miracle Life: 09/24/11

Saturday, September 24, 2011

24/09 INTERVIEW/ James Steinberg: U.S. Leadership restored in 10 years after 9/11

BY YOICHI KATO NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT

2011/09/24

James Steinberg answers questions at his home in New York (Yoichi Kato)

Ten years following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the once-damaged U.S. leadership in the world has been restored and strengthened, said James Steinberg, former deputy secretary of state of the United States, in an exclusive interview with The Asahi Shimbun.

Through the war on terrorism under the Bush administration, he pointed out, the legitimacy of U.S. leadership was damaged due to their unilateral action of imposing democracy by force. The Obama administration, in which Steinberg was deeply involved with from the very beginning, re-established cooperative relationships with other nations.
"That's the single most important achievement of the Obama administration," said Steinberg, now dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University in New York.
In dealing with a rising China, Steinberg also emphasized the need for cooperation among regional countries, saying, "It is up to all of us to create an environment in which China is more likely to choose a benign course."

天声人語 2011年9月24日（土）付

　近所の桜並木できのう、恒例の「健康診断」があった。先の台風が葉をさらったが、倒木や大きな枝落ちはない。老木たち「かかりつけ」の樹木医氏によると、街路樹を風から守るにはまず根を保護すること、危なければ風を通す枝切りが要るそうだ▼激しい雨風は列島に秋を置いていった。しつこい残暑が去り、いわし雲の空は水彩の妙。〈夕焼けてサーファー赤き波に乗る〉田島もり。そんな夏の残像は、朝夕の涼にあせてゆく▼けれど今年は、夏ばてが尾を引く「秋ばて」に要注意らしい。思えば、節電でわが身に無理をさせた。冷たい物を引き受けた胃腸は弱っている。大地震がまた来るというストレスも、通奏低音のごとく心身に響くという▼ならば火照る体を冷まし、乾いた心を潤そう。暑くも、寒くもない。春のような慌ただしさや、期待と落胆の山谷も少ない。私見だが、胸中の寒暖計が最も安定する数十日である▼〈たそがれは風を止めて／ちぎれた雲はまた／ひとつになる〉。オフコースの佳曲「秋の気配」で、小田和正さんは男女の別離を生地横浜の風景に重ねた。淡い喪失感は、秋が持つ別の味だ。〈大いなる河のように／時は流れ／戻るすべもない〉▼この彼岸、東北ではどれほどの人が真新しい遺影に手を合わせただろう。乱れたままのお墓も多い。流れる月日に抗し、亡き人の面影は濃くなるばかりかとお察しする。あれから三つ目の季節である。すっきりと晴れ渡る千金の、一日一日を大切に送りたい。

24/09 Defunct NASA satellite to hit Earth within hours

English.news.cn 2011-09-24 14:45:03

BEIJING, Sept. 24 (Xinhuanet) --A defunct six-ton satellite is hurtling towards earth and is expected to crash within the next 24 hours, but experts have no idea where it will land.

Severe floods hit Cambodia

English.news.cn | 2011-09-24 21:30:04 | Editor: Tang Danlu

Cambodians use boats to navigate flooded streets at Kian Svay district in Kandal province, 20 kilometers east of Phnom Penh on September 24, 2011. Unusually severe flooding in Cambodia has left at least 58 people dead, including 31 children, a disaster official said on September 23, 2011. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

Cambodians travel through floodwaters on an ox-cart at Kian Svay district in Kandal province, 20 kilometers east of Phnom Penh on September 24, 2011. (Xinhua/AFP Photo)

1 2 3 4 5

Key Words : Floods

•	Cambodia less worries with flooding

•	Cambodia uses helicopters to rescue victims by flooding

•	14 people killed by floods in Cambodia

24/09 Five myths about millionaires

By John Steele Gordon, Saturday, September 24, 2:03 AM

This past week, President Obama tried to sell his new “millionaires’ tax” to the Rust Belt. “What’s great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it,” he said in Cincinnati on Thursday, praising “the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires.” But who are the millionaires Obama is talking about? And will a tax on them help the economy? Let’s examine a few presumptions about the man with the monocle on the Monopoly board.

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Five Myths

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1. Millionaires are rich.

Being rich has gotten more expensive. A $1 million fortune was unusual in the early 19th century. The word “millionaire” wasn’t even coined until 1827by novelist (and future British prime minister) Benjamin Disraeli. In 1845, Moses Y. Beach, editor of the New York Sun, published a small pamphlet called “Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of New York City.” The price of admission to Beach’s list, which was wildly popular, was a mere $100,000.

By the time the first Forbes 400 list of the richest people in America was published in 1982, the smallest fortune featured was $75 million. There has been so much wealth creation in the past 30 years — much of it thanks to the microprocessor behind modern-day fortunes such as Dell, Microsoft and Bloomberg — that only billionaires are on the list. Today, $1 million in the bank generates only about $50,000 per year in interest. That isn’t chump change, but it’s roughly equal to the 2010 median household income.

2. Millionaires think they’re rich.

“Rich,” like “poor,” is a relative term. A family living on the American median income of $50,000 a year might think that one living on $500,000 is rich. But that second family, which probably knows families far better off than they are, thinks that you need $5 million a year to be truly rich, and so on.

On Thursday, 44 percent of people voting in an online survey as part of the GOP debate coverage said that a $1 million annual income made a person “rich.” In a 2008 survey of affluent Chicago households, only 22 percent thought a nest egg of $1 million was rich. In March, four out of 10 millionaires surveyed by Fidelity Investments said they do not feel rich. That same month, a majority of investment advisers surveyed in a Scottrade poll said that $1 million isn’t enough for retirement.

Though the average American family is rich beyond the wildest dreams of the average family in Bangladesh, where per capita income recently rose above $700, it’s not much compared with those who summer on beachfront properties in the Hamptons. When John D. Rockefeller learned in 1913 that the late J.P. Morgan had left an estate of $60 million, including a fabulous art collection, he reportedly said: “And to think — he wasn’t even rich.”

Why do people think millionaires pay less? One cause of confusion is that stock dividends and capital gains are taxed at a maximum of 15 percent, while regular income in their bracket is taxed at a maximum of 35 percent. The rich often earn more dividend and capital gains income than regular income, so it’s tempting to wrongly conclude, as Warren Buffet has, that millionaires “wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes.” But dividends are paid out of corporate profits that have already been taxed. So Buffet’s equity earnings are doubly taxed: He pays 35 percent at the corporate level and 15 percent on his own return.

4. Millionaires share the same political beliefs.

That might have been true in pre-revolutionary France, where the nobility was exempt from most taxation (and why so many were subject to a brief meeting with Dr. Guillotin’s lethal invention). But it is certainly not true in 21st-century America, where political opinions among the rich are just as diverse as they are among the less well-off.

Just consider George Soros and the Koch brothers. They are listed high on the Forbes 400 list, but Soros funds Democratic campaigns, while the Koches helped foment the tea party revolution. Income can’t be used to predict political opinion. In 2008, for example, Obama won the votes of 60 percent of those with a family income under $50,000 and 52 percent of those earning more than than $200,000. McCain carried the middle class.

In America, millionaires have always had the freedom to disagree — even in the White House. Franklin Roosevelt, called one of the 10 richest presidentsby Forbes in 2010, was denounced as a traitor to his class for instituting the New Deal. Also on Forbes’s list: famous trust-buster Theodore Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, who proposed a “War on Poverty” days before he was assassinated.

5. Obama’s “millionaires’ tax” won’t seriously limit investment.

That’s the line of reasoning that the administration is using. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told reporters that the president’s plan wouldn’t hurt growth. “I am very confident that the modest changes we’re suggesting in terms of revenues . . . would make the economy stronger in the long term, not weaker in the long term,” he said.

Geithner’s confidence is somewhat misplaced. According to a 2001 congressional study that confirmed a basic tenet of macroeconomics, “each $1 of marginal tax rate cuts would save the private economy at least $1.25 as deadweight losses fall and economic efficiency increases.” Taxes distort investment decisions. Why throw money into productive assets — corporate securities, a rental property or new employees for a small business — if the income they generate will be taxed away?

Taxes on the rich are taxes on people who create jobs. And jobs are an unalloyed good thing for an economy. Excessively taxing the capital that makes the economy go is poor public policy. And we have a recent example of how the opposite works well: Unemployment declined by a third in the four years after the Bush tax cuts were fully implemented in 2003, dropping to 4.2 percent from 6.2 percent. Meanwhile, federal revenue increased 44 percent in those years. If these tax cuts put people to work and generated money for the government, shouldn’t Obama consider the possibility that tax increases should be avoided?

jsg@johnsteelegordon.com

John Steele Gordon is the author of “An Empire of Wealth: The Epic History of American Economic Power.”

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3. Millionaires pay proportionately less income tax than poorer people.

In a speech on Monday, Obama said raising taxes on millionaires isn’t class warfare, but “math.” His math may be off: According to the IRS, those with adjusted gross incomes of more than $1 million paid an average of 23.3 percent in federal income taxes in 2008; those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 paid 12.7 percent; and those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 paid 8.9 percent. Half of American families don’t make enough money to pay income taxes at all.

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woodyag

Hm. You know, in fact if I were a millionaire, of any stripe, I would fight to keep stories like this from circulating. They paint millionaires as whining babies; regardless of any truths. Do we need more rancor and class hatred? (That's supposed to be a rhetorical question, and the answer is supposed to be no- though I'll guarantee some Pee Tarty types would answer yes.)

Today 9/24/2011 11:44:08 PM GMT+0900

woodyag

If I were the Washington Post, I would NOT allow headlines like "millionaires aren't rich" to see the light of day. It gives world the clear understanding that the editors are clueless; and in a world where many billions of people live on less than $2 US per day- nearly half the world's people, in fact- it breeds increased resentment of those heartless, mindless Americans. Yes, we all know, from many studies done over many decades that many millionaires don't FEEL "rich". I assure you, 6.99 bi...See More

Today 9/24/2011 11:39:13 PM GMT+0900

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Saturday, September 24, 2011

24/09 INTERVIEW/ James Steinberg: U.S. Leadership restored in 10 years after 9/11

天声人語 2011年9月24日（土）付

24/09 Defunct NASA satellite to hit Earth within hours

24/09 Severe floods hit Cambodia

24/09 Five myths about millionaires