From Yahoo Finance, apparently quoting Warren Buffet in 2011:

Buffett stated, “I could end the deficit in five minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

Reminds me of Perot's suggestion to raise the gas tax. Here's his explanation, apparently from the Clinton-Bush-Perot debate from 11 Oct 1992:

Q: As part of your plan to reduce the ballooning Federal deficit, you've suggested that we raise gasoline taxes 50 cents a gallon. Why punish the middle-class consumer to such a degree?

PEROT: It's 10 cents a year, cumulative. It finally gets to 50 cents at the end of the fifth year. I think "punish" is the wrong word. I didn't create this problem; we're trying to solve it. Some of our international competitors collect up to $3.50 a gallon in taxes. And they use that money to build infrastructure and create jobs. We collect 35 cents, and we don't have it to spend. I know it's not popular. But the people who will be helped the most by it are the working people who will get the jobs created because of this tax. Why do we have to do it? Because we have so mismanaged our country over the years, and it is now time to pay the fiddler.

BUSH: The question was on fairness. I just disagree. I don't believe it is fair to slap a 50-cent-a-gallon tax. I don't think we need to do it.

Both Perot's and Buffet's are rational (something you couldn't always say about Perot) "Give me the place to stand, and I shall move the earth"-style answers. It is that easy to create change and achieve goals -- and, because politics isn't engineering, not that easy, all at the same time. But if you put representatives' self-interest between a problem and a solution like Buffet does, you should get some movement. (Unfortunately, I would also nearly guarantee the deficit would be EXACTLY 3% of GDP, at least until there was a loophole that allowed it to be bigger :sigh:.)

Buffet & Perot's answers are definitely solutions from business owners. You can see in Bush's answer that he's got a much different mindset: not alienating voters is his primary concern, not solving problems [quickly].

I wonder why there's such a difference business vs. politics, where you can convince people in a company to follow difficult decisions so much more easily than a country. I mean, sure, it's obvious: In one case, the executive can can you. In the other, they [ostensibly] can't. But why isn't there the same buy-in? You could argue one's stake in their government should be greater than what they have in their company. Anyhow...

Labels: business, economy, government, Other Stuff

Richard Clarke interviewed with NPR, and seemingly everyone has seen the moneyball quote. It's worth reading, so I won't skip it, though my interest lies elsewhere...

CLARKE: No, David. If I were in the job now, I would have simply told the FBI to call Fort Meade, the headquarters of the National Security Agency, and NSA would have solved this problem for them. [The FBI is] not as interested in solving the problem as they are in getting a legal precedent.

So good. Now let's move on to the way he thinks. I really like to use this model. When someone oversimplifies a question, and tries to prevent something as a simple binary, as in, "Should Apple be forced to unlock an iPhone?", it's useful to show that we're ready on a spectrum or sliding scale between A and B. If you can put the question in a larger context, its faux simplicity falls away.

RICHARD CLARKE: ... Under the Obama administration, for example, we've said we're not going to torture people. You know, we could, at the far extreme to make the FBI's job easier, put ankle bracelets on everybody so that we'd know where everybody was all the time. That's a ridiculous example, but my point is encryption and privacy are larger issues than fighting terrorism.

GREENE: But can you just explain why you would compare, you know, a company helping the government design a way to unlock an iPhone to something extreme as torture and ankle bracelets? I mean, that sounds like a very extreme jump.

CLARKE: No, the point I'm trying to make is there are limits. And what this is is a case where the federal government, using a 1789 law, is trying to compel speech. And courts have ruled in the past, appropriately, that the government cannot compel speech. What the FBI and the Justice Department are trying to do is to make code writers at Apple - to make them write code that they do not want to write that will make their systems less secure. [emphasis mine]

Now we can discuss how "grey" unlocking the phone is. There's stuff that's not particularly controversial: Law enforcement should be able stop a masked man leaving a house through the window with a large bag to ask what's in there. Then there's stuff that's not confrontation in the opposite direction: We shouldn't make everyone wear GPS equipped ankle bracelets so that law enforcement can find anyone, any time, regardless of past history or probable cause.* Or that we shouldn't use extreme torture (let's face it, some of the "non-torture" means of interrogating are still, at least colloquially, torturous.)

It's a chart.

The iPhone unlocking is somewhere in the grid, somewhere between a burglar in a window and torturing the burglar, but where? And since the OS compromise could apply to anyone, doesn't this topic fall between bank cameras and ankle bracelets too? Which cells on the table are closest? Is there another axis we're missing (privacy)? Those are more interesting questions.

As I said, I love to reason like this. It's one of my favorite rhetorical tropes. I remember visiting a friend, and he thought that his milk had turned. His wife said, "But it's before the expiration date! It's fine." In the split second he took to reply, I butted in with, "Well, even if you keep a new carton closed and put it outside in the sun for a day, it's going to turn, regardless of date." Now we had two ends of the spectrum: Perfectly preserved milk good until the date, and poorly preserved milk that could conceivably turn before.

I wasn't trying to suggest anyone had treated the milk poorly, which is what the NPR interviewer tried to suggest to Clarke, I imagine to "BAM!" kick the interview "up a notch".

Hopefully that wasn't the interviewer's goal, but otherwise, Clarke is right back in the situation I often find myself, with someone who misses the rhetorical move and ends up annoyed that I dared suggest they don't know how to keep their milk cool. "Man, that's a very extreme jump!" No kidding. /le sigh

I get it if it's just a friend of mine who misses it, but an interviewer? Your one job was to listen, man. Okay, okay, that and keep the interviewee on track. Which he was doing exceptionally well by himself.

(Luckily both my friend & friend-in-law are excellent mathematicians, and immediately understood the logical grid I was setting out. ;^D)

* Though this one is probably less controversial than we think, at least if we carry around cellphones that are powered on.

Labels: government, iphone, privacy, rhetoric

A new study by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory looked at the impact that plug-in hybrids (and indirectly, electric cars) might have on the US electricity grid in the next few decades. They found that, as they say, timing is everything: If the cars were recharged after 10 P.M. there might not be a need for new power plants (in their 'high-demand' scenario, 8 new plants are required).

Labels: car, energy, government, Other Stuff

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