ArticleIP_20076.txt

   
   
      
         
            

            
               Judge Me by My
Actions
            

            I write to you about the comments by Paul Krugman
in a to a recent column of his in this magazine ("Don't Blame It on Rio ... Or
Brasilia Either"). In it, Krugman states that during the week prior to my being
offered the central bank presidency by President Cardoso, I "was negotiating
with the government" and that meant I knew nothing bad was going to happen to
Brazil. At the same time, he goes, Soros was "buying up large quantities of
Brazilian debt at deep discounts."

            Paul Krugman is a great economist, perhaps the best
in his generation. As a journalist, however, he was careless, and I happened to
be his unlucky victim. His accusation is false. He did not bother checking with
me. I did meet with senior government officials that Wednesday (Jan. 27), but I
was not offered any government job, not the least the central bank presidency.
I did not have access to any privileged information either. As it turned out,
Friday was a chaotic day in the markets, and on Sunday I did get the
invitation, which I was honored to accept. These are the facts.

            Since then, Krugman has
written two notes on the episode, both available on his Web site. In them he
states that he does not believe that I am corrupt (thanks, but in my worst
nightmares I never dreamed my name and the word corruption would appear on the
same page) and that he did not treat me unfairly. I beg to disagree. Whether
Krugman thinks it is right or wrong for someone with market experience to take
a government post is immaterial. People should be judged by their actions and
their record, not by labels of any kind, not by rumors.

            

               --Arminio Fraga
            

            

               Commentary
            

            I suppose you think you
are being iconoclastic by publishing Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter's nasty
musings on King Hussein on the day of his funeral (see ""). You are wrong. It
is never iconoclastic or even interesting to read the predictable
chauvinism-driven propaganda of hacks: The Israelis (the right-wing ones,
anyway) are always right. The Arabs are always wrong. It is so very tired. Too
bad that the kind of thinking these two represent has led to so many dead
(Israelis and Arabs) over the past 50 years.

            
               --M.J.
Rosenberg
            

            Chevy
Chase, Md.

            
               And
Dissent
            

            Why are you subjecting your loyal and (usually)
enthusiastic readership to the reactionary, bigoted, and sexist drivel of Midge
Decter and Norman Podhoretz in ? We don't subscribe to 
                  Slate
                in
order to expose ourselves to the ramblings of Anita Bryant's spiritual
parents.

            While Podhoretz may be correct in his opinion of Al
Sharpton, his comments regarding Sharpton and Jesse Jackson possess a thinly
disguised undertone of racism: As he castigates "white liberals" for assuming
that "Negroes" could do no wrong, his discussion of Sharpton's actions seem to
say, "Well, what can you expect? We told those white liberals years ago that
you couldn't expect more from Negroes." Podhoretz implies that Sharpton's
behavior is both representative of and entirely in keeping with the "character"
of African-Americans in general.

            Of Decter's comments, the less said the better.
While we may deplore that sex has become the dominating factor in many young
people's lives, the goal should be to expand and emphasize the nonsexual means
of personal expression ("liberation") available to them, not to return to the
repressive and contaminating moral hypocrisies of a previous age.

            The best thing that may
be said of Podhoretz and Decter is that their biological clocks can't have many
more minutes left on them. And that the editors of 
                  Slate
                will
never see fit to subject their readership to them again.

            
               --Christopher
Milazzo
            

            
Albuquerque, N.M.

            
               Straight
Shooter
            

            In his "," Jonathan Chait says it's misleading to
focus on the ratio of tax revenues to GDP. Why? Because the boom in stock
prices has led to a big jump in federal tax receipts but isn't counted as an
addition to GDP. But why should it be? The price of a stock reflects the
present value of expected future earnings; these earnings will be counted as
income when--and if--they're achieved. It would surely be silly to count the
expected earnings implicit in the stock price of Amazon.com as income earned
today.

            Chait also errs when he
criticizes the Tax Foundation. The group, he says, "assumes that the average
taxpayer pays an average share of estate and capital gains taxes, which is
absurd." In fact, it isn't absurd at all. The median or modal taxpayer may not
pay the average, but the average one obviously does.

            
               --Ira Carnahan
            

            
Washington

            

               Taxonomy
            

            Jonathan Chait may be correct that 40 percent of
income does not go to the federal government, but he is wrong if he
thinks that we don't pay around that in taxes overall. Does he include the
Social Security and Medicare "non-taxes" in his calculations of tax burdens?
State, local, sales, property, and gasoline taxes? Does he count the other 7.5
percent of one's salary that goes to Uncle Sam in his tax burden number?

            Back of the envelope, it seems that every working
American pays a flat 15 percent of salary, plus around 5 percent to 10 percent
in state and sales taxes on every dollar earned or spent, respectively, plus
some unknown amount in property taxes (and renters get screwed the most here,
since rent of course includes prorated property tax pass-throughs), plus
gasoline taxes, plus some special local taxes (such as D.C.'s extra taxes on
restaurant meals, liquor, and other "sin" taxes). All told this seems to add up
to a total tax burden for a typical family of nearly 40 percent.

            The typical American pays a greater percentage of
total income to taxes than the rich who would have to pay estate or capital
gains taxes. This is true because the vast majority of tax revenue that is
collected in the United States is regressive: sales taxes, property taxes
(which are passed on to renters, so paid by everyone), Social Security, etc.
And poorer people are more likely to spend money on things like cigarettes,
alcohol, and so on, making their total percentage tax burden even larger.
Finally, Social Security tops out at around $70,000, making it a smaller
percentage tax burden for the rich than the poor.

            Perhaps Chait and his
buddies should donate more to the government.

            
               --Eric M.
Eisenstein
            

            
Philadelphia 

            
               Notes on
Groove
            

            Almost everything Cullen Murphy states about the
word "groovy" in "" is accurate, except for its original meaning. Jazz
musicians did indeed use the term to indicate being "in the zone," but it
didn't necessarily refer to the grooves of a record. It referred more to the
sense of swing derived from the rhythmic variation in their playing of eighth
notes. While classical performers tended to interpret their eighth notes
strictly and evenly, jazz musicians provided a little bounce in theirs, a
slightly uneven distribution of rhythm achieved by placing them slightly behind
the beat, and/or by making the first eighth note slightly longer than the
second. This heightened the sense of groove, by playing against the beat rather
than on top of it. Musicians often refer to a great rhythm section with terms
like "grooving," "popping," and "killing."

            All great jazz musicians
have an original approach to playing eighth notes, from Louis Armstrong to
Coleman Hawkins to Lester Young to Charlie Parker to Bill Evans to Miles Davis
and on and on. They all play eighth notes in a unique way. They all have their
own "grooves." Jazz musicians also experimented with several mood-altering
substances, and this also plays into a sense of "feeling groovy."

            
               --Andre White
            

            Montreal, Canada