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NPR has been running a series by John Ydstie on Social Security reform all week. On Friday they had questions from listeners.

In response to a question about fixing the system by lifting the cap on Social Security taxes, Kent Smetters, an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who worked on President Bush’s Social Security commission made the claim that doing that would have a major impact on small businesses which supply the majority of jobs in the US.

I have no idea what experience he has had in the small business sector, or even how he defines it, but as a small business owner let me enlighten Kent: raising the cap wouldn’t even be noticed.

For a small business owner a forty-hour week is a vacation, because you never get an actual vacation. You are the last person paid and the first to take a cut. You don’t take any more out of the business than is absolutely necessary to pay your personal expenses. Your business is the be all, end all of your existence, your asset, your retirement plan, everything. If a small business owner is able to take a salary above $100,000/year, he or she is getting ready to sell the business.

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CNN has a story about attempts to calm relations between Iran and the US at the Davos meetings.

Someone set up a meal that was typical of most business conferences I have ever been to: i.e. pretty much one problem after another.

Apparently someone forgot that the Iranians would probably be observant Muslims and not the usual convention goers. They had invited a cartoonist to be on a panel at the meal. Senator Joe Biden got lost and was over an hour late.

This isn’t going to work. No one trusts the US. If we had a new Secretary of State that wasn’t associated the Iraq War, some might have given Bush the benefit of the doubt, which was yet another reason that Condoleeza Rice should not have been confirmed.

Saddam Hussein complied with the UN resolutions and disarmed. Everyone knows this now, because the US has spent months and millions looking for weapons of mass destruction and came up empty. Iraq followed the rules and was still invaded. This tells North Korea, Iran, and others, that there is no safety to be bought by disarming; only weapons can provide any protection from aggression.

This is what unilateral, pre-emptive wars bring when the reason for the war is false. We are less safe, have no international credibility, and have lost a major tool in increasing our security.

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It didn’t register last week when The Modulator left me a comment about adding me to the Friday Ark.

Thanks to Kat at Lab Kat I can repair the damage. She was added this week.

The Friday Ark is a wide ranging Friday Creature Blogaround, for all those interested.

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