Back to Work - Bill Clinton [35]
2 My first full budget was for fiscal year 1994, the last for fiscal year 2001, which began in October 2000 and ran through the first eight months of President Bush’s first year. His tax cuts reduced the 2001 surplus but didn’t eliminate it until 2002.
3 See TRICARE: Summary of Beneficiary Costs, http://www.tricare.mil/tricaresmart/product.aspx?id=442.
4 For a fuller discussion of Orlando and other areas still generating growth, more good jobs, and new businesses, and the role good government policy plays in fostering and supporting such growth “clusters,” you should read William J. Holstein’s excellent book, The Next American Economy (New York: Walker, 2011).
5 Glenn Kessler, “Social Security and Its Role in the Nation’s Debt,” Washington Post online, July 12, 2011, http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/social-security-and-its-role-in-the-nations-debt/2011/07/11/gIQAp1Wl9H_blog.html.
6 Peter Orszag and Peter Diamond, “A Summary of Saving Social Security: A Balanced Approach,” May 2004, http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/64164; Peter Orszag, “Saving Social Security,” New York Times, November 3, 2010, http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/saving-social-security/; Robert C. Pozen, “Why My Plan to Fix Social Security Will Work,” USA Today, June 12, 2005, http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005–06–12-pozen-edit_x.htm; http://bobpozen.com/.
7 The Moment of Truth: Report of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (Washington, D.C.: White House, 2010), fig. 17, p. 65.
8 The same thing happened again in 2010, when another five million Americans lost their coverage at work. This time insurance companies said they had to raise rates to establish a reserve to cover the uncertain costs of complying with the health-care reform law. The policyholders should get some of that money back as insurers comply with the requirement to put 85 percent of premiums into health care, a fact that undermines the case for the big increase in the first place.
9 Mark Schoofs and Maurice Tamman, “In Medicare’s Data Trove, Clues to Curing Cost Crisis,” Wall Street Journal, October 25, 2010.
10 Paul Krugman, “Medicare Saves Money,” New York Times, June 12, 2011.
11 An examination of our health system’s costs compared with other countries’ was done by McKinsey & Company. You can get it at http://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/rp/healthcare/accounting_cost_healthcare.asp.
12 See http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/05/tax_man.html.
13 A lot of the manager’s income is now taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, though the income comes not from risking the manager’s own money on investments, but is a fixed percentage of profits earned on capital the manager’s investors risked.
CHAPTER 5
How Are We Doing Compared
with Our Own Past and with
Today’s Competition?
THE MOST SUCCESSFUL NATIONS IN THE twenty-first century have both a strong economy and a strong, effective government. To make this case, which is one of the main points of this little book, I’ll have to persuade you to look at how the United States is doing compared with our own history and expectations and at how we’re doing compared with other countries that are our competitors for the future, both those that are already wealthy and those that are rapidly rising. Believe it or not, you’ll see that quite a few are outperforming us in terms of education, technology, modern infrastructure, research and development, and high-end manufacturing. Many have lower unemployment rates, faster job growth, less income inequality, and lower poverty rates. Some even do a better job of giving their poor people a chance to work their way up the economic ladder into the middle class, the journey we know as the American Dream.
For example, Singapore, an island nation of just five million people, with a high per capita income and a relatively low tax burden, is making a $3 billion investment of government funds, much more