they will claim to be conservatives and they will vote Republican. Are they all radicals who want to tear down not just the Affordable Care Act but Social Security and Medicare? No! But . . . you get the idea. Are any of these plans or programs compatible with what Andrew Sullivan calls “the pragmatism, moderation, incrementalism, and [cautious] reform” which at least purportedly characterized classical conservatism? No. Do they rely on science or other investigative tools to identify the actual facts (about virtually anything) so that they can make cautious fact-based decisions, or do they take more of a “Who are you going to believe — me or your lying eyes?” approach? Then I look at myself, and at the modern Democratic Party, shorn of its former racist base — which has all gone over to the Republicans. Do we look to science for answers about climate, energy, medicine, etc.? Yes. Do we rely on other investigative tools, such as the Census and other population surveys, to gather verifiable facts about economic and social conditions? Yes. Do we try to identify actual problems and take a “whatever works” approach to fixing them, instead of identifying as a “problem” any incongruity between our theoretical aspirations and reality, in favor of our theories? Yes. So, I’m a conservative in the classical sense, and so is the Democratic Party. That we’re actually trying to help people and make our world a better place is a lagniappe, in that sense. I won’t insult you by hyperlinking lagniappe. (Though if you didn’t have Tek Lin for eighth grade English, click here.) But I will join you in saying, “Amen!” (Even if we Dems too may from time to time be guilty of a little non-fact-based dogma.) And hello? Jim didn’t even mention conserving the environment, on which the habitability of our planet depends. How about that small item?
My One-Star Reviews July 25, 2017July 26, 2017 But first — do you know jet.com? Acquired last year by Walmart for $3 billion? I love Amazon, but competition is important — and the glass-bottle Honest Tea varieties that are so hard to find in physical stores but that are just a click away with Amazon ($44.62 for a 12-bottle case of Moroccan Mint) are just a click away on Jet at $16.27 (for Cinnamon Sunrise or Ginger Oasis, my other two favorite varieties) — after the 15% new-customer discount on my first three orders but before the additional $4.31 they knocked off of already-free shipping for my willingness to wait a couple of days to receive it. In all, $61.69, delivered, for 48 bottles, versus what would have been three times as much on Amazon. Needless to say, that’s an extreme example — and I still love Amazon. But “shop around?” And now . . . Okay, so this is about as self-indulgent as it gets . . . but I went over to the afore-mentioned Amazon recently to buy someone a copy of my investment guide — way easier to click for $10 than to actually have to put one in a jiffy bag, find stamps, and all that — and noticed a bunch of one-star reviews. This is a little disheartening, so — being shallow and thin-skinned — I went to check them out. My favorite, from G. Belmonte this past April 4th: “Book is great — however i received with the front cover torn….very disappointment.” One star out of five. (Don’t judge a book by its torn cover?) Then there was Matt, back in January: “Financial books shouldn’t get political. A great book whose advice is completely undone by a few sentences of rhetoric. Why? WHY?” One star out of five. Two people found that review “helpful.” In fairness, not all ten of my one-star reviews call the book great. In fact, only those two did. Writing of an earlier edition in 2010, Chris called it “Worst book ever,” explaining: “This book was terrible. PLEASE do not waste your money on it. Anything of value in this book, you probably know already. PLEASE, in these tough economic times, find a better book to spend your money on.” The current edition is not that much changed, so I’m afraid Chris would still hate it. I actually challenged one guy (“What an idiotic set of advices“), who gave the book one star because it recommends that, when it comes to life insurance, most people should “buy term and invest the difference” — a point on which most consumer advocates and personal-finance experts agree. Being a life insurance salesman (who earns a far higher commission on complex whole-life products), he calls this advice “stupid or simply irresponsible.” We had a nice little back and forth (“It is the mark of a good salesman to believe passionately in his product, so hats off to Mr. Poletaev,” I began), and while he didn’t budge on the issue of life insurance, he agreed that maybe one star for the whole book, based on that one page, was “a little harsh.” I like this guy. But I’m still stuck with one star.
A Trade War That Could Hurt Your Finances July 23, 2017July 23, 2017 But first: “A lawyer, a spy, a mob boss, and a money launderer walk into a bar. The bartender says: you guys must be here to talk about adoption.” — Dr. A on Twitter And whom do you believe — Eric Trump in 2013 (“We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”) or Eric Trump denying he ever said that? And why did Deutsche Bank loan him all that money? Was there a Russian connection? Why was the Vice Chair of a famous Russian money-laundering bank in Cyprus chosen to be our Secretary of Commerce? And why was a guy Trump had not previously known — paid $10 million a year to help Putin — chosen to head Trump’s campaign? Whose idea was that? And why was the guy chosen to run — and gut — the State Department the only one of those being considered whom Putin awarded the Order of Friendship? And why did Trump’s Attorney General lie about his contact with Russians? And why did his National Security Advisor lie about his contact with Russians? And why did his son Donald lie about his contact with Russians? And why did son-in-law Jared attempt to set up a back-channel connection with the Russians that US intelligence would be unable to detect? And why did Jared omit his Russia contacts from from his SF-86 disclosure form? (And why does he still have security clearance?) And why does Trump seem so happy whenever he’s with the Russians, inviting them and their photographer, but no American photographer, into the Oval Office; switching seats to seek out Putin for an hour’s chat at the G20 dinner? And why does Trump still not accept the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia worked to influence our election? When Trump fires Sessions to install someone to fire Mueller, he will explain that all this nothing-burger stuff is detracting from his (unparalleled) ability to get us all GREAT health care at a tiny fraction of the cost . . . make America safe again by getting Mexico to build a beautiful wall . . . and boost our economy by negotiating great trade deals. Which brings us to . . . John Mauldin’s report on the trade war that Trump is teeing up. (By pulling out of the TPP, Trump’s already ceded American leadership in the Pacific to China.) . . . Candidate Trump talked about renegotiating trade agreements to help American workers. I support that goal. The problem is that President Trump seems intent on starting a trade war that will hurt those same workers. We are on a very dangerous course. Worse, if a report I saw last week is accurate, that course is already locked in. . . . This is what Axios reported June 30, based on the input of anonymous Trump-administration sources: Read the whole letter, but the gist of the Axios report was that “One official estimated the sentiment in the room as 22 against [imposing 20% steel tariffs] and 3 in favor — but since one of the three is named Donald Trump, it was case closed.” Apparently, our president has created a National Trade Council and put a discredited economics professor at its helm — someone who understands trade in the same way Trump’s EPA chief “understands” climate change or Trump himself “understands” health care — which is why we all now have GREAT health care at not just a fraction of the price (which would have been amazing) but at a “tiny” fraction of the price. It was so easy! Make no mistake: Putin is winning. As I wrote earlier this month . . . My fantasy — and it is only that — is that some crisis a month or three down the road triggers a lawsuit that can only be decided by the Supreme Court. And that that Court, though captured by the right, somehow finds the fundamental patriotism and fairness to say something like this: Seventeen years ago this Court faced a national crisis and — in a ruling it went out of its way to brand as non-precedential — made a tough and widely criticized call that, in effect, gave George W. Bush the Presidency and, as it happened, the opportunity to appoint two of us to this body. Last year, the Senate made the unprecedented decision not to allow the President to fill a vacancy on this Court, on the grounds that the will of the people as expressed in 2008 and 2012 did not give him that authority — the Senate needed to see how the people leaned in 2016. As we now know, the people — not the Electoral College, the people — leaned toward the Democratic candidate. Today we face a new crisis. In developments that have been building all year, it has become clear that the 2016 election results were interfered with by a massive Putin-directed thumb on the electoral scale — a thumb the existence of which the Trump team long denied knowledge of but of which we now know they were well aware. In that context, we have been called upon to overturn the 2016 result as tainted, and to order a workable mechanism by which the country can move forward and regain its footing. We hereby direct former presidents Obama and Bush, acting in concert, to recommend to this Court, in the shortest time possible, an interim president and vice president to serve out the remainder of this presidential term — or a shorter term if a majority of the House and Senate shall call for an earlier election. Or something like that. And Barack and George, very different people but both sane patriots, would perhaps recommend to the Court Joe Biden and Mitt Romney; the Court would approve; and most of the nation — not having attained anything like great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost — nor remotely to have tired of “winning so much they got tired of winning” — would breathe a huge sigh of relief. As would the world. Or they could just give it to Hillary, who did get more votes despite it all. But Putin/Trump have been so effective at getting people to misperceive her (she is wonderful and would have made a great president), it could fail to give the same sense of closure.
Gender Clips July 21, 2017July 20, 2017 Here’s the trailer for a documentary on the different “shades” of gender identity. (I’m the old, square one.) Commented one audience member on IMDB after seeing Between the Shades‘ debut at a film festival last month: “I am a straight man, and I went to see it with a straight woman. We both stood-up and cheered as the credits rolled at the end, loving each and every participant, fully embracing the individuality of us all, and the deft hand of the filmmakers. We were definitely entertained and elevated.” How the world has changed. At least a good chunk of it. But these two minutes show how much harder it is for non-conforming people to live in places like Turkey and Russia and Uganda. (They might have included Texas — for example and example — though Texans now enjoy certain federal protections that the Republican Party was unsuccessful in blocking.) And here are seven minutes with a law student from New Jersey — atheist dad, Catholic Mom — and their attempts to deal with his sexuality. Hard not to like this guy. From Between the Shades: “No matter how different people are, everybody wants to be loved.” “If you meet someone and fall in love with them, why would you let anything stop you from love? And that’s really what it comes down to.” Love is love. No? Have a great weekend!
WHY Premiums Are Rising July 20, 2017July 20, 2017 Our Republican friends prevented us from creating millions of good new jobs revitalizing our crumbling infrastructure — lest a strong economy improve Obama’s chances at reelection, and because the plan included a surcharge on income above $1 million a year to pay for it. Similarly, they’ve worked hard to impede, and now destroy, the Affordable Care Act, because it imposes an extra 3.8% tax on dividends and capital gains above a certain level — an extra $3.8 million in tax for every $100 million you earn. The billionaires most influential in the Republican Party hate that tax, even though the combined rate (23.8%) is still lower than it was after Ronald Reagan’s eight years (28%). (Democrats have wealthy supporters, too, but many of them are Patriotic Millionaires, either explicitly or in spirit.) Rather than accept Medicaid expansion, that would have helped so many of their constituents, many Republican governors actually eschewed that federal aid. And rather than work to improve the ACA — by allowing Uncle Sam to negotiate prescription drug prices, and adding yet a further 2%, say on investment income above $1 million (still below Reagan’s top rate) — they are hell-bent on its demise. Republican Game-Playing Is Responsible for Three-Quarters of 2018 Obamacare Rate Increases. It looks like health insurance rates will go up a lot next year, but not because medical inflation is high or because insurers aren’t making money under Obamacare. Mostly it’s because insurers are nervous about whether they’re going to lose the CSR subsidies that are part of Obamacare. President Trump has deliberately chosen to keep this dangling, so insurers have to raise their rate requests in case he decides to stop paying it. Insurers are also nervous about the individual mandate, which helps bring young, healthy customers into the insurance pool. Republicans have been talking about officially forbidding the IRS from enforcing it, and if that happens rates will have to go up too. Charles Gaba has gone through the rate requests of 20 states, and he figures that these two things account for about 71 percent of the size of the rate hikes that have been requested so far. In other words, if insurers in your state are asking for a 20 percent increase, 6 percent of that is from normal causes and 14 percent is from deliberate Republican efforts to destabilize the individual market. California’s exchanges are well run, and the state is fully committed to Obamacare. The state insurance commissioner has asked insurers to submit two rate requests for 2018, one with and one without uncertainty over CSR and the mandate, and these rate requests are set to be unveiled on Monday. It’s going to be an important bellwether. WHEELTUG ENTHUSIASTS: Narration has been added to the Paris Airshow video.
A Small Step YOU Can Take To Fight Terrorism; and a Retirement-Plan Plan July 19, 2017July 17, 2017 Well, a very small step. But Parvez Sharma’s book, A Sinner In Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance, will be released next month, and if enough of us pre-order it, we will help initiate the virtuous cycle that makes books successful. Success begets success. You don’t even have to read it! Give it to your local library if it doesn’t interest you. (“Putting his own life at risk, the author takes us on a surprising and compelling journey through the front lines of his much-contested faith.” — Reza Aslan, author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Zealot.) It’s the story of his film by the same name. (“Brilliant . . . rare . . . takes aim at Wahhabi Islam” — Vice. “A rebuke of Saudi Arabia” — Yahoo News. “A swirling, fascinating travelogue and a stirring celebration of devotion.” — New York Times Critics Pick. “Revelatory.” — Washington Post.) Islam can go two ways, as most of us can: peace and love and light . . . or, if sufficiently misled, desperate, or disrespected, something inhuman and horrifying. Kind of like me: most of the time, a teddy bear . . . but make me crazy enough, as the local FedEx did recently, over nothing (which was part of what made me crazy!), and Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde. May you never see my dark side. Parvez is on the side of sweetness and light. And gives heart, and spiritual support, to those who would modernize the faith and condemn barbaric Wahhabism. So let’s see if we can get his book picked up here and around the world. Click. MILLENNIALS SAVING FOR RETIREMENT My pal Bob Pozen wrote this piece for The Hill on the savings habits of millennials — those aged 20 and 36. They’re saving at a pretty good clip, which is great — but more for rainy days and nice vacations rather than for retirement. One structural reason is that half aren’t offered a retirement plan at work. Sure, they could open an IRA on their own (a Roth! read all about it!), but most don’t. Bob urges Congress to adopt the Automatic IRA, which would require employers with over 20 employees not offering a plan of their own to hook up their payroll systems to an IRA provider (Fidelity, Vanguard, whomever) and send regular IRA contributions from their employees paychecks — unless they opted out. Smart.
Frugal Science and Musical Comedy July 18, 2017July 17, 2017 Need a break from the negative? Watch this TED Talk: Inventor Manu Prakash turns everyday materials into powerful scientific devices, from paper microscopes to a clever new mosquito tracker. From the TED Fellows stage, he demos Paperfuge, a hand-powered centrifuge inspired by a spinning toy that costs 20 cents to make and can do the work of a $1,000 machine, no electricity required. Or watch Mozart with a sense of humor. (Thanks, Mel!)