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By Steve Levy
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved ...
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About this blog: I grew up in Los Angeles and moved to the area in 1963 when I started graduate school at Stanford. Nancy and I were married in 1977 and we lived for nearly 30 years in the Duveneck school area. Our children went to Paly. We moved downtown in 2006 and enjoy being able to walk to activities. I do not drive and being downtown where I work and close to the CalTrain station and downtown amenities makes my life more independent. I have worked all my life as an economist focusing on the California economy. My work centers around two main activities. The first is helping regional planning agencies such as ABAG understand their long-term growth outlook. I do this for several regional planning agencies in northern, southern and central coast California. My other main activity is studying workforce trends and policy implications both as a professional and as a volunteer member of the NOVA (Silicon Valley) and state workforce boards. The title of the blog is Invest and Innovate and that is what I believe is the imperative for our local area, region, state and nation. That includes investing in people, in infrastructure and in making our communities great places to live and work. I served on the recent Palo Alto Infrastructure Commission. I also believe that our local and state economy benefits from being a welcoming community, which mostly we are a leader in, for people of all religions, sexual preferences and places of birth.
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Meeting the Federal Deficit Challenge
Uploaded: Apr 9, 2011
Last night we met the small dollar and ideologically charged challenge of passing a federal budget for the 2010-11 budget year.
Now Americans face the challenge of meeting the tougher big dollar challenges of preventing high deficits and surging interest costs over the next two decades.
Two-thirds of the federal budget is in five categoies--Social Security and defense at aorund $750 billion, Medicare at $500 billion and Medicaid at $300 billion and interest at $200 billion.
Virtually ALL of the growth in the budget and projected deficits over the next decade are in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest. As the deficits persist, for example, interest payments surge from $200 billion to $900 billion.
Who favors having higher income residents contribute to reducing the deficit through a) raising the tax base that supports Social Security as we have for Medicare, b) increasing payments by higher income residents for part B Medicare benefits--a practice already started under George Bush, c) resinstating the reductions in exemption and dedcutions recently ended for 2010-12 and d) perhaps reducing benefits under Social Security and Medicare for higher income recipients?
As a lcoal example, who favors pension reform that makes the largest benefit reductions go for future higher income retirees as opposed to across the board benefit cuts?
Both of these approaches seem reasonable to me along with many other changes that will have to be made to balance future budgets.
Community.
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