April 30, 2010
I resent films that are so shallow they rely entirely on their visual effects, and of course science fiction films are notorious for this. I've always felt that there's another way to do it: a lot of effort should be expended toward rendering the environment of the spaceship, or space travel, whatever the fantastic setting of your story should be–as convincingly as possible, but always in the background. That way the story and the characters emerge and they become more real.
- Ron Cobb, the conceptual artist behind Alien
I have finally seen Avatar ... nearly a year after the rest of the world. I did not see it in 3D: which allowed me to see the substance of it rather than be swept up in visual effects.
I nearly fell asleep during parts of it. I was not more tired than usual, maybe a little less than usual. The story simply did not engage me to the point that sleep would have been impossible.
Many reviewers mentioned a Message: some to celebrate it, others to reject it. I actually had difficulty seeing it. I saw good and evil defined in black-and-white terms, good being the integrated Navi and evil being the determination to break them by destroying everything they hold dear. Where it fell apart for me is that none of this ever reached mythic level, leaving me only with one-dimensional characters who were predictable, shallow, and boring. (The single exception -- almost -- was the near-Luciferian determination of the bad guy.) Whenever a Message is presented that way, it feels so awkward and forced that I often find myself much more intrigued by the opposite of what it is trying to say.
I did see emotion: extreme tragedy, extreme joy, extreme anger. There were no shadings. There were no mixed emotions. I could understand it, but the on-off switch was so extreme that it became unreal, an abstract thing to be watched rather than felt.
Eventually I finally found my attention engaged by, of all things, the battle tactics: not those of the Navi (which were effectively the same as ever), but those of the corporate side, forced into extremis. I did find it amusing that apparently the only way for Pandora to win was for it to learn to take sides: to take into itself the human ability to take sides and fight for a side.
(If this did not exist before -- and we are told it did not -- why do the Navi tribes understand and glorify the concept of warrior?)
The entire thing presented as a very simple plot which, really, was nothing but fighting and a simplistic overview of the reasons for fighting. It led, as such plots do, to the climactic battle. Apparently Avatar is based on a videogame? If so, I never heard of it before the film: yet the film so strongly follows a videogame outline that I found myself saying at times, "This feels like a videogame."
I saw almost no real sense of the world, neither Pandora nor the human side, and not Pandora's ecology and other world systems either. I saw many necessary biological niches, but nothing to fill them. Where Pandora is concerned, there is nothing shown that is not beautiful and even helpful to the Navi. The Navi are so clearly intended to master their world that all its creatures are allowed to retain their own individual will and personality only so long as they are not bound and dominated by one or another among the Navi.
The special effects were beautiful: but in 2D at least, I have seen many similar effects before. There were times when I had the distinct feeling that the effects were there at least in part to keep us from thinking about the story too much. In many places -- and this may have been more noticeable in 2D -- the shots had an unnecessarily deep field, clearly there specifically to provide a 3D "effect". I don't feel nearly as strongly about it as Ron Cobb, but then again I do not work in the field.
It makes a useful test to try to remember afterward (without looking it up) who actually acted in the film. Where the story and characters are memorable, the actors will be as well. Where the effects alone are memorable, only the director will be remembered. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were unknowns: but after Star Wars came out, everyone remembered them. In Avatar, everyone seems to remember James Cameron, and Cameron alone.
I do think that Avatar was worth seeing: once or twice. It will probably join the DVD collection as a 2D freebie add-on from someone else's 3D purchase.
- Ron Cobb, the conceptual artist behind Alien
I have finally seen Avatar ... nearly a year after the rest of the world. I did not see it in 3D: which allowed me to see the substance of it rather than be swept up in visual effects.
I nearly fell asleep during parts of it. I was not more tired than usual, maybe a little less than usual. The story simply did not engage me to the point that sleep would have been impossible.
Many reviewers mentioned a Message: some to celebrate it, others to reject it. I actually had difficulty seeing it. I saw good and evil defined in black-and-white terms, good being the integrated Navi and evil being the determination to break them by destroying everything they hold dear. Where it fell apart for me is that none of this ever reached mythic level, leaving me only with one-dimensional characters who were predictable, shallow, and boring. (The single exception -- almost -- was the near-Luciferian determination of the bad guy.) Whenever a Message is presented that way, it feels so awkward and forced that I often find myself much more intrigued by the opposite of what it is trying to say.
I did see emotion: extreme tragedy, extreme joy, extreme anger. There were no shadings. There were no mixed emotions. I could understand it, but the on-off switch was so extreme that it became unreal, an abstract thing to be watched rather than felt.
Eventually I finally found my attention engaged by, of all things, the battle tactics: not those of the Navi (which were effectively the same as ever), but those of the corporate side, forced into extremis. I did find it amusing that apparently the only way for Pandora to win was for it to learn to take sides: to take into itself the human ability to take sides and fight for a side.
(If this did not exist before -- and we are told it did not -- why do the Navi tribes understand and glorify the concept of warrior?)
The entire thing presented as a very simple plot which, really, was nothing but fighting and a simplistic overview of the reasons for fighting. It led, as such plots do, to the climactic battle. Apparently Avatar is based on a videogame? If so, I never heard of it before the film: yet the film so strongly follows a videogame outline that I found myself saying at times, "This feels like a videogame."
I saw almost no real sense of the world, neither Pandora nor the human side, and not Pandora's ecology and other world systems either. I saw many necessary biological niches, but nothing to fill them. Where Pandora is concerned, there is nothing shown that is not beautiful and even helpful to the Navi. The Navi are so clearly intended to master their world that all its creatures are allowed to retain their own individual will and personality only so long as they are not bound and dominated by one or another among the Navi.
The special effects were beautiful: but in 2D at least, I have seen many similar effects before. There were times when I had the distinct feeling that the effects were there at least in part to keep us from thinking about the story too much. In many places -- and this may have been more noticeable in 2D -- the shots had an unnecessarily deep field, clearly there specifically to provide a 3D "effect". I don't feel nearly as strongly about it as Ron Cobb, but then again I do not work in the field.
It makes a useful test to try to remember afterward (without looking it up) who actually acted in the film. Where the story and characters are memorable, the actors will be as well. Where the effects alone are memorable, only the director will be remembered. Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher were unknowns: but after Star Wars came out, everyone remembered them. In Avatar, everyone seems to remember James Cameron, and Cameron alone.
I do think that Avatar was worth seeing: once or twice. It will probably join the DVD collection as a 2D freebie add-on from someone else's 3D purchase.
April 29, 2010
With the simple replacement of polarised lenses for the old coloured lenses combined with modern CGI effects, 3-D films have finally left behind 1950s basement nostalgia and embraced modern blockbuster productions. DreamWorks Animation has already announced that all its future films will be released in 3-D.
It is only a matter of time before most other production studios follow DreamWorks' lead. Cinemas have always been the points of first release for films upon which the DVD tail absolutely depends. Sales of tickets for conventional 2-D films have been falling for years. In contrast, sales of tickets for 3-D films are rising: and will continue to rise until the economy improves and the cost of large-screen 3-D television becomes more affordable to the average technophile. (Small screen televisions won't be adequate even to approximate the cinema big-screen experience.) For the short-term foreseeable future, 3-D is where the money is.
Not that most 3-D productions are likely to make all that much money. The budget for Avatar was $237 million, the largest in history. To date, it has grossed $2.7 billion worldwide: a 1100% return on investment. Its exceptional marketing campaign enabled Avatar to make back 10% of its budget on its opening day, a tenth of that at midnight screenings alone.
Then again, the first film to successfully harness the latest gimmick has always had the profits edge. (Lasting substance is an entirely separate -- and probably profit-inverted -- question.) And let's not forget the surcharge effect, which indirectly accounted for as much as half of Avatar's earnings:
It is only a matter of time before most other production studios follow DreamWorks' lead. Cinemas have always been the points of first release for films upon which the DVD tail absolutely depends. Sales of tickets for conventional 2-D films have been falling for years. In contrast, sales of tickets for 3-D films are rising: and will continue to rise until the economy improves and the cost of large-screen 3-D television becomes more affordable to the average technophile. (Small screen televisions won't be adequate even to approximate the cinema big-screen experience.) For the short-term foreseeable future, 3-D is where the money is.
Not that most 3-D productions are likely to make all that much money. The budget for Avatar was $237 million, the largest in history. To date, it has grossed $2.7 billion worldwide: a 1100% return on investment. Its exceptional marketing campaign enabled Avatar to make back 10% of its budget on its opening day, a tenth of that at midnight screenings alone.
Then again, the first film to successfully harness the latest gimmick has always had the profits edge. (Lasting substance is an entirely separate -- and probably profit-inverted -- question.) And let's not forget the surcharge effect, which indirectly accounted for as much as half of Avatar's earnings:
In my review of Clash of the Titans, I added a footnote: "Explain to your kids that the movie was not filmed in 3-D and is only being shown in 3-D in order to charge you an extra $5 a ticket. I saw it in 2-D, and let me tell you, it looked terrific."For now, the profits chase has turned 3-D into the next big technological wave: but we have seen so many other technological waves crest and collapse. Many have not even survived long enough to be surpassed by true destructive technology. (Who still remembers the LaserDisc?) The real test of net profits will come over the next decade.
- Roger Ebert
April 28, 2010
When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war.
- General Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan
[Powerpoint is] dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.
- Brigadier General H. R. McMaster
- General Stanley A. McChrystal, leader of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan
[Powerpoint is] dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control. Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.
- Brigadier General H. R. McMaster
April 26, 2010
Volcanoes are notorious carbon emitters. Eyjafjöll has been releasing an average of 150,000 tonnes of CO2, each and every day during its peak eruptions. In the five April days of significant airline disruption, this comes out to 750,000 tonnes.
During the same period of time, the removal of so many jets from the skies has kept at least 1,300,000 tonnes, and perhaps as much as 2,800,000 tonnes, of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even so, it is only a drop in the bucket against the estimated 24 billion tons of CO2 humankind produces annually as a whole.
(The increased car and train load is negligible compared with the air traffic. Travel which is not quick and convenient to close and far corners of the world is not so lightly undertaken.)
The total annual estimated carbon release by all erupting volcanoes, everywhere in the world, from ocean bottom plate tectonics to ongoing lava events in Hawaii, is around 200 million tonnes. The equivalent extrapolation from disrupted European air traffic alone gives between 97.5 and 210 million tonnes. (That drop seems to have gotten a bit larger.)
Even termites can influence their environment. The Sahara Desert gives us evidence of our previous ability to alter our environment in drastic ways, even without the help of oil and coal technologies. Why are we so determined to see ourselves as utterly ineffective within the ecosphere of which we are a part?
During the same period of time, the removal of so many jets from the skies has kept at least 1,300,000 tonnes, and perhaps as much as 2,800,000 tonnes, of CO2 out of the atmosphere. Even so, it is only a drop in the bucket against the estimated 24 billion tons of CO2 humankind produces annually as a whole.
(The increased car and train load is negligible compared with the air traffic. Travel which is not quick and convenient to close and far corners of the world is not so lightly undertaken.)
The total annual estimated carbon release by all erupting volcanoes, everywhere in the world, from ocean bottom plate tectonics to ongoing lava events in Hawaii, is around 200 million tonnes. The equivalent extrapolation from disrupted European air traffic alone gives between 97.5 and 210 million tonnes. (That drop seems to have gotten a bit larger.)
Even termites can influence their environment. The Sahara Desert gives us evidence of our previous ability to alter our environment in drastic ways, even without the help of oil and coal technologies. Why are we so determined to see ourselves as utterly ineffective within the ecosphere of which we are a part?
April 24, 2010
The Eyjafjallajökull volcano has spawned its first videogame. At Volcanic Airways, the challenge is to successfully pilot an aircraft through an ash plume.
April 18, 2010
With the previous collapse of the banking system, the ongoing lawsuits over British money lost in Icelandic savings accounts, and the current eruption of Eyjafjöll (Eyjafjallajökull is the name of the glacier, not the volcano), Europe might be excused for starting to wonder if all good things come from Iceland.
It is a useful lesson in learning just how much in the way of convenience and travel we have started to take for granted. Kenya's fresh vegetable and flower industry is losing $3 million USD a day because of shipments its producers cannot make to Europe. Farmers in Iceland cannot graze their livestock in open fields, but cannot import hay. Farmers in Italy cannot ship their water buffalo mozzerella, and have no other use for its milk. From luxury to necessity, we have come to rely on our globalised networks. When they fail us, even in such a small part of the world: so strong is the worldwide domino effect that everything shudders to a halt.
All this, quite apart from the millions of passengers who suddenly found themselves stranded, many without enough money and with expiring visas; let alone the hundreds of millions of dollars lost by the collective airlines every day they continue to be grounded. (Maybe teleconferencing will finally get its real boost from these disruptions?)
So much of what is being disrupted now would have been done differently ten, twenty, thirty years ago. But even last week, with air travel so unrealistically cheap and so convenient: who thought twice about hopping across a country or two to meet friends for the weekend, or halfway around the world for a wedding?
The lesson had to come abruptly, without any warning, and be absolute. We would pay attention to nothing less. Lifeboat drills may be mandatory, but most ships' passengers don't attend them: even to the point that conecting transportation is often planned to bring in passengers after the drill is already over. We pay no attention to drills for events we never believe will happen.
Eyjafjöll may continue erupting for another week, or months, or as much as a year. The ash may continue to be the high-silica content most dangerous to jet engines, or become mostly steam, or increase its fluoride content until it poses an entirely different danger to surrounding lands. The jet stream may move the ash plume away from the N. America-Europe great circle route: in which case be certain that the airlines are going to seize the chance to fly as soon as physically possible (and perhaps sooner than is altogether safe). The ash may be swept into the stratosphere (and potentially lower our global temperature by half a degree or so), or it may become a lower-lying cloud and pose respiratory issues. Katla may erupt as well, as it has after every previous Eyjafjöll eruption: and then there will be different concerns.
This much is certain: we are going to learn to cope with events we cannot control. In some things, we may even have to learn to sacrifice convenience.
It is a useful lesson in learning just how much in the way of convenience and travel we have started to take for granted. Kenya's fresh vegetable and flower industry is losing $3 million USD a day because of shipments its producers cannot make to Europe. Farmers in Iceland cannot graze their livestock in open fields, but cannot import hay. Farmers in Italy cannot ship their water buffalo mozzerella, and have no other use for its milk. From luxury to necessity, we have come to rely on our globalised networks. When they fail us, even in such a small part of the world: so strong is the worldwide domino effect that everything shudders to a halt.
All this, quite apart from the millions of passengers who suddenly found themselves stranded, many without enough money and with expiring visas; let alone the hundreds of millions of dollars lost by the collective airlines every day they continue to be grounded. (Maybe teleconferencing will finally get its real boost from these disruptions?)
So much of what is being disrupted now would have been done differently ten, twenty, thirty years ago. But even last week, with air travel so unrealistically cheap and so convenient: who thought twice about hopping across a country or two to meet friends for the weekend, or halfway around the world for a wedding?
The lesson had to come abruptly, without any warning, and be absolute. We would pay attention to nothing less. Lifeboat drills may be mandatory, but most ships' passengers don't attend them: even to the point that conecting transportation is often planned to bring in passengers after the drill is already over. We pay no attention to drills for events we never believe will happen.
Eyjafjöll may continue erupting for another week, or months, or as much as a year. The ash may continue to be the high-silica content most dangerous to jet engines, or become mostly steam, or increase its fluoride content until it poses an entirely different danger to surrounding lands. The jet stream may move the ash plume away from the N. America-Europe great circle route: in which case be certain that the airlines are going to seize the chance to fly as soon as physically possible (and perhaps sooner than is altogether safe). The ash may be swept into the stratosphere (and potentially lower our global temperature by half a degree or so), or it may become a lower-lying cloud and pose respiratory issues. Katla may erupt as well, as it has after every previous Eyjafjöll eruption: and then there will be different concerns.
This much is certain: we are going to learn to cope with events we cannot control. In some things, we may even have to learn to sacrifice convenience.
April 16, 2010
Law is a secular approximation of morality. What shall be acceptable for society is legislated by the chosen leaders of that society, whose choices in turn are sanctioned by that society. (No matter the system of government, leaders who are not acceptable to those they lead do not remain leaders for long.)
Through law, morality becomes the province of government. While law exists at all, it cannot be otherwise. Whether law protects only property rights or broadly defines criminal actions, it still sketches out a codefied morality.
Yet morality is not the province of government alone. Every religion which has ever existed has been built upon a decree of morality. Even more so than the state, the morality of religion is based equally upon what is permitted and what is forbidden. And unlike government, which claims mortal human beings as its only authority: the morality of religion is based directly upon the perception of the divine, granted to human beings through rationality or revelation.
The original Lockean argument that government lacks authority in the realm of individual conscience becomes void as soon as the duties imposed by one clash with the restrictions imposed by the other. No matter how determined a wall between church and state, no matter whether the separation is intended to be friendly or hostile: where moralities differ in the slightest, religion and government will come into conflict.
The solution is simple. Either religion allows itself to be remade in a shape acceptable to the government, or the government allows itself to be remade in a shape acceptable to a dominant religion. Where this process is transparent, either the religion becomes the government, or the government becomes the religion. In any lesser form of co-existence, conflict will persist.
Through law, morality becomes the province of government. While law exists at all, it cannot be otherwise. Whether law protects only property rights or broadly defines criminal actions, it still sketches out a codefied morality.
Yet morality is not the province of government alone. Every religion which has ever existed has been built upon a decree of morality. Even more so than the state, the morality of religion is based equally upon what is permitted and what is forbidden. And unlike government, which claims mortal human beings as its only authority: the morality of religion is based directly upon the perception of the divine, granted to human beings through rationality or revelation.
The original Lockean argument that government lacks authority in the realm of individual conscience becomes void as soon as the duties imposed by one clash with the restrictions imposed by the other. No matter how determined a wall between church and state, no matter whether the separation is intended to be friendly or hostile: where moralities differ in the slightest, religion and government will come into conflict.
The solution is simple. Either religion allows itself to be remade in a shape acceptable to the government, or the government allows itself to be remade in a shape acceptable to a dominant religion. Where this process is transparent, either the religion becomes the government, or the government becomes the religion. In any lesser form of co-existence, conflict will persist.
April 08, 2010
April 07, 2010
We live in a 24/7 media world. With all the sanitised images flooding our airwaves, it is easy to start assuming that they are the whole picture. Sometimes we forget that what we are allowed to see is a very small percentage of the whole. Sometimes we forget that war is an ugly thing.
The two children inside the van were injured and were eventually evacuated to a local hospital, after initial attempts to evacuate them to a nearby United States military hospital were blocked by United States military command. The other unarmed civilians in the van were killed.
06:18:40 Crazyhorse [lead helicopter] notices a group of people on an open plaza.- newly leaked military video of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike which targeted and killed several civilians, including two Reuters news service staff, as originally posted on Wikileaks. Original footage from Noor-Eldeen's cameras was confiscated at the time, along with the cameras themselves. The video has been confirmed as authentic by a United States Defense official.
06:20:05 Crazyhorse: Have five to six individuals with AK47s. Request permission to engage.
06:20:32 Crazyhorse: Is that an RPG?
06:21:09 First shots fired at the group.
06:21:41 Helicopters cease fire.
06:22:02 Helicopters notice that Saeed Chmagh is injured and is crawling.
06:24:54 Crazyhorse: Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon.
06:25:26 Helicopters notice a mini-van arriving, attempting to help Saeed.
06:25:58 Crazyhorse: Roger. Break. Uh Crazyhorse One-Eight request permission to uh engage.
06:26:29 Bushmaster gives permission to engage. Proceed to open fire on the mini-van.
06:27:27 Helicopters cease fire.
06:31:53 Bradley fighting vehicle arrives on the scene, followed by ground personnel.
06:33:12 They discover two wounded children in the van.
06:35:14 Ground unit reports: I've got uh eleven Iraqi KIAs. One small child wounded. Over.
06:36:13 Roger. Ah damn. Oh well.
06:36:05 Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.
06:36:45 Humvee drives over Namir Noor-Eldeen's body.
06:43:06 Bradley fighting vehicle drives over a second body.
06:49:09 Video cuts.
06:50:00 1/8 CAV moves in to assist 2/6 after a report of Small Arms Fire (SAF) in the area. They fail to positively identify (PID) the attacker.
07:20:42 Helicopter reports that six individuals have entered a building. It appears to be either under construction or an abandoned construction site.
07:21:40 This is Bushmaster Six Romeo. Crazyhorse One Eight is going to be engaging north to south with Hellfire missiles over.
07:23:39 Hellfire missile is fired. Target hit.
07:25:27 There it goes! Look at that bitch go!
07:26:42 Roger, building destroyed. Engaged with three hellfire missiles.
The two children inside the van were injured and were eventually evacuated to a local hospital, after initial attempts to evacuate them to a nearby United States military hospital were blocked by United States military command. The other unarmed civilians in the van were killed.
April 06, 2010
In these days of 10-second sound bites, video clips, carefully managed marketing messages, and shortened attention spans, to take longer than a minute in asking any question or responding to it is usually public relations death. People lose interest. More crucially, the media loses interest.
And yet: no social issue can be adequately explained in a sound bite, no matter what the position. What results is usually a war of slogans. With anything more detailed dismissed as rhetoric, all sides become unwilling to delve deeper.
(At some point, it seems to have been forgotten that rhetoric is only the ability to communicate effectively using logic, emotion, and knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.)
In such a world, a broad, seventeen minute answer is almost unheard of. The following curious answer to an otherwise average question happened in North Carolina, toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at Celgard, an advanced battery technology manufacturer. Would it surprise anyone that many people seem to have stopped listening after the first paragraph?
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. We're honored to have you here today. I'm Doris Ravis from Lake Wylie, South Carolina. I work at Celgard. We have wonderful CEOs that take care of us and have really helped the company grow. My question is, though, in the economy times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care? Because it -- we are over-taxed as it is.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have. Here's the bottom line: Number one is that we are the only -- we have been up until last week the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance, and the vast majority of those folks work. It's just that they don't happen to work for a company that is either big enough or generous enough to provide them any coverage.
So that's point number one. There is a moral imperative that is important. Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation. See, those of us who have health care right now ask ourselves, well, is this something that should be a priority right now, but anybody here who lost their job and then COBRA ran out, or COBRA wasn't subsidized the way the Recovery Act made sure COBRA paid 65 percent of the cost of COBRA -- and if you had somebody at home who was sick, or you had a child who got sick, you'd suddenly say to yourself, well, now I see the need.
And so part of what we have to do is always say to ourselves, there but for the grace of God go I -- and have a basic safety net. So that's point number two.
Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you've got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it. Or when you get sick they try to find what they consider to be a preexisting condition that would justify them canceling your policy. Or there's some fine print in there where you've got a lifetime limit, and it turns out you thought you had coverage, but it turns out the coverage only goes up to a certain point and then afterwards you have to start paying out of pocket. And even after paying all those premiums, you're now in the hole for $100,000 or $200,000, and you're going bankrupt and you're losing your house.
And the final point is that the costs of health care -- setting aside anything we did in reform, I mean, if we just allowed the current trajectory to go on -- is out of control. I haven't talked to Bob about what his costs are looking like for Celgard employees, but I can tell you that health care costs have gone up, the price of health care has gone up three times faster than wages. So either the company is having to swallow those costs, which means that's less money that they could use for hiring new workers or investing in new plants and equipment, or they're passing on those costs to their employees in the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-payments.
And what's happening federally is, because the costs are so out of control, all the programs that we already have -- Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program -- all those things are completely out of control. So if you're concerned about the deficit, what you're really concerned about is the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other programs that are already in place.
So here's what we did. What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage. And the way we're going to do that is to say that most people individually shouldn't buy health insurance on their own because they have no leverage and the insurance companies take advantage of it. Instead what we're going to do is we're going to set up a big pool, a marketplace, that allows everybody to buy into this pool -- that members of Congress, by the way, will be a part of so you know it's going to be a good deal -- because members of Congress, they've got to look out for their own families; they wouldn't vote for it if it wasn't going to be a good deal. And just like Walmart is able to leverage a really good price from its suppliers for everything because they're such a big purchaser, well, this pool will be a big purchaser and it will be able to get a better deal from insurance companies.
So that's point number one. That will drive down the prices for people who are participating and it will allow everybody to get a decent deal on insurance. And what we do is we provide tax credits to people who still can't afford it so that they can afford it. That's point number one.
Point number two is we've got the strongest insurance reforms in history. So all those things I told you about -- you not being able to get insurance because of a preexisting condition; you finding yourself getting dropped even though you've been paying premiums for 15 years and suddenly they just decide, sorry, we don't want you because you're getting sick -- those policies will be over. And so you will be protected as a consumer to make sure you've got security and protection if you've got insurance already. That's the second thing we do.
The third thing we do is we actually put in place a whole bunch of mechanisms to start reducing the actual cost of health care. So, for example, one of the things that we do is to say we're going to start encouraging paying doctors not based on how many tests they take, but based on the quality of the outcome -- does somebody end up healthy.
And it turns out that a lot of times if you go to the doctor you get one test. Then you go -- referred to a specialist, you get another test. Then maybe you go to a third person, the surgeon, you get a third test -- it's all the same test but you're paying three times.
So what we're trying to say is, we'll pay you for the first test and then e-mail the test to everybody. Right? (Applause.) Or have all three doctors in the room when the test is being taken.
But that's an example of the kinds of things that save money and will start reducing costs over the long term. So what we've done is we've embedded in how Medicare reimburses, how Medicaid reimburses, all these ideas to actually reduce the costs of care.
So our hope is that over time, over the next three, four, five, six years, because of all these changes, that we've actually saved money from this, even though more people are covered.
And so now you'll hear the critics and the Republicans say, now, that just defies common sense. If you're adding 30 million more people, then it's got to cost more money. And you can't pretend like somehow that's going to help us on the deficit. I've heard this criticism, I understand it.
But let me give you an example. If you've got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it's raining and snowing through that roof and there are some people who are inside the rooms where the roof is okay and they're nice and warm, and then you got a few -- your family members in that room where there's a big hole in the roof and they're shivering, and they're cold -- if you repair the roof, that's going to cost some money. But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that's going out of the roof, you count all those savings, over time it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too. You're not the only one who's warm, right? That's essentially what we're trying to set up.
Now, last point I want to make. All those savings that we're anticipating, we don't even count those when it comes to making sure that this is deficit-neutral. Here are the two ways that we're paying for this thing: Number one, we are eliminating a whole bunch of waste, fraud, and insurance subsidies that were being paid out under Medicare that aren't making our seniors any healthier. I mean, you've got a pretty sweet deal for insurance companies right now in a program called Medicare Advantage where they get $18 billion a year paid to them to manage a Medicare program that about 80 percent of seniors are getting directly from the government, and it's working just fine. It's just a subsidy to them that doesn't make anybody healthier. So what we're saying is, well, let's eliminate the subsidy. So that's about how we pay for half of this thing.
The other half of it, it is true that we have identified some additional taxes that we think are fair. And let me describe, just to give you an example -- I don't think this will affect you, but I don't know -- I don't know your family's circumstances. Right now, if you're on salary, you get your salary from Celgard or any of the companies around here, you're paying your Medicare tax on all of that, right? You see it on your -- it's part of your FICA. But if you're Warren Buffett and you get most of your money from dividends and capital gains, you don't pay Medicare tax on that. You're eligible for it. You're going to get the same Medicare benefits as anybody else. But because your source of income is what's called unearned income -- capital gains and dividends -- you don't have to pay this.
Well, I'm thinking to myself how is it that the guy who is cleaning up the office is paying the Medicare tax and the guy who is making capital gains isn't? So what we said was, look, if you make more than $200,000, $250,000 a year, then that money that you make over $200,000, $250,000 a year that's unearned -- that's from capital gains and dividends -- you should have to pitch in to Medicare just like everybody else, because you're going to be using it like everybody else. So it's a concept of fairness. (Applause.)
Now, what the Congressional Budget Office has said -- I'm sorry, by the way, these questions sometimes are -- or these answers are long, but I want to make sure you guys -- that I'm really answering your question. I hope you feel like I really want to respect the importance of your question. What the Congressional Budget Office has said is that as a consequence of the savings from the waste and fraud, combined with the new revenue sources I just mentioned, that this thing is going to actually reduce our deficit by over a trillion dollars -- over a trillion dollars. We're actually saving money for the government -- because we closed the roof, the house is now insulated, it's warm. And by the way, in the meantime we've got a whole bunch of people who were left out in the cold who are now being taken care of.
That's the concept. But I know that for a lot of people, they've got a legitimate concern about, gosh, it just seems like government spending is out of control. I understand that. I feel that. But understand what happened: When I walked in, we already had a $1.3 trillion deficit. That's an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion. That's -- the day I got sworn in, before I did a thing, we had $8 trillion in accumulated debt from the war in Iraq -- not paid for; the prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D -- not paid for; Bush tax cuts -- not paid for.
So we already had all this debt that had just been piled up, but nobody had noticed because things were going kind of good. Just like a lot of folks didn't notice their credit card was going up or that their home equity loans were going up because when things are going good you tend not to notice.
So all that debt had already accumulated. We then had to spend $787 billion on the Recovery Act to do all the things -- unemployment insurance; COBRA; what's called FMAP, which is essentially helping states to keep their budgets afloat so that they didn't have to lay off teachers and cops and firefighters -- all of which if that had happened would have further depressed the economy and we would have recovered a lot later; the investments we're making in clean energy and things like Celgard to help spur economic growth.
So we had to spend that, but that's only a fraction of what our debt was. And in addition what happens is when the economy goes south, there are fewer tax revenues. And so you're putting more money out to help people with unemployment insurance and things like that, but you're getting less money in because folks are out of work and businesses aren't making money.
Bottom line is, we now have a significant debt that has to be paid down. That's why I'm freezing government spending. That's why we reinstated what's called pay-as-you-go. You can't start a program without paying for it. Our health care program is paid for.
But the big thing, if you're really worried about leaving debt to the next generation, which I know you are, the most important thing we're going to have to tackle is our health care costs, because Medicare is by far -- Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest things that are looming in the horizon in terms of what our debt is going to be. Nothing else comes close.
If this health care bill never existed, if I didn't do anything about it, we'd actually be a trillion dollars worse off over the long term. But even with the saving we're getting from health care, we're still going to have to do more. And if you don't believe that, go on our Web site -- The White House -- and you can look at how the federal budget works.
A lot of people think if you just eliminated foreign aid we could balance the budget, or if you just eliminated earmarks you could balance the budget. Earmarks -- pork projects, what everybody calls pork -- those account for about 1 percent of the budget, less than 1 percent. Foreign aid accounts for about 1.5 to 2 percent of the budget.
Most of the budget is Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, defense spending, and interest on the national debt. That accounts for about 70 percent of the budget. And so all this other stuff that sometimes we argue about, that's not the big stuff. We're going to have to tackle the big stuff if we're going to get our budget under control.
Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry. (Laughter.) But I hope everybody -- but I hope I answered your question. (Applause.)
And yet: no social issue can be adequately explained in a sound bite, no matter what the position. What results is usually a war of slogans. With anything more detailed dismissed as rhetoric, all sides become unwilling to delve deeper.
(At some point, it seems to have been forgotten that rhetoric is only the ability to communicate effectively using logic, emotion, and knowledge. Nothing less. Nothing more.)
In such a world, a broad, seventeen minute answer is almost unheard of. The following curious answer to an otherwise average question happened in North Carolina, toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at Celgard, an advanced battery technology manufacturer. Would it surprise anyone that many people seem to have stopped listening after the first paragraph?
Q. Thank you, Mr. President. We're honored to have you here today. I'm Doris Ravis from Lake Wylie, South Carolina. I work at Celgard. We have wonderful CEOs that take care of us and have really helped the company grow. My question is, though, in the economy times that we have now, is it a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care? Because it -- we are over-taxed as it is.
THE PRESIDENT: Well, let's talk about that, because this is an area where there's been just a whole lot of misinformation, and I'm going to have to work hard over the next several months to clean up a lot of the misapprehensions that people have. Here's the bottom line: Number one is that we are the only -- we have been up until last week the only advanced country that allows 50 million of its citizens to not have any health insurance, and the vast majority of those folks work. It's just that they don't happen to work for a company that is either big enough or generous enough to provide them any coverage.
So that's point number one. There is a moral imperative that is important. Number two, you don't know who might end up being in that situation. See, those of us who have health care right now ask ourselves, well, is this something that should be a priority right now, but anybody here who lost their job and then COBRA ran out, or COBRA wasn't subsidized the way the Recovery Act made sure COBRA paid 65 percent of the cost of COBRA -- and if you had somebody at home who was sick, or you had a child who got sick, you'd suddenly say to yourself, well, now I see the need.
And so part of what we have to do is always say to ourselves, there but for the grace of God go I -- and have a basic safety net. So that's point number two.
Point number three is that the way insurance companies have been operating, even if you've got health insurance you don't always know what you've got, because what has been increasingly the practice is that if you're not lucky enough to work for a big company that is a big pool, that essentially is almost a self-insurer, then what's happening is, is you're going out on the marketplace, you may be buying insurance, you think you're covered, but then when you get sick they decide to drop the insurance right when you need it. Or when you get sick they try to find what they consider to be a preexisting condition that would justify them canceling your policy. Or there's some fine print in there where you've got a lifetime limit, and it turns out you thought you had coverage, but it turns out the coverage only goes up to a certain point and then afterwards you have to start paying out of pocket. And even after paying all those premiums, you're now in the hole for $100,000 or $200,000, and you're going bankrupt and you're losing your house.
And the final point is that the costs of health care -- setting aside anything we did in reform, I mean, if we just allowed the current trajectory to go on -- is out of control. I haven't talked to Bob about what his costs are looking like for Celgard employees, but I can tell you that health care costs have gone up, the price of health care has gone up three times faster than wages. So either the company is having to swallow those costs, which means that's less money that they could use for hiring new workers or investing in new plants and equipment, or they're passing on those costs to their employees in the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher co-payments.
And what's happening federally is, because the costs are so out of control, all the programs that we already have -- Medicare, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program -- all those things are completely out of control. So if you're concerned about the deficit, what you're really concerned about is the cost of Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other programs that are already in place.
So here's what we did. What we said is, number one, we'll have the basic principle that everybody gets coverage. And the way we're going to do that is to say that most people individually shouldn't buy health insurance on their own because they have no leverage and the insurance companies take advantage of it. Instead what we're going to do is we're going to set up a big pool, a marketplace, that allows everybody to buy into this pool -- that members of Congress, by the way, will be a part of so you know it's going to be a good deal -- because members of Congress, they've got to look out for their own families; they wouldn't vote for it if it wasn't going to be a good deal. And just like Walmart is able to leverage a really good price from its suppliers for everything because they're such a big purchaser, well, this pool will be a big purchaser and it will be able to get a better deal from insurance companies.
So that's point number one. That will drive down the prices for people who are participating and it will allow everybody to get a decent deal on insurance. And what we do is we provide tax credits to people who still can't afford it so that they can afford it. That's point number one.
Point number two is we've got the strongest insurance reforms in history. So all those things I told you about -- you not being able to get insurance because of a preexisting condition; you finding yourself getting dropped even though you've been paying premiums for 15 years and suddenly they just decide, sorry, we don't want you because you're getting sick -- those policies will be over. And so you will be protected as a consumer to make sure you've got security and protection if you've got insurance already. That's the second thing we do.
The third thing we do is we actually put in place a whole bunch of mechanisms to start reducing the actual cost of health care. So, for example, one of the things that we do is to say we're going to start encouraging paying doctors not based on how many tests they take, but based on the quality of the outcome -- does somebody end up healthy.
And it turns out that a lot of times if you go to the doctor you get one test. Then you go -- referred to a specialist, you get another test. Then maybe you go to a third person, the surgeon, you get a third test -- it's all the same test but you're paying three times.
So what we're trying to say is, we'll pay you for the first test and then e-mail the test to everybody. Right? (Applause.) Or have all three doctors in the room when the test is being taken.
But that's an example of the kinds of things that save money and will start reducing costs over the long term. So what we've done is we've embedded in how Medicare reimburses, how Medicaid reimburses, all these ideas to actually reduce the costs of care.
So our hope is that over time, over the next three, four, five, six years, because of all these changes, that we've actually saved money from this, even though more people are covered.
And so now you'll hear the critics and the Republicans say, now, that just defies common sense. If you're adding 30 million more people, then it's got to cost more money. And you can't pretend like somehow that's going to help us on the deficit. I've heard this criticism, I understand it.
But let me give you an example. If you've got a house and you’ve got a big hole in your roof, and it's raining and snowing through that roof and there are some people who are inside the rooms where the roof is okay and they're nice and warm, and then you got a few -- your family members in that room where there's a big hole in the roof and they're shivering, and they're cold -- if you repair the roof, that's going to cost some money. But if all the water damage from your floors and all the heat that's going out of the roof, you count all those savings, over time it may turn out that it actually is saving you money and, by the way, all those family members now are warm, too. You're not the only one who's warm, right? That's essentially what we're trying to set up.
Now, last point I want to make. All those savings that we're anticipating, we don't even count those when it comes to making sure that this is deficit-neutral. Here are the two ways that we're paying for this thing: Number one, we are eliminating a whole bunch of waste, fraud, and insurance subsidies that were being paid out under Medicare that aren't making our seniors any healthier. I mean, you've got a pretty sweet deal for insurance companies right now in a program called Medicare Advantage where they get $18 billion a year paid to them to manage a Medicare program that about 80 percent of seniors are getting directly from the government, and it's working just fine. It's just a subsidy to them that doesn't make anybody healthier. So what we're saying is, well, let's eliminate the subsidy. So that's about how we pay for half of this thing.
The other half of it, it is true that we have identified some additional taxes that we think are fair. And let me describe, just to give you an example -- I don't think this will affect you, but I don't know -- I don't know your family's circumstances. Right now, if you're on salary, you get your salary from Celgard or any of the companies around here, you're paying your Medicare tax on all of that, right? You see it on your -- it's part of your FICA. But if you're Warren Buffett and you get most of your money from dividends and capital gains, you don't pay Medicare tax on that. You're eligible for it. You're going to get the same Medicare benefits as anybody else. But because your source of income is what's called unearned income -- capital gains and dividends -- you don't have to pay this.
Well, I'm thinking to myself how is it that the guy who is cleaning up the office is paying the Medicare tax and the guy who is making capital gains isn't? So what we said was, look, if you make more than $200,000, $250,000 a year, then that money that you make over $200,000, $250,000 a year that's unearned -- that's from capital gains and dividends -- you should have to pitch in to Medicare just like everybody else, because you're going to be using it like everybody else. So it's a concept of fairness. (Applause.)
Now, what the Congressional Budget Office has said -- I'm sorry, by the way, these questions sometimes are -- or these answers are long, but I want to make sure you guys -- that I'm really answering your question. I hope you feel like I really want to respect the importance of your question. What the Congressional Budget Office has said is that as a consequence of the savings from the waste and fraud, combined with the new revenue sources I just mentioned, that this thing is going to actually reduce our deficit by over a trillion dollars -- over a trillion dollars. We're actually saving money for the government -- because we closed the roof, the house is now insulated, it's warm. And by the way, in the meantime we've got a whole bunch of people who were left out in the cold who are now being taken care of.
That's the concept. But I know that for a lot of people, they've got a legitimate concern about, gosh, it just seems like government spending is out of control. I understand that. I feel that. But understand what happened: When I walked in, we already had a $1.3 trillion deficit. That's an annual deficit of $1.3 trillion. That's -- the day I got sworn in, before I did a thing, we had $8 trillion in accumulated debt from the war in Iraq -- not paid for; the prescription drug plan, Medicare Part D -- not paid for; Bush tax cuts -- not paid for.
So we already had all this debt that had just been piled up, but nobody had noticed because things were going kind of good. Just like a lot of folks didn't notice their credit card was going up or that their home equity loans were going up because when things are going good you tend not to notice.
So all that debt had already accumulated. We then had to spend $787 billion on the Recovery Act to do all the things -- unemployment insurance; COBRA; what's called FMAP, which is essentially helping states to keep their budgets afloat so that they didn't have to lay off teachers and cops and firefighters -- all of which if that had happened would have further depressed the economy and we would have recovered a lot later; the investments we're making in clean energy and things like Celgard to help spur economic growth.
So we had to spend that, but that's only a fraction of what our debt was. And in addition what happens is when the economy goes south, there are fewer tax revenues. And so you're putting more money out to help people with unemployment insurance and things like that, but you're getting less money in because folks are out of work and businesses aren't making money.
Bottom line is, we now have a significant debt that has to be paid down. That's why I'm freezing government spending. That's why we reinstated what's called pay-as-you-go. You can't start a program without paying for it. Our health care program is paid for.
But the big thing, if you're really worried about leaving debt to the next generation, which I know you are, the most important thing we're going to have to tackle is our health care costs, because Medicare is by far -- Medicare and Medicaid are the biggest things that are looming in the horizon in terms of what our debt is going to be. Nothing else comes close.
If this health care bill never existed, if I didn't do anything about it, we'd actually be a trillion dollars worse off over the long term. But even with the saving we're getting from health care, we're still going to have to do more. And if you don't believe that, go on our Web site -- The White House -- and you can look at how the federal budget works.
A lot of people think if you just eliminated foreign aid we could balance the budget, or if you just eliminated earmarks you could balance the budget. Earmarks -- pork projects, what everybody calls pork -- those account for about 1 percent of the budget, less than 1 percent. Foreign aid accounts for about 1.5 to 2 percent of the budget.
Most of the budget is Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, defense spending, and interest on the national debt. That accounts for about 70 percent of the budget. And so all this other stuff that sometimes we argue about, that's not the big stuff. We're going to have to tackle the big stuff if we're going to get our budget under control.
Boy, that was a long answer. I'm sorry. (Laughter.) But I hope everybody -- but I hope I answered your question. (Applause.)
