GETTING OUT OF THE RED The crisis in disability insurance
Social Security is primarily made of three insurance programs: old age insurance, insurance against on-the-job injuries (workers compensation), and insurance against career-ending disabilities (disability insurance). Old age insurance, being the bulk of Social Security, is what comes up in conversation most often. But the remainder of Social Security is in dire need of reform as well, and if Congress paid a little more attention to Disability Insurance (DI) in particular, they might go a considerable way toward fixing the nation’s budget deficit.
Embracing Africa’s newest nation
After decades of brutal fighting that left millions dead, South Sudan finally seceded from the North on July 9, forming the Republic of South Sudan. Led by President Salva Kiir, the South has many serious obstacles to overcome, including vast poverty, ongoing conflict with the north, and internal tribal violence. Regardless, secession is a vital step on Sudan’s journey towards a long-awaited prosperity, and it is important that the United States not only endorses the split, but also extends support to the months-old nation during this critical time of development, when the South’s government can so easily unravel.
EDITORIAL Wear a helmet!
For most MIT students, a brain is their most prized asset. So for the subset of those students who bike to class or work, we have one simple message: Wear your damn helmet.
If I were President
Having grown up in New York City, I follow the New York Times religiously. Nowadays, I don’t follow the local news (though interestingly chaotic), but rather opinion articles from columnists and bloggers. Recently, a piece caught my eye: “If I Were President” by Jesse Kornbluth. His work drew professors, C.E.Os, astrophysicists, and experts from all over, to answer: “What would you do if you were president?”
Why Senator Brown is wrong
In an August 13 op-ed in the Boston Globe on controlling the debt, Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.) echoed the disgust many feel with the bickering in Washington, stressing the need for bipartisan policies to control the debt. Having voted for Senator Brown myself, I was hopeful that the proposals he outlined might indeed represent the type of bipartisanship he ran on during his campaign. I was sorely disappointed to find that his idea of reaching across the aisle was the same as Speaker John Boehner’s: unwilling to accept anything less than 98 percent of his demands.
GETTING OUT OF THE RED The 1.5 MRC Force
In the parlance of military planning, the U.S. wields what one would call a “two-MRC force.” That is to say, as structured, the armed forces should be able to fight two “major regional conflicts” (Iraq-sized wars), simultaneously. The logic behind this sizing is simple: should the U.S. choose to fight in one region (say, the Korean peninsula), it doesn’t want to find itself without a free hand in dealing with other regions (say, the Persian gulf). Two MRC’s worth of military might gives the U.S. the strength to conduct big stick diplomacy with troublemakers even while taking action against another rogue state.
CORRECTIONS
An August 3 article about the MIT Mobile application incorrectly stated that the software was available for the “most recent features phones.” The application is only available on Android and iOS devices, but the MIT Mobile website () can be accessed from any internet device.
Tea Party of America: Slowing down the future
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly known as the Stimulus, opened the door to many projects in America. ARRA aimed to boost America’s economy out of a recession that plagued the entire world. It paved the way for many things: $90.9 billion for education, with $2 billion specifically for Head Start and a 17 percent increase in the maximum Pell Grant to $5,350, and tax reductions for the middle class by $237 billion. Unfortunately for America, it indirectly led to the emergence of the Tea Party movement. This movement has done nothing productive for America and has only caused further interruptions in the country’s already strenuous democratic process.
Ten key words to learn in every language
Apparently there are more than 6,000 spoken languages in the world, as catalogued and described in the book “Languages of the World”, according to Wikipedia. So it turns out that to be outrageously multilingual, you’d have to learn a new language about every five days, given that you live until the ripe old age of 80 years. However, I would like to inform you of two possibilities you have in this regard:
Help fix MIT’s student government
In high school, many of you were likely involved in some form of student government. Whether as a class officer, a member of the executive board of Student Council , or as a student leader in some other capacity, I’m willing to bet that you left a positive mark on your school. In fact, I know you have. According to the May/June Faculty Newsletter, 31 percent of you founded an organization. Perhaps, like myself when I was a freshman, you are proud of what you’ve accomplished so far, but are wondering where you will find your niche at MIT. With over four thousand undergraduate students at this school, will you be able to have as big an impact as you did in high school? I’m here to tell you that the answer to that is a resounding “yes.”
Keynesian quandaries: The debt deal aftermath
The Stewart-Colbert rally was a good bit of entertainment in and of itself, but the best bit of comedy to come out of it was a video made by a pair of faux reporters who went about asking the rally-goers “Is Barack Obama a Keynesian?” The attendees, unaware of John Maynard Keynes and his contribution to modern macroeconomics, confused Keynesian for Kenyan; hilarity ensued.
Obama is vulnerable, but none of the GOP field seem capable of unseating him
As the 2012 race takes shape, the man that Republicans hope to beat, President Barack Obama, is looking more vulnerable with each passing day. The debt ceiling negotiations have collapsed his numbers, and recent Gallup polling shows him with just a 24 percent approval rating of his handling of the federal budget deficit. His numbers on the economy and job creation are similarly dismal, with approval hovering at 26 percent and 29 percent, respectively. In the other areas tracked by Gallup, his popularity has waned considerably — on Afghanistan, education, and foreign affairs, his approval is at 38 percent, 41 percent, and 42 percent, roughly a 10 point decline in each category from May of this year. Terrorism is the one issue on which the president has a majority approval rating, but even that number, 53 percent, is down 10 points from May, and is conspicuously low, given the recent death of Osama bin Laden. Worse still, there is little upside for the president when the numbers are broken down by party affiliation — there isn’t a single area in which 50 percent or more of independents approve of Obama’s job performance.
Living Pink (or blue, or green, or obsidian)
While I realize that almost every freshman has some anxiety about their move to their new home, I know that some of you have worries beyond not finding friends, spending REX alone, or flunking out after the first semester (which I’ll have you know is impossible thanks to pass/no record). Some of you also have to worry about revealing an aspect of your identity that you might not even be comfortable with yourself. You freshmen who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender have the added burden of finding a living group and a circle of friends who accept your deviation from traditional norms.
Capitalize smarter, not harder
Suppose for a moment that there are two farmers, Jim and Bob. Jim grows tomatoes, and Bob grows corn. Both crops take tractors to produce. Normally, corn and tomatoes are equally profitable, but this year, corn is expected to be 15 percent more profitable than tomatoes. Accordingly, Jim would like to loan out his tractors to a corn farmer and split the extra profits, while Bob is looking to borrow some tractors from someone else.
Buddy from the East
China has been compared to many things stereotypical: “a fiery dragon waking from its long sleep,” “a skyward-reaching bamboo growing towards prosperity,” and “a fortune cookie telling an everlasting fortune.” Okay — maybe I made up the last one. But many economists speculate too often that China’s market is on a meteoric rise. Although this prediction may be true, the recent debt debates blowing across Capitol Hill have presented themselves as a Great Wall for China.
Embrace, don’t shoot
Sorry, extremists — multiculturalism is no longer debatable. It is simply nonsensical to consider the 21st century world as something resembling a medieval kingdom of homogenous fiefs.
CAR REVIEW The Nissan Leaf: An improbable electric future
I’m a fan of Formula One racing, the kind of guy that has seen every episode of the BBC’s Top Gear … six times. My idea of wealth is having a 10-car garage. It is with a heavy heart that I recognize a sad fact of life: in order to allow the weekend indulgence of driving a fast, gasoline-powered car, we’re all going to have to start driving motors on the weekdays that do not consume fossil fuels. It is thus, ironically, that the widespread adoption of alternative-fuel vehicles will save the enthusiasts’ 500-horsepower sports car.
Yes on same-sex marriage
Last month’s vote to legalize same-sex marriage in New York was a welcome victory in the struggle to provide all Americans, no matter their sexual orientation, with equal rights. It is self-evident that people should have the right to marry whom they love.
Good job ending bias toward heterosexuals…
A central tenet of all true libertarianism is that individuals, not the state, are the final arbiters of morality. The role of the state as a promoter of moral behavior exists only as a corollary to its monopoly on force or its role as a coordinator of collective action, i.e., the state exists to prevent a man from imposing his will upon another through violence or theft, and to broker an agreement when decisions cannot be made at the individual level. To extend the law beyond that is to make the state a conduit for the very impositions that it was built to defend against. It is a subversion of free society.