Sunday, November 25, 2012

Read Stuff, You Should

Happy Birthday to Roz Chast, 58.

Back to normal schedule this week, which means back to the good stuff:

1. Members we'll miss, by Jennifer Steinhauer.

2. Do tax breaks to encourage savings for retirement actually work? Perhaps not. Annie Lowrey reports -- in a new and promising NYT blog for reporting on the fiscal cliff negotiations. Anything that has Lowrey and David Leonhardt (and several other excellent journalists) reporting is going to be worth reading."Debt Reckoning" sure is an awful title, though.

3. Paul Krugman looks at some data about "takers" and finds it's just health care costs. Larger point: pick a budget problem that people think is a big deal, and odds are that it turns out to be really about health care costs.

4. I'm pretty sure Stan Collender's reading of the news stories about the fiscal cliff negotiations is the right one. 

5. And I haven't seen the movie yet, but Andrew Sprung on Lincoln, politics, and democracy is a must-read.

7 comments:

  1. And Scott Monje offered some fascinating musings on the role of confusion in Benghazi.

    http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2012/11/23/confusion-in-benghazi/

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    Replies
    1. Plain Blog approved! (I linked to it over at Plum Line last week).

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    2. That's marvelous! Thanks!

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  2. I'm a long-time reader, first time commenter; I had to say something about the one aspect of your blog that bothers me.

    "Debt Reckoning" may be a cringe-worthy title, but "Read Stuff, You Should" is *much* worse. Your other recurring titles are fine, but please consider retiring this one.

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  3. Re: Tax breaks for retirement:

    No amount of tax breaks will make saving for retirement overshadow the debt from buying a car, an education, the buying health insurance, or that five grand we spent on rent in the tech downturn that went on credit cards.

    Money tomorrow that may never come just isn't high on the priority list when there are things to learn, do, eat and save today.

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