Washington's Backward Retirement Policy: So Wrong, and Yet So Easy to Fix

Reuters

In his 1998 State of the Union Address, facing the prospect of budget surpluses for the first time in decades, President Bill Clinton had a simple plan: "Save Social Security first." He wanted to dedicate future budget surpluses to the Social Security trust funds, pushing back for decades the day when it would run out of money. In 2000, presidential nominee Al Gore took up the refrain with a memorable, and occasionally mocked metaphor: the "lockbox."

Well, that didn't happen! . The latest projection by the Social Security Board of Trustees is that the trust funds will be exhausted in 2033. At that point, payouts will be limited to the amount brought in by payroll taxes--which means that everyone's benefits will fall by about 25 percent.

This looming threat is often cited as a reason why we need to "reform" Social Security, which is code for cutting benefits. Most recently, President Barack Obama proposed changing the calculation of cost-of-living adjustments, which amounts to a progressively larger benefit cut as you get older. The problem, however, is that Social Security is the only significant source of income for many older Americans, and its net benefits are falling anyway due to increasing taxes and higher Medicare premiums (which are deducted from Social Security).

!

Against this backdrop, it's a mistake to look at Social Se! curity in isolation. We have to look at our overall retirement security "policy." And when we do that, it's obvious that we're throwing billions of dollars away.

That money is being wasted on tax subsidies for "private" retirement accounts such as 401(k)s and IRAs. In 2012, these subsidies added up to $199 billion, or about 1.3 percent of GDP. (See Toder, Harris, and Lim, Table 5.) The motivation to protect these accounts isn't totally crazy. Since we want people to save for retirement, we offer tax breaks for doing so.

More Tax Breaks, But Not More Savings
There are two major problems with these subsidies.

The first is that they go overwhelmingly to people who don't need them -- like my wife and me. As two university professors living in Western Massachusetts, where the cost of living is low, we make more than we need to support our lifestyle. We max out ! our defined contribution plans every year, and because we're in a relatively high tax bracket (28%, I think), we save thousands of dollars a year on our taxes. This is the problem with most subsidies that are delivered as tax deductions. Their cash value depends on the amount you can deduct and on your marginal tax rate. In this case, fully 80 percent of retirement savings tax subsidies goes to households in the top income quintile. (See Toder, Harris, and Lim, Table 5.)

The second problem is that these tax incentives don't work. They don't cause people to save more. In my case, the amount we save is just our income minus our consumption, and our consumption isn't affected by the tax code. If there were no tax subsidy, we would save the same amount and just pay more in taxes. And it's not just us. A recent and widely discussed paper by Raj Chetty, John Friedman, Soren Leth-Petersen, Torben Heien Nielsen,! and Tore Olsen looked at what happened when the Danish government ! reduced tax subsidies for retirement savings by rich people. The short answer is that decreases in retirement savings were almost perfectly matched by increases in non-retirement savings. The overall effect, they estimate, is that for every dollar in tax subsidies, total savings go up by one cent. The other ninety-nine cents is just a handout to people who would have saved anyway.

In White House Burning, we did not propose eliminating these tax subsidies because we did not want to remove incentives for people to save more. Since it turns out that those incentives don't work, I now say, get rid of them.

The Right Retirement Policy
The single most important step we can take toward improving retirement security for all Americans is eliminating tax preferences for private retirement accounts and earmarking the resulting tax revenue for the Social Security trust funds. There would have to be some transi! tion period for existing defined benefit pension plans, but once phased in, this would increase tax revenues by about 1.3 percent of GDP.

That is almost double the 75-year gap in Social Security's finances, which the CBO estimates at 0.7 percent of GDP.* This means that we could ensure the program's solvency for generations to come and still have money left over. Those additional revenues could be used to expand Social Security benefits through a guaranteed, fixed pension, as recommended by Michael Lind, Joshua Freeman, and Steven Hill of the New America Foundation. Or we could grandfather in employer-sponsored defined benefit plans, if we think those are preferable to defined-contribution plans. Or we could maintain savings incentives for lower- and middle-income workers, for example by providing a 15 percent refundable tax credit for c! ontributions to retirement accounts up to $5,000 per year and phasing i! t out around the 60th income percentile.** Or we could pay down the national debt.

All of these options are preferable to what we're doing today: handing out free money to people who would save plenty for retirement anyway. Furthermore, bolstering the Social Security trust funds would eliminate--at least for most of our lifetimes--the argument that we have to cut benefits because we can't afford them.

We do have the money. It's just going to the wrong people.

______________________

* Last year, the CBO estimated the 75-year gap in Social Security's finances at 0.7 percent of GDP in its extended baseline scenario, which conforms to current tax law. (The alternative scenario adds the arbitrary assumption that payroll taxes will be capped as a percentage of GDP, resulting in a 75-year gap of 0.9 percent of GDP.)

** Currently, the three bottom income quintiles only enjoy about 7 percent of the retirement savings tax ! subsidies, or about 0.1 percent of GDP. So if we want to preserve 401(k) plans for people who really need them, we can certainly afford it.

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The Increasingly Egalitarian Nudity on Game of Thrones_

HBO

Every week for the third season of HBO's fantasy series Game of Thrones, our roundtable of Ross Douthat (columnist, The New York Times), Spencer Kornhaber (entertainment editor, TheAtlantic.com), and Christopher Orr (senior editor and film critic, The Atlantic) will discuss the latest happenings in Westeros.

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On Game of Thrones, Two Savage, Spectacular Game Changers

Orr: Ygritte, light of my life, fire of my....

Where was I? Oh yes, Episode 5, "Kissed by Fire."

A couple of recaps ago, Ross noted that he would "respect Game of Thrones' sex scenes more if the leads were disrobing as often as the extras, or if the men were exposed half as often as the women." Well, the promise of that increased respect seems to have been more than showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss could resist. (Alas, Ross is out of pocket this week and will have to forego any victory lap.) Forget the prostitute extras of episodes past: This week featured back-to-back hot tubbing by Jon and Ygritte and Brienne and Jaime, with an added dose of dude-ity (and ill-considered pillow talk) from Ser Loras and a new acquaintance. In all, the cast shed their threads almost as often as the performers in a 1970s production of Hair.

And who can blame them? The storylines in which characters declined to disrobe had an unpleasant tendency to resolve themselves in murder, execution, compelled marriage, and, in one case, a (temporarily) fatal instance of bisection by sword.

It was, in short, an episode crammed with developments almost across the board. While there were no appearances by Theon, Sam, or Bran, and the Mystery of Pod's Penis remained unresolved, pretty much every other character on the show was nudged forward along his or her narrative arc: Beric Dondarrion revealed the secret of his mortal persistence (and in so doing complicated our assessment of the Red God); Jon Snow and Ygritte found the one spot north of the wall where it was warm enough for them to take the next step; Rickard Karstark lost his head, figuratively and then literally; Tyrion and Lady Olenna bartered over who would pick up the tab for the royal wedding (her lines, "I was told you were drunk, impertinent and thoroughly debauched. You can imagine my disappointment at finding nothing but a browbeaten bookkeeper," may have been my favorite of the episode); we met Stannis's fanatical wife, afflicted daughter, and—I assume—stillborn sons (a gruesome detail not in the books); Jaime revealed the mitigating circumstances under which he earned the title Kingslayer; Sers Jorah Mormont and Barristan Selmy continued to take one another's measure while Danaerys promoted one of the Unsullied; Arya bade farewell to Gendry; the Onion Knight got a reading lesson; and the quiet plotting and counter-plotting between Lannisters and Tyrells in King's Landing took another matrimonial turn. In addition, there were doubtless a few other twists that I missed while I was trying to work out the cramps in my note-taking hand.

Indeed, if I have a complaint with the otherwise excellent "Kissed by Fire," it's that it squeezed in too much, such that a few key moments were given too little space to breathe. Take the resurrection of Beric Dondarrion: I'd expected that his death at the hands of the Hound would take place in one scene, and his revival by Thoros would be a Big Reveal at some subsequent point in the episode. Instead, the latter came so fast on the heels of the former that we barely had time to notice he was dead in the first place.

If I have a complaint with the otherwise excellent episode, it's that it squeezed in too much, such that a few key moments were given too little space to breathe.

So, too, with Lord Karstark's murder of the Lannister boys and his subsequent judgment and execution by Robb. It was handled deftly enough—Richard Madden continues to come into his own as the young King of the North—but it would have been nice if the genuine tragedy of his situation had been given a little more time to sink in: kill Karstark, and he loses the allegiance of half his Northmen, without winning an iota of gratitude from the Lannisters; let Karstark live, and he gives tacit endorsement to murder and treason. Given how truly Robb is the heir to Ned Stark's sense of honor, it wasn't much of a choice at all. But it's yet another example of circumstances conspiring such that he can "win every battle but lose the war."

Jaime's revelation to Brienne—a crucial stage in his ongoing evolution—felt a tad rushed as well, as did the delicious concluding scene in which Tywin tells his shocked children, Tyrion and Cersei, of the unilateral marital plans he's devised for them. (In the books, Tywin's paternal interventions take place in reverse sequence: Cersei first, then the Imp. I'd been looking forward to the profound glee with which Tyrion receives the news that his dad wants Cersei to remarry—it may be his single happiest moment in all the novels—but in this restructuring he's obviously too miffed by his own connubial obligations to savor the moment.)

As we discussed earlier in the season, Benioff and Weiss have an almost impossibly tricky balancing act to maintain on the show, between focusing on a particular storyline (as they did in last season's "Blackwater" episode) and keeping all the others moving forward. "Kissed by Fire" struck me as one of the clearest examples to date of the dangers inherent in the latter imperative. I can't recall a single scene this week that I thought was a misfire (a rarity, as regular readers can attest), but the episode overall seemed less than the sum of its parts, and a potent reminder that there can be too much of a good thing.

At least that was my takeaway. How about you, Spencer? I can hardly imagine what it would be like to swallow all these developments in a single sitting as a non-reader of the books. What's your verdict? A satisfyingly hearty meal or the makings of a bad case of narrative indigestion?

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Kornhaber: Too... many... developments? No. I show up to an episode wanting to see forward movement, and unlike in the talky, table-setting opening hours of this season, the bulk of the scenes here provided an "oh SHIT!" moment of one sort or another. Count this newbie as satiated.

If anything made me queasy, it was the tension of seeing characters having to juggle the oaths they've sworn to competing authorities—lords, gods, family, codes of conduct. Whether it was Jaime recounting the choice between betraying his king or his conscience, or Robb weighing justice against strategy in punishing an insubordinate (and later realizing he'll need the help of a lord whose commitment he'd flaked on), or Jon trampling his vows by surrendering intel and his virginity, or Jorah and Barristan feeling out each other's loyalties, or Stannis confessing infidelity to his creepily permissive wife, each storyline in "Kissed by Fire" suggested that abandoning promises in Thrones can be not only pragmatic, but principled.

The first finale this season to not hinge on a violent showdown, the Tywin scene deepens the daddy issues in House Lannister, and to my eye, plants the possibility of a familial mutiny.

The opening scene, though, forwent any moral murk and instead delivered the dumb clarity of trial by duel—and a badass one at that. The sound editors cranked to 11 the roar of Beric Dondarrion's flaming sabre, the clank of steel on steel, the clatter of kicked barrels, and the savage sideline "KILL HIM!" of Arya Stark. The effect was such that I was hunched with my face inches from my laptop screen (the 2013 equivalent of "edge of my seat"), hanging on every reversal of advantage in the fight. Dondarrion's resurrection may have come too quickly for book readers' tastes, Chris, but I didn't mind, as his character hasn't been much developed on the TV show. His demise felt just north of incidental, and his return roused one of those "oh SHIT"s not because Berric Is Back but more because This Lord of Light Guy Really Is Something, Huh?

I'm not sure I like whatever that "something" is, though. As we saw so many times last night, much of Thrones is about people cutting through the flimsy ties of decorum, honor, and fealty in the name of raw, fact-based self-interest. But kill-at-will, resurrect-at-will magic like we've seen from the fire god's faithful screws with that cold logic: It's still not clear who has access to it, and the adherents speak in glazed-eyed, hazily motivated gobbledygook—i.e. all of the scenes with Stannis's wife. And I'm waiting for the explanation from why the hell this religion hasn't already conquered the world if equipped with such powers. But all will be made clear eventually, right?

Onto the sex scenes. At Think Progress recently, Alyssa Rosenberg hosted a discussion about the lies pop culture tells us about sex—among them that "sex is something you're inherently good at or not good at, rather than a set of skills you develop." The non-conspiracy-theory version of the Podrick-at-the-whorehouse plot offered up that trope as humor, but Jon Snow's deflowering was far funnier for its unwinking depiction of Snow as naive sex god who just knows exactly when and where, to, uh, kiss. (Interestingly, Daenerys's evolution in the first season was the opposite of this, no?) Oh well. The stone-pillow talk and the cave-Jacuzzi confessions of love were endearing, at least. And, as noted, Loras's encounter with his cute new squire was a step towards righting the show's long-maligned deficit in equal-opportunity ogling.

Other instances of affection felt a bit too hammy, though. Gendry's "you wouldn't be my family, you'd be m'lady" to Arya made me gag, but I'm glad we get to bid adieu to the non-entity that he's been. I found Jaime and Brienne's hot-tub scene transfixing—the Oathbreaker's confession hinted that the glimmer of humanity we've seen in him lately may have been there all along—right until the end. That's when the Lannister inexplicably convulsed, Brienne shouted out "The Kingslayer!", and Jaime corrected her with his real name. Bleh. The scene had already reach a crescendo; it didn't need a daytime-soap kicker.

But the episode kicker, was, as you put it Chris, delicious. The first finale this season to not hinge on a violent showdown, it opens new lines of intrigue, deepens the oh-so-fascinating daddy issues in House Lannister, and to my eye, plants the possibility of a familial mutiny. Jaime's undergoing an identity crisis out at House Bolton, and now Tyrion and Cersei are being made to wreck their lives to secure their father's dynasty. But the Queen Regent outright rejects Tywin's order at first, and for all of Charles Dance's matter-of-fact menace, the only cudgel his character brandishes is paternity: "You're my daughter! You'll do as I command!" As we were reminded repeatedly in the preceding 50+ minutes, stronger bonds have been broken in Westeros.

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What Has the Pursuit of Fossil Fuels Cost Us? And Who Has Had to Pay?

flickr/fatguyinalittlecoat

In his piece, "What if we never run out of oil?" Charles Mann examines the possibility that new technologies and new sources of petroleum, like methane hydrate, could mean that we never run out of oil. The conclusion? As long as there is some kind of oil, somewhere, we will never make the transition to clean energy--and as a result, we won't be able to do anything about climate change.

It's true that for years, many in the environmental movement have quietly, eagerly anticipated the end of oil. You can't blame them. There's no question that running out of oil would hasten the switch to healthier forms of energy like wind and solar.

A debate on the future of energy Read more

But that doesn't mean that running out of oil is the only way we can shift our economy--any more than running out of beer is the only way to solve alcoholism. It may be radically optimistic, but I believe that, armed with an understanding of the high cost of our current energy economy, we are capable of accelerating movement to a more sustainable path.

We are pouring billions of dollars into technologies d! esigned to extract every last drop of oil. What if the same le! vel of commitment was made to clean energy?

The question Mann raises-- when, or if, we will run out of oil--is the wrong question. The real question is: What has the pursuit of oil cost us? Who pays the highest cost? Who reaps the benefits? How far are we willing to go? And what is the upside of continuing to rely on carbon-based fuels--whether it's methane hydrate, shale gas, or tar sands oil--when we have alternatives? The only question we don't have to ask is whether we should transition to carbon-free energy.

The consequences of relying on oil are becoming impossible to ignore. And that makes it more difficult to justify the lengths we'll go to in order to get to it.

Take a look at the tar sands. Producing tar sands oil devours staggering quantities of energy and water. And the process leaves behind a legacy of toxic lakes, dead wildlife, and cancer-stricken communities. In terms of our oil addiction, tar sands is the hard stuff. And pursuing! it is an unmistakably desperate move.

We've already gone to great lengths to feed our addiction to oil. We've seen too many disasters unfold--from the Exxon Valdez spill, to more recent examples like the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, or just this month, the pipeline spill that spewed 10,000 gallons of oil into an Arkansas community.

Over the years, we've watched as companies and governments repeatedly violate human rights in their pursuit of oil. We've seen them put more and more communities at risk--from Richmond, California, to Nigeria, Ecuador, and just about everywhere they operate.

And then, of course, there is climate change.

When we talk about running out of oil, the assumption is we are talking about running out of oil before we run out of water, clean air, food, and the other resources that are critical to our existence. We might not run out of oil before we find ourselves at the mercy of unprecedented war, disease and disasters. ! This is not hyperbole--even the Pentagon has identified climate change ! as a security threat, largely because of the human migrations and conflicts over resources it will bring.

So it's tough to feel like celebrating the advances in drilling technology or the discovery of methane hydrate reserves that Mann points to, even when they result from brilliant innovation. Finding new ways to get and burn fuels that contribute to climate change isn't a victory. Not in the long run.

One big problem with these new technologies is that they threaten to funnel funds, innovation, and momentum away from real carbon-free, renewable energy solutions. As Mann points out--a fuel like natural gas could be a useful crutch as we transition from dirtier fuels like coal--but unless we're prepared to set it aside at some point, it fails us miserably.

Critics raise questions about the viability of a full, fast transition to clean energy--including whether our grid could handle it. These concerns are sometimes overblown--just this month, Synapse Ene! rgy Economics released a report showing that the grid would be reliable even with a much higher level of renewables. But the transition to clean energy does bring legitimate challenges. And they would be more readily solved if we were willing to spend as much money and time on them as we are on finding hidden petroleum reserves and developing deep sea drilling vessels.

In fact, the strides that have been made in clean energy technology thus far have been made largely in spite of our energy priorities, not because of them.

In the piece, Mann notes that for McKelveyan social scientists,

...oil reserves should not be thought of as physical entities. Rather, they are economic judgments: how much petroleum experts believe can be harvested from given areas at an affordable price.

The problem is, the folks making these calculations are missin! g something. When they talk about the "affordable price" for oil, they ! fail to take into account oil's staggering cost to human health and to the resources we depend on, like air and water. They fail to consider the cost of fiddling with the very balance of life on earth. What is the cost of childhood asthma on refinery row in Port Arthur, Texas? What is the cost of fracking to communities like Dimock, Pennsylvania where drillers and homeowners fought in court for years over tainted water? What is the cost of recovering from storms like Katrina and Sandy? These costs have to be part of the equation.

To resign ourselves to believing that the market alone will determine how we respond to this problem is shortsighted. It overlooks our instinct for self-preservation, as well as our history. In America, at least, progress on issues like civil rights, women's rights, and child labor has been shaped by moral! imperative, not economic demand. The force of the market is powerful. But it is not the only force.

The calculation that really matters is this: Do we want our kids and grandkids to have a chance live healthy, peaceful lives? Do we want to preserve ourselves? Or do we want to keep extracting and burning all the oil we can get to?

Many of the experts Mann talks to say, effectively, it's too late to do anything about it. That's a dangerous attitude. When your car is speeding towards a brick wall, are you going to swerve, or are you going to argue about whether or not it's too late to swerve?

We are heading toward a brick wall--that wall may not be the end of oil, as we once thought. It may be the end of us. And I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to turn the wheel now, while we still can.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAtlantic/~3/2kevJu5zUcY/story01.htm

We Don't Need Exotic Fuels to Cook the Earth, Coal Will Do

flickr/fallsroad

Since the 1970s, a prominent strand of the environmental community has warned of imminent energy shortage, hoping to persuade people to conserve resources and shift to alternative fuels that pollute less. This has often worked for a time: in the 1970s, for example, fears of scarce oil and environmental damage combined to prompt strong efforts that cut fuel consumption and directed government money toward renewable power. Yet initiatives in this vein have inevitably faltered. Worries about vanishing resources have reliably spurred rising prices, which, in turn, spark exploration and innovation that reveals ever-larger sources of fossil fuels. That new abundance does not only challenge the economics of alternative energy sources - it also invariably erodes their foundatio! n of political support.

A debate on the future of energy Read more

Charles Mann's fascinating essay recounts the most recent turn in this cycle, and gives a glimpse at what the next twist might be. Shale gas and tight oil, he reports, have again eviscerated expectations that a transition to clean energy will driven by fossil fuels' scarcity. And methane ! hydrates, still an esoteric and far-from-commercial prospect, ! might eventually dwarf that, giving the world the option to use fossil fuels forever - and by driving climate change, fry the planet in the process.

Mann is right about one big thing: geology isn't going to save us from having to take tough political steps if we're going to seriously confront climate change. But he needn't have invoked shale gas or methane hydrates to do that. A paper published in Nature Climate Change last year pointed out that if all the coal in the world were burned, it would likely warm the planet by an unimaginable 27 degrees Fahrenheit. (International negotiations typically focus on keeping warming to 3.6 degrees or less.) Alas the world has become more coal-dependent, not less, in recent years. In mid-April, the International Energy Agency (IEA), an intergovernmental organization with 28 members including the United States, reported that despite surging investment in renewable power, "the average unit of energy produced today is basically as dirty as it was 20 years ago". The culprit is the inexorable rise of coal.

Indeed that rising coal consumption makes our predicament considerably more troubling than many of those who celebrate the rise of natural gas appear ready to admit. In Mann's telling, natural gas will move us beyond coal, leaving only the (admittedly large) challenge of spurring a final move to zero-carbon fuels. In practice, the world has already sunk huge sums of money into thousands of coal-fired power plants, and operating those plants remains cheap; and, despite the U.S. shale boom, more coal plants are being built. Even if the natural gas boom were to eventually spread from the United States to the rest of the world, coal-fired power could well continue to dominate much of the global energy system for decades.

So natural gas doesn't let us off the hook for a decade or two w! hile we figure out how to make zero-carbon energy thrive. Indeed it doesn't even give the United States a pass. In May 2012, fracking briefly spurred gas to pass coal as the top source of U.S. electricity. But as natural gas prices recovered, coal regained its top rank, a position most expect it to retain for decades to come. That won't cut it if we're going to seriously tackle climate change. To be certain, cheap gas makes it less expensive to cut our emissions, by shifting away from traditional coal. But we'll still need governments to step in and tip the balance, whether through new regulations or a price on carbon that gives gas an advantage over coal.

If we really want to take full advantage of natural gas, though, we need to look for new ways to use it. For much of the 2000s, engineers spoke excitedly about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to clean up coal. The idea is simple: combine existing technologies to scrub the carbon dioxide fro! m coal-plant smokestacks (or separate it before generating power) and then bury it underground. The problem was always cost. The individual elements involved were well known, but the combination was novel and the risks were high. Today no commercial coal plants with CCS exist, and the technology remains far from an economically viable option.

Few talked about applying CCS to natural gas power plants during the technology's (or at least its hype's) heyday. Capturing carbon dioxide requires a lot of energy, which means you're best off generating that energy with cheap fuel. Natural gas, though, was super-expensive for most of the 2000s, making gas with CCS seem silly. But a world where natural gas is inexpensive and abundant might be one where capturing the carbon from gas fired power plants is affordable too. That would turn the paradox of natural gas abundance on its head: ultra-cheap gas could make at least one zero-carbon option far more viable that we've typically! assumed.

Should we bet on that? Hell no. Most people who spend ! time thinking about energy appear to have learned a simple lesson from the shale boom: natural gas is far more abundant than we previously thought. The deeper lesson they should take to heart is that we're awful at predicting our energy future. Will methane hydrates turn the world on its head once again? Will crashing prices for solar power or a renaissance in atomic energy provide deliverance from our climate woes? Will carbon capture and storage let us exploit abundant natural gas without cooking the climate?

Who knows? But what we do know is enough. A shortage of fossil fuels isn't going to save us from dangerous climate change. And plans that depend on one or another technological breakthrough are far too risky to bet our future on. We need to move forward with gas, using it to edge aside coal, even as we push ahead on a host of zero-carbon opportunities. That's the best way to maximize the odds that we'll ultimately be able to deal effectively with climate chang! e.

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheAtlantic/~3/ewOzpV8Q2pg/story01.htm

The Overwhelming Proliferation of Car-Sharing Companies

The transportation industry is squarely in the crosshairs of the tech start-up industry, and the fruits of their disruption were on full display at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW), the high-octane tech-music-film festival in Austin last month. Uber, the on-demand towncar service, was offering free rides in pedicabs all over the city. SideCar, the ride-sharing start-up that was one of the most buzzed-about apps at this year's festival (partially because of its run-ins with city regulators), was offering free rides around town. Car-sharing service Car2Go had premium parking spots reserved around the perimeter of the Austin Convention Center.

Panels with names like "Transportation Apps and the Sharing Economy" and "Damn the Man! Disrupting Regulated Industries" featured the founders of Lyft and Zimride (ride-sharing), Wheelz and Getaround (car-sharing), an! d Flywheel (taxi-hailing). A "Hacking Transportation Meet Up" was sponsored by Scoot Networks -- a "Zipcar for Scooters." Hail-A-Cab, the Austin equivalent of MyTaxi and TaxiMagic, touted its services with a full-page ad in SXSW's official program guide.

I'm a fan of these new transportation disrupters. I'm in the sweet-spot of their demographic: a carless, eco-friendly, early-adopting urban-dweller. I used Uber to get me to the DC airport on my way to SXSW. A week before the conference, I received a holographic sticker from Car2Go for my membership card that qualified me a "Pro User." Together with my stay at three different Airbnb rooms over my time in Austin, I am a bona-fide member of the Sharing Economy.

But even for an avid user like me, the scene in Austin was quite overwhelming. Currently, most of these transpo! rtation apps are being beta-tested in different urban centers.! But SXSW, which basically assembled all of them in a few square blocks, provided a vision for what the future could look like in major metros around the country -- and it wasn't pretty.

There were so many options for getting from Point A to Point B, I was often paralyzed before I stepped out the door. Do I use a car-share or a ride-share? Should I order a cab, a pedicab, or a sedan? Car2Go or Zipcar? How about a scooter or a bike-share? What about plain-old public transportation? By the time I've checked the dozen apps on my phone, compared prices, wait times, and travel times, I probably could have made it to my destination by walking. It took my wife and I over an hour to weigh all the different options of getting her to the airport. (We eventually decided on a Zipcar.)

Thankfully, there seems to be an app that aims to make sense of this dystopian future of transportation. I met the founders of RideScout at SXSW,! of course, where they showed me their new tool that aggregates all these various transportation options in a single interface. While most transportation options have their own apps, RideScout collects them in one place. You plug in your departure and RideScout will present you with various options based on your current location, allowing you to compare them by duration and price, all in real-time.

Founder Joseph Kopser thought up the idea when he was trying to weigh the many choices for how to get from his house to the Pentagon. "I had like 20 options on a very small 5 mile route, from biking to jogging to Virginia public transportation to friends in DC," he said. And that was two years ago, even before the prolife! ration of transportation start-ups. As with most accidental start-up fo! unders, he assumed that someone had invented such an intuitive app. When he couldn't find it, he decided to build it himself.

The West Point graduate was also drawn to the idea that, after working for so long working for the military "in the business of consuming energy, ... now I have a chance to turn around and give back to society." Kopser compares his task at RideScout with his previous job working for Army chief George Casey. "Trying to get people to change their habits, change their mindsets," he said. "That is a hard, strategic long-term event, which can't be measured in tiny quick wins."

The most difficult challenge for RideScout has been synthesizing the APIs and databases from various apps and platforms that weren't designed to work together. The fact that new apps are coming out almost daily exacerbates the challenge, forcing them to be strategic with each new partner they attempt to integrate into their app. In presenting different options to user! s, RideScout is also struggling with how to compare "apples and oranges," with some services charging by the mile while others charging by the minute or hour.

They launched a beta version of the app in February with approximately 100 testers, and rolled out a more functional version right before SXSW last month, attracting over a 1000 users already. (The app is currently only available for iPhones, but they're hoping to launch an Android version by this fall.)

They've started out simple, beginning with the low-hanging fruit of public transportation data (available through Google Transit Feed), and then layering Car2Go's open API on top of it. Even with just Car2Go, RideScout offers a valuable service in estimating how much the trip would cost -- a feature that is unavailable (perhaps intentionally) on Car2Go's own site or app. (RideScout has developed their own algorithm to estimate cost, which they intend to hone as they get more ride data.)

Taxi com! panies have proven to be a particularly challenging group to get on boa! rd. "It would take a change of thought," Kosper said. "The industry would have to accept the idea of an aggregated source marketplace, which they never wanted it to be up until now." In the meantime, RideScout has created a portal on their site and app where individual taxi drivers can sign up to be listed in the system. But since that model is difficult to scale up, they are working on signing up full companies or partnering with an already-established taxi app rather than reinventing the wheel.

They're also in the process of creating a social ride-sharing infrastructure in the app, where people can log their upcoming drives and allow friends to hop along if they're heading in the same direction. They've synced the feature to Facebook to help identify friends on the app, and are working on creating a functionality for groups, like co-workers or teammates. Their vision is free ride-sharing, which would differ from the paid models like Lyft and SideCar -- companies t! hat they also hope to integrate into the app. "We have no desire to invent new technologies," Kopser said. "We want to weave them together more seamlessly."

Kopser confirms that they've been in discussions with some of these start-ups but nothing has not been able to seal the deal yet. "Out focus right now is on national partnerships," says Craig Cummings, the app's other co-founder. They had talks with Zipcar that were put on hold during their merger with Avis, but Kopser "remains optimistic they will return to discuss that with us," he told me.

Most of these companies have their own private APIs, so RideScout has negotiate with each service individually to integrate them into the app. Their challenge is convincing these companies that "providing customers with more options and allowing them to choose what fits best, everyone benefits from those efficiencies," Kopser says. They're hoping to become a Kayak for local transportations -- a case in which most air! lines eventually realized that it is in their interests to participate ! in an aggregator even if users sometimes choose their competitors.

What all of these apps, including taxis, are essentially trying to convince users that they can get to and from work, run errands, meet people for lunch, get to appointments, and do all their other daily tasks without having their own car. RideScout is betting that aggregating all these new transportation options in one place is the best way to make that case to users -- which is a win for all transportation disrupters. "If people aren't pumping $50 into a tank when they fill up, they can transfer that money to taxis, public transportation, and these other options," Kopser says. "When people make the decision to leave their car at home, we all win -- the roads are less clogged, there is less smog, and money is staying in the local economy."

RideScout's ultimate goal is to make a user experience that is so seamless it replicates the ease and flexibility of owning a car. Millenials are already ! making the shift away from car ownership: A recent study by car site Edmunds.com found that young adults aged 18-34 purchased 30 percent fewer cars in 2011 than they did in 2007.

Though the platform is "transportation agnostic and geography agnostic," as Kopser describes it, technically working anywhere that has a Google Transit or Car2Go feed, their focus is currently on Austin, where the company is based (and the city that has the highest smartphone-adoption rate per capita in the country). "For every Austinite who finds an alternative for their commute, " said Austin City Council Member Chris Riley, "RideScout has helped all of us by taking one more car off the road."

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