Kevin Drum

Politico has a big piece today about the growth of tax-free retirement accounts—things like 401(k)s and Roth IRAs. The gist of it is that (a) these accounts cost the government just as much as if they were funded directly, and (b) the benefits go largely to the affluent:

There's been a surge of expansion since 1996, largely pushed by the retirement industry:

That success now vexes many retirement experts, alarmed by how easily Congress acquiesces to tax breaks for retirement savings that disproportionately help the wealthy while treating the benefits relied upon by most retirees — Social Security and Medicare — as budget-busters ripe for reform.

....The cost of retirement tax expenditures to the government is expected to nearly double in just four years from $369 billion in 2023 to $659 billion [nominal] in 2027.

Social Security is progressive: it replaces most of your income if you're poor but only a fraction if you're higher income. Tax-free retirement accounts are just the opposite: they benefit the rich more than the poor, and that inequality has grown over time.

And they're expensive. Adjusted for inflation, the cost to the federal government has soared from $162 billion in 1995 to an estimated $600 billion in 2027:

It's notable that the change from 2015 to 2027—about $400 billion—is equal to the projected shortfall in Social Security starting in 2034. In other words, if this money had instead been committed to Social Security, it would be solvent forever.

But it wasn't. Instead all the talk is about increasing the retirement age and reducing Social Security's inflation adjustment, both things that would disproportionately harm the poor. But the retirement industry doesn't care much about that. After all, they don't make any money off the poor, do they?

YouGov asks about abortion more often than once a year, which makes it a handy gauge of abortion opinion over the past couple of years since Dobbs. Here it is:

It would be nice if they had data before May 2022, but they don't. Still, it's better than most.

As it happens, by far the most popular opinion is that abortion should be allowed up to a certain point and then restricted. But what point? YouGov asked this as an open-ended question:¹

The middle point is at around 12-16 weeks. And what kind of restrictions should there be after that? Majorities agreed on rape, incest, life and health of the mother, or a serious or fatal disability in the fetus.

¹In this poll, 21% said it should never be restricted and 24% said it should always be restricted.

Also: 18% said abortion should always be legal and 12% said it should always be illegal. The answers you get depend a lot on poll wording.

Here is Hilbert preparing for the great eclipse. He was disappointed that we couldn't see totality, but after going inside for a nap he got over it pretty quickly.

Donald Trump wanted Congress to kill renewal of the FISA surveillance program:

Trump had urged members to “KILL FISA” in a social-media post Wednesday, and holdout Republicans then blocked the bill from proceeding, forcing leaders to scramble to rework the proposal.

....While dozens of mostly minor changes geared at safeguarding privacy were included, an amendment vote to add a warrant requirement failed Friday in a nail biter of a vote, with 212 in favor and 212 against.

I wish the House had added a warrant requirement. It's not as if the FISA court ever turns them down. I could even have accepted a streamlined warrant requirement—just something to keep the FBI honest. Even if you accept that its massive violations of surveillance rules are mostly honest mistakes, many of them aren't. Requiring a warrant is the best way to cut that down.

So does this mean I agree with Trump? Not even a little bit. Trump doesn't give a hoot about warrants. He wanted the entire program killed out of personal pique. He thinks the program is used to spy on him, so he wants it gone.

But the program doesn't spy on him and it does spy on lots of potential terrorists. This is a good example of how Trump's disordered mind is genuinely dangerous. His ego makes him the center of everything, and if he were president he presumably would have killed renewal completely, thus ending an important national security program. All because he's nuts.

Those of you who are faithful readers already know this, but today Brookings released a report confirming that college costs haven't really gone up that much. They include a handy graphing tool that shows the actual cost of college at various income levels:

In the scenario I chose to illustrate this, the actual cost of college for a family with an income of $100,000 has increased 16% since 1995 and hasn't increased at all since 2007. That doesn't change until your income exceeds $150,000. (All of this is adjusted for inflation.)

The Brookings data shows a higher increase for public universities, but that's because they include room and board. If you look at tuition and fees, the net cost has gone down.

Remember this the next time you see one of those charts showing that the cost of college has skyrocketed over the past few decades. It hasn't. In fact, over the past 20 years it's barely changed at all.

This is—I shit you not—next week's agenda for Republicans on the House Rules Committee:

Meh. Nothing more important to do, I guess.

But I'm truly disappointed at the lack of cool acronyms. Only freshman congressman Nick Langworthy could be bothered, making HR 7700 into the SUDS Act. Nice one, congressman!

How much humanitarian aid is getting into Gaza? There are two sources for this: Israel itself (via COGAT) and the UN (via OCHA). Here's what they report recently:

Up through April 6 both sides mostly agree. Israel reports an average of 190 trucks per day while the UN reports an average of 170.

But after April 6 they wildly diverge. Israel claims that shipments have surged nearly 100%. The UN says they've gone up 4%.

What accounts for this? For one thing, the two sides count trucks differently. Israel counts trucks entering Gaza. Once there, the trucks unload everything and their pallets are then loaded onto Palestinian trucks. The UN counts the number of trucks that leave the loading area.

This should still be about the same, but the UN says that many of the entering trucks are only half full. When they're reloaded inside Gaza workers fill the trucks completely, which explains why they see fewer trucks leaving than Israel sees entering.

But that should have produced a steady difference, not a sudden change on April 6. Something else is at work here. But what?

Israel has loudly and persistently claimed that there is "no limit" to the amount of aid they allow into Gaza. The problem is distributing it. They say the UN is unable to distribute all the food and other types of aid that enter Gaza. In fact, Israel claims that more food enters Gaza now than before the war:

The UN says the "no limit" claim is true only in a hypertechnical sense. In reality, shipments are held up by: (a) onerous inspections, (b) a small number of entry points, (c) limited hours of operation, (d) slow approval of visas for aid workers, and (e) regular attacks on aid convoys, which naturally makes it hard to recruit workers.

There's no way to arbitrate these claims from 8,000 miles away. However, we do know that if plenty of food is getting in but it's not being distributed, warehouses in Gaza would be bursting at the seams by now. They don't seem to be. Beyond that, it's flatly inconceivable that twice as much food is being delivered as before the war. I'm not sure what games are being played here, but the UN seems to have the better of the argument.

You remember Ippei Mizuhara, the interpreter for baseball superstar Shohei Ohtani? He supposedly stole $4 million from Ohtani to pay off gambling debts, but I haven't really been paying attention to this since the story first broke. New York gets me up to speed:

According to U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, Mizuhara got ahold of Ohtani’s bank account to feed his “insatiable appetite for illegal sports gambling.” He then blocked Ohtani’s agent, financial adviser, and accountant from being able to access the account of the baseball phenom, who is known for paying less attention to his finances than your average multimillionaire. Bank records in the filing show that Mizuhara also changed the phone number and email on Ohtani’s account so Mizuhara could access the funds. And the Feds claim to have a recording of Mizuhara calling the bank pretending to be Ohtani to release more money to pay off his debts.

With Mizuhara allegedly in control of Ohtani’s finances, the indictment states that Mizuhara placed a staggering amount of bets with the player’s money. Between December 2021 and January 2024, prosecutors allege that he placed around 19,000 bets, winning over $142 million and losing around $183 million — for a total loss of around $41 million.

Shazam.

This is from the New York Times today:

Yes, seriously. To dig into "complex" views about the election, the Times asked voters for one word. God only knows what they'd call it if they asked for ten words.

Many years ago—pre-blogging—I wrote this about OJ Simpson:

Yes, OJ was guilty and got off. So have lots of white guys. But that's missing the point. Why did the jurors unanimously believe it quite plausible that the LAPD planted evidence and lied on the stand?

That's pretty much still my basic take.