• People don’t save enough, and 401(k) (or equivalent) plans often don’t provide a lot of incentive for people to save.
• Employers don’t use the 401(k) enough as a competitive factor in recruiting and retaining employees, preferring to simply shed the costs formerly associated with pensions.
• Current parameters for Social Security make it untenable in the long run, even at the inadequate rates paid out to eligible people.

Of course, this has been a known problem for a long time with no real discussion about the black hole of politics that is entitlement reform.  The unknown is whether enough people in Congress will put governing over elections long enough to do something – make payroll taxes less regressive, reset the retirement age, close loopholes in business contributions, other ideas I don’t know about – about it..  I’d like to be cautiously optimistic, but there’s no reason I should be at present.

I’m in favor of government running things where profit maximization should not be the goal – defense, infrastructure, education, and healthcare. To those who disagree, I ask:

1. Why would you want to put $600 billion into shareholders’ pockets at the expense of improving the nation’s overall health and productivity (which can only help GDP)?
2. Why don’t you want to move away from a system with 30% overhead (which doesn’t improve health in any way) to one with 3% overhead?

By reducing administrative overhead and eliminating profits for the payers from the equation, we can then pay doctors more for their services than they currently get from Medicare and Medicaid while likely reducing overall costs of healthcare for people and businesses alike.  I don’t understand (and would like to know) why someone would disagree with this model (unless of course that person was a financial beneficiary of the current one at the expense of millions of Americans’ well-being).

What does that mean in this political climate?  It means that I support what the president has said so far and am waiting for the results of his plans (frankly, it’s too soon to tell).  It means that I’m leery of Congress, who can’t seem to get over themselves and their special interests and get something done to benefit their constituents.  For instance, the stimulus package and the budget process both irritate me — at what point will they actually change from the quid pro quo style of bill-writing that causes so much of the bloat and deficits in the first place?  I know – the president spearheads some of these initiatives and signs off at the end, but the devil’s in the details where Congress does the writing.

What I don’t understand is how intense the hate has become.  The Obama administration has been in place for fewer than five months — have they had time to earn the invective already?  I didn’t like GWB when he was elected, but what he had done in his first five months wouldn’t have warranted the reaction Obama gets.  The Sotomayor nomination alone has brought racism out of the woodwork, while seemingly 0.0000001% of the discussion of her nomination has anything to do with her legal credentials or published judicial history.  I understand if someone doesn’t like her decisions or even things she says in public, but why the leap to racist slurs (albeit bafflingly confused slurs)?

National Review - Sotomayor

Ultimately, I don’t think most Americans have this hatred in them without lots of outside nudging and prodding.  It makes me wonder what would happen if the haters (not to be necessarily confused with committed) on both sides were silenced for a while and allowed people to debate again.  Maybe we’d let the best ideas (not the loudest shouters) win.

http://www.youtube.com/v/Jll5baCAaQU&hl=en&fs=1

Of course, I’m saying this as I (for the umpteenth time) watch the third season of The West Wing.

Pollster.com’s national tracking indicates that Obama is maintaining his proponents while McCain is gaining the undecideds.  I can only hope this is not a direct result of hearing some automated call say that Obama is a dangerous man that pals around with terrorists.

http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/flash/swfs/chart.swf?xml=http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/content/xml/08USPresGEMvO.xml&choices=Obama,McCain&phone=&ivr=&internet=&mail=&smoothing=&from_date=&to_date=&min_pct=&max_pct=&grid=&points=&trends=&lines=&colors=&e=1

I don’t get it.  If this election is showing anything, it’s showing that people want to decide between two issues-based visions for our future rather than who can most effectively bury the other person in mud and slime.  An Obama vs. “McCain 2000″ could have been the best campaign in decades.  So why are Republican party members intolerantly closing ranks around Sarah Palin?  She seems to be a blast from the neocon past, not a fresh breath of air.  I may not like Romney, but he’s accomplished (Bain, 2002 Olympics, governor of Massachusetts) and isn’t the apparently reflexive ideologue she is.

On top of this, isn’t party splintering what doomed the Democrats for years?  And weren’t the Republicans basically gloating over this in the mid-nineties?  So why are they condemning themselves to the history repeat?

http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/flash/swfs/chart.swf?xml=http://www.pollster.com/flashcharts/content/xml/08USPresGEMvO.xml&choices=Obama,McCain&phone=&ivr=&internet=&mail=&smoothing=&from_date=&to_date=&min_pct=&max_pct=&grid=&points=&trends=&lines=&colors=&e=1

Ultimately, I think (and hope) this shows that Americans are responding to a positive message of change rather than to increasingly nasty tactics (such as the various robocalls, the mutilation hoax, and increasing untruths about Obama’s plans).  America is also seeing the McCain campaign (and the Republican Party) turn on itself:

• Kristol Rips McCain Camp, RNC for Handling of Palin
• Possible GOP Civil War
• Lieberman starts hedging his bets on Obama
• A Palin Insurgency?

Meanwhile, Sen. Obama is picking up endorsements left and right:

Chicago Tribune (which has never endorsed a Democrat for president):

It may have seemed audacious for Obama to start his campaign in Springfield, invoking Lincoln. We think, given the opportunity to hold this nation’s most powerful office, he will prove it wasn’t so audacious after all. We are proud to add Barack Obama’s name to Lincoln’s in the list of people the Tribune has endorsed for president of the United States.

LA Times:

We may one day look back on this presidential campaign in wonder. We may marvel that Obama’s critics called him an elitist, as if an Ivy League education were a source of embarrassment, and belittled his eloquence, as if a gift with words were suddenly a defect. In fact, Obama is educated and eloquent, sober and exciting, steady and mature. He represents the nation as it is, and as it aspires to be.

Denver Post:

Republicans love to mock Obama’s history as a community organizer. But here was a man with no money to offer, no patronage to dispense, no way to punish his opponents. All he could do was to work with people from all walks of life, liberals and conservatives, business people and the unemployed, and bring them together in common cause for a better community. Could there really be better preparation to reunite a worried and divided America to again pursue our “more perfect union”?

…and Colin Powell: