It's called football for historical reasons. Students at Rugby played a football variant that allowed carrying the ball, and American football is ultimately derived from this.
Corporations are absolutely terrible in “innovating” in any direction that they don’t want to go. It the “innovation” you want is a DVD player for $29.95, sure, they’ll “innovate” that for you. It’ll come at the cost of only working for one year on average with a 90-day warranty, being made to break in pieces if you try to take it apart to so much as clean the lens, and generally playing back crap quality video.
Guys, he's right. This whole capitalism thing just isn't working out. Sure, we can take a bucket of sand and transform it into a machine that can retrieve several hours of video and audio from a disc as thick as a nickel and five inches in diameter, but the average person has to work like an hour and a half to buy one, and it will only last for a year.
Seriously? You chose consumer electronics as your example of how much the private sector sucks at innovation? Is the DMV the cornerstone of your speech about how awesome government is?
The CBO says that Federal employees with a Master's Degree or lower have higher total compensation.
It's not really acontroversial that unions raise costs for employers, is it? It is one of their selling points, after all.
And even without paying less on a per-worker basis, efficiencies could still be realized by making it easier to fire redundant or otherwise unproductive workers, reducing featherbedding, and eliminating losses due to strikes.
When a government just contracts services out, rather than legitimately privatizing them, there's no particular reason to assume that this will result in any improvement. There's still no competition, so the contractor has an incentive to improve service only insofar as the government monitors quality and enforces standards. But if they could do that with a contractor, they could have done it when they were running it themselves.
For proper functioning, markets require profit motive, competition (or at least the possibility of competition), and consumer choice.
I don't really see a problem with that. A logarithmic scale on the x-axis is fine for many long-term historical data series where changes are much more rapid in modern times than in the past. This isn't really a proper logarithmic scale, but it's close enough, and gets the point across.
Because we:
A) Don't want him free to victimize others.
B) Don't want to leave open the possibility that some judge may someday order him to be freed, opening the door to A.
C) In any case don't particularly want to pay for his food, shelter, and medical care for the rest of his life.
If he lives, he's a threat at worst and dead weight at best. Considering the alternatives, having him dead is a pretty attractive option.
It's worth noting that income inequality between individuals is not directly comparable to GDP inequality between countries because of population differences. For example, China and India rank #2 and #3 respectively in terms of PPP-adjusted GDP, but they're not particularly wealthy countries on a per-capita basis; they just have over a billion people each.
I didn't even have to do that. I just asked Comcast how much money I would save on my total (Internet plus TV) bill by cutting out the TV service. I decided it wasn't worth it (only would have saved a couple of dollars), and when I was about to hang up they gave me a huge discount for six months.
There is no question as to whether or not money controls the press.
Except...that's not really true, is it? Not money, generally. Most people who own media outlets are rich, but most rich people don't own media outlets.
It seems to me that audience is distributed considerably more unequally than income in this country, and that the downside of this is much greater and much less speculative.
Whether or not you think we should abolish or weaken the filibuster, there is one thing we can all agree on: the filibuster should be a real filibuster.
Not me. I'm quite happy with a de facto 60-vote supermajority requirement to pass legislation.
Yes, I read that article when it came out, and I have the same objection: This implies an unstable equilibrium that doesn't seem to model real-world poverty very well. That is, if this is why people get stuck in poverty, then a one-time cash infusion should result in a permanent increase in a poor person's disposable income. The guy who pays $15 to cash his paycheck could pay the $7 to get a replacement driver's license, and then he never has to pay a check-cashing fee again. A $500 rainy-day fund means you never have to take out a payday loan again.
That was addressed to the regular posters, not to you. And there really isn't any room for disagreement here. Your critique isn't subtly flawed---it's made up of whole cloth.
Not to mention that he's also misrepresenting my comment. I never called him an anti-semite. I was making the totally valid observation that what he was saying about the rich was word-for-word identical to the kind of things anti-semites said about Jews.
I've made this observation before; see my 1:09 and 2:55 comments here:
Brandon: Isn’t leftism just anti-semitism with “Jews” crossed out and replaced with “the rich” or “bankers?”
Tom: Me, I wouldn’t play the anti-Semitism card here, Mr. Berg. I’ve found it to be a fairly equal-opportunity bigotry. People are people.
Brandon:
I’m not saying that leftists are antisemitic. If you replace Jews with a different scapegoat, then it’s not really very antisemitic.
I just think that the sort of populist leftism you see in this and similar movements is very strongly remnisicient of traditional antisemitism, with the most significant difference being a different choice of scapegoat.
There’s probably a right-wing analogue, too. Anti-immigrant hysteria, for example. Dirty furriners takin’ our jobs.
That is, both antisemitism and the sort of bigotry we see from M.A. and OWS are instances of the broader phenomenon of scapegoating of market-dominant minorities.
The problem with Vimes' Theory is that it implies that poverty is an unstable equilibrium. Give a poor person a bit of extra money, and he can afford to buy better boots. With the money he saves from not having to buy new boots each year, he can buy a more durable version of something more expensive. And it keeps snowballing until he's not poor anymore.
In practice, poverty seems to be fairly stable, and can often recover from fairly large positive income shocks.
On “Allegory”
It's called football for historical reasons. Students at Rugby played a football variant that allowed carrying the ball, and American football is ultimately derived from this.
On “How to Privatize”
Corporations are absolutely terrible in “innovating” in any direction that they don’t want to go. It the “innovation” you want is a DVD player for $29.95, sure, they’ll “innovate” that for you. It’ll come at the cost of only working for one year on average with a 90-day warranty, being made to break in pieces if you try to take it apart to so much as clean the lens, and generally playing back crap quality video.
Guys, he's right. This whole capitalism thing just isn't working out. Sure, we can take a bucket of sand and transform it into a machine that can retrieve several hours of video and audio from a disc as thick as a nickel and five inches in diameter, but the average person has to work like an hour and a half to buy one, and it will only last for a year.
Seriously? You chose consumer electronics as your example of how much the private sector sucks at innovation? Is the DMV the cornerstone of your speech about how awesome government is?
"
Épée.
"
The CBO says that Federal employees with a Master's Degree or lower have higher total compensation.
It's not really acontroversial that unions raise costs for employers, is it? It is one of their selling points, after all.
And even without paying less on a per-worker basis, efficiencies could still be realized by making it easier to fire redundant or otherwise unproductive workers, reducing featherbedding, and eliminating losses due to strikes.
"
To clarify, I mean that a contractor might be able to hire outside the government employee unions when the government itself could not do so directly.
"
As I alluded to upthread, doing an end-run around the government employees' unions might result in some legitimate cost savings.
"
But if they could do that with a contractor, they could have done it when they were running it themselves.
Actually, this might not be true, if the government employees are unionized, and the contractor's are not.
"
When a government just contracts services out, rather than legitimately privatizing them, there's no particular reason to assume that this will result in any improvement. There's still no competition, so the contractor has an incentive to improve service only insofar as the government monitors quality and enforces standards. But if they could do that with a contractor, they could have done it when they were running it themselves.
For proper functioning, markets require profit motive, competition (or at least the possibility of competition), and consumer choice.
On “10 Countries Do Not Have 90% of World GDP”
I don't really see a problem with that. A logarithmic scale on the x-axis is fine for many long-term historical data series where changes are much more rapid in modern times than in the past. This isn't really a proper logarithmic scale, but it's close enough, and gets the point across.
On “He Needed Killin’”
Because we:
A) Don't want him free to victimize others.
B) Don't want to leave open the possibility that some judge may someday order him to be freed, opening the door to A.
C) In any case don't particularly want to pay for his food, shelter, and medical care for the rest of his life.
If he lives, he's a threat at worst and dead weight at best. Considering the alternatives, having him dead is a pretty attractive option.
On “Peter Singer Is Wrong”
I went to see the joke about Judaism and Voodoo and was extremely disappointed that it didn't contain the phrase "That Voodoo that Jews do."
On “10 Countries Do Not Have 90% of World GDP”
You usually don't. It's not something I've ever seen done before.
"
It's worth noting that income inequality between individuals is not directly comparable to GDP inequality between countries because of population differences. For example, China and India rank #2 and #3 respectively in terms of PPP-adjusted GDP, but they're not particularly wealthy countries on a per-capita basis; they just have over a billion people each.
On “Questions for the Masses: An Inequality Open Thread”
I didn't even have to do that. I just asked Comcast how much money I would save on my total (Internet plus TV) bill by cutting out the TV service. I decided it wasn't worth it (only would have saved a couple of dollars), and when I was about to hang up they gave me a huge discount for six months.
On “Managing the influence of money on politics? a.k.a the problem with democracy (or at least one of them)”
There is no question as to whether or not money controls the press.
Except...that's not really true, is it? Not money, generally. Most people who own media outlets are rich, but most rich people don't own media outlets.
It seems to me that audience is distributed considerably more unequally than income in this country, and that the downside of this is much greater and much less speculative.
"
Voters are like computer users.
On “A Political DREAM”
Whether or not you think we should abolish or weaken the filibuster, there is one thing we can all agree on: the filibuster should be a real filibuster.
Not me. I'm quite happy with a de facto 60-vote supermajority requirement to pass legislation.
On “Inequality by Half Measures”
Idiots? No. Apologists for big government? Very likely.
2 or 3% for government — 20% for everyone else.
Counterpoint (PDF).
And that's without factoring in the deadweight loss from taxation.
"
Yes, I read that article when it came out, and I have the same objection: This implies an unstable equilibrium that doesn't seem to model real-world poverty very well. That is, if this is why people get stuck in poverty, then a one-time cash infusion should result in a permanent increase in a poor person's disposable income. The guy who pays $15 to cash his paycheck could pay the $7 to get a replacement driver's license, and then he never has to pay a check-cashing fee again. A $500 rainy-day fund means you never have to take out a payday loan again.
"
I'm quite happy to let it die, but my comment was misprepresented, and a correction was due.
"
That was addressed to the regular posters, not to you. And there really isn't any room for disagreement here. Your critique isn't subtly flawed---it's made up of whole cloth.
"
Not to mention that he's also misrepresenting my comment. I never called him an anti-semite. I was making the totally valid observation that what he was saying about the rich was word-for-word identical to the kind of things anti-semites said about Jews.
I've made this observation before; see my 1:09 and 2:55 comments here:
That is, both antisemitism and the sort of bigotry we see from M.A. and OWS are instances of the broader phenomenon of scapegoating of market-dominant minorities.
"
It would be appropriate, I think, to update this post to indicate that the first half has been thoroughly refuted.
"
The problem with Vimes' Theory is that it implies that poverty is an unstable equilibrium. Give a poor person a bit of extra money, and he can afford to buy better boots. With the money he saves from not having to buy new boots each year, he can buy a more durable version of something more expensive. And it keeps snowballing until he's not poor anymore.
In practice, poverty seems to be fairly stable, and can often recover from fairly large positive income shocks.
"
The more obvious explanation is that they don't have any costs for raising money.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.