Why is it that our elected – coff – representatives think they can legislate paradise?
Yesterday we got a brochure from Colorado House Representative Pete Lee. Last time he was campaigning he came by here and did his best to convince us that he adored Heinlein. If he did, he must have read the braile print with his nose, or something, because clearly he’s missing something to an understanding of how societies and economies work – and understanding Heinlein had.
Or perhaps he read only early Heinlein, back when the man was young and a Shavian socialist. Perhaps he thinks all goodness flows from government and that government must take action to do things or we’ll all starve in the dark.
But even that makes absolutely no sense with the accomplishments he’s bragging of: the signal ones being that he voted more money for schools and that he has helped create legislation that ensures jobs won’t leave Colorado.
We’ll leave the first one alone, for now. What kind of an idiot allows him or herself to be bribed with his or her own money? No, seriously. So, we pay property taxes for the schools, and he gave more of our money to the schools. Yay?
Seriously. This country already spends more on education than any other land at any other time. He goes on to bleat about teacher to student ratio and blah blah blah.
There’s another ratio he should have looked into. Administrator to teacher. The more money you give to schools the more they grow administrators, like poisonous mushrooms after a rain. And administrators are sort of like politicians. The more you have, the more trouble they create.
But beyond that, look guys, I had great teacher to student ratio, relatively, through elementary, because my class was only 12. Unfortunately, since that was considered a ridiculously small work load for a teacher, they brought another class in for the teacher to teach. When I was in first grade, I shared a classroom with the fourth graders, then next year, after they graduated (school only went to fourth grade) I shared one with first graders, and so on. The class after us got first graders brought in when we were fourth graders.
So in the same classroom, we had a teacher teaching two completely different classes.
Also we only went to school in the morning or the afternoon (in my case, usually morning) and the classes repeated in the afternoon. Four hours, overloaded classroom.
Everyone learned to read and their multiplication tables. Even the kid who was educable mentally retarded.
Later on, when I went to middle and highschool, I THINK the smallest form (you were put in a form and had all your classes with them) we had was 42. We had classes in the attic amid broken furniture; in the cafeteria as they were setting up for lunch, and on one signal occasion the art room (for a whole year. Even though we didn’t have an art class. Central planning, eh?)
All of us learned, despite the awful teacher to student ratio and the whimsical accommodations. In a time when properties are losing their value, is it really the best idea in the world to increase property taxes in order to give more money to schools, so they can have two fewer students per class or whatever?
But this is actually the minor folly. The major folly – and the thing he is most especially proud of – is that he passed an anti-outsourcing law. Colorado firms won’t be sending jobs to India or China, why no sireeh Bob.
That sound you hear is my head hitting the desk. It’s a pity because I liked the desk. You’ll know when I go on a rampage because you’ll hear news of a woman with a branding iron marking all politicians on the forehead. It will say “You can’t legislate the economy. You can only deform it.” It will be written backwards so they can read it in the mirror.
You’d think it was obvious, right?
Younger son came downstairs while I was reading this bucket of fail and I told him, “Rejoice, oh, son, Pete Lee has made sure that no jobs will get outsourced from Colorado to India.”
He said “you’re joking, right?” And I showed him the dread paper.
He snorted. “Yeah, because it’s so hard to have a sub-corporation set up somewhere else, and have the outsourcing take place there. Or if that’s too much trouble, and it’s a family corp, to just relocate to another state – which will then get the supervisory jobs, too. Well done, there, you representative.”
I won’t say “from out the mouth of babes” because son is obviously a dude, but you get what I mean. If even number two son who understands machines better than people gets it, why can’t politicians?
Of course, if it were just my district representative in CO I wouldn’t be half as exercised. But we also have a president who has mandated punitive taxes for companies based in the states and doing business abroad or even foreign companies that do any business with the US and who has tried his best to curtail outsourcing. And we won’t get into the funnies that the congresscritters get up to.
Again, you can’t legislate the economy, you can only deform it. If something is occurring because of a strong economic (or other) pressure, it will continue occurring after you make it illegal. It will just occur… illegally.
Take hiring of illegals. It occurs because mandated minimum wage is too high (yes, of course they want to raise it. They think they can legislate economic facts.) “Define too high” you say, since other countries have a much higher minimum wage.
Simply put, minimum wage is “all the traffic can bear.” While it is possible for countries that don’t have a huge open border to a poorer country, and which have a less complex tax structure, and more generous welfare benefits to mandate a higher minimum wage and get it obeyed without massive non-compliance issues, they are still paying for it. Money is going to pay too much for work that isn’t worth that much, and therefore shorting companies of R & D money or innovation money. Which means their standard of life will not be what it could be. But that’s the problem of the squid farms on Mars. You know, we spent money on welfare, so we missed out on squid farms on Mars. It seems not to exist, because you can’t prove the wonders of squid farms. The normal person never knows what they missed. And yet, the cost is still there because, duh, you can’t legislate the economy.
But when you are a country like we are, with a massive open border and a very poor/unstable country next door, oh, yeah, and punitive taxes and regulations that make the margin companies operate from tiny, what you get is illegal workers working for far less than the minimum wage. And it’s no use at all punishing the business owners. Most of them aren’t greedy monopoly figures in top hats. They’re farmers, restaurant owners, small manufactory owners, whose choice is something like “hire illegals or go under.”
Of course before going under they’re going to hire illegals, particularly since – because the problem is everywhere – there are so many of them that even with the best possible enforcement it’s not going to be very good.
(OF course, the politicians solution for this is to legalize the illegals, which… makes no sense, since then they’d have to get minimum wage. Never mind.)
It’s the same thing with outsourcing. A lot of the companies that outsourced tech support to India and China and heaven knows where, are bringing it back to the states. Why? Well, it turns out other cultures don’t have the same rules, or the same performance standards. So the higher salaries of American workers are worth it.
BUT some companies still outsource. Why? Because they’re just starting out, or they’re in trouble, and all they can afford is foreign labor.
Legislate against that? Well, they’ll either hire a company in another state, which in turn hires abroad, or come up with some other dodge. Because people don’t let their businesses die because the law tells them to. Instead they get creative. Most of that creativity makes things harder to deal with and fix, but it’s what happens.
Sometimes I wonder why politicians don’t, instead, spend time legislating the weather. It would have just as much effect, but fewer drawbacks.
Instead they legislate the economy… and we all pay for their illusions.
According To Hoyt 
I know the solution! We just need a law that politicians can’t pass stupid and/or ineffective laws. Regrettably, that’ll leave them with very little to do. :)
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that is in no way regrettable.
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The Devil finds work for idle hands to do.
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A politician doing nothing would at least be worthy of
minimum waaaaage (Yeehaw)
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Bribing politicians to do nothing, that is an appealing, but dangerous prospect.
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I have a modest proposal – for each quarter (or 6 month, or year – I’m not picky) conduct an approval poll (open to registered voters only) in their district. Not “who do we want to represent us”, but “are we satisfied with the work this person has done”. For any period where approval is below 50% – neither they or any of their government-supplied assistants receive any pay. Flogging and/or tar, feathers, and riding out of town on a rail can be added for repeated failures.
A variant: conduct the approval poll for the entire branch of government the politico belongs to – state legislature, governor, US house of reps, Senate, the president – with the same penalties. You can’t play nice with other congresscritters/senators/other branches of government? No pay for you! And nobody will want to work for you, either, since your bad behavior my cut *their* pay.
Do I think this is actually likely to be tried? No. Do I think it would actually work well if tried? I’m not sure. Do I think it would work at least as well as the current system? Almost certainly – and probably better. Would I enjoy the screams of rage from the punished politicos? You bet. And I’d happily supply the tar brush and help shoulder the rail.
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I think we’d have much better representation, and therefore better government, if the elections were held the first Thursday after April 15th. We also need to teach our children/others that Government has no money of its own, it can only distribute money it gets from others through taxation. TANSTAFL needs to be taught in EVERY classroom, and any teacher who can’t teach it, or refuses, is barred FOR LIFE from teaching, at any level. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but it would help!
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Remember that a lot of the voters actually regard their refund as a windfall.
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Yes, the system has managed to train people to be thankful when they give back, without interest, some of the money they took. Amazing, isn’t it?
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A lot of the people who fall in the category of regarding it as a windfall actually get more money than they paid in.
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Our household has been in that position once, but we all would have prefered to do without the medical expenses that qualified us.
The Spouse noted the following after reading your post:
Which would be a far better way to “increase” the minimum wage
Or we could eliminate payroll taxes, and require employers to give their “matching contributions” directly to their employees. That would increase the minimum wage (plus all other wages and salaries) significantly, without adversely affecting the employers’ bottom lines.
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Yeah, those are the ones I would like to strangle with their own intestines. That is MY money they receiving as a windfall.
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I was with you until “can’t play nice.” I’m not particularly interested in my elected representatives playing nice with others (see Ted Cruz), I’m interested in them doing the job according to the relevant founding document(s).
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” You can’t play nice with other congresscritters/senators/other branches of government? No pay for you!”
Gak.
The Republicans in the House are currently not playing nice with the President and the Senate — as they were elected to do.
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That’s the one I’m unsure of. And for just the reasons you give. But right now *both* parties refuse to compromise if they have a bare majority – sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad. As in “I know we should do this, but I want the lack of action on them in the next election.”
Maybe we should change the punishment cutoff to “must please at least 50% of your district’s voters AND have at least 50% approval of your branch”. With a kicker of “less than 50% approval in your district twice in succession and you’re out of office, and may not run in the next election cycle” – that is, if you please your constituents you can still run, even if you don’t always get paid. Displease your constituents, and you’re out – and don’t get the incumbent advantage the next time you run. Increases the likelihood you’d compromise on public-interest bills but not ones wildly unpopular at home. Might even reduce the number of kitchen-sink bills (yeah, dream on).
While we’re at it, impose Instapundit’s proposed tax surcharge on lobbying income for at least two election cycles after leaving public office or employment. Is there anyone, other than the parasite class themselves, who really *likes* professional politicians and bureaucrats?
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But right now *both* parties refuse to compromise if they have a bare majority – sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad.
From where I stand I see a lot of compromising on core positions when there’s a slight majority on the right– it’s called “bipartisanship.” The left will, in return, agree to let the right do what the left wants.
There’s a reason that the joke goes that bipartisanship is when an R does what the D’s want.
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Which is the problem I see – it mostly goes one way. Punish them both for not compromising enough to keep the overall national satisfaction level high, and for compromising so much that their own constituents are mad at ’em. Though if I could only have one metric, it would “own constituents”.
I also toy with the idea of a high-threshold (75%? 80%?) national ability to kick ANY elected official out. IE – even if his own voters love Senator Long-Term-Incumbent (because: pork), if 80% of the rest of the country hates him, he’s out of office and doesn’t get to run as the incumbent. This is another of my “I’m not sure it would be a good or not” ideas, though.
Since I live in California, I’m continually amazed at some of the people my neighbors happily vote for, too. I’ve been experiencing considerable schadenfreude with the ongoing self-destruction of State Senator Leland Yee (California’s former number-one gun-grabber, currently being charged with racketeering, bribery, gun-running, and murder-for-hire) but we still have plenty of others who seem to get reelected by a combination of incumbent inertia and “I can’t possibly vote for the other party”, even though they stack up high disapproval ratings.
Coming up with off-the-wall possible fixes is one way to keep from beating my head against the wall.
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Look into methods to make the power more local, instead of more broad– a lot of the crazy in Cali is the tight packed population centers, not the people in the rest of the state! (no, doesn’t help much when you’re in with the other sardines)
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One of the unintended consequences of the Proposition 13 tax limits (still wildly popular since they restrict annual property tax increases to a maximum of 2%) that made it very hard to raise taxes was that the state government noticed that there was no restriction on the state government taking over many previously local taxes, or assigning more and more unfunded requirements on local governments.
These days, a much higher percentage of our local taxes go to the state rather than the local government. Including a lot that then get “returned” to the local government if, and only if, they implement state-required policy. Schools that used to be locally funded now are still “locally funded” if they are willing to vote additional taxes on themselves for extras. But the majority of the property taxes that were locally controlled now go to Sacramento and come back to be spent under state direction.
Prop 13 passed in the same era that the state allowed government workers and teachers to unionize. And signed contracts that *required* the workers to join the unions (or pay the dues anyhow). These days, the biggest lobbying groups in the state are the unions – the prison guards and teachers in particular.
I could go on. I love the state, but despise its government. I’ve got enough economic, job and family ties it’s hard to move away – but if I were young, single and footloose I’d probably have already moved.
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I was born in Modoc. My dad’s family has been there over a century.
I very much know the feeling.
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Interesting proposition. Now, imagine a situation like say…Bush. (Yeah, I know, exec not rep.) Where for 8 solid years the media keeps up the bad reports and lies to the point where 75% of the country hates him. Do we want to give the media this kind of power over who represents us?
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It’s a feature, not a bug, for so-called “gridlock” to prevent new laws that have (if elections actually represent the will of the people) barely 51% support. Bipartisanship & compromise are for solving problems severe enough that there’s a lot of support for getting a solution, but disagreement on how.
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And that’s a good thing… when there hasn’t been a lot of over-reach going on.
OTOH, there is no perfect system, and I really like the “majority can’t control everyone” thing.
Saw a thing on facebook this morning, from that Teller magician guy– “Democracy without respect for individual rights is just bossing the weird kid around. And I’m always the weird kid.”
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“A variant: conduct the approval poll for the entire branch of government the politico belongs to – state legislature, governor, US house of reps, Senate, the president – with the same penalties. You can’t play nice with other congresscritters/senators/other branches of government? No pay for you! And nobody will want to work for you, either, since your bad behavior my cut *their* pay”
BAD idea, you are elected by your local constituents, those are the ONLY people you should be concerned about pleasing. Why on earth do I want the guy I elected to oppose Nancy Pelosi to be worried about her constituents polling him out of a paycheck?
I don’t elect politicians in order for them to “play nice” with other politicians, this is the single biggest problem of politicians in general, and Republicans in particular, they get to Washington/state capitol, and are worried about other politicians liking them/ thinking badly of them. I’m not paying them to be nice, I’m paying them to do their job; if those opposing them hate their guts, well as long as they are doing what I elected them to do, I don’t care (and honestly someone like Chuckie Schumer hating your guts is a good recommendation as far as I am concerned; you going to lunch with him and playing nice is going to cause me to have serious doubts).
An entire branch of government such as congress is practically always going to have a below 50% approval rating, especially when the voting public is pretty evenly divided. Think about it, neither side is going to get everything they want accomplished, and since something most individuals in the voting public wanted accomplished/wanted stopped, isn’t going to happen, they aren’t going to approve of the branch that didn’t make it happen. For example, I was very unhappy with Congress passing Obamacare, I don’t approve of them; on the other hand my Congressman campaigned and voted against it. Should the fact I don’t approve of Congress due to their passing it reflect against him?
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Has the disadvantage of focusing the pols and their minions even more on the short term.
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The proposal looks to me like it would backfire, inspiring more political machines to master the fine art of rigging elections.
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Sounds too much like paying them danegeld to me.
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Hence ‘dangerous.’ In mild amusement, that was actually where my mind went with it.
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:) Thanks for the chance to link Kipling. It had been a few days…
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It is a very dangerous concept, Marxian in its risks, like paying musicians to not rehearse!
Mrs. Rittenhouse (Margaret Dumont): You are one of the musicians? But you were not due until tomorrow.
Signor Emanuel Ravelli (Chico): Couldn’t come tomorrow. That’s too quick.
Captain Spauling (Groucho): Say, you’re lucky they didn’t come yesterday.
Ravelli: We were busy yesterday, but we charge just the same.
Spaulding: This is better than exploring. What do you fellows get an hour?
Ravelli: Ah, for playing we getta ten dollars an hour.
Spaulding: I see. What do you get for not playing?
Ravelli: Twelve dollars an hour.
Spaulding: Well, clip me off a piece of that.
Ravelli: Now… for rehearsing, we make a special rate, that’sa fifteen dollars an hour.
Spauling: That’s for rehearsing.
Ravelli: That’sa for rehearsing.
Spaulding: And what do you get for not rehearsing?
Ravelli: You couldn’t afford it.You see if we don’t rehearse we don’t play. And if we don’t play, that runs into money. . . . Well, let’s see how we stand. . . . Yesterday we didn’t come. You remember yesterday we didn’t come.
Spaulding: Oh, I remember.
Ravelli: That’s three hundred dollars.
Spaulding: Yesterday you didn’t come, that’s three hundred dollars.
Ravelli: Yes, three hundred dollars.
Spaulding: Well, that’s reasonable. I can see that, alright.
Ravelli: Now today we did come, that’s –
Spaulding: That’s a hundred you owe us.
Ravelli: Hey, I bet I’m gonna lose on the deal.
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You didn’t provide a link with that. Minimum Wage. ;)
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Wew! Thought that one was going right by.
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When I used to work tech support for a Non US based cell phone manufacturer one of the arguments we used to have with the heads from the home office was why the American agents scored so poorly on metrics when they were scored by the outsource team. It came down to the Americans knowing what steps to skip and what steps had to be followed, whereas the outsourcers followed every step on the list. Which in turn lead to a higher volume of calls being transferred to Tiers 2 and 3 because those tiers were stateside – and would skip the fluff steps to solve the issue.
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Of course before going under they’re going to hire illegals, particularly since – because the problem is everywhere – there are so many of them that even with the best possible enforcement it’s not going to be very good.
Our government doesn’t appear to look for illegals in the workplace, unless they are being hired by companies that are ununionized and have been declared somehow socially inappropriate, such as Walmart. Then they will happily charge the company for their improper hiring practices.
Meanwhile the government is reticent to put in ways for companies to check if their potential employees are not in legal residence, because that would constitute profiling, and we know that profiling is wrong.
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I really don’t have a lot of misgivings about the people that come here and actually WORK. The ones I get incensed with are the ones that come here and DEMAND the government support them, provide them with free food, clothing, housing, and spending money, send their kids to public schools and DEMAND they be taught in Spanish/other language of choice, and generally are a drag on society.
I have a neighbor who I’m sure came to the US illegally about fifteen years ago. He bought the house they’re living in (probably mortgaged, but still…), and I know he’s had at least two other families living with him from time to time. He worked for one of the major car dealerships here in Colorado Springs as a mechanic, and now owns his own auto repair business. One of his brothers (I think) works for him, but he also employs at least five gringos (including one of the dark-skinned varieties). His children go to the same school Timmy did. HE is a neighbor worth having, and I’m sure he also supports someone back in Mexico or wherever he came from. I’d give THAT man amnesty, and put him on a track for citizenship (the same track other, LEGAL immigrants have to follow).
The two families I know of that live out in the Stratmoor area, that I know are illegals, and whom I know have been reported several times (the police visit regularly — violence, drugs, alcohol, etc.), need to be crated up in a sealed CONEX box and sent back to Mexico.
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I like the immigration policy that is described as “high fences but wide doors.” In some cases, we make it very hard for people to immigrate who actually want to be here, as shown (potentially) by your hard-working neighbor. You get more behavior of the sort you reward, and if we made it so that people who are Future Americans could immigrate easily, the percentage of them would go up naturally.
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A Facebook friend recently told me that we don’t need to change legal immigration because he knows several people who made it through the system. I figure that’s like telling me that if my car is leaking oil, I don’t need to have it serviced because it still runs.
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YES. One of my cousins married a man from Argentina, and it was just ludicrous the hoops our immigration system made them jump through for him to become a legal citizen. (By the time he applied, they’d already been living in Argentina for a while and had two kids, so it was obvious to anyone with a brain — which does not include the immigration bureaucrats they had to deal with — that this was not a “paper marriage” for citizenship.) Meanwhile, we’re encouraging people to jump the line who only want to be suckers at a larger, better-supplied* government teat?
* For now. Watch how quickly it’ll dry up when you add millions of new suckers**.
** Pun very much intended, Mr. Barnum.
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A friend’s sister in-law is having similar problems. She is from Colombia and is having no luck getting a temporary visa for her mom to come visit for an extended time. Still scratching my head about what the State department has against Colombians.
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It’s amazing, isn’t it? Foggy Bottom still pretends that Colombia combines the worst of Pinochet’s Chile and the FARC. IIRC, the justification I’ve heard is that back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Colombian troops or government security police went after some labor unionists for helping FARC and/or Shining Path, so Colombia is a pariah state. *rolls eyes*
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But consider — they went after (mass-murdering) Marxists! How horrible! Surely a few decades can not erase that!
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Yeah, I was going to point out that they went after Marxist community organizers like our Glorious Leader.
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Just riffing on the title so far but, sure you can. Mind you, you can’t accomplish anything good that way, but you can always legislate it right into the ground.
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I think that’s the point.
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. . .Which creates disaster, which opportunity the certain party exploits, to get more democrat voters to the polls…
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“Sometimes I wonder why politicians don’t, instead, spend time legislating the weather. It would have just as much effect, but fewer drawbacks.”
But, they do. At least, that’s what I thought all of the carbon emissions legislation being thrown out was. It also seems to have plenty of drawbacks.
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See the Aussie Carbon Tax for a spectacularly expensive attempt at changing the weather. (I have the same quote on my clipboard and was going to use this example)
It is fun to watch a Politician lie through her teeth about the tax and then once in power, to sooth the green painted commies who had to be used to get into power, the exact opposite of her claim was enacted … and the lying wench has the nerve to be surprised when the nation turned on her and whine when the opposition once back in power kept their promise to ax the tax.
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More rules means fewer fish getting big enough to threaten the current big fish.
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Bingo!!!!!!!
It really pisses me off that they are doing it to small food producers, so the only thing that can get to market is BigAg poisonous food.
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Just to make sure you know, when you make comments like “BigAg” and “poisonous food” you make yourself look like a moonbat.
No, don’t argue with me. Don’t care. It’s the presentation that matters.
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When you end your statement with “No, don’t argue with. Don’t care.” Why should anybody listen?
Also, it makes you sound like an asshole.
No, don’t argue with me…
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I am an asshole.
But I did misword that last line.
I should have been “Don’t argue with me about the pet food or the industry. It’s not an issue I care about”.
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Incisive argument. You’ve convinced me. GMOs for me from now on.
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Protip: Everything you get in the supermarket is genetically modified. No, there isn’t a biological difference between selective breeding and genetic engineering. Genes are genes and proteins are proteins. As long as the latter isn’t going to kill you in organism A (and they do check for that, Monsanto has no desire to kill off their customers) it isn’t going to kill you if it’s engineered into organism B. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either ignorant or mendacious.
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or has an agenda.
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Their agenda is why they’re lying.
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Seconded, oh and you can’t be allergic to GMO food. You can be allergic to a CERTAIN GMO product, but NOT to GMO food as a whole. Claiming you are (and I’m not saying you are doing so, but others have) makes you look like an idiot to anybody with a brain and a rudimentary knowledge of biology.
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An additional word of advice: only eat organic food — that inorganic food will rip your guts out.
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It’s hard to chew and leaves grit in your gums, too.
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But I like salt!
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So do I.
It makes other foods tasty, and is quite necessary to certain chemical processes in food production. (I also find baking soda and baking powder useful.)
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And water. Water is nice, too. Not so much on its own but it makes a nice ingredient.
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Claiming you are (and I’m not saying you are doing so, but others have) makes you look like an idiot to anybody with a brain and a rudimentary knowledge of biology.
Leaves out a sizable portion of the population.
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Granted. It’s the poisons they are modified to grow in that we try to avoid. Glyphosate is not good for you. I’m not to thrilled about the virus vehicles either.
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That’s why you should support GMO foods, they result in lower pesticide use. Before Roundup-Ready farmers had to “nuke” their fields with massive pesticide doses before planting, since they couldn’t treat during the growing season. Now farmers can use lower doses over longer periods. Doses that can be easily washed off.
The virus vehicles are plant viruses. We separated from them so long ago that it is exceedingly unlikely that you’ll see a crossover.
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Anyway, the original comment concerned corporate/government regulatory barriers to small food producers going commercial. Practically, the only way you can buy local food from friends and neighbors is black market.
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Which seems to be thriving out here. There are several places that are most gracious about accepting a small donation per pound for tomatoes, pecans, peaches, plums, and occasionally sweet corn (if you really insist). ;)
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To some extent. Unfortunately, a farm is, by nature, a sitting duck.
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I suspect that’s a State issue, not Federal. There are plenty of Farmer’s Markets around here.
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I’m typing this one-handed because the other hand is full of Washington cherries I just bought 45 minutes ago, There are plenty of legal ways to buy local food (which isn’t necessarily all it is cracked up to be). I agree that food regulations can be a bit extreme. For example, I have no problem with people selling unpasteurized milk, as long as it it clearly la belled and rigorously segregated from pasteurized milk.
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They already had the system for checking it in place for normal hybrids. Sometimes new varieties of long standing food crops will make people sick– it’s kind of like why the US doesn’t have anywhere near the number of potato varieties that actually exist. (I think the last one that was big was a squash, some 20 folks hospitalized?)
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Yeah, when I read about the sheer variety of potato and different flavors that were available, I wibbled a little. I wanted to taste them. But realistically, you might not be able to have some things grow in certain areas (which is probably the reason why we don’t have Golden Delicious apples – one of my favorite kinds – in Queensland…)
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Interesting. Along with its fruiting quality Golden Delicious is a universal pollinator among apples. I would think it would be grown everywhere an apple would grow.
Growing up where I did the basic available market variety was the Red Delicious. I was also familiar with Jonathans, Cortlands and Romes. I didn’t come across the Golden until later, but that may have been because of Momma and Daddy’s preferences. For fresh eating I find that the Golden is better than the Red variety. Still, Granny Smith is probably the favorite apple in our household.
I knew about various fruit varieties – but! The Daughter brought home a seed catalogue from a company that collects seeds from around the world. The sheer variety of tomatoes, all the sizes, shapes and colors, I couldn’t begin to try growing all the ones that interest me.
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We had a Granny Smith appletree in the backyard. I SWEAR half of my winters I lived off apple sauce.
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Yeah, Golden Delicious is a universal pollinator; but I think it needs a cold season; which, in the three winters I’ve been here in North Queensland, has happened twice.
I know you can slowly start to cultivate things to grow in tropical places, because things that wouldn’t have grown in the Philippines before now grow – off the top of my head, strawberries and apples, and ya pears. The first offerings on sale of the things though, were sour and hard or tasteless. But when I took up a teaching course some years back (discovering how seriously screwed education is), I’d pass street sellers with punnets of strawberries and OH MY GOD THEY SMELLED AWESOME. They were selling 3 punnets for 100PHP (around 3 US dollars) and that first time, I brought home six, and my family and I sampled some of the best strawberries we’d had outside of France. The trick? They were growing the strawberries in the much colder mountainous regions of the northern Luzon provinces.
Ooh, if I may ask, what’s the company that collects seeds from around the world? I like looking at variety. I tried ordering and growing a range of tomato and vegetable seeds from overseas but although they would sprout, millipedes would eat the precious little shoots.
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Soil and climate have an awful lot to do with the quality of the produce. I gather that, for example, the same hot pepper cultivars are hotter grown in hotter climates.
The company I mentioned is Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Co, presently located in Mansfield, Missouri. (Yes, the same Mansfield as in the final home of Laura and Almanzo Wilder.) One warning, to those to whom it might matter, they are vegetarians and very committed to non-GMO/GMO free movement.
http://www.rareseeds.com/about/
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Thanks for the link, and nah, if they wanna be vegetarian, that’s fine – I just don’t want to be one myself.
Oh and apparently, GARDENING SPREADS FASCISM AND RACISM now… /snark snark snark
Is it me or this Brit is criticizing the cultural national pastime of all England as evil? I guess he must have been especially ignored-feeling lately and irrelevant to discussions…
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Sanctified bovine, Poe’s Law strikes with a vengeance! Someone please tell me that rubbish is satire. Please.
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I wanna believe it is, but the simple existence of doubt depresses me regardless of the truth.
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My vast cynicism says that someone didn’t have enough attention ‘academically’ thus this ‘theory’ and that they were serious. And because it’s fashionable to bash traditional pursuits (and gardening… is so British Traditional they have entire societies and groups devoted to it!)
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From the article Gardening Spreds Fascism And Racism
A sociology lecturer at the University of Westminster is claiming that panelists on a BBC radio show are covertly spreading racist and fascist messages when they talk about gardening.
…
The topics discussed on the show include different plant species and soil purity, which Pitcher identified as code language for racial purity. The Caucasian sociologist said radio personalities use discussions of “invasive” and non-native plant species to express opposition to foreigners.
On Alice Cooper’s Welcome 2 My Nightmare there is a song, and in that song is a perfect incredulous delivery of my first reaction: “O, really?”
(I wish I could create it as a gif, it could be so useful, but I am no computer geek, I would have to improve to be a novice..Sigh.)
This sounds like the thinking of someone who has honed his mind to see racism and fascism under every bush, and has not the slightest hands on knowledge of gardening. Nor awareness of the green movement and locavor push for organic – unadulterated by ‘pesky’ chemicals – soil. Nor of the move to avoid non-native plants that may go rampant, pushing out the native species and thereby lessening overall bio-diversity.
Note: This is a problem not just with animals (see: rabbits in Australia) and birds (see: Canadian Geese in parts of the USA). There are some flowers that were used in the Keep America Beautiful highway planting projects have taken so well to their areas that local farmers now consider them noxious weeds and have demanded that their seed be eliminated from the plantings.
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They’d probably grow, but the soil REALLY matters for apple flavors.
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High five on the Golden Delicious. Wife doesn’t like them, says they’re too tart. She only likes Red Delicious.
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ewwww, Red delicious are tasteless, jonathans! *nod*
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O_o I’ve never tasted a Red Delicious I liked. Every single one I’ve had tastes woody, dry, or flavorless. And I try ’em every so often too, thinking ‘Maybe this one…’
I like my apples tart and sweet and juicy.
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I’ve heard that the good ones are the old breeds, that have green streaks. The solid reds ones have the flavor breed out.
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Tart apples are the best for pies, because you’re going to add so much sugar.
I used to really love Winesaps but they’re not common around here. Now I mostly eat Fujis, or Gala, but they’re not as good.
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Fuji and Royal Gala – yum. Over here, Golden Delicious are classed as sweet apples.
http://www.news.com.au/world/the-cold-war-is-back-russian-us-and-british-combat-jets-are-once-again-engaging-in-games-of-chicken-in-the-skies/story-fndir2ev-1227012663971
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Er… crap. Wrong link. That was right next to the proper link tab, which is this one: http://www.gardenexpress.com.au/apple-dwarf-golden-delicious/
I’d love to have golden delicious apple trees (and Imperial Mandarin trees, and a certain type of mango here that tastes as good as the mangoes I’ve had in the Philippines) but we’re still getting moved around so that may not be a dream I’ll have fulfilled for some years yet.
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There were some apple trees around the land where my dad used to have his garden (part of the YMCA camp where he worked), but I don’t know if they are there anymore, because that part of the land was sold and there are houses there now.
The apples were slightly larger than a golf ball, had rust-colored patches on a fairly thick green skin, and were positively delicious! I had forgotten about them for years, but now that I’ve been reminded, I’m going to see about trying to plant a couple in my yard.
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The problem with tart apples is washing off all the makeup and removing the little leather miniskirts before cooking.
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But it’s SO worth it once you get them out of the leather miniskirts. Plus you can sell them on eBay as wallets.
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People buy apple wallets?
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The miniskirts, once you sew up the top, or the bottom.
Just not both.
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Oh, yeah, regarding potatoes – I read an article about them in The Smithsonian magazine, and it said that the farmers in the Andes mountains have different varieties for different elevations, so yes, not likely to be able to sample all of them unless having them delivered.
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I remember seeing some of the pictures in National Geographic, and all I could think of was ‘they look interesting and sound yummy!’ Funny names though.
Then again, we have that purple yam in the Philippines (that very often gets turned into a sweet dessert, and makes visitors go ‘why is that cake blue?’)
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Oh, I want to look into finding some of the ones not normally available in the U.S. (The article said a farmer in Peru might have more varieties in his one garden than were available in the whole U.S.), which will grow in my region and see if I can order some to plant.
There article also said that there are over 5,000 known varieties total.
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Oh, if you do, enjoy it! The likelihood of my being able to do so are in the negatives. Australia’s been understandably restrictive about that.
I did a little googling around out of curiosity; http://tatermaterseeds.com/shop/ has peruvian/andean potatoes, then there’s potatogarden dot com which has a bunch of unusual varieties that have been growing in the US for a while. Hope that helps!
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Go for the one with established-in-the-US but unusual breeds; you’re less likely to get something dangerous, be it a bad breed of tomato or some kind of SWAT team. (Yes, people smuggle in non-drug plants, and buying them is bad.)
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I’ll have to see if any of the local propagators have them. A quick look turned up this though:
https://www.greenharvest.com.au/Plants/Information/Yacon.html
Which has me quite curious. I know the Fingerling Kipfers are common enough that I can buy them at the grocery and there are different kinds of potato available (there’s a purplish one and three different sweet potatoes generally)
Oooh, the site has Jicama available (singkamas to Filipinos) – I LOVE THOSE. They’re a light, slightly sweet turnip like thing that’s nice with salt and vinegar, or just plain, peeled and eaten raw.
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Jicama is *great*– it’s in the Mexican cooking area in most of our grocery stores, mom introduced a lot of folks to it. (She taught in some really bad schools, and made Task One scaring the @#$# out of the bad dudes… so their families loved her. I don’t get it.)
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The Spouse and I confused the customs agent when we returned from London with our suitcases stuffed with books (and one rain coat). The man kept asking, ‘Books? You spent your limit on BOOKS?’ On the other hand at the next table the granny from Italy, who was trying to bring in salad goods from her garden for the family (‘She says she doesn’t know if we have anything worth the eating…’), they understood.
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My mom brought half a cake, five pounds of cherries and salad fixings when she came to visit. She got to CO with all of them.
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What an odd man.
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Ooh, thanks!
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It’s not the content, it’s the delivery.
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Cogent point. Worthy of consideration.
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BigAg being a favorite term of the fruits and nuts?
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Legislating the economy isn’t supposed to actually work – “everybody knows” the economy is too complex to understand, let alone regulate. It’s just supposed to impress the rubes, at election time, that at least “you tried”. Because what we have is a meritocracy of campaigners, that’s the only metric that counts.
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Those ‘attempts’ are leading to a morass of laws that – if we had to strictly adhere to them – would bring commerce to a screeching halt.
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I still vividly recall living through old Jimmuh the C’s valiant attempt to put a gallon of affordable petrol in every tank back in the day. Wonderful intentions, sucked in implementation. Long lines waiting at the pumps, limits on how much you could buy. You could actually be refused service if your gauge read more that half full. Yeah, great idea. And I too picked up on that interesting small disconnect from the lib/prog list of good intentions for legalizing the illegals because American needs the cheap labor, and oh by the way we really need to raise minimum wage to $15.
On a somewhat related note, anyone else have the thought that if our current grand and glorious leader really wanted to stick it to Putin all he would have to do is announce authorization of the Keystone pipeline, open all federal lands to exploratory drilling, and suggest very favorable trade terms for energy products with European countries. Might just have a more significant effect than banning the import of Russian sporting rifles and shotguns don’t you think.
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Yes, but that would benefit America.
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And all that cheap fuel means global warming! Think of the baby seals! Oil slicks from wrecked tankers, Category 10 hurricane, people no longer cutting down park trees for fuel in Germany (um, ignore that one), super-blizzard, the children!!!
Anything I missed?
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Endangered bugs existing in only that one small wood which would be on the way of that pipeline?
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I think you mean the Prairie Chicken. (And I wish I were joking.)
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Aha. Well, there is always something endangered on the way.
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Mostly donations from billionaires.
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Prairie Chicken – tastes like spotted owl.
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*snork!*
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I dunno, i always thought spotted owl was kinda stringy.
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Wouldn’t know. They all left the old growth trees for the second growth areas about the time we started hunting ’em…
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True Story. A friend of mine had a small (two man) logging operation on the coast, mostly logging small private pieces. He was getting ready to log this nice 40 acre patch of second growth, when the owner found a pair of spotted owls nesting in it. The owner called a state biologist, who came out and looked at it and then told them, “log it off, if you cut the tree they are nesting in down, they will go back to the old growth where they belong.”
I have seen two active spotted owl nests (that I could identify, I don’t normally wander around looking for nests in trees, and then wait to see if they are being used and by which species) one was in a second growth alder patch, and the other was in an approximately twenty year old reprod patch, in Oregon. I ran into an Oregon state biologist down there one day, and he informed me that that pair of spotted owls was the most productive in the state, they had raised litters? every year for eight years and produced more young than any other pair they were monitoring. Then three years ago they had precommercial thinned that reprod, and in his opinion they must have disturbed that pair, because they hadn’t had a litter since. When I asked him if he had ever considered the thought that they might just be getting old; he looked at me for a second and then just went on talking like I hadn’t said a word.
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Yeah, this litany (Is your brain going to recover, by the way? That had to hurt.) is the sort that makes me twitchy.
Because there are legitimate concerns that need to be addressed in implementing a large scale project of this nature. Some of them have been raised (And addressed! How’d it happen?) but so much is going to be camouflaged under the ninniness (word, really).
The people proposing the project not being evil masterminds, they’d like to be able to find and fix any potential problems, address any potential concerns, and generally eliminate as many potential failure points/disasters as possible.
Ninniness (repetition reinforces it’s legitimacy, right?) masks things behind the absurd.
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Yup, and yes, my brain will recover. I’m sort of getting it warmed up for a 20 minute presentation I need to write, about non-human animals as agents of geomorphic changes in a watershed. Small doses of jargon at first, then larger, and then I can launch into the project without hurting myself.
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Warm-ups are good procedure.
Sounds like an interesting (potentially) presentation. Assuming there’s a layman’s accessible version.
Although, I thought non-human animals had no impact because they’re ‘natural.’?
:innocence:
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In popular environmentalism, non-domesticated animals have only good effects on Nature, because, you know, they’re natural. In environmental history, all sorts of non-human animals have effects on their environment, even those not considered “keystone” species, and good or bad depends on “good for whom”. I’m looking at primarily beaver, bison, horses, sheep, and cattle between roughly 1800 and 1925.
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I’m gonna assume you knew I was joking, because I don’t have time for depressed pouting at the moment. :D
And now I’m more interested in the presentation.
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Presentation? How about grilled and plated with some fresh white asparagus, polenta with bacon and cheese, and a few sprigs of parsley?
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Hm. Is that the presentation for beaver, bison, horse, sheep or cow?
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Yes.
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We love all God’s critters, especially with gravy and mashed potatoes!
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Almost all. There’s one prominent critter I like to keep out of my diet.
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I teach finance and economics. Like crying in baseball, there’s no fair in finance/econ.
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I meant to reply before, but my computer was giving me issues. I’m a great fan of Dr. Sowell.
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THe bison or the spotted owl?
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Me too. Are you going to post it somewhere?
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I might. It’s a paper for an international conference next year. If the papers are published as a collection or in the organization’s journal, I can’t post it, but I may see what I can do in a couple of blog posts. I’m also a little hesitant because it’s getting close to where someone could look at “who does research in this area” and ID me.
Eamon, I was pretty sure you were kidding. I just thought I’d fill in teh difference between the “Save all the Things!” crowd and what I do. (Not that there’s not “some” overlap between the groups.)
Wayne, I’ve been told that flame-broiled beaver tail is quite tasty. The rest of the beaver, not so much. Remember, cook game long and low, braise/simmer it, or lard it so it doesn’t dry out. :)
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Nothing wrong with filling in the details. I’m a lousy pouter anyway.
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:o) It’s an over-rated talent.
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“Wayne, I’ve been told that flame-broiled beaver tail is quite tasty.”
You have to char it and peel it, then it’s good.
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“Wayne, I’ve been told that flame-broiled beaver tail is quite tasty. The rest of the beaver, not so much. Remember, cook game long and low, braise/simmer it, or lard it so it doesn’t dry out. ”
Not sure how beaver tail got the reputation of being a delicacy; honestly I’ve never tried it, it is a strip of gristle and fat with a bone in the middle and a thick chunk of scaly leather on either side. Looks like way to much work to get at a very inferior piece of meat. Whoever gave you your information was faulty however, the rest of the beaver (well the red meat parts, I don’t eat guts) is very tender, juicy and tasty.
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Whoever gave you your information was faulty however, the rest of the beaver (well the red meat parts, I don’t eat guts) is very tender, juicy and tasty.
*squint* I think I can see why that misinformation may have been given though…
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we had to use a cement mixer to toss the brontosaurus legs in marinade.
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Good to know. We have a thriving beaver colony. I don’t know if we’ll every need to eat them as they draw in the moose, which give you a much better return.
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You know I was being mature (I know, rare, for me) and carefully keeping my comment out of the gutter.
I COULD have just said, “the beaver is much tastier than the tail.”
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You were doing so well, too.
Almost resisted.
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Goodness, why resist such a delightful opening?
*pokes her brain as it marinates in the gutter*
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… I’m trying to figure out whether you did that on purpose or not, drow. *shakes head*
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Did what? ^_^?
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I’d say “get your minds out of the gutter you’re blocking my snorkel” but that won’t work well.
I switched to a rebreather unit some time ago.
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There was an interesting suggestion in an article that I read that the loss of the megafauna in north and south America impoverished a lot of the prairies and llanos because the megafauna transported nutrients back up the watershed to be….deposited, during their migrations. Not sure how accurate that is. But having mastadons wallow in the creeks and seasonal waterholes must have been worse than all the horse, bison and wild hogs ever in busting down the walls of a gulley or churning up a riparian area.
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It might have happened temporarily, and would be more likely in true arid environments than in the Great Plains/High Plains. Bison expanded into the empty grazer niche really quickly, as best archaeologists can tell (based on what happened between 1550-1800). I have no knowledge about the pampas prior to about 1800, so they could well have become somewhat senescent (lots of dead plant matter not getting recycled).
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Advocates of the Pleistocene rewilding want to bring ’em back, or the closest equivalents. They like mustangs and feral burros: there were equines in the Americas in the Pleistocene. They want to add elephants, camels — cheetahs, to give the pronghorn a justification for its speed — and more
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I would point out that an ’06 gives the antelope justification for all the speed it can produce.
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Good question good for whom. North Carolina has been having an interesting time with beavers, and I write of the semi-aquatic rodent kind.
Chapel Hill, NC is the home of the main branch of UNC, and it runs into a small town named Carboro, the area is called by some Berkeley East. Has lots of streams. Has lots of expensive houses that back on the streams. Has been invaded by beaver. Has headache balancing the demands of the greens to protect the wild life and the home owners (often the very same people) who do not want flooded homes.
The state zoo in Asheboro is having to live trap and relocate beaver that keep trying to, um, helpfully re-landscape the carefully landscaped wild animal enclosures.
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List of things supposedly caused by global warming
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html
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LMAO Awesome. I can’t wait to peruse those.
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We can make cheap fuel from baby seals? Where’s my baseball bat?… Um, sorry, was that not what you were wanting me to think about the baby seals?
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“Might just have a more significant effect than banning the import of Russian sporting rifles and shotguns don’t you think.”
Depends on what effect you were aiming for. Banning arms and ammo is a “worthy” cause in and of itself. The fact that the Russians could give a shite and it only hurts American businesses is beside the point.
Great justification for it though.
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Its gonna be great for American businesses. Have you seen prices on the remaining Russian-made AKs?
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Short run, then they’ll have to start looking around for something else to import. They had to put a stop to those AKs though. They’re just a little too “armed peasants” for comfort.
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Many domestic AK manufacturers are already ramping up their production.
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Of course.
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a thing to remember is Carter ***spit*** was, in his mind, trying to lower the prices of gas and electricity, and 0bama has freely admitted he thinks our gas should be at least “in line with the rest of the world” price-wise ($4 or $5 a gallon) ignoring their high pricing is due to Taxes on the gas, not poor policy causing extra high base crude pricing, and he said his under his policies “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Carter failed to lower the pricing … 0bama has succeeded in his goal to raise our prices.
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Yes, it’s one of those few times he’s been honest. In order to reduce the use of something, raise the price.
‘Course, I don’t think he foresees/saw the consequence of higher prices. More money in the producers pockets increases incentives for exploration and production…
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“all he would have to do is announce authorization of the Keystone pipeline”
I believe it’s too late for that. If I heard the news correctly, Canada has already moved on and agreed to sell the oil to China.
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So, if the oil gets consumed somewhere else, the environment is still saved, right? Right? (Nevermind the increased pollution from transporting it to China by ship.) And of course shipping by rail is safer and cleaner. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with Burlington Northern/Santa Fe being the primary shipped of oil from Canada and North Dakota. Oh, and who owns a big chunk of BNSF?)
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Sure, as long as you avoid the fact that the Chinese are the worst polluters on the planet. What never gets mentioned is that American industry now meets or exceeds the restrictions laid out in the Kyoto accords even though we never signed up to them. So all that Canadian crude will be shipped by rail to ports to be loaded on tankers with all the added risk that both those means of transport impart just so that what finally reaches China can be processed without any of the concerns and restrictions we would have taken.
The greenies should be ever so proud of themselves. They showed us, now didn’t they.
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I believe the Canadians continue to find more oil in various plays & layers – there may be enough for both the Chinese and us.
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“I still vividly recall living through old Jimmuh the C’s valiant attempt to put a gallon of affordable petrol in every tank back in the day. Wonderful intentions, sucked in implementation. Long lines waiting at the pumps, limits on how much you could buy.”
I wasn’t buying gas at that time, but my dad constantly states whenever it is brought up, “remember the gas shortage under Carter? Funny thing, as soon as the price got up to a $1 a gallon where they wanted it there wasn’t a shortage any more, there was all the gas you wanted to buy. And we’ve never had a shortage since, even though we have burned a whole lot of gas in the last thirty years.”
I have a problem believing that he had any desire to “put a gallon of affordable petrol in every tank”
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It depends on what definition you use for affordable, don’t it???
Keep in mind that a dollar bought considerably more back then.
Back then, $1.75 would buy your average SF ppb.
Inflation and historical cost of paperbacks
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102755
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“Back then, $1.75 would buy your average SF ppb.”
You can blame Clinton for that one. Legislating how much recycled paper must go into a paperback is EXACTLY what I consider important when I am electing my national representatives.
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YES. Someone else who knows where the problem came in. It doubled pbacks from around 5 to 8 and immediately put most out of my “buy new on impulse” range.
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But how will we destroy the environment without it? The bleaching is worse than harvesting new trees on the environment.
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A small disagreement. You can legislate an economy. You cannot by legislation create a healthy economy. There will be an economy of some kind. Underground. Black. But an economy there will be.
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Exactly! You can absolutely legislate an unhealthy economy though. See (most of) Europe.
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From RES who isn’t where he can comment, an observation on teacher/student ratios:
With a class of 120 students and four teachers — we have a Student/Teacher ratio of 30:1. Assume that we have one excellent teacher, two competent ones and one mediocre teacher.
To “improve” the S/T ratio to 20:1 we hire two more teachers. Where do they come from? If they were competent we wouldn’t have kept the mediocre teacher employed, so assume the new hires are barely competent, if that.
Now we have twenty students taught by our excellent teacher instead of the prior thirty. The two competent teachers — who had been instructing sixty students — now teach forty. Where we previously had three-quarters of our students receiving excellent to competent teaching, we now have half our students being taught by teachers who are, at best, mediocre.
The fallacy of classroom ratio depends on how you view teacher quality. If all teachers are interchangeable, dilution of the teaching pool causes no drop in instructional quality; if you understand teacher qualities to be an important differential, you perceive dilution of the teacher pool to produce an overall drop in education results.
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Note: the teacher’s union is still one of the most powerful organizations in this country, and lives off the government funds. (And they see that those politians who scratch their backs get their organized support.)
There are very likely unemployed teachers of potential merit, but, because of the union protection racket called tenure, we are stuck with teachers who are less than stellar. (The California decision having not worked it’s way through the courts yet — but there is hope.) Lower student teacher ratios promoted by the union may well be designed to protect established tenured teacher once the population of students drops — as it tends to do the when the economy crashes. One might even argue that this is one reason the government is inclined accepting an influx of illegal children is to keep populations up in government schools and thus keep the union workers happily employed.
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I hadn’t thought of it this way, but excellent points, all. I don’t think the classroom to teacher ratio should be an issue except in lower elementary school. Look at college classes: I doubt you learn much less in big lecture halls.
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Properly structured, yes, but “properly structured” would include supporting programs to encourage better performing students help out those who are struggling, so that the teacher can focus on getting the information that they are supposed to be teaching out there, without having to go over it half a dozen times for the slower students.
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Is this encouragement going to be labeled “Pay to the Order of”? Children should not be acting as unpaid teacher’s aides when they are in school to be educated themselves.
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If it’s volunteer and not forced, what does it matter? Plus, you learn a subject even better when you teach it to someone else.
Children acting as unpaid teachers aides often went on when the school was a one-room affair with all grades in the room at the same time, and it worked well.
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When the schools are encouraging the children whom they happen to hold captive, calling it volunteer is very iffy.
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It’s an established and effective method (when not abused), assisting those with problems and improving the mastery of the students who understood the material initially. There are also secondary skills being learned by all parties.
Note, the alternative for the students who already understand the material is not additional educational opportunities. It’s boredom until everybody’s caught up.
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Now imagine it being implemented by the sort of school system that punishes the kid who was assaulted for not trying hard enough to get along with the other kids.
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Oh, I can imagine all sorts of horrible implementations. Some of ’em I don’t have to imagine.
Doesn’t completely invalidate the technique, though. Just means it’s inappropriate in some environments.
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And a free and cheap alternative: let them read on their own. Does no harm and may be educational.
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Which is where I spent most of my primary school education. The best teachers were the ones (depressingly few) who had suggestions for reading.
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Primary and secondary. I think typing on the phone squeezes my brain.
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I’ve explained it to people as the interface getting in the way of my chain of thought.
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Yeah, that works. Doesn’t help that the WP banner shows up on the phone, and when typing a comment my viewing window is squeezed between the banner and the keyboard! *grumble*
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Ditto.
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Problem: it has to be something you already understand, not that you’ve just finished.
I helped out my classmates in the Navy as an official class homework aid– dang, I miss my Marines– but it was always on stuff that I had demonstrated a grasp of.
Before giving them something so easily exploited, first they need to stop putting people in classes when they couldn’t pass the pre-reqs, and then give teachers the ability to remove students that are actively interfering with the class.
Then we can talk about extra credits for folks who work as teacher’s aid.
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No argument.
Also, in post-secondary education I favor the undergraduate assistant much, much less.
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I got “volinteered” for exactly that.
Not only does it not work, when they still screw up the kid who was “encouraged” to help gets blamed.
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And why in blue blazes are we paying a premium for a college degree if a classmate of the students is capable of teaching them?
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In college? Agreed.
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Seconded. When I was tutoring in college, I for dang sure could have used some of that “premium.”
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I missed part of what I was trying to describe. The mentoring would be done by older students, not those in their grade, so it would not be a classmate. I would suggest two grade levels above, minimum.
Yes, everything can be broken. That doesn’t change the fact that it would improve things in general.
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Giving government employees the authority to pressure anyone, let alone children, to work for nothing is never a certainty to improve things.
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I did that one year! It was actually kind of nice– basically, just like a study hall but with something useful to do after I finished my homework, and it kept the math fresh in my mind. Also good for building real self-esteem.
(back story: I signed up for some high level math class after they assured me that it would not be taught by Mr. “It’s not my job to teach you, it’s your job to learn” wrestling coach. I walked in on the first day. He was setting up to teach. I walked out and straight down to the councilor and put my foot down, and there was nowhere else to put me. The class was an absolute failure, because he couldn’t bully anyone to teach the other students the class, but at least I escaped….)
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This is the abused I mentioned elsewhere. I have unkind words for teachers who blame students for education failures. The teacher is responsible, and they’re responsible for supervision of the student-student process. It’s still all on them.
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Mary, in high school I was an unofficial teacher’s aide for my sophomore geometry class. Just me & 7 girls in the class. I didn’t need any other compensation to do lots of tutoring :)
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All predicated of course on the assumption that the increased funding will go towards hiring more teachers. In actual implementation the bulk of such windfalls go to infrastructure, increased administrative staff, better working conditions for the permanent important folks. Or so they consider themselves.
I know for a fact that in my area teachers and parents are paying for basic classroom supplies while the front office gets new computers, new furniture, redecorated offices, and so on. I hope and pray that some school administrators are sincere and honestly trying to provide quality education, but everything I see tells me that they are simply feathering their own very cushy nests while treating the kids as an unfortunately necessary evil they must tolerate to justify their petty empires.
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I’ve been told that part of this problem is because the money that the school district receives is earmarked for specific purposes, and is not a general fund, that the schools can do with as they please.
If this is true, then it leads one to wonder if the underfunding of basic supplies is intentional, in order to boost support for higher taxes and school funding.
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It’s funny how firefighters, police, and teachers get their salaries cut first when the government wants money, but never the salaries of the politicians…
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Funny indeed how under sequestration what our caring compassionate administration did was close every possible public venue whether or not sequestration had any impact on that location’s funding. When the cattle get uppity you must inflict pain upon them to teach them a lesson and their place in the greater scheme of things.
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And spend money to do so, when the venues didn’t cost anything, open.
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ALL. MARKETS. CLEAR. It doesn’t matter what any government says or does, the market will take that information and, as Sarah put it so beautifully, deform around it.
And don’t get me started on “Economic Patriotism”.
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Capitalism views laws as damage and routes around them.
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Hence the illegal drug trade, human trafficking, illegal prostitution, cigarette smuggling, continued moonshine production, gun running, etc. Where there is demand, somebody will come up with a supply, morals and laws notwithstanding.
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“Economic patriotism”. Good thing a Republican didn’t say that, it would be jingoistic!
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I find it appalling that the president and his party would DARE question anybody’s patriotism. This economic nationalism is the last resort of the scoundrel.
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The last resort of the thief, trying to cloak his actions with a glimmer of justification.
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I think the majority of the country has never even taken a basic econ class and are completely and totally confused about the concept of incentives.
Leading to way too many totally confused democrats voting for all sorts of unhelpful nonsense.
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Incentives. Key concept. That’s why no politician wants to talk about it.
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They talk about them all the time.
Then implement the perverse ones.
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Maybe we should just institute the Canute Memorial Procedure for all proposed utopian legislation — *until* the legislative body comes up with a law that actually does control the weather / herd cats / get type A+ blood from a turnip, they aren’t allowed to pass any economy-herding laws. It would keep them busy and away from explosives, and we could sell tickets for extra revenue ;-)
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Watch that ‘type A+ blood stuff’ I’m getting calls from the Red Cross already. I think they might start a turnip farm in the field just north of me in the belief that osmosis works.
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It’s called “opportunity cost”. Of course, I’m sure you (and most of, if not all, the regulars here) know that.
My favorite “go to” place on that is Bastiat and his “that which is seen and that which is unseen.”
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“Every one that doeth evil hateth the light.” I would like to see a procedural change in the way laws are created. Say you’re creating S. B. Whatever and that this law will do Something Important. V1.0 has the text and is date-stamped and the author(s) name(s) is/are given. I would like each modification to be date-stamped as well, along with the name of the senator that proposed the change clearly noted. I want to be able to simply and easily, when the inevitable disaster caused by this clause — I’m looking at you, Messers Dodd and Frank — pin the tail on the damn donkey that authorized this clusterf**k.
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“And I will shed my light over dark evil, for the dark things cannot stand the light…”
Alan Scott, where are you when we need you?
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I’ve often thought there should be a variation on the REINS act, that legslators should be PERSONALLY responsible for the — scorn quotes — “negative externalities” of the laws they promulgate. Maybe assign punishments by culpability. Author of a bill bears 50%, sponsor 25%, co-sponsor 15% and so on. No statute of limitations. Hubert Humphrey should have been held accountable for the disaster of the Great Society, with his promises of spending maxima held against him. For example.
M
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And legislators get NO benefit of “grandfathering” when they change existing law. I remember when they passed some gun legislation (I think it was the “assault weapons” ban), that some Senator (Kennedy?) said that his gun that would come under that law was “grandfathered in”.
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Sarah, I don’t think that you are the audience for that ad. There is a portion of the economy that can be legislated. That’s the rent taking economy of the administrative state. That’s who the ad is pointed. It’s the teacher and school administrators who have vested interest in believing that more money in schools means better schools, regardless of actual results, it’s the social worker who believes that what they do is “helping,” It’s the poor people who believe that they are owed, and most of all it’s the product of the Ivy Covered Snob Factories who, because they have always done the right thing and gone to all the right schools and kissed the right butts that they should legislate other people’s business because they are “better” than the rest of us. They believe that the economy can be legislated because they have always depended on money legislated form others and can’t conceive how that all might come down around their heads.
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Well done, and your son is correct! Re wages- Australia is learning a hard lesson about high wages with the closing of Ford of Australia, Holden and Toyota car/truck plants, one cigarette manufacturer and one oil refinery closing… Estimated 50K+ jobs lost and unknown amount of tax revenue, because these companies were NOT PROFITABLE in the current Australian economy. The pol’s response? Raise taxes… again…
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In the US we call that doubling down on stupid, which seems to be what politicians of every culture are best at.
They get elected by blowing smoke up a majority of rear orifices, then assume that grants them some measure of ability to rule successfully. Then when they fail through their own stupidity it’s our fault, and perhaps they’re right. After all we did elect them and chose not to lynch or tar and feather them for cause.
Public polls are an interesting indicator, but still and all a poor substitute for throwing the bastiches out, and two, four, or six years is starting to feel like far too long a lag time to wait.
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Eeek! Where’s Mad Max going to get his next Interceptor?
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China.
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If he’s lucky… Otherwise Korea… And it could mean the end of the ubiquitous Aussie Utes…
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Eventually, the politicians will figure out that businesses respond to this kind of legislation by relocating to another state, and they’ll start trying to ban that. Business owners will respond by selling the company — or shutting it down and selling off its assets — in order to take the money to another state and start over. And the politicians will try to ban selling or closing down your own business. From there to Directive 10-289 is almost no distance at all.
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“Eventually”? The NLRB has already weighed in on businesses (Boeing anyway) relocating to avoid state taxes and Union entitlements. The ruling was “no”.
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They are routing around that, somehow. Today’s (31 Jul) WSJ has an article about the new Dreamliners (787-10s) being built in the non-union plant. It seems they are just a bit too long to ship to WA for final assembly. I wonder how that happened…
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Funny thing though, the higher Tier airlines are not buying 787’s built in North Carolina. The -10 may turn out to be an unpopular model….
Word is that after that bonus was paid out, a lot of the workers took the money and left. The turnover in that plant is said to be at Burger King levels, and the quality of the output shows it.
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First reminisce: My first grade class (all in one room) had one teacher and 98 students. Sister Brigit Joseph effectively taught all of us, some of us got more out of it than others, but all learned.
Second throught: Had a college econ exam question:
” President Harding (I think) said I don’t know much about economics but when Americans buy American, the economy is better for it. Prove that only the first half of his statement is true.”
Its nice to laugh during an exam, not so much when politicians try it in real life.
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Actually both of those statements are true, if the second is caveated.
“When Americans buy American products because they are better the economy is better for it.”.
We are better off when we are competitive.
My MiL’s car is dying. It’s a Ford, arguably the best (quality) that America is producing these days.
My SiL is driving a Toyota Echo *she* has owned for 10 years, and was a few years old when she bought it.
I was considering buying a Ford Escape Hybrid (I have this unfounded belief that a hybrid will do better over 8000 feet than a gas, and certainly than a non-turbo diesel), but frankly the Toyota Highlander Hybrid isn’t that much more (on the used market) and I can trust that the Toyota will last longer than the payments.
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We currently own a Ford Freestyle that has 125,000 miles on it and is still going strong. I’m shooting for 300,000 miles in it, as long as some idiot doesn’t cream the car in an accident. (One of the reasons I love this car is that I was sitting in the third row when we got rear-ended by a drunk in a truck at least half again our weight, and I was completely and totally uninjured. Guy pulled a hit-and-run but left a license plate behind, which is why he ended up in jail…)(Oh, and the oil he left behind indicated mortal damage to HIS vehicle too.)
Mind you, this was during the brief period where Ford owned Volvo, so it’s technically a prettied-up Volvo design.
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Good point; and it illustrated the logical flaw of much economic legislation: the confusion of cause and effect. See, in a healthy American economy, American products are better and cheaper so people buy American, wages are higher, and there are more people who can afford to buy houses. So pass laws to encourage people to buy American, raise wages, and own (mortgaged-through-the-nose) houses, and the economy will be the better for it, amiright?
(The same with education: Experienced readers learn to recognize whole words at a time, so teach that instead of phonics; teach subtraction the way people with developed number skills do it and leave off the mechanical get-the-right-answer-even-if-you-don’t-know-why method.)
The fun thing is that by legislating the desired effects, they’ve eliminated a feedback the system used to have, so the system is destabilized andit becomes impossible to measure how well anything’s working.
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This is a good example of what’s called “wet streets cause rain” stories.
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And Toyota is actually more “American made” than Ford. It just isn’t union made.
Oh, actually I see that according to this website, http://www.cars.com/go/advice/Story.jsp?section=top&subject=ami, in 2014 the Ford F150 is actually the most American made, edging out the Toyota Camry. Either last year or the year before the Toyota Corolla and Honda Accord were the two most American made, you will note in the top 10 we have 4 Toyotas (#’s 2,4,5,6), 3 Hondas, and one each of the big three “American” companies.
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Offspring’s buying a 2012 CR-V from me. We were looking at cars – and I wasn’t impressed by Fords. We were looking at the Escape, and the feeling I got was that it was all gloss and little to no substance. (Doesn’t help that I’ve got a friend who’s had miserable experiences with Fords…)
Add in that it didn’t look like there was a reasonable way to change the battery, it being tucked up in the back of the engine compartment underneath the air conditioning intakes, and I just backed away slowly so as not to excite the salesman. They get dangerous when they smell money…
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“I was considering buying a Ford Escape Hybrid (I have this unfounded belief that a hybrid will do better over 8000 feet than a gas, and certainly than a non-turbo diesel)”
My dad drove a Ford Escape Hybrid for about a year as a work car. It didn’t have any problems, unlike the new Ford C-max he got to replace it.* It was a few years old with a fair amount of miles, and no problems, BUT it never seen the upper of 20 mpg no matter how you drove it. A lot of compact gas vehicles, and practically any compact diesel will do much better than that. No it wasn’t over 8000 and possibly a diesel might not work as well their, although the only problems I have seen with them there are the low wintertime temps, but while I have noticed a slight decrease in power at those elevations in my gas Toyotas, I’m not sure that it was the elevation as much as the fact that Wyoming has 85 octane gas instead of 87.
*Don’t buy a C-max, the entire line is a lemon; of over half a dozen I know of (some counties and state decided to get them for work cars) every one has been broke down and in the shop (and usually left the driver stranded in the process) in less than six months from the time it left the dealer.
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I live in Oklahoma. The Tulsa area has some of the largest schools in the state with the worst teacher to student ratios . . . and they frequently out score all the other public schools in the state. This fact goes unnoticed by the Oklahoma City metro area.
People tend to forget the only reason minimum wage in the US finally pushed through was because it was supported a white supremacist agenda by preventing blacks from taking jobs from white people.
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I teach Finance and Economics at the University level, and I’m always amazed at the low level of economic fluency most people have. The law of supply and demand isn’t arbitrary. Along with that, if you don’t let markets set prices as the intersection of supply and demand (i.e the price and volume that clears the market), they supply and demand will adjust and end up at a sub-optimal level. But I’ve learned that most people don’t want to understand – they just want to find justification for what they already “know”. When I find myself talking to one of those I just keep quiet (unless there’s a third party present that can benefit from the idiot being curbstomped).
Thomas Sowell has written a couple of great (and pretty much math-free) books on the topic.
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I own those books by Dr. Sowell. They are great for their simple clear explanations.
Could you recommend a book with the math in it? (I have managed to acquire a math degree.)
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Here’s a splendid example of this sort of reasoning:
http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2014/06/15/lets-get-rid-of-wage-labor/
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Mr. Spagnoli’s views on human motivation and willingness to cooperate are rather more optimistic than mine are. And I’d like to see him answer the question about “large scale expropriation of the means of production” instead of saying “it might be hard but that won’t/doesn’t matter because . . .”
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“However, I’m tempted to assume that people will want to be economically active and that the UBI combined with the end of wage income will set loose a lot of initiative and ambition, but all that is hard to predict. Maybe I’m being too optimistic.”
Maybe he should read Theodore Dalrymple.
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He’s being way, way too optimistic.
If I’d had a UBI back about 30 years ago, I wouldn’t have had much of an incentive to better myself. I’d have been pretty happy just doing the minimums.
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I remember reading of some socialist calling for “Universal Income” because “wage slaves” often voted the way their employers wanted them to do. Of course, this “moron” may have made the same argument but I quit reading after the first paragraph or two.
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If we can’t work for wages, we’ll set up cooperative ventures instead!
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An “anarcho-synidicast commune”?
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Help! Help! I’m being repressed.
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Somebody’s been smoking the fairy dust {Now With Rainbows!}.
Emphasis mine.
Really? Hm.
…lose their right to unilaterally decide… Those bassoons!
…sharing the proceeds… What is this wage you speak of?
Do you really think so? *wide-eyed, breathless*
:|
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One of the things that really chaps my hide is when workers whine about not getting their fair share of the proceeds. What do you mean “fair”? Were you the one who came up with the idea to form the company? Were you the one who put everything on the line to start this venture? Are you the one who could possibly be completely wiped out if everything goes Tango Uniform?
This always reminds me of The Little Red Hen.
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Yes. More pointedly, did you or did you not agree to the compensation offered when accepting the job?
Which does not preclude me from criticizing executive compensation packages when said executives are tanking companies. Separate issue.
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That is a subject for the stock holders and the board of directors. (Most of whom went to college or are in the same club as the aforementioned useless exec.)
I think one of the things that screws up companies is the focus on short term results. Find a way to tie an executives compensation to how the stock is doing 1 yr, 5 yrs, 10 yrs. down the road so they’re trying to build a better company rather than cook the books. (Has anyone else been forced to take PTO so a C level exec could make liabilities go down to make his goals?)
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Yeah, but I think it’s a fine subject for the wider culture. Culture informs everybody, after all.
And, yes. Maximizing share-holder value as the sole metric is problematic for long-term corporate viability.
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In my company’s IT, we’ve been mandated to take PTO twice in the past four years in order to improve IT budget numbers. We were hardly thrilled.
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“Wage labor is inherently authoritarian rather than cooperative”
Notice the projection. HE wants to decree that no one is allowed, however voluntarily, to cooperate in an agreement for wages, and he doesn’t realize that he’s the authoritarian.
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Do they ever?
I’m sure he’d deny it. His reasons are pure, after all.
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I was going to post this there, but RWP is right, people won’t generally hear what they don’t want to:
You want to see what life would be like if everyone got a check in the mail large enough to cover “basics” (who decides “basics”? Politicians subject to pressure groups”) go look at groups that *already* get these types of subsides:
1) Native Americans, especially those in Alaska.
2) Native Australians (aka “Aboriginals”).
3) Trust fund kids in NYC, Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.
4) Every trailer park in America outside of Silicon Valley, and even a few of them.
And no, it’s not about race. Most of the people in 3 and 4 are of European/WASP descent. It’s about growing up KNOWING that you will never have to dance for your dinner.
And now, it’s not *all* of them. Just most.
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Any time a student uses the word “fair” in my class (unless with derision), they get marked off. It’s a meaningless word (at least the way it’s usually used today).
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What? We can’t talk about the fair princess in the fairy tale?
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Oops – accidentally posted this above in a place it made no sense. I teach in a business school. Like crying in baseball, there’s no fair in finance – despite what Senator Warren (spit) says.
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I dunno. I’m with Mary on this one.
A princely sum is indeed a fair thing to see in one’s bank balance…
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People who will tell you that there is fair in finance & economics will tell you other lies, too.
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I thought fairs were financially viable?
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Considering how much pelf I’ve coughed up over the years for funnel cake, stuff-on-a-stick, Navajo tacos, and “throw the ring over the milk bottle”, I’m not sure how you can lose money on a fair.
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And if you successfully “ring the milk bottle”, you receive a giant purple, stuffed panda; that you could have bought for less than you paid for the rings to attempt to win it.
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Off on a tangent:
And they play games with the funding. When they brought riverboat gambling to Missouri, they sold it on the revenue from the boats going to education. True, but they canceled the money that education was getting from the general fund by the amount that they got from the riverboats. So now, if anyone wants to go against the riverboats, they are automatically anti-school. And the local school districts have trouble on funding votes, because people talk about how they’re getting all that money from the riverboats.
(And that isn’t discussing whether the gambling is a good idea, or the fact that they advertised it with pictures of the boats going up and down the river, but somehow “riverboat” got redefined as “building in a moat” when it came time to build them, etc.)
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Capitalism routing around damage by building a moat.
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First the gambling floor had to be floating on the river (which I voted against). Then it could be in a moat (which I voted against). Now they want it to be within two miles of the river. Guess which way I’ll vote on that one.
Well do I remember the wailing and gnashing of teeth when I told people to stick it when they screamed, “Its for the children! Don’t you care?”
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I wonder how long before the definition of rivers expands to allowing one beside Fishing River (a small creek up in Kearney).
I remember they had to have the “Boat in a Moat” vote because they were already building and operating ones like that, and people were starting to say, “Hey, wait a minute! This isn’t what I voted for.” Or voted against, as the case may be.
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Sometimes I wonder why politicians don’t, instead, spend time legislating the weather. It would have just as much effect, but fewer drawbacks.
It has been tried — in Camelot….
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it’s being done now. we call it “climate change.”
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The US spends about as much on education as defense – given the sequestration, it might even be more. Why is it that we have the world’s best military but an education system that we are constantly told is a national embarrassment*? I think it’s useful to point out that one is dominated by conservatives, while the other is controlled by Progressives.
*I’m not entirely convinced by international comparisons of statistics. There are so many issues, ranging from translation error to fundamental differences in worldview, that I don’t think the statistics are saying what the people flogging them are saying.
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*Sniff* Amazon denied my Affiliate site.
I suppose next time I should plug in one of the blogs I use more.
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Reading this, I flashed back to an episode of “The Simpsons.” The owner of a carny ring toss booth tells Homer that it is impossible for the customer to actually win at any of the carnival games; they’ve all been carefully rigged to prevent that. Homer immediately drops a wad of bills on the counter. “Oh, yeah? We’ll just see about that!”
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Except, you are all too optimistic. I have listened to people in politics – they are not that stupid – they are experts in exactly one thing – getting elected. Bluntly, a significant fraction of them would adopt smarter policies if we, the people, would support them. But, political survivors have learned that, overall, smart policy loses them jobs…
If you look at most initiatives, they are calculated to not do much damage and provide nice sound bites. Are there any jobs in Colorado to outsource? If so, is the law actually hard to dodge? Probably not. Does the law make a good commercial? Yep. There are a few real programs…but they catch enormous flak. Eg., Obamacare, which sounds bad until you compare it to the current system… Btw, the current system involves a large fraction of the population being uninsured, using emergency rooms for general practitioner visits, and you footing the bill if they actually get sick…kind of the reason that Republcans and Democrats both implemented the same system…(Romney)
Now, that said, there are better systems – like the one where GPs are cheaper and less qualified, where we stop paying for care that isn’t cost effective and just accept that people die, and where costs for any real care are passed directly to the patient.
Of course, this eventually translates into slowing medical research with marginal benefits (probably a good thing), letting heart and cancer patients die a few years early, and giving up on the seriously disabled, oh, and somehow convincing people making less than 60k or so that they really should accept dying a few years earlier while convincing people making more that they should either die a few years earlier or triple their medical bills… Oh, and somehow beating the immense lobby that is the medical industry. Sigh. Our politicians opted for the wimpy way out…other way would be much better for the economy and for most people in this nation.
Problem is that people just aren’t willing to hear that they aren’t worth keeping alive. Meh. It might be possible to reframe that somehow. Tricky though. Problem is, the insurance industry is problematic (hides costs) and necessary (hard to bargain in the trauma ward) and (real care is expensive enough to be hard to budget for…and bankruptcy, deaths of productive people, and debt slavery are all bad…)
–Erwin
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Bullshit. Bullshit spun with a cherry on top.
WHAT the hell is with this pitch for Obamacare? Are you insane or merely deluded?
The current system works fine unless you’re an illegal alien. I have a friend who is unemployed and has not gone into debt slavery through a cancer fight. We look after our true destitute just fine. Unless you’re foreign, you clearly never needed emergency systems while broke.
Uninsured is NOT the same as uncared for.
As for Obamacare? Yeah, because everyone having to pay for contraceptives, even people past the age to need them, single men and people without a remote need for them MAKES PERFECT SENSE. And having bureaucrats decide which treatment is better is JUST wonderful.
Again, are you insane? Or merely deluded?
I have a story due tonight, so I have to go. However, these good people shall have MUCH fun with your nonsense.
There is one thing I want the government to do, sir. Stay the hell away from me and mine.
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Naw, Sarah, he’s just fucking stupid. Never mind that in every country which has socialized medicine there’s a separate and parallel system for the wealthy who can afford to pay for their care. Us proles, we wait, and wait, and wait and eventually die. Like a friend of mine’s son did in Canada because his dad couldn’t afford to drive to the US for care like the premier of his province did.
Now in America pre-obamafuckedupcare, there was basically one system. Some got better care, some got worse, but pretty much everybody, even dead broke folks, could expect to get decent care. Overpriced? yup. Multiple reasons for that, too complex to get into here, but the solution?
Well there’s already, in my rural area, at least one “free market clinic” that I know of, where you pay a subscription fee and can see the doctor anytime you want, because he doesn’t want to be broke as hell, thanks to o-butthead’s bullshit.
See, that two teir system is already starting. The wealthy will pay concierge doctors and fuck everybody else. Us proles? We’ll wait and wait and wait and wait and eventually die. Which, of course, is what Sarah Palin warned us about, and fuckwits like Erwin here want.
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Your position is unclear and your argument is based on several false premises.
I’d appreciate it if you could restate your argument with the clear absence of sarcasm, snark or other subtly distorting artifact.
Thanks ever so much.
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Go read the legislation, Cole. Or at least try to offer specific factual rebuttals of your own.
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Did you miss the part where he was asking for a clarification of the complaints? If you try to argue against unclear subject matter, it’s like trying to punch jello. You can hit it, but it just moves aside and wiggles.
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This is a clarification of the point how? I’m familiar with the legislation, and the industry.
I’m not offering any factual rebuttals because I’m not sure where the original commenter is coming from, or precisely where he’s going. Benefit of the doubt sort of thing.
But, thanks for stepping in! It’s been illuminating.
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There’s a lot I want to type, but it hits too close to my real-world persona. I’ll just say that I’ve needed some semi-major tests and interventional procedures this summer, and worked out payment plans. By doing that, the stuff costs less than it would have if I still had insurance, and I won’t go broke before I start getting paid again this fall. (Because of O’care/the ACA, I no longer have anything other than a catastrophic care plan. Oh, and Ob-gyn stuff that I’m not permitted to opt out of even though I don’t/can’t use it.)
We need competition, portable plans, and more a la cart coverage options, along with transparent billing. We don’t need the federal government dictating prices and care levels. That market manipulation is what got us into the mess in the first place, along with the .gov and its allies convincing people that insurance is for every thing down to runny noses, instead of for covering major expenses (like car or home insurance).
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Cannot let this pass.
Nancy Pelosi said, “30 million people have no or inadequate insurance” (What constitutes “inadequate”? Did they have a co-pay for their birth control?) Population in 2009 was 305 million. That means, using Nancy Pelosi’s own numbers, this “large fraction” wasn’t even into the double digits. 90.2% of the population had adequate or better insurance (what’s left after you take out “none” and “inadequate”).
90.2% success is an A- at worst and _not_ reason for scrapping the entire system and replacing it.
Romneycare (and Romney is pretty far left as far as Republicans go–A Massachusetts Republican is a far different beast from, say, a Texas Republican) was only 70 pages. If Obamacare was “based on Romneycare” then where did the other 2630 pages come from? That’s 2630 pages that _aren’t_ “the same as Romney did”.
As for the rest, we have no more people insured than before–about as many people lost their plans (“If you like your plan, you can keep your plan” actually meant “If I (Obama) like your plan you can keep your plan.”) No more than that actually signed up for Obamacare. It didn’t make health care “more affordable.” Every plan on the Obamacare website is more expensive, with higher deductibles, and lesser coverage (except for birth control, I’m guaranteed free birth control coverage; still have to pay for my diabetes meds but if I ever want hormonal birth control it’s right there),
So far from just “sounds bad” it is bad. It’s an unmitigated disaster whose full, catastrophic effect still has not been felt.
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Huh, some text got lost in there. After “sounds bad until you compare it to the current system” my comment was supposed to be “then it sounds even worse.”
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I am amused that CO is trying to stop outsourcing jobs, as I am aware of at least two major companies there that either provide outsourced call center services or extensively use such services. One of those companies in particular is making a big push to the Philippines. Which is why I just has to change jobs.
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“The central point of my legislation for my Five Year Plan is my proposal for a Ten Year Study of the Viability of Five Year Plans, known as the “Kolorado Uniform Legislation Against Kleptocrats” Act…
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Oops. I was a bit unclear. Or perhaps a lot. Lemme see. Restating per request.
First bit, I believe that many of our legislators knowingly make poor choices that damage this nation because those choices help them get elected. I don’t believe they are ignorant, at least entirely. This stems from hearing a lot of…well I’d do this sensible thing, but I’d lose the next runoff. The rest is mostly ramble.
Second bit, I believe that the US health care system is high cost (to the point that it harms the competitiveness of our economy) and also has poor outcomes relative to other health care systems. My opinion is that there are a bunch of reasons for this problem. Some are intractable demographic issues, like the high levels of obesity in America and the long work hours.
Others are based in market failures induced by our insurance system. Basically, having most costs covered by an employer results in overuse of expensive care, as does complete coverage of expensive care. Insurers like high costs, since they just raise rates. Patients like high costs because they like better care. Hospitals love high costs. Companies hate them, but they’re in kind of a trap where offering health care is cheaper than raising wages to let people pay for insurance. And by Medicare.
In practice, as far as I can tell, European healthcare and true free market healthcare are both more cost effective than our system, because, at some point, someone is interested in lowering costs.
That said, my real snark is actually devoted to our current medical establishment. Decisions on treatment utility are made based on treatment effectiveness rather than treatment efficiency. So, if you spend 100k to add an extra month of agony, that’s a good deal? Medicare shouldn’t cover this – because it sets a minimum standard of care.
See, I haven’t seen a way to make it work…but I am pretty sure that part of a sane health care policy includes not paying for treatments that cost much more than a monthly wage per month saved. And that does mean letting granny die. And really, not paying for elder care. And offering euthanasia for seriously disabled children if their parents can not cope. So, no marginally better chemotherapy, et cetera. And, well, maybe set up proficiency tests to perform various diagnostic exams, but stop requiring medical school. And yes, some people will die, but not that many. And we will get squid farms. And lots more beside. Well, probably. Squid farms are hard. Definitely nanotechnology and big networks. Thing is, we are in a weird potential well where people are paying for more health care than they should, and aren’t willing to change.
I personally suspect that a lot of vested, wealthy interests like the current system because it means that poor US people open their pockets and fund the cost of developing treatments that they’d never bother with if given a choice between paying their share and dying a month early with an extra 50k and some morphine.
That said, a European system still works better and costs less than what we have. And Obamacare will eventually warp into an European system. So, yah, I am fine with it, and the associated temporary extreme incompetence.
–Erwin
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Excuse me, have you lived in an European system? I have and I call bullshit on stilts with a cherry ontop. THEY REPORT differently from what we do, but they are in practice horrible enough that everyone who can afford it pays private. Which results in a two tier system.
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Pays private, or *comes to the US to get their advanced medical care*
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Yep. that too.
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My people weren’t THAT well off.
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I’d just as soon not have to do what’s coming, which is pay for dickhead’s required insurance AND pay for private care, because of shitbirds like Erwin here.
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Yes, but I find it amazing when all these rich politicians with what they called on the news ‘cadillac’ health care plans, and when push comes to shove can afford to pay out of their own pocket for health care, were giving us the Canadian and UK systems as exemplary, when we can easily find multiple instances of the rich in those countries engaging in ‘medical tourism’ to the states.
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Erwin, you incalculable jackass, go live under that system you shitbird. I can name a half-dozen free market solutions which would have lowered the cost of healthcare and health insurance (and they’re only the same thing to dumbfucks) off the top of my head. All of which were better solutions than fucking up the best health care system on earth.
Moron.
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I don’t want to get involved in this fight, but Walter Russell Mead has an interesting and relevant blog post offering some illumination on this topic:
Prices Prices Prices
The U.S. Health Care System: The Global Sugar Daddy
A new pill for hepatitis C is unmasking a huge global inequality in pharmaceutical costs—one that disproportionately burdens the United States. The FT has a must-read report on Solvadi, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences that costs $84,000 for a 12-week course of treatment for American patients, but sells for a song in other countries—as low as $11 per pill in Egypt, for example. As a result, an increasingly noisy movement in America is starting to ask why this is:
“The answer is because it can,” says [Chief medical officer of Express Scripts] Dr [Steve] Miller, one of Gilead’s fiercest critics. “Sovaldi has shone a light on the fact America is subsidising healthcare innovation for the rest of the world.”
None of these measures will address the ethical problem of other rich countries (like France, Switzerland and the UK) free-riding off of innovation financed by the more dynamic American marketplace for medicine. But picking the other, lower-hanging fruits may well make our own ailing system better and more sustainable for all Americans—something that must be our first priority anyway.
http://www.the-american-interest.com/blog/2014/07/31/the-u-s-health-care-system-the-global-sugar-daddy/
Embedded links in the original article justify the visit.
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The difference in prices of pharmaceuticals across markets is called “price discrimination”. And believe it or not, it actually results in LOWER prices in the US than we’d have without it. The idea is that the firm prices drugs differently in different markets based on what they’ll bear. In each case, the price is above the marginal cost of production. But the company makes profit even in the “low price” countries. This gives them some slack in the “high price” countries.
Why not make them sell ALL their drug at the low price? If they did, they’d make lower profits and this would give them less incentive to develop new drugs. It sounds like it’s reduce prices in the short term, but over time, we’d end up with fewer medical innovations – a lot of companies wouldn’t invest as much because they’d have less chance of making big profits on some drugs/projects that would make up for all the ones that didn’t work out.
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yep. Same thing I do with kindle books when I put them up. If I just translate the price, I never sell in India, Brazil and Mexico. So I lower those prices. I wish Amazon had a “recommended price” point for those countries.
I pick up pennies, but pennies are money. And I increase my audience.
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” But the company makes profit even in the “low price” countries. ”
Technically, what happens is that they take in more than marginal cost of making the batch of “low price” drugs, which more can go to defray the fixed cost of making a drug.
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I’d actually written a blog about this recently.
http://thewriterinblack.blogspot.com/2014/07/why-is-medicine-so-expensive.html
It’s all about “marginal cost” vs. “average cost.” The marginal cost is that if you’re making 10,000 pills (say), then the increased cost of making that 10,001st pill is the marginal cost. You can make money selling that 10,001st pill at just above the marginal cost provided the cost of producing the other 10,000 is already covered.
In pharmaceuticals, the costs of developing and bringing to market new medicines is quite high. And you’ve generally got a limited “window” to recover that (patents expire leading to generics coming out, or competitors simply develop a different product that serves the same function). The foreign sales can be sold cheap (based on marginal cost) provided someone is paying the development costs.
Basically, we are paying the development costs so all these other people can have their cheap medicines–even when it’s a foreign company (like Glaxo Smith Kline). But since the alternative is to have the rate of medical advance of places like the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba, well, I’ll pay.
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De-prescriptionizing a lot of pharmaceutical drugs would probably help. Yes, many drugs carry some risks, but what in life doesn’t? Put a warning on the bottle: “overdose of this drug may lead to X, Y, Z”, and then let the buyer make his own informed decision.
I’d keep prescriptions for antibiotics in a (probably futile) effort to prevent their further misuse and the continuing strengthening of antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but the rest of the pharmacopoeia should be OTC AFAIC.
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While I certainly agree there are wide swaths of the pharmacopoeia that could be reclassified I’d hold the line a little higher than just antibiotics. There are some — freaky interactions and synergistics that take a certain (large) amount of base information to anticipate.
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That’s a point. And putting those interactions on the bottle might require more real-estate than is actually available. Still, that information could be made available online, and the customer/patient could have the relevant URL provided to him prior to his purchase.
Still, the “antibiotics only” idea isn’t something I’m adamantly wedded to. I freely admit to very limited knowledge of the scope of prescription law and drug interactions.
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If we provided more relevant information and less lawyer approved warnings, an online resource would be useful.
And there’s whole chunks of the prescript pharm that could shift to OTC with reasonable ease.
The barriers to this, however, are myriad.
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Not trying to say you’re wholly wrong – I think there are quite a few prescription drugs that could be made OTC, but just as an example of the other side: My wife takes a med for blocking estrogen receptors since her cancer treatment. She was also taking a not-uncommon antidepressant for her neuropathy. Then we found that the anti-depressant interferes with the action of the estrogen blocker, which would seriously increase her chances of contracting cancer again. This is not really a thing that’s easily understood by the majority of people, and we only found out when our GP got an alert from (I think) the insurance company.
Likewise, dosage determination can be problematic for many drugs.
On the other hand, resources like this already exist, which can be a huge help.
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Oh, I think most medications *should* be taken with the guidance and involvement of a doctor. I’m just unwilling to have that enforced by men with guns with few exceptions (those being cases that present a hazard to others, e.g. antibiotics, immunizations, psychotropics).
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Having dealt with the effects and interactions of psychotropics personally, familially (totally a word), and professionally, I’d be okay with those requiring a professional’s supervision. Neurochemistry can be a real crap shoot, and tinkering with it is complicated indeed. Still, there are an awful lot of things that are over-restricted (pseudoephedrine, anyone?).
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Anybody who’s ever had to deal with the FDA soon figures out why drugs and medical device are so expensive in this country. The key words are “risk aversion.” The cost of risk taking are so high and so unpredictable that it’s amazing that any innovation or new drug creation goes on at all.
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I know legislators routinely make poor decisions with an eye toward their electability. I also know a distressingly large number of legislators are actively stupid.
The costs of healthcare in the U.S. relative to other countries is a difficult comparison, because the costs in other countries are largely masked. As has been noted elsewhere, the reporting for costs and outcomes is very difficult to match, as things are not accounted equivalently. Unfortunately this has not kept some from waving numbers about and making broad declarations.
I’ve seen several studies that aimed to account for the differences in reporting requirements, and in each the disparity in outcomes is reduced to marginal. And I’ve read far more than I want on the actual conditions in several of the “wonderful” systems touted by folks who don’t have to seek medical care in those systems. Europe does not have exceptional healthcare, neither relative to the U.S. nor standing on it’s on. There are individual differences across the various countries, but — I don’t want to be sick in Europe. Or Canada.
It’s certainly true that current insurance practices are introducing huge market distortions, and I think a revamp of how we view and use medical insurance is long past due. However, talk to billing specialists in the medical field, and the larger distortions are a result of regulatory pressures and Medicare/Medicaid. Not that insurance distortions are marginal. Oh, no.
Patients don’t like high costs, nor do they equate them to better care, because they’re shielded from those costs by comprehensive insurance plans. They’re blithely consuming healthcare without appreciation for efficacy or cost.
Hospitals don’t like them, either. Higher costs do not equate to higher returns, because they’re still left negotiating for the payment with insurers, and insurers are disinclined to reimburse. Hospitals, clinics, private practices — all are looking at ways to meet the clinical requirements while reducing costs in every possible way. Account for every band-aid, every gauze pad, every inch of tape. From a business perspective such close accounting is ideal. From a provider perspective, however, it’s constraining and often not in the best interests of patient care. Providers would be much happier with an encounter price that allowed for latitude in marginal expenses and customized individual treatment. If they’re forced to account for every tongue depressor, they’d be much happier if the price of the depressor was representative of actual cost and reasonable profit. As is that tongue depressor is carrying a huge overhead in unfunded medical liabilities, the result of regulatory requirements and insurance negotiations. Again, the bigger distortion comes from government insurance programs than private ones.
Insurance companies don’t want higher costs, either. They are highly regulated and regionally constrained. They aren’t free to raise rates at will, as a result of market and legal constraints. So, rather than simply recoup their expenses via rate increases they’re in the position of riding herd on providers to contain costs as much as possible. Constantly. This necessarily increases their own overhead and bites into the income flow.
This is all a tiny glimpse of the complexities driving medical costs in the U.S. And there are huge fluctuations across specialties, regions, levels… There is no simple cross-comparison between the U.S. healthcare system as a whole and anything going on anywhere else. When you see one, engage skepticism.
Decisions on treatment utility are made based on treatment effectiveness rather than treatment efficiency. So, if you spend 100k to add an extra month of agony, that’s a good deal?
This is where you and I might start having real problems. Yes, treatments are based on effectiveness, as they should be. The driver for care should be the patient, in every case. The medical professionals have the job of navigating. Everybody else needs to step out. Recognizing that current comprehensive insurance is shielding the patient from costs, and leaving it aside for the moment, who else ought be making decisions on the value of another month, agony or no?
I am pretty sure that part of a sane health care policy includes not paying for treatments that cost much more than a monthly wage per month saved.
I’m pretty sure that utilitarian arguments about the value of an individual human’s life as compared to their economic output per unit of time ‘saved’ are a dark road with any number of ethical landmines. As to letting granny die? How about we let granny decide? No marginally better chemotherapy? Where’s the margin? I’m not touching the euthanasia for disabled children bit, because I need this keyboard.
Listen, the market is distorted. Patients are prevented from making rational decisions about how they want their care to proceed because they’re shielded. That needs to change. The solution is not other people deciding, individually or corporately, how valuable a given individual’s time is and what they’re worth in terms of healthcare. And anybody that hasn’t worked in healthcare cannot imagine the personal and societal costs of such a proposal. Anybody that hasn’t had to face fatal triage decisions probably ought hold their tongue. And I’m going to stop here on that path. Because I still need this keyboard. And those tiny vessels in my brain.
I personally suspect that a lot of vested, wealthy interests like the current system because it means that poor US people open their pockets and fund the cost of developing treatments…
Um. No. Actual poor people in the U.S. are not funding developing treatments in the U.S. The rich are funding far, far, far more medical research than any other segment, both individually and corporately. This is not a system riding on the backs of the poor to benefit the rich. Sorry, it just isn’t. It is far more accurate to say the system is riding on the backs of the rich to the benefit of the poor. The poor are a net drain.
And the poor are the ones that are going to be dying early to achieve your sane healthcare policy.
You’re closing paragraph — blithely stating that the “European system” works better and costs less is indicative of a lack of study on the issue. There is no “system” in place across all of Europe, though there are several similar systems in place to varying degrees. As noted above, cost and efficacy comparisons are muddled and inaccurate, at best.
Obamacare warping into something out of Europe? Again, there are many, many issues with this. We’re not looking at temporary extreme incompetence with ultimate success and ponies. We’re looking at disruption, disconnection, collapse and disorder. We’re looking at the possibility of generational set-back. Or maybe we get lucky and the system warps and wiggles and survives. Despite .gov fingering.
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I will quietly leave this tray of snickerdoodles here for you. Thank you.
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I’ll (probably) return the plate unharmed. :)
Dig the avatar, by the way.
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Thanks, one of my first attempts at character creation from a base. Turned out better than I expected. (I shall not get so lucky next time I anticipate).
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Process? Program? What did you start with? Nosey wants to know…
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I started with a 3d Model called Dawn. I took the developer rig into a program called “Blacksmith” and used their tools to re-shape the face, then used the blacksmith exporter to package up the morphs, imported them into Poser, applied, and started rendering. I can’t take credit for any of the real modeling or texture work. I’m not there yet, though I hope some day to be. I have a wide range of hobbies. (Alas, any replies I shall have to answer tomorrow… bed time has arrived.)
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Might you tag me via email sometime for more detail? I’m curious/interested in the process and flexibility. And learning curve. Cover thoughts, and such.
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It may be Sunday, unless work cooperates today. It’s a bit much to type up from my phone.
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Sunday works. Anytime works, I’m in mid-range planning, so rushing is not needed.
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Oh, don’t encourage him and his snickerdoodle fascination!
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You think encouragement matters? I’m pretty sure it’s independent of any external influence.
:D
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But… but… but they’re yummy. (They also happen to be my favorite cookie too, so…)
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Were you around for the T.L./Eamon cookies at the patriarchy meeting debate? It was — protracted. And occasionally revisited.
And I really like ’em. :D
By the by, anybody seen T.L. around of late?
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Nothing wrong with snickerdoodles*, they are quite tasty. Chewy chocolate cookies with peanut butter and butterscotch chips happen to be my favorite, however.
*I am very disappointed in WordPress for not recognizing ‘snickerdoodles’ as a word; but then again it doesn’t recognize ‘WordPress’.
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verily indeed, the program, it has ontological issues.
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It’s been a few days.
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I like ’em too, though I prefer chocolate chip.
That said, I recently saw a picture of caramel snickerdoodles that intrigue me. I may have to make some when/if I ever get back below 200 pounds.
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Oatmeal cookies with peanut butter and chocolate chips are where it’s at.
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Alright, dangit, now you’re making me hungry for cookies. But don’t forget the craisins in those oatmeal cookies.
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Ewwww. No craisins in my patriarchy cookies, please. Or raisins. Oatmeal, peanut butter and chocolate are enough. Add craisins and I’ll know you’re trying to drive me out of the patriarchy meeting you sexist!
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FINE. I’ll make my own, then. Hmph.
I buy a 3lb bag of craisins and put it on my desk at work, then eat a small handful of them with my granola bars in the morning. Don’t look at me like that, I actually LIKE granola bars! I’m allowed to be Odd a little different from everyone else, aren’t I? ;-)
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Hey, I like dried fruit (craisins included) and granola bars too. And oatmeal. =9
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yes, but not in my chocolate cookies!
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Oh, no, not in chocolate cookies.
Well, oatmeal cookies + macadamia nuts with chocolate chips I consider acceptable…
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No.
I like granola bars, too.
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Craisins in oatmeal cookies? Check. Chocolate chip and peanut butter chip in oatmeal cookies? Check,
All three – doesn’t sound like it’s work – too many flavors.
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I’m going to side with the learned gentleman/lady/whichever applies.
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You mentioned the legal side in passing, but that’s one participant in the healthcare industry that does not have any interest in lower costs – in fact, from the FP physician in in private practice to the most humungous health provider and insurance groups, the number one driver of upward cost pressure comes from the legal side.
Do something about medical liability and a lot of that pressure would be removed.
[snark] Or here’s one to toss at the antilibertarians: Instead of single payer health insurance, lets go to single payer malpractice insurance, with the .gov as the sole insurer of MDs and hospitals. Hey, centrally planned and controlled, plus with any number of ancillary federal departmental SWAT teams as a bonus! How could it not work perfectly? [/snark]
But we elect more lawyers than MDs or hospital administrators to Congress, so nothings going to happen there, as shown by the ACA: thousands of pages and nada on medical liability.
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“And offering euthanasia for seriously disabled children if their parents can not cope. ”
How about offering euthanasia for mentally deficient people? Who gets to decide who is mentally deficient? I know who I would decide was if I was in charge, I suspect you would not agree with me.
“That said, a European system still works better and costs less than what we have. And Obamacare will eventually warp into an European system. ”
a)No actually it doesn’t work better, cost is up for debate, but it does not work better. Unless of course, as you state above, you believe people dying at earlier and receiving less care is a sign of a better working healthcare system.
b)No it is very unlikely that Obamacare will warp into an European system, or at least not for very long. The US system is currently propping up the European and Canadian systems. Who is doing all the research and development of new drugs, medical procedures, medical equipment? It certainly isn’t government run healthcare systems. In fact the only way such research and development is done is if it is financially viable. You may believe capitalism is evil, but it is the ONLY reason that we have as successful a healthcare system as we have, today. There is NOBODY ready to step up and take over the role of the US businesses that have been doing all the medical research and development. And they CAN’T AFFORD to do it when they aren’t going to be compensated for it, do you have any idea how much it costs to bring ONE new antibiotic to market these days? Diseases and bacteria are constantly developing immunities to antibiotics, so it isn’t like our healthcare will stagnate at the current level, it will actually start a slide backwards that gradually picks up more and more speed the farther down the slope it goes.
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Erwin thinks he’ll get to decide the “useless eaters” to be eliminated.
Same as it ever was, nicht wahr?
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Shiver…
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…First bit, I believe… and …I don’t believe… and …Second bit, I believe… and …My opinion is… and …as far as I can tell… and so on
O.K., that’s your position. By now you have probably realized that it is not held by everyone else. This includes some people who are pretty well informed on the subject matter.
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I’m just going to leave this here with three words “Liverpool Care Protocol.”
It’s gone far beyond just euthanizing the defective kids. They are murdering by dehydration old people in British Hospitals and freezing pensioners to death because they can’t afford to pay for all that great green energy.
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“BUT some companies still outsource. Why? Because they’re just starting out, or they’re in trouble, and all they can afford is foreign labor.”
Or they don’t believe they get what they pay for.
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Here’s a classic case of legislated economics in action, in all it’s putrid stench:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/31/1317833/-Connecticut-gubernatorial-candidate-to-factory-workers-It-s-your-fault-this-factory-is-closing?detail=facebook
Cronyism and green energy cost those guys their jobs:http://www.opengatecapital.com/2013/09/20/fusion-paperboard-in-the-news/
I have actually seen a more clear cut case of everything that is wrong with the system that our Democrats and progressives here in Connecticut have set up for themselves. Private hedge fund, foreign money, Solar energy clear cutting woods, shady government tax breaks and loans, a plant closing and somehow it’s all Tom Foley’s fault for pointing this out. This was bad business, but that’s the kind we get in Malloy’s Connecticut.
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Wellll, duh! It only works if everybody claps as hard as they can; otherwise Tinkerbell dies.
What kind of governor wants Tinkerbell to die? He should be ashamed of his promoting Tinkophobia.
Think love-ly thoughts. Think love-ly thoughts. Think love-ly thoughts.
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