“A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.” GB Shaw (founder Fabian Socialism)
My favorite Chait is when he set himself up as an objective judge on the issue of “epistemic closure,” where he postulated that progs & libs have more varied sources of information than wingnuts. Yup, someone who writes “I hate George W. Bush” is a really objective judge.
There’s more than sophistry afoot.
Chait claims “There are many fewer government employees now than there were when Obama took office.”
Bullshit liar.
There may be less state and municipal government employees, and some may be in jail (remember Bell, California!) but I don’t trust the numbers unless someone I trust runs them.
The number of federal employees has increased.
Their salaries have increased. Their benefits have increased.
But more importantly, Federal non-defense discretionary spending has increased. That may not reflect so much in more federal workers, but that’s the real statistic to be worried about.
The resulting conclusion from the sophistry is absolutely delicious though, isn’t it: In other words, Obama’s economic plan, which by his own statements identifies a reduced government sector as a bigger problem than the reduced private sector, proves Obama reduced government spending and the number of government employees during his first tenure.
Is that really what Obama wants to say, that he reduced the size of government and it didn’t work so now it’s time to try the opposite?
I’m also wondering, how are the private contractors whom many government entities hired to replace direct workers classified? Many cities and counties replaced their workers with contracts with independent contractors who perform the same services but more cheaply. Are the employees of these independent contractors counted as gov’t employees. They should be, shouldn’t they. They get wages or salaries from the taxpayer.
How about food stamp recipients? Aren’t they gov’t employees?
Curtis,
your question puts the finger on a process of how to make things invisible even though you can see them.
A state has no eyes. so how does it ‘see’? through studies, reports, reports, and more reports.
now, a fundamental problem with reports, and all these things is that no one wants a report with 1,235,342,342 columns.
so one way politicians game reports, or create illusions for the state to not see or see, which then is what the public knows since the state is the only source, is to do something that creates a classification that the reports cant classify.
this is also, at its core, one of the fundamental reasons for failure of the administrative state (what all totalitarian or socialist variants are – variations on philip dru).
there are several fundamental reasons why such states dont work, the most classic being hayeck
But in my life, as one of the people who, for 30 years, has in one way or another been making ‘eyes’ for people who administrate, research, or have to know about something from “a place with no view”.
I have never really written it up, though i am sure someone must have taken the angle. but often, i find, that people today ignore fundamental reasons why certain things cant or wont work.
most economics takes the view point of a larger picture in which the problem is knowledge and choices and so on. where the ones who implement it, believe computers, or IDs and such will then be able to process and so, in some way, overcome these fundamental flaws. or homogenization will (new age man a mutt, a cog, a unit)
but the problem is fundamental, it can never be overcome by more application of the problem itself, nor by some adaptation that minimizes lag (latency).
why dont we know whats happening to certain populations and the effects of eugenics? because, unlike me, most people dont understand that you can hide things by creating the categories you make, and then forcing an adaptation to be followed that people peering at the numbers do not know about.
so you can show “unemployment numbers” but its a complete misnomer, without the numbers of people who have left without being employed, the report is incomplete, and its like the electorate is color blind. just put what you want to hide in green on the red area and just make them tonally the same.
these mathematical glasses that color the vision of the masses, separates them from making better choices (for them) and is assumed or hoped will make such choices in favor of the people handing out bad eyeglass prescriptions.
so if you invent a new way to do things, and there is no classification for it in the reports that are key, then such things become invisible.
for instance, when you look at the tables of crimes by race against race. they are interesting, and the numbers there have been well argued. but if you read the table notes carefully, this is for 1 on 1 crime only, and group on one crime acts are asymmetrical in occurrence.
so in essence, it hides the groups attacking people, and it inflates the groups that commit their crimes alone more.
so beyond the fundamental problems that hayek and other classic economists talk about, there is no way around this problem, as there is no way to fix it in any meaningful way.
ie… because it cant be solved by some heuristic, nor could one be applied and not violated, there is absolutely no way to avoid this problem when the state tries to administrate the lives of everyone.
added to this are things like compounding rounding errors, and that the collecting of data, which takes time and resources, affects the thing for which the data is collected for.
there is no way for any kind of plan to work out if the plans execution relies only on reports and hierarchies of them in which blindness and rounding skew compounds, as the information which is insufficiently collected, and arbitrarily put into columns (which cant adapt in any real time), and then is used to make decisions that start a whole new chain of such reports and data.
just cause the people i work with don’t even know what that job is or what the resource that knows it can do, doesn’t mean i don’t know it, didn’t do it, and so on.
one of the things that made me very successful before an idiot destroyed the career for me… was the fact that i was not so focused on reports in terms of control and seeing… but that things were tools in which you help someone in their local space do what they think they need to do, and switch when they need to switch.
reports are more of a thermometer..
but the illusion for some is that they are knowledge and can be used to administer everything…
its the difference between a master carpenter and a religious zealot.. 🙂
and on that note..
When the AP doesn’t back up Obama’s (we got your back, we got your back) “gov’t grew less under me than anybody in the last 60 years” claim, then, well, it’s just sad isn’t it. Poor man. He tries hard, though.
“The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama’s 2010 results look smaller in comparison,” said to the Associated Press. “… It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.”
I love how the current president’s statement is being called a “gaffe”. A gaffe is a misstatement. Biden makes gaffes. The current president made a gaffe when he talked about visiting fifty-seven states during his 2008 campaign.
This wasn’t a gaffe; it was a policy statement. It’s a progressive truth: the private sector is dependent on the public sector. A strong public sector is necessary for the proivate sector to thrive. Taken to its conclusion, the public sector is the host, where the private sector is the parasite.
Chait probably sincerely believes that government spending adds value to the economy. If so he very sincerely could believe what he wrote.
Fortunately I suspect most people at some intuitive level understand adding government workers in the public sector is not a good thing. And that adding a job in the private sector – making or providing a service in demand – is a very good thing.
Thank God the days when we have to suffer through listening to left leaning types praising the European way for this or that are coming to an end.
Obama: a two woman sham;
Evil woman jezebel plan.
Between Valerie, Mac a shells
He looked and found how he sells.
He’s not a leader; he’s so wrong
for our country. Won’t be long
til lack of per form i an ces
shows he bows to les be an ces.
Hunh.
For a palate-cleanser, try this.
To all within reach of New York City: a fabulous exhibition of THE LIFE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL is on view right now in midtown at the J.P. Morgan Library — complete with voice recordings of the Great Man making his most famous speeches, letters in his own handwriting, photographs, and artifacts.
Go see this treasure trove of material on the man who, more than any other, saved Western Civilization by standing fast when all hope seemed lost, and Britain stood alone against the might of the Axis Powers. If that doesn’t get your blood up, nothing will:
I can mentally photograph and catalogue a boob in one tenth of one second. Same for leg, hair, arm, anything remotely sexual. This ability is phenomenal. I can do it 360 degrees and 24/7. I know all that is going on relative to this subject.
But most of all . . . eyes. Give me eyes, just a look.SEE ME! and . . . wow, what power you women have, and you want to trade that for what we do: scrap and scrim in the mud. Are you crazy? You call that progress? And other things being equal you will carry and then care for “our” children?
Well. Hmmm. Sounds like somebody sold you a bill of goods without the goods. Ready to call them on it?
This reminds me of an opinion piece I read (or heard, can’t remember the media) a long time ago just after the Berlin Wall fell. I was still a Democrat and fairly liberal but those events were starting to cause me to “change” (OK neo!). Anyway this commentator made the claim that the collapse of Communism was actually *delayed* by Reagan’s policies. The combination of sophistry and willful denial was so striking that I have never forgotten it though I can’t remember who it was.
Beverly (re: Churchill exhibition), that is great! I am sorry I won’t be on the East Coast this summer to see it. While other actions of Obama have caused far more substantive damage, there are few things he has done that symbolize himself more than his ejection of the bust of Churchill from the White House.
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.” by James Madison in 1788
I: Me, an individual, a committee of one.
Pledge: Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
Allegiance: My love and my devotion.
To the Flag: Our standard; Old Glory ; a symbol of Freedom; wherever she waves there is respect, because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts, Freedom is everybody’s job.
United: That means that we have all come together.
States: Individual communities that have united into forty-eight great states. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose. All divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose, and that is love for country.
And to the Republic: Republic – a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people; and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
For which it stands
One Nation: One Nation – meaning, so blessed by God.
Indivisible: Incapable of being divided.
With Liberty: Which is Freedom; the right of power to live one’s own life, without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
And Justice: The principle, or qualities, of dealing fairly with others.
For All: For All – which means, boys and girls, it’s as much your country as it is mine. And now, boys and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: Under God.
Wouldn’t it be a pity if someone said that it’s a prayer, and it would be eliminated from schools, too? –Red Skelton
[Under God now has been dropped]
Egypt’s highest court declares parliament invalid
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“A socialist is somebody who doesn’t have anything, and is ready to divide it up equally among everybody.” GB Shaw (founder Fabian Socialism)
My favorite Chait is when he set himself up as an objective judge on the issue of “epistemic closure,” where he postulated that progs & libs have more varied sources of information than wingnuts. Yup, someone who writes “I hate George W. Bush” is a really objective judge.
There’s more than sophistry afoot.
Chait claims “There are many fewer government employees now than there were when Obama took office.”
Bullshit liar.
There may be less state and municipal government employees, and some may be in jail (remember Bell, California!) but I don’t trust the numbers unless someone I trust runs them.
The number of federal employees has increased.
Their salaries have increased. Their benefits have increased.
But more importantly, Federal non-defense discretionary spending has increased. That may not reflect so much in more federal workers, but that’s the real statistic to be worried about.
http://spectator.org/archives/2012/05/30/plenty-of-nutting/1
The resulting conclusion from the sophistry is absolutely delicious though, isn’t it: In other words, Obama’s economic plan, which by his own statements identifies a reduced government sector as a bigger problem than the reduced private sector, proves Obama reduced government spending and the number of government employees during his first tenure.
Is that really what Obama wants to say, that he reduced the size of government and it didn’t work so now it’s time to try the opposite?
I’m also wondering, how are the private contractors whom many government entities hired to replace direct workers classified? Many cities and counties replaced their workers with contracts with independent contractors who perform the same services but more cheaply. Are the employees of these independent contractors counted as gov’t employees. They should be, shouldn’t they. They get wages or salaries from the taxpayer.
How about food stamp recipients? Aren’t they gov’t employees?
Curtis,
your question puts the finger on a process of how to make things invisible even though you can see them.
A state has no eyes. so how does it ‘see’? through studies, reports, reports, and more reports.
now, a fundamental problem with reports, and all these things is that no one wants a report with 1,235,342,342 columns.
so one way politicians game reports, or create illusions for the state to not see or see, which then is what the public knows since the state is the only source, is to do something that creates a classification that the reports cant classify.
this is also, at its core, one of the fundamental reasons for failure of the administrative state (what all totalitarian or socialist variants are – variations on philip dru).
there are several fundamental reasons why such states dont work, the most classic being hayeck
But in my life, as one of the people who, for 30 years, has in one way or another been making ‘eyes’ for people who administrate, research, or have to know about something from “a place with no view”.
I have never really written it up, though i am sure someone must have taken the angle. but often, i find, that people today ignore fundamental reasons why certain things cant or wont work.
most economics takes the view point of a larger picture in which the problem is knowledge and choices and so on. where the ones who implement it, believe computers, or IDs and such will then be able to process and so, in some way, overcome these fundamental flaws. or homogenization will (new age man a mutt, a cog, a unit)
but the problem is fundamental, it can never be overcome by more application of the problem itself, nor by some adaptation that minimizes lag (latency).
why dont we know whats happening to certain populations and the effects of eugenics? because, unlike me, most people dont understand that you can hide things by creating the categories you make, and then forcing an adaptation to be followed that people peering at the numbers do not know about.
so you can show “unemployment numbers” but its a complete misnomer, without the numbers of people who have left without being employed, the report is incomplete, and its like the electorate is color blind. just put what you want to hide in green on the red area and just make them tonally the same.
these mathematical glasses that color the vision of the masses, separates them from making better choices (for them) and is assumed or hoped will make such choices in favor of the people handing out bad eyeglass prescriptions.
so if you invent a new way to do things, and there is no classification for it in the reports that are key, then such things become invisible.
for instance, when you look at the tables of crimes by race against race. they are interesting, and the numbers there have been well argued. but if you read the table notes carefully, this is for 1 on 1 crime only, and group on one crime acts are asymmetrical in occurrence.
so in essence, it hides the groups attacking people, and it inflates the groups that commit their crimes alone more.
so beyond the fundamental problems that hayek and other classic economists talk about, there is no way around this problem, as there is no way to fix it in any meaningful way.
ie… because it cant be solved by some heuristic, nor could one be applied and not violated, there is absolutely no way to avoid this problem when the state tries to administrate the lives of everyone.
added to this are things like compounding rounding errors, and that the collecting of data, which takes time and resources, affects the thing for which the data is collected for.
there is no way for any kind of plan to work out if the plans execution relies only on reports and hierarchies of them in which blindness and rounding skew compounds, as the information which is insufficiently collected, and arbitrarily put into columns (which cant adapt in any real time), and then is used to make decisions that start a whole new chain of such reports and data.
this is what i used to do as a software engineer in fortune 10 companies
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_analysis
just cause the people i work with don’t even know what that job is or what the resource that knows it can do, doesn’t mean i don’t know it, didn’t do it, and so on.
one of the things that made me very successful before an idiot destroyed the career for me… was the fact that i was not so focused on reports in terms of control and seeing… but that things were tools in which you help someone in their local space do what they think they need to do, and switch when they need to switch.
reports are more of a thermometer..
but the illusion for some is that they are knowledge and can be used to administer everything…
its the difference between a master carpenter and a religious zealot.. 🙂
and on that note..
When the AP doesn’t back up Obama’s (we got your back, we got your back) “gov’t grew less under me than anybody in the last 60 years” claim, then, well, it’s just sad isn’t it. Poor man. He tries hard, though.
“The bailout ballooned the 2009 budget just before Obama took office, making Obama’s 2010 results look smaller in comparison,” said to the Associated Press. “… It also assumes Obama had less of a role setting the budget for 2009 than he really did.”
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/26/news/la-pn-obamas-spending-record-whos-telling-the-truth-20120526
Jonathan: Your brain…Tiny yet insignificant. Vapid yet vacuous.
This AT article is probably about as good as it gets for brevity and clarity. I’ll reduce it to two phrases:
Temporary wasn’t temporary.
Current Services Budget method is fraud.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/obamas_spending_and_the_dog_that_didnt_bark.html
I love how the current president’s statement is being called a “gaffe”. A gaffe is a misstatement. Biden makes gaffes. The current president made a gaffe when he talked about visiting fifty-seven states during his 2008 campaign.
This wasn’t a gaffe; it was a policy statement. It’s a progressive truth: the private sector is dependent on the public sector. A strong public sector is necessary for the proivate sector to thrive. Taken to its conclusion, the public sector is the host, where the private sector is the parasite.
Chait probably sincerely believes that government spending adds value to the economy. If so he very sincerely could believe what he wrote.
Fortunately I suspect most people at some intuitive level understand adding government workers in the public sector is not a good thing. And that adding a job in the private sector – making or providing a service in demand – is a very good thing.
Thank God the days when we have to suffer through listening to left leaning types praising the European way for this or that are coming to an end.
Obama: a two woman sham;
Evil woman jezebel plan.
Between Valerie, Mac a shells
He looked and found how he sells.
He’s not a leader; he’s so wrong
for our country. Won’t be long
til lack of per form i an ces
shows he bows to les be an ces.
Hunh.
For a palate-cleanser, try this.
To all within reach of New York City: a fabulous exhibition of THE LIFE OF WINSTON CHURCHILL is on view right now in midtown at the J.P. Morgan Library — complete with voice recordings of the Great Man making his most famous speeches, letters in his own handwriting, photographs, and artifacts.
Go see this treasure trove of material on the man who, more than any other, saved Western Civilization by standing fast when all hope seemed lost, and Britain stood alone against the might of the Axis Powers. If that doesn’t get your blood up, nothing will:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/bplrxec
Sophistry. How about boobistry.
I can mentally photograph and catalogue a boob in one tenth of one second. Same for leg, hair, arm, anything remotely sexual. This ability is phenomenal. I can do it 360 degrees and 24/7. I know all that is going on relative to this subject.
But most of all . . . eyes. Give me eyes, just a look.SEE ME! and . . . wow, what power you women have, and you want to trade that for what we do: scrap and scrim in the mud. Are you crazy? You call that progress? And other things being equal you will carry and then care for “our” children?
Well. Hmmm. Sounds like somebody sold you a bill of goods without the goods. Ready to call them on it?
This reminds me of an opinion piece I read (or heard, can’t remember the media) a long time ago just after the Berlin Wall fell. I was still a Democrat and fairly liberal but those events were starting to cause me to “change” (OK neo!). Anyway this commentator made the claim that the collapse of Communism was actually *delayed* by Reagan’s policies. The combination of sophistry and willful denial was so striking that I have never forgotten it though I can’t remember who it was.
Beverly (re: Churchill exhibition), that is great! I am sorry I won’t be on the East Coast this summer to see it. While other actions of Obama have caused far more substantive damage, there are few things he has done that symbolize himself more than his ejection of the bust of Churchill from the White House.
“It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.” by James Madison in 1788
I: Me, an individual, a committee of one.
Pledge: Dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
Allegiance: My love and my devotion.
To the Flag: Our standard; Old Glory ; a symbol of Freedom; wherever she waves there is respect, because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts, Freedom is everybody’s job.
United: That means that we have all come together.
States: Individual communities that have united into forty-eight great states. Forty-eight individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose. All divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose, and that is love for country.
And to the Republic: Republic – a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people; and it’s from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
For which it stands
One Nation: One Nation – meaning, so blessed by God.
Indivisible: Incapable of being divided.
With Liberty: Which is Freedom; the right of power to live one’s own life, without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
And Justice: The principle, or qualities, of dealing fairly with others.
For All: For All – which means, boys and girls, it’s as much your country as it is mine. And now, boys and girls, let me hear you recite the Pledge of Allegiance:
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands; one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Since I was a small boy, two states have been added to our country, and two words have been added to the Pledge of Allegiance: Under God.
Wouldn’t it be a pity if someone said that it’s a prayer, and it would be eliminated from schools, too? –Red Skelton
[Under God now has been dropped]
Egypt’s highest court declares parliament invalid