Government Bureaucracy

                                        

My biggest objection to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is not the sleazy way it was railroaded through Congress, or the crazy Supreme Court decision that allowed it to pass as a tax when President Obama had repeatedly said that the purchase mandate was not a tax. From the beginning I have believed that the whole thing was unworkable and that implementation would be a logistical nightmare.

It’s not just the snafus and computer glitches that have plagued the recent opening of the health care exchanges. I cannot imagine that the government will be able to enroll more than 30 million people in these exchanges even when more than half of them will receive premium subsidies.

As someone who worked in the insurance business for over 35 years, I know how difficult it was to get people to pay for something that they disliked even when they acknowledge that they needed it. Very few people like to pay for any kind of insurance. It’s like taking bad tasting medicine. Although a basic amount of auto insurance is mandatory in most states, here is Connecticut we still have to add uninsured motorist coverage to our policies. Driving without insurance is against the law but many still take the chance.

To overcome such reluctance insurance companies strongly encourage automatic pay plans where payments are automatically deducted from checking accounts. Anything is better than waiting for customers to mail in payments. The government learned this many years ago when it required employers to withhold taxes and Social Security payments from paychecks.

However, it’s not just a question of payment. I suspect that a large portion of the eligible population will not, for various reasons, even bother to sign up. They will either not want to, not know how, or just be turned off by the red tape. This group will even include those who do not have to pay. After all, in the past it was very easy to just go to the local hospital emergency room when you were sick. You could never be turned away.

It’s true that those who fail to sign up will have to pay a penalty but how is that mandate to be enforced? Will it be a payroll deduction or a deduction from a Social Security disability check? Will the government reduce someone’s unemployment check?

Thinking about these administrative problems brought to mind my first and only experience as a government employee. In our first of marriage my wife and I decided that I would go back to graduate school to complete my course work for a PhD in history. She was a nurse and would be the breadwinner. I was able to complete my course work in a year. By that time she was pregnant and I had to get a job. Fortunately, I had taken and passed the US Civil Service exam and just at the right moment I received a notice offering me a position as management analysis intern with the Federal Aviation Agency at New York’s Idlewild airport. President Kennedy had been assassinated the year before but the airport’s name had not as yet been changed to JFK.

I interviewed and was hired. I was a lowly GS 5. The FAA was a large organization with a huge responsibility but the management analysis office at the airport was a small operation. There was the chief who had his own private office and then three senior analysts of varying grades. Our desks were all in a row and I was assigned one right by the door. We were a diverse crew and resembled one of those World War Ii movies where the crew of the plane or ship was made up of different ethnic groups. The three analysts were all educated and middle class—one was Italian, one Jewish and the other Black. Of course, there were few female analysts then but there were two young expert secretaries, who in those days were still called secretaries.

I was a management intern totally lacking in knowledge or experience of either aviation or management. Back in the 1960s management analysis was a somewhat new thing and the government was just beginning to follow private industry in adopting it. At the time management analysis was looked down upon by people who were actually doing the real work. The whole field was also held up to ridicule by comic authors and filmmakers who liked to make a mockery of the so-called time and motion studies done to improve workplace efficiency. Anyone who remembers Lucille Ball (I Love Lucy) at the assembly line in the chocolate factory will know what I mean.

In the beginning I remember that I spent most of my time reading aviation magazines. There was no formal orientation program. Eventually, I must have been given some low level assignments and responsibilities but only remember one. In 1964/5 President Lyndon Johnson launched a much heralded government efficiency program. He took the lead by personally shutting off light bulbs in the White House. More seriously, he insisted that all government agencies cut back on paperwork. Since this was impossible, he took the drastic step of forbidding the purchase of any new filing cabinets. This would force all departments to reevaluate what they really needed to file, and also clean out unnecessary files. For example, the FAA was required to file papers detailing every take off and landing at even the smallest airports. It would not surprise me it these documents from the dawn of aviation history might still be in some repository.

Anyway FAA management analysis offices all over the country had to implement these new filing regulations.  We sent out manuals, directives, and detailed instructions to all field offices and mandated that they comply. Now field offices were the places where the vitally important work of the FAA was done. I recall one trip to a massive flight control center where Air Traffic Controllers (mostly ex-military pilots) were intently watching the blips on the primitive radar screens that often seemed perilously close to one another. It was a fatiguing and nerve-wracking job and I wouldn’t have done it for a million dollars. The safety of thousands of air travelers was in their hands.

But in our office we were concerned about files and filing cabinets. One day one of the field offices called up and virtually begged us to go out to his office and help him figure out how he should implement all these new directives. We couldn’t be bothered. It was his job. Just read the manual. The last thing we would want to do was to visit a field office or actually try to implement one of our own directives.

My experience with the FAA has stayed with me for over 50 years, and makes me sympathize today with all those doctors who, while holding the fates of thousands of patients in their hands, must deal with the administrative nightmare that is Obamacare.

At the end of my first year I got an offer to teach at a small college in Connecticut. When I told the bureau chief that I would be leaving, he expressed regret and told me that he was considering a promotion for me for a job well done.

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Spending Caps

After maxing out his credit card at 17 Trillion dollars, President Obama wants to crash through the cap and increase his credit limit by trillions more. He sounds like a petulant adolescent who spends his weekly allowance almost immediately and then asks for more. Actually he demands more and reviles and insults the very people he needs to get what he wants. Rather than negotiate he resorts to bullying.

This is the same Barack Obama who as a young Senator opposed President Bush’s attempt to raise the debt ceiling when it was only half what it is now. In less than five years in office President Obama has doubled the national debt. What has been the result? What have we gained from all his attempts to stimulate and grow the economy?

Over the weekend Bridgeport’s hometown newspaper, the Connecticut Post, published figures on the city’s continuing economic plight. A front-page headline indicated that 1 in 7 children in the state of Connecticut live under the official poverty line. Bridgeport has been among the hardest hit. According to US Census figures 38% of Bridgeport’s children now live below the poverty line, compared to 28% back in 2008.

One must always take these figures with a grain of salt but it would appear that things have certainly gotten worse in Bridgeport during the Obama presidency. Bridgeport is a virtually one-party city controlled for years by the Democrat leadership. Three years ago its overwhelming Democrat vote enabled a Democrat governor to be elected by the narrowest of margins. Nevertheless, neither a Democrat President, Governor, nor Mayor, has been able to get Bridgeport rolling.

The paper even printed a chart showing that median income in Bridgeport had declined dramatically during the past four years. In 2012 “median” household income in Bridgeport was $37500, down 14% from over $43000 in 2008. Median income is not average income. When the Census Bureau says median income, it just means that half of the households in that area make over the median, while the other half make less.

In other words, half the households in Bridgeport in 2012 made over $37500 in 2012. Although other cities in Connecticut are doing better, all are off their 2008 highs. The Governor’s hometown of Stamford has a median income of $75000 but it is still 10% off its 2008 figure. The median income of the entire state of Connecticut was $67000 last year, but that is only 92% of its 2008 figure. Guess which city has the highest median income in the whole US? It’s not New York or Los Angeles. Census figures show that in Washington DC 50% of the households make more than $86000 per year.

No wonder that city is out of touch with the rest of America. The Census figures show that during his first administration, the President’s attempts to stimulate the economy have driven large segments of the population towards poverty. Household incomes are down all over the country but the President can only suggest borrowing more money, and then taxing people more to pay for it.

Maybe the President could take a lesson from the world of sports. The aging New York Yankees failed to make the playoffs this year for the first time in years. At the beginning of the season their payroll was over 228 million but some of their aging stars broke down this year and they were passed by younger, hungrier teams. In fact, small market teams Cleveland, Tampa, and Oakland made the playoffs but their combined payrolls were less than the Yankees.

Now the Yankees are going to have to find a way to get under the salary cap next year while at the same time meeting the incredible demands of Robinson Cano, their star infielder, for a 10 year contract worth over 300 million. If the Yankees exceed the payroll cap next year, they will have to pay a huge penalty. If President Obama exceeds his budget cap this year, we will have to pay the penalty.

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Masterpiece: Giorgione, "Three Ages of Man".

                                              

Today, in our Masterpiece section we discuss Giorgione's "Three Ages of Man", the third in our series of famous but  mysterious painting of the Renaissance.  Earlier we had discussed Giorgione's "Tempest", the most popular painting in the famed Accademia in Venice; as well as Titian's "Sacred and Profane Love", the most popular work of art in Rome's magnificent Borghese Gallery. Click on the image to enlarge. 

Giorgione is the most mysterious and perhaps the greatest of all Venetian Renaissance painters. The mystery stems partly from the fact that he died at about the early age of 33 and left behind little biographical information. We only have a handful of contemporary references as well as the brief and often unreliable biography in Vasari’s Lives of the Eminent Painters, written decades after Giorgione’s death in 1510.

Moreover, as was the custom, Giorgione never signed any of his paintings and scholars have disagreed for centuries over questions of attribution. Finally, for those few paintings definitely given to Giorgione’s hand, controversy has raged over their subject or meaning.

A good example is the so-called Three Ages of Man, currently in the Pitti Palace in Florence. The name of the painting is pure guesswork stemming only from the obvious disparity in ages of the three men. One appears to be about 60, another in his early thirties, and the last a young man in his teens.

Scholars today object to the popular title. Some think the painting represents a music lesson and that the man on the viewer’s right is pointing to musical notes on the paper held by the young man. Others claim that it represents the education of the young emperor/philosopher Marcus Aurelius.  Others just throw up their hands and claim that it contains, like other Giorgione works, multiple levels of meaning.

However, the most spectacular element of this extraordinary painting has so far received little notice. Venetian painters were known for their coloration. Just look at the garments of the three men. Nothing in a Renaissance painting is there by accident or whim. The colors in this painting provide a major clue to its real subject.

As far as I know no one has suggested that the painting has a sacred subject, but yet, it appears that Giorgione has depicted a scene from the nineteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew. It is the story of the encounter of Jesus with the young man of great wealth.

In Matthew’s account the young man asked Jesus what he could do to attain eternal life.  Jesus told him to keep the Commandments, and specifically named the most important. The man replied that he had done so but still felt that something was wanting. Jesus then uttered the famous words, “If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” The gospel relates that the young man went away sad for he had many possessions.

How has Giorgione depicted this story and who is the third man? The man in the middle is obviously young and the golden lapels of his garment as well as his fashionable hat indicate that he is well to do. He is holding a piece of paper or parchment that contains some indecipherable writing that under magnification hardly looks like Renaissance musical notation.

On the right any Christian, Venetian or otherwise, would immediately recognize the visage of Jesus. There is no halo or nimbus but Giorgione never employed that device. The pointed finger is certainly characteristic of Jesus. Here he points not at a sheet of music but at the Commandments, which the gospel account has just enumerated.

Jesus wears a green garment or vestment, certainly an unusual color for him. In fact, it looks like the robe or chasuble worn by a priest during Mass. At the hand of Jesus we can also see the white sleeve of the “alb,” a long white robe always worn under the chasuble. Green is the color used by the Catholic Church during Ordinary time, that part of the Church year not identified with any of the great feasts.

The third man is St. Peter. He is the only other person identified in Matthew’s account of this incident.  He stands on the left, head turned toward the viewer. Giorgione uses Peter as an interlocutor, a well-known Renaissance artistic device designed to draw the viewer into the painting and encourage emotional participation.  The old man’s face is the traditional iconographical rendering of Peter with his baldhead and short stubby beard. As Anna Jameson noted many years ago, Peter is often portrayed as ”a robust old man, with a broad forehead, and rather coarse features.”

The color of Peter’s robe is also liturgically significant. Peter is rarely shown wearing red, but Giorgione has chosen to show him wearing the color reserved for the feast days of the martyrs. In the gospel account immediately after the young man went away sad, Peter, speaking for the other disciples as well as for the viewer of Giorgione’s painting, had asked, “Behold we have left all and followed thee: what then shall we have?”

In the first decade of the 16^th century Venice was at the apex of its glory. It would suffer a great defeat at the end of the decade during the War of the League of Cambrai but until that time it was arguably the wealthiest and most powerful of all the European nations. It was certainly the only one that dared confront the mighty Ottoman Empire.

 

Nevertheless, some young Venetian patricians were wondering whether the whole life of politics, commercial rivalry, and warfare was worthwhile. One of them, Tommaso Giustiniani, a scion of one of the greatest families, did actually sell all his possessions, including his art collection, in order to live as a hermit in a Camaldolensian monastery. At one point he wrote to a few friends, who were also considering a similar move, about the futility of their daily lives. He argued that Venetian life was agitated, completely outward, and continually dominated by ambition. It was the reason for all their worry. “If, then, a Stoic philosopher appeared to free their minds from all these disturbances, his efforts would be in vain, so completely does agitation dominate and enfetter their whole lives. How can anyone not feel disgust for such an empty existence?”

Peter and the other disciples were shocked when Jesus said that it would be harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. “Who then can be saved,” they asked? The response of Jesus was full of hope: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Green, the liturgical color used throughout the Church year, is also the color of hope.

 “The Rich Young Man,” the name we can now give to the painting in the Pitti Palace, would certainly appear to have an historical context in Giorgione’s time. Five hundred years after the death of this short-lived genius perhaps we can begin to understand that Giorgione was a unique and original painter of sacred subjects.

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Income Inequality

                                         

Recently, my local newspaper (Connecticut Post) ran an article with a large bold headline that read, “ Top 1 percent takes rising share of 2012 U.S. income.” The article was based on figures from the Census Bureau that compared incomes among various statistical groups from the year 2000 to 2010. The headline and the findings in the article were supported by huge chart that took up most of the front page of the Business section.

The Connecticut Post likes to run stories like these since they seem to provide hard statistical evidence for its pet issue of inequality in Connecticut, whether it be racial, gender or economic. Hearst Connecticut Newspapers, the parent company of the newspaper, even went so far as to commission a study of the census figures by a University of Connecticut economist. Nevertheless, a review of the chart once again illustrates the old adage that “statistics don’t lie, but liars use statistics.”

At the top of the chart was the astonishing figure that the top 1% of the population in Fairfield county showed an increase in income in 2010 that was 14.5% larger than its comparable income in the year 2000. At the same time, income in every single other income bracket decreased during the same period. For example, the bottom 5% of Fairfield county’s population saw a 16.7% drop in income from 2000 to 2010.

What are we to make of these figures? The paper’s own chart belied the obvious conclusion it drew. In the same period the top 5%, which we also include the top 1%) actually saw their income drop by 9.8% in the same period. The Connecticut Post did admit that top earners suffered most in the “Great Recession” of 2007-2009. So what explains the figures?

Let’s look at the top 1% first. Fairfield County has a population of about 900000 so the top 1% would include about 5000 households. You would have had to read very deeply into the article to see that the income figures include not just salaries but also dividends and capital gains. The paper even explained that the more recent figures might be skewed by the fact that stockholders might have been taking capital gains from the sale of real estate and stock in anticipation of federal increases in tax rates. In other words, the wealthy were selling already owned assets and the gains inflated their incomes.

Other social and economic factors might have been at work. I would guess that during the decade that began with the attack on the World Trade Center, some wealthy New Yorkers decided to move our of Manhattan to Connecticut. Also, Greenwich, Connecticut lies just over the border from New York’s posh Westchester County. Not only are New York State’s income taxes higher than Connecticut’s (New York is not called the Empire State for nothing), but also real estate taxes in Westchester are substantially higher than those in Greenwich. Rather than a bad thing, the influx of wealthy people into Connecticut is a good thing for Connecticut. The top income households in the state pay much more than their fair share of taxes, and receive far less than their share of benefits from the state.

Speaking about benefits, what about the low-income households at the bottom of the chart? The bottom 10% had an income drop of 16.7% during the decade while the bottom 5% showed an income drop of 16.7%. Buried inside the paper the last sentence of the article admitted that the income figures did not include “so-called transfer payments from government programs such as unemployment benefits and Social Security.” Since everyone knows that such government benefit programs have increased dramatically in recent years, it is not hard to conclude that the bottom percentiles did not actually show a decrease in actual income.

Of course, benefits like food stamps and Medicaid only come from the taxes paid by those in the higher percentiles. I don’t know what the figures in Connecticut are but in this country the top 1% pay about 40% of all Federal income taxes. It would be better and more accurate if the paper’s chart had shown the actual after tax income of the various groups.

I don't deny the existence of income inequality but I do not believe that the Census figures show that it is growing. Moreover, unlike the Connecticut Post I do not believe that income inequality is necessarily a bad thing. No one ever suggests that athletes or entertainers should all work for the same pay. Even the most liberal Hollywood stars would be shocked at the idea. What then is so bad about an executive making a bonus if he does a great job?

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