That is not even a real Thomas Jefferson quote.
123 karma · joined July 20, 2015
The top 2-5 layers of management tend to be the types who want solutions, and they don't care how it works, and they don't really want to be bothered with the details.
To the extent they expend thought at all on systems, they tend to be focused primarily on questions like, "why is all this stuff so confusing?" "who do I blame when this thing goes wrong?"
Where I work, they go through cycles; a higher-up will say "Hey let's build a staff of in-house developers." And they'll do that for 2 or 3 years, until someone reads an article in CIO magazine about how outsourcing is superior. Then they'll start unfairly purging and firing developers, writing code is now "bad", configuration is "Good." This goes on for several years, until the cycle starts over. So as a developer, after you survive your first purge, you begin to see that invisibility is the only way to survive.
It is difficult to explain but people tend to use the word "bureaucracy" as a catch-all for several dozen discrete problems that crop up in different combinations depending on what level of govt you're operating.
Typical examples might be :
-a developer not having the authority to work on a system
-a developer being ordered to work on a system, but not being given permissions to the necessary tools (even if they're available), or they may prohibit certain common-sense tools, or they may force you to use certain tools.
-a developer being ordered to work on a system where the design is severely irrational, maybe impossible, and but he or she has no authority within the hierarchy to push back on requirements
-a developer being ordered to work on a system that some powerful person wants to see fail
Imagine the "client from hell" that many of us have dealt with before, who doesn't know what they want. Now imagine that person is like 3 levels higher than you, calling the shots, and you're not even allowed to speak to them, much less push back against their crazy expectations.
Approximately 50% of American politicians are anti-government as an ideology, and use the argument of "cutting overpaid government salaries" as a plank in their economic policy, so having well-paid gov't staff is just "waste" in their minds.
As far as teachers go, they are not employed by the federal government. In most states they are county-level employees and the counties obviously do not have authority to dictate federal income tax levels.
Effectively what we're talking about are central bank operations, which is a dry and boring subject within economics, that is both misunderstood by mainstream economists and misused (for political reasons) by heterodox economists (many of whom are charlatans).
Generally speaking though, everyone tends to agree that central bank policies became looser over the 20th century, and IMHO that's really the only relevant kernel of truth in the OP link, who seems to be a promoter of fringe economic theories.
The best place to read about the topic is at the Federal Reserve Bank's website. Alternatively, I would recommend reading any of this :
As I said, the PRC's policies are what drove its people into poverty. It was a choice the PRC made to attack the UN armies, it chose to do so fully aware of the consequences of supporting North Korea and Kim Il-sung.
In 1949, when the PRC was formed, they represented 9.5% of the global economy. In 1990, after 41 years of Communist Party rule, China was 1.59% of the global economy. ----
So while it is accurate to say that China's economy did poorly in the 19th and early 20th century, it is also true to say that the CPC proceeded to drive the nation into abject poverty.
In 1949, when the PRC was formed, they represented 9.5% of the global economy. In 1990, after 41 years of Communist Party rule, China was 1.59% of the global economy.
You cannot blame that on opium or the west, that is the result of Communist policies like the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, to say nothing of the ruthless control and censorship of information.
Liberalisation and foreign trade is what brought them out of poverty over the past 30 years.
The Soviets did something similar, just without as much effectiveness.
Western leaders were never so stupid to treat individual soviet companies as though they were independent from the soviet government.
One major difference is the PRC made lots of promises about liberalization during its accession to the WTO. While the PRC may not be very 'communist' per se, it is also not very 'capitalist.' In hindsight it was naivete for western leaders to accept promises of Chinese liberalization at face value.
Yes, poor people often incur environmental risk by inhabiting undesirable urban land that's risky.
But it is also very common for the wealthy to intentionally take on flood/fire risk so they can be in the most-desirable areas with natural beauty. Many of the big fire hazards are in towns filled with ski resorts, vacation homes, wealthy retirees with ranches. Many of the big flood hazards are wealthy people attempting to live too close to the ocean, or too close to a river, than is safe.
Using Houston as an example, 50 to 100 years ago it was the norm to bring in fill dirt from other regions, flatten and grade a piece of land, and construct a gridded residential neighborhood with total disregard for natural drainage. Flooding was dealt with by artificially channelizing bayous and streams, which is why Houston's urban waterways look so unnatural. Many of these older neighborhoods along the gulf coast were unsustainable and are not being rebuilt after hurricanes.
Starting around 30 years ago, local, state and federal policymakers started to get a clue. Neighborhoods were more commonly build to accomodate the drainage patterns -- this is why developments from the 1990's, 2000's tend to have large retention ponds, (example: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5517845,-95.4295706,3a,75y,2... )
while neighborhoods from the 1950's-60's do not.
The obstacle to a functional flood insurance market are all the people who can't afford market premiums, who have complained to their politicians, demanding that the rest of society subsidize their property risk.
realistically they're measuring "big floods" and "bigger floods" in a way that is consistent, however the stated time frequency with which they supposedly occur is so extremely inaccurate that it does not rise to the level of 'science.'
It is VERY difficult to get them to understand that they have the cause-and-effect reversed : In fact, it was the increase in value that triggered the new development.
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
Median hourly rate in the US ranges about $41/hr for 'Computer Programmers' to $70/hr for 'Computer and IS Managers.' In a state like New York the rates would be even higher, perhaps much higher.
Europe has the individual talent, but their capital markets tend to be sclerotic and risk-averse, and in the case of certain countries, protectionist as well.
Chemours was loaded with "assets" like dangerous chemicals, and their accompanying lawsuits. (One phrase used in a later lawsuit was: "unlimited exposure for historical DuPont liabilities")
Chemours' market cap was initially valued at $3b and quickly crashed to $0.75b. But then Trump was elected, it started looking like the liability from dangerous chemicals would be less than previously believed, and eventually this company, which was designed to fail because of open-ended liabilities, was valued as high as $10b.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CC/chemours/market...