Positive Impact Institute

Just wanted to give a quick shout-out to our good friends over at Panorak, which is run by Daniel Maes and PII webmaster Dustin Hagstrom. Panorak.com is a brand-new all-in-one outdoor sports and adventure site – from hiking to white-water rafting. I’ve had the good fortune to travel to some spectacular places in my life, from the jungles of Sumatra to the volcanic craters; if I’m lucky this summer I’ll get to check out some of the amazing outdoor activities in Malawi, many of which center around the lake. I’ve always wanted a site just like Panorak, which is a natural place to (for example) aggregate all the hiking trail information for Hawaii that currently exists on random websites from the 90s, photocopied maps, and poorly-maintained signs. Sure, part of the fun of outdoor sports is discovering stuff – going places for which there is no information. But it’s a lot more rewarding to find something legitimately new, and to avoid headaches and hassles that have already been sorted out by others. Moreso than nearly anything else, this process lends itself to crowdsourcing and the internet. Printed books are currently the norm for lots of this stuff, but think about how often the trail information you’ve found has turned out to be obsolete. With modern mobile internet devices you can let people know about that kind of change instantly – and with a site that has a community built around doing that, you’ll have a reason to do so.

Something had to be done about the piss-poor state of internet resources on outdoor activities, and Panorak is exactly the answer I was hoping for. Their route-finding tool is a brilliant idea. I’d be remiss here if I didn’t mention the site’s design. It’s beautiful and even better it loads like a dream, which is key if you’re someplace exciting (i.e. with limited internet capabilities) like I am at present.

What, if anything, does this have to do with PII’s stated mission? Our goal has always been to find solutions to problems in the under-treaded middle ground where everyone can agree but nobody has a political incentive to act. As an aspiring economist, I often like to think those solutions emerge from the market, as somebody sees an opportunity and seizes it. In this case, it just happens that that solution was a sick website made by a good friend of mine – but it’s a solid solution, and to a fairly important problem. More broadly, people who enjoy sports outdoors are far more connected to, and politically active on, issues of environmental protection: witness my Uncle Chris, who is a true-and-true Republican but big on environmental preservation because he loves to cross-country ski. They also have more contact with parts of the developing world, with similar political consequences (a few notable exceptions aside). Development and the environment are both major issues where we could all agree if only the political will were there, and beyond filling an important market niche (and one that I’m interested in) Panorak is helping build that will. That’s something we can all get behind.

This map is just cool, so I wanted to post it.  It is a fascinating look at Europe’s first real attempt at international interventionism, the Balkins having been run by the US.

The protesters have left Tahrir Square after succeeding in forcing the military to push Mubarak out of power, suspend the constitution, abolish Parliament and take over the country.  So the Egyptian people seem to have gone from a military dictatorship run by Mubarak to a military dictatorship run by….who?

The story behind the end of Mubarak is actually nicely summed up in this NPR article:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/10/133501837/why-egypts-military-cares-about-home-appliances

The article is summary of all the business interests of the Egyptian military, as reported in a State Department cable leaked by Wikileaks.  These interests range from tourist resorts in Sharm el Sheik to road construction companies to consumer home appliances.

It is quite arguably the last business interest that has driven the military’s thinking the most these last three weeks.  As long as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians were protesting in Tahrir Square, they were not out buying things.  In fact, they managed to shut down the whole city, so no one was buying anything!  Add to that the fact that tourists were leaving Egypt in droves and one can start to imagine the financial pain the Egyptian military was going through while Mubarak was trying to hold onto power.

In the months to come, it’ll be interesting to see what happens.  The military does not appear to want anything to do with governing the country directly, but they have significant business interests to protect.  It is hard to imagine how, if a civilian government gets elected, it will expand the Egyptian economy without threatening the military’s stranglehold on business.  Then again, the military guys could just retire and become businessmen, forced to compete.

I recently began writing for MethodLogical, a new collaborative blog focused on global health and international development. My latest post discusses some of the economics of preventive healthcare, specifically in the context of vaccinations and the impact of sleeping around on HIV transmission. In my first post, from two weeks ago, I talk about why economists care about healthcare in the first place – and why doctors and health practitioners should pay attention to economics.

My pieces will appear on the site every two weeks, but new content from the other awesome bloggers at MethodLogical comes out almost every day.

learn more about the event at thefoolishthings.net

Otherwise, enjoy this talk on the Middle East Cauldron

Sam King – Middle East Cauldron

Here are the maps referred to in the talk:

conflict maps

Wikileaks

The recent wikileaks leak of 75,000 classified military reports from Afghanistan does not include a ton of new information.  We know Pakistan is helping the Taliban and we know that the US has been killing civilians and that it is hurting our war effort.

Currently, the Afghan people support the international effort to rebuild their country.  However, the release of these documents will cost Afghan support for that effort.  That will make them more likely to support the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the short run.  At this critical juncture, that could damage the Afghans’ long-term interest, which is building a proper government that can protect them from the Taliban.  That is why only leaders with all the information at hand should release information to the public.

On the flip side, there is something to be said for transparency.  The one thing these documents apparently bring to light in a big way is the amount of non-Afghan help the Taliban are getting, especially from Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence Agency.  They even mention Iranian involvement on a scale not previously known.

The media seems to be learning the wrong lessons from these leaked documents.  Left-wing voices like the British newspaper, The Guardian, which received the classified documents early, have already published as much dirt as they could find about the US killing civilians.  And right-wing voices, like FOX editorial writers, already decry the leaking of the documents because it might cause Generals or soldiers to think twice before taking action.

But should they think twice?  The leaked documents paint a picture of a war gone terribly wrong.  Take a step back and they paint a picture of a military and a government seemingly incapable of learning from their mistakes.  If a soldier is about to bomb a building in a civilian area, perhaps he should think twice.  Stanley McChrystal thought so and made it a standing order before resigning.  He didn’t resign for making the wrong call, mind you, but rather telling it too honestly in the first place.  That is in stark contrast to the Taliban, mind you, who do not write after-action reports on their plots to specifically mass-murder civilians.

Misappropriating responsibility is the real danger.  The US is doing good in Afghanistan, and wants to do far more good than the Taliban ever does.  But we, as citizens of a democracy, have allowed our elected representatives to give our soldiers an impossible task.  That is our fault, not the soldiers’.  Instead of decrying our mistakes, we need to learn from them and then pressure our politicians toward going after the people who are causing us to lose – radical elements in the Pakistani military-intelligence complex and the Iranians.

This article was first published in the Michigan Daily on June 29th, 2010: http://michigandaily.com/content/viewpoint-questioning-israeli-american-relations

The streets in Washington, DC are organized alphabetically, numerically and by State name expanding outwards from the Capitol Building.  Streets running East-West start with A and continue onto Z.  Streets running North-South are numbered, 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd, etc.  Streets running diagonally through the city are named after states. For those familiar with Washington DC’s policy world, two streets stand out: K Street and Massachusetts Avenue.  On and around these two streets lie influential institutions that formulate many of the policies voiced by our elected officials.

So when one of these “think tanks” publishes a paper entitled, “Israel as a Strategic Liability?”, it causes a stir, especially when it is one as moderate and centrist as the Center for Strategic International Studies.  The fact that they are asking this question out loud implies that policymakers are asking it in private.

To be clear, the think tanks do not create policy so much as refine it. The Obama administration’s clashes with Benjamin Netanyahu over the issue of settlements created the space for a public discussion of Israel’s strategic value to the US.  Until then, our Presidents did not allow for daylight between US and Israel policies so policy analysts did not discuss alternatives to supporting Israel regardless of their actions.

One think tank now asking that question is the upstart J Street Lobby.  J Street is the one lettered street that does not exist in Washington, DC, and the group’s founders felt that was analogous to the absence of their pro-Israeli, pro-peace point of view from DC’s streets.  Their response to the Israeli commando-raid on a “Peace Flotilla” attempting to bring supplies to Gaza was that:

The blockade of Gaza hasn’t simply failed; it [has] undercut the goals it was meant to achieve: Hamas remains heavily armed and its hold on the Strip is as strong as ever, while the people of Gaza suffer – and they and the world blame not Hamas but Israel and the United States.

J Street’s constructive, thoughtful criticism of Israel stands in sharp contrast to discussions of the flotilla raid at UM.  In conversations on campus, the flotilla incident has driven otherwise-reasonable people toward extreme viewpoints. Worse, this debate has unproductively focused on the raid itself. Supporters of both Israel and Turkey would be better off concentrating on two closely-related questions. First, what is best for Israel and Turkey in the long run? Second, what is best for the Palestinian people?

Turkey will never achieve its stated objective of EU membership so long as it is perceived as trending toward and supporting Islamic radicalism, and stands to gain nothing from strained relations with the US. It will gain on both fronts by acting as an honest mediator of peace between Israel and Palestine by supporting Fatah, the Palestinian Authority and pro-Peace Israelis.

For Israel, the reaction to the Gaza flotilla is emblematic of the way that their hard-line approach to the Palestinians is poisoning the well of public opinion in the Middle East, which is driving a wedge between Israeli and US strategic interests.

Moreover, what is best for the Palestinian people is for Israel and Turkey to pursue peace. The immediate humanitarian crisis in Gaza is a symptom of the underlying problem, which is the conflict with Israel. Until peace is achieved Palestine’s other problems will never be solved.

Peace, then, is in everyone’s interest and US policy should shift to reflect that fact.  The US should no longer blindly support Israel when it engages in tactical blunders, such as the flotilla raid.  But Palestine’s supporters should also recognize that the Palestinians are not yet a viable negotiating partner and stunts like the “Peace Flotilla” only strengthen groups like Hamas at the expense of pro-peace groups like Fatah.  All debates about Israel and Palestine, whether they are in Michigan, DC or Jerusalem should be focused on how to create peace, not on publicity stunts.  A successful effort by groups like J Street to shift the discussion away from finger-pointing and toward the peace process would serve everyone’s strategic interests.

Jason Kerwin is a doctoral student in economics and holds an MA in international policy studies. Coauthor Sam King has a degree in Middle East regional studies and has spent time living and working in the Middle East. Together they direct the Positive Impact Institute, a non-partisan organization dedicated to finding policy solutions that lie in the unexploited common ground between left and right. They can be found online at www.positiveimpactinstitute.com.

This article was first published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, November 29, 2009

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20091129/OPINION03/911290325/Education-must-be-in-battle-plan

On a cold, Afghan winter night in February, 1989, the last of the Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan.  The West basked in its victory, leaving Afghanistan in triumph and turning its attention to the collapse of the USSR.  We forgot about the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, who made our victory possible.

Our indifference came back to haunt us on September 11, 2001.  Prompted by the worst terrorist atrocity in history, America returned to Afghanistan and swiftly routed Al Qaeda’s terrorist protectors, the Taliban.  Again we reveled in victory and shifted focus to Iraq, while the Taliban silently re-grouped in Western Pakistan.

These mistakes led us to today, when an American President faces the daunting decision of sending more soldiers to war.  Pundits from all sides assail him: more troops, fewer, escalation, withdraw.  But there is only one way to achieve victory, and it has been staring at us from behind a veil of oppression for 30 years. It is the liberation and education of the children of Central Asia, especially the girls, that will secure our victory and their futures.

First, America and its allies must demonstrate resolve.  We should coordinate major increases in our military and economic commitments to Afghanistan in tandem with a media campaign declaring our determination.  We should deploy the 40,000 troops, American or otherwise, requested by General McChrystal.  These troops should establish security for the civilian population and train a larger Afghan Army and police force.  They should be accompanied by more aid money and a “civilian surge” of advisors.  More important than the actual number of troops, this buildup will provide evidence that we are wholly committed to victory.

Proving we are in this fight to the end will give us the clout to address the endemic corruption that has hampered efforts to improve the lives of Afghanistan’s children.  We have already begun strengthening Afghanistan’s anti-corruption cops and pressuring Karzai to stop selling government jobs to his cronies.  International donors should use more inspectors general to establish better oversight of sub-contracting.  Money should be withheld from our warlord-cum-provincial governor allies who enrich themselves at the expense of their communities and given to honest officials.  We can shift the allegiance of moderate insurgents if we can give their daughters the same opportunities as those of well-connected government ministers.  This will allow us to focus on the hard core Taliban and Al Qaeda.

But everything started with Pakistan, so Pakistan must be part of the solution.  Pakistan’s government under Zia Ul-Haq radicalized Pakistani society.  His obsession with fighting the Soviets in religious terms legitimized Al Qaeda’s violent Jihadist rhetoric.  Pakistan’s obsession with battling India over Kashmir allowed its military to create the Jihadist groups who have now joined the Taliban.  The Pakistani government’s failure to provide education for its children allowed the Saudis to build the radical madrassas in West Pakistan that gave rise to the Taliban movement.

To beat the Taliban we must confront Pakistan’s anti-Americanism.  Fundamentally, the Pakistanis think we do not respect them or their grievances, like poor education.  Secretary Clinton boosted America’s image by challenging Pakistani students with the question “Why don’t the Pakistanis know where Bin Laden is?”  They appreciated her forthrightness.  Those students will also appreciate aid money addressing their real concerns, like the poor education in rural areas, especially of girls.  To protect our interests, that aid should be contingent on Pakistan’s military keeping pressure on the Taliban.  They will understand that.

And if we need a model of how to provide education to girls in Central Asia, we need look no further than Greg Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute.  In his best-seller Three Cups of Tea, Mortenson outlines his struggle to build schools for children, especially girls, in the face of the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan.  He provides the materials.  The communities provide free labor.  The sense of ownership this creates insures the schools’ protection.  The Taliban have not shut down a single Mortenson school.  That is why we at the Positive Impact Institute are launching a campaign to raise awareness about his NGO, the Central Asia Institute.

We must win in Afghanistan.  President Obama was right to take the time to formulate the best possible plan.  Now he must implement a strategy that shows the firmness of our resolve but also shifts the focus from war to addressing the region’s problems, especially in terms of education.  We owe it to the girls of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and President Obama owes it to the American people.

Samuel Wilder King II is a Punahou ’02 grad and holds a bachelors degree in Middle East Regional Studies from Georgetown University.  He served as a political consultant in Baghdad for 9 months in 2008 and is currently managing Adrienne King’s campaign for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor in Hawaii.  He is a registered Republican.

Jason Kerwin is a Punahou ’02 grad and holds bachelors and masters degrees in foreign policy from Stanford University. He is currently a first-year doctoral student in economics at the University of Michigan.  He is a registered Democrat.

Sam and Jason are the Directors of the Positive Impact Institute, which can be found online at www.positiveimpactinstitute.com.  If you would like to support their campaign to raise awareness about the Central Asia Institute visit www.positiveimpactinstitute.com/central-asia-project.

This article was first published in the Honolulu Advertiser on September 27th, 2009 http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/20090927/OPINION03/909270341/1108/OPINION02/Retiring-at-older-age-saves-Medicare

The year is 2080. Half of the entire American Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is dedicated to Social Security and Medicare, and interest on debt to finance those programs.  Then a financial crisis drives the US government bankrupt.  The government’s inability to fund Medicare and Social Security leaves millions of senior citizens with no means of support and no backup plans.  Without fundamental changes, this will be America’s future.  While health care reform is vital, President Obama and Congress are ignoring the critical point that even if health care costs go down Social Security and Medicare will still be unsustainable.

When Social Security began in 1935, someone who lived to 65 expected to live to 77.  Today, that person would live to 83.  Medicare was created in 1965 as part of Social Security legislation, so it used the same minimum age.  The Social Security retirement age has increased by just two years in the last seven decades, and Medicare still starts at age 65.

Source: Center for Disease Control and Prevention,

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr56/nvsr56_09.pdf

What makes this a problem is the huge number of people approaching retirement.  Baby Boomers did not have as many children as their parents, and their children had even fewer, so each year the number of workers supporting each person on benefits drops.

Source: US Census Bureau,

www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/country.php,

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Uspop.svg

The best option to keep these programs viable is to increase the eligibility age by one month for every three calendar months without increasing benefit payouts – starting now.  This is a simple solution that requires no new government bureaucracy.  We should continue this increase until the average person receives benefits for 12 years, just as they did in 1935.  Today, that would mean a retirement age of 76.  This will decrease costs and increase the number of people paying money into the system.  Since people live longer today, retirements should start later.  Doing it gradually allows people to adjust their retirement plans and prevents a sudden collapse of the US economy like the 2008 financial crisis.

The chart below, provided by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, shows that with current trends, spending on health care alone will ruin the country’s financial position in 70 years.  The red line represents projected government revenues as a percent of GDP (the total annual income of the entire country).  It outlines the future we described above – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will totally consume government revenues by 2080, and total government spending will be seven tenths of GDP.

whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/financial_pdf/08guide.pdf

One way to estimate the savings from pushing the retirement age back is to look at how much we would have saved if it were already higher.  Based on numbers provided by the Department of Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation, we calculate that an eligibility age of 76 would have saved Medicare about $80 billion in 2002 out of a total cost of around $230 billion.  A 2000 AARP study published in the Social Security Bulletin had similar results, estimating that increasing Medicare eligibility to 70 by 2040 would cut costs by $67.3 billion in that year. Our plan would have an eligibility age at 75 by 2040, yielding higher savings.

We also estimate that if Social Security’s retirement age were 76 today we would save approximately $280 billion in 2009, out of a total of $660 billion.  Moving the eligibility age upwards, so that it remains in line with life expectancy over time, reduces long-run Social Security costs by as much as 40% and Medicare costs by up to one-third.  It also increases the number of people in the workforce, further shoring up the system.  Poor seniors would still be covered by Medicaid; we could implement additional programs targeting the needy without a large impact on savings.

In the end raising the retirement age makes sense.  People live longer today, which is a wonderful thing.  In concert with other cost-control reforms currently being discussed, revising the retirement age upward will reduce the fiscal impact of Social Security and Medicare and help prevent their collapse.  Doing it slowly will allow people to adapt their retirement plans now rather then letting them count on a system that is guaranteed to fail.  Best of all, it is simple, cheap, and requires no additional government bureaucracy.

Samuel Wilder King II is a Punahou ’02 and Georgetown ’06 graduate. He served as a political consultant in Baghdad from March to December 2008 and is currently managing Adrienne King’s campaign for the Republican nomination for Lieutenant Governor in Hawaii. Sam’s blog can be found at thekinginstitute.blogspot.com. He is a registered Republican.

Jason Kerwin is a Punahou ’02 and Stanford ’06, MA ’07 graduate, and worked for the last two years as a researcher studying cost control in Medicare. He is currently a first-year doctoral student in economics at the University of Michigan. Links to Jason’s published research on Medicare can be found at http://positiveimpactinstitute.com/members/jason-kerwin. He is a registered Democrat.
Below is the list of people CC’ed on this article personally, so far:

1. President Obama
2. Speaker Pelosi
3. Senator Snowe
4. Senator Baucus
5. Senator Inouye
6. Senator Akaka
7. Speaker Gingrich
8. The Social Security Administration
9. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
10. Chairman Steele
11. Chairman Kaine
12. The Congressional Budget Office
13. The Government Accountability Office
14. The Treasury Department
15. American Association of Retired Persons
16. American Medical Association
17. Bill O’Reilly
18. Wolf Blitzer
19. Keith Olbermann
20. NPR
21. NYT
22. WSJ
23. The Economist
24. The Brookings Institute
    • Isabel V. Sawhill
    • Henry J. Aaron
    • John Bertko
    • Mark McClellan, MD, PhD
25. American Enterprise Institute
    • Joseph Antos, PhD
26. Harvard Medical School, Department of Economics
    • Michael E. Chernew, PhD
    • David Cutler, PhD
    • Greg Mankiw
27. RAND Corporation
    • Elizabeth A. McGlynn, PhD
    • Dana Goldman, PhD
28. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton Business School
    • Mark Pauly, PhD
29. University of California, Berkeley
    • Stephen Shortell, PhD
    • J. Bradford DeLong
30. Marginal Revolution
31. Matthew Yglesias
32. fivethirtyeight.com
33. The Huffington Post
34. The Becker-Posner Blog
35. The Grassroots Institute of Hawaii
36. Gilia Rethman’s Hump Day Report
37. The Hawaii Reporter