

Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan - rams
http://philip.greenspun.com/politics/economic-recovery

======
mixmax
Public economic policy is a hard problem, and with all Respect to Philip there
are a couple of points from the list of promises to business managers that are
somewhat contradictory.

1) _world's lowest percentage of GDP (among developed nations) spent on
government; only with a low spend will investors have faith that taxes will
stay low_ \- This has the consequence of bad infrastructure, an uneducated
workforce, less investment in basic sciense which lays the ground for
innovation and high-tech industries, etc. A country like Sweden has a high
percentage of GDP spent on government, and yet it has managed to create
companies such as Saab, Ikea, Ericsson, Electrolux, Hasselblad, Hennez and
Maurtitz, Mysql, Volvo, etc.

2) _corporate governance that relieves investors from worry that profits will
be siphoned off by management_ \- This is one of those things that sound easy
but turn out to be extremely hard. History shows that when you try to protect
investors from fraud, mismanagement, etc. all you get is more red tape and,
bigger government and make things harder for small companies. Sarbannes Oxley
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes-Oxley_Act>) was an attempt to solve
this very problem and it turned out to be a disaster.

3) _world's best school system and best educated workers_ \- America has a
long way to go here. The problem is that it takes many years to get educated
workers: You start in kindergarten and get educated workers 15 years later.
Besides empirical studies show that a good education system requires
considerable public investment, and thus a larger percentage of GDP spent on
government.

4) _world's cheapest transportation system and one that is virtually free from
uncertainty caused by congestion_ \- again this requires substantial public
investment, and is a long term commitment. You will have to spend a good
amount of GDP on infrastructure and will only reap the rewards after a decade.

I have to admit that this reads a bit like when you hear politicians talk
about technology - it is apparent that their understanding of the domain is
not very deep.

~~~
metaguri
Spot on. Many of Greenspun's points make intuitive sense and thus seem like a
good argument on their own, but they are quite incompatible. You can't have
your cake and eat it too.

I really like your point #1, and it's the most important. I'm not sure if
there are empirical analyses to support this, but I believe that investing in
education has the greatest returns (up to the limit when your whole population
is educated maximally--but that's a far ways off from where we are right now).
It lifts the whole economy up on its own, and makes it more competitive in the
world, which is very important re: Greenspun's comment about today's
globalized world being very different compared to the 1930s.

As for the rest... those are nice to haves, but I think that lowering taxes to
encourage foreign investment is an asinine comment. There will be low
investment in the next few years, as he comments, if there is a poor political
and economic environment for it, not if there are unfavorable tax conditions.
Investors are sitting on mountains of cash right now; if the government
creates policies and programs that incentivize people to put that cash to work
(i.e. government/private sector co-sponsored infrastructure projects) then
they will.

~~~
Prrometheus
>"I'm not sure if there are empirical analyses to support this, but I believe
that investing in education has the greatest returns (up to the limit when
your whole population is educated maximally--but that's a far ways off from
where we are right now). "

Most people don't get this point, but the US spends A LOT of money on
education, more than most countries. "More money" is the easy answer, the one
that politicians like to use. But I don't think the returns of spending more
federal money on the current educational system are positive.

Here is a chart comparing US education spending with the performance of its
students on international math tests. I don't think you can look at stats like
this and say "more money" is the answer.

[http://www.heritage.org/Research/features/issues/charts/Ed_K...](http://www.heritage.org/Research/features/issues/charts/Ed_K12/Ed_K123_l.gif)

~~~
mk
The US may spend a lot of money on education, but there is an underlying
problem that isn't addressed in either your comment or Phil Greenspun's
argument. K-12 education is primarily funded through property tax. This
results in wealthy communities having great schools with tons of resources and
poor communities that are using decades old resources and schools that are
falling apart. So maybe you are correct in saying that "more money" isn't the
answer. The tax system that we use for education is not equal and is failing
us as a country. If we want to maximize the ability of people we should give
the most people the best opportunity that we can.

~~~
Prrometheus
DC is regularly one of the top 3 school districts in the country in terms of
per pupil spending. I don't think you would want to send your children there.

There are fundamental incentive problems with public monopolies. When you have
a group of dedicated, wealthy, involved parents, these negative incentives can
be overcome. However, the system fails your average person, and it surely
fails those who need the most help _even when a lot of money is spent on
them_.

Those of us who advocate market reforms simply want the incentives of the
system to be a help, rather than a hindrance. But we're radical right-wing
nazis who hate children and eat puppies, so I don't think our plans are going
to be implemented any time soon.

Also, it's funny that we are characterized that way in the United States, when
such right-wing countries as Sweden and the Netherlands already have universal
school vouchers that can be spent on private schools.

~~~
tptacek
DC spends more on administrative costs and less in the actual classroom than
most other school districts.

The fact that DC's money is _misspent_ does not automatically mean that the
problem _isn't_ money. And sure, one good way to raise money for the DC school
system would be to streamline their administration.

~~~
Prrometheus
I agree that DC public schools misspends its money. But I am not very
interested in how can we fix the problem in just this particular time and
place. I am more concerned about what incentives of the system cause this
problem, and what new incentives would keep this problem from recurring in
other times and places.

It is easier to look at a particular district and point out what they are
doing wrong (cronyism, graft, etc.) than to build universal policy that
improves the system as a whole. "There are a thousand people cutting branches
for every one striking at the root", and all that.

~~~
tptacek
So, that makes sense, but your original argument appeared to be something to
the effect of, "money isn't the solution; we've tried money, for instance in
DC, and it hasn't worked". That argument is wrong. It's akin to saying,
"penicillin isn't the answer to infection; we've tried it, for instance by
putting it on an altar and praying to it, and it hasn't worked".

I'm not engaging with the rest of your argument.

~~~
Prrometheus
The evidence that I've seen suggests the correlation between school spending
and educational achievement is weak. There may be specific districts that we
can target as being underfunded, and money might help those districts. But
untargeted increases in education spending seem unlikely to help. After all,
there are very well funded districts in the United States that are horrible.

That would be my main argument. Then I wandered a bit.

~~~
tptacek
I guess I'm asking for evidence of school districts that are both well-funded
and well-managed, using (for instance) the Charity Navigator definition of
well-managed (admin and fundraising costs kept to under N% of program
expenditures). If there are a bunch of them, maybe I'd give more weight to
your argument.

For the time being, I just think about the fact that teachers in these
supposedly-overfunded school districts are teaching overcrowded classes in
doublewide trailers and spending their own money on books and classroom
supplies. And then I think your argument is awfully abstract,
counterintuitive, and unpersuasive.

~~~
frig
If anything, it's almost obvious that almost all American public schools are,
in general, "underfunded".

Part of having a free market in labor (such as we have) means that, if you're
trying to attract people to take on a particular position, you need to offer
enough to lure them away from their other options.

Public school teachers have good job security and benefits (after awhile), but
the starting salary is usually very uncompetitive with most skilled private
sector work and it takes a long time to obtain enough seniority to catch up.

For a lot of folks who might make good teachers, switching to teaching in
public school is asking them to take a paycut in the 50-100k+ range.

If you don't have starting salaries for teachers in the 60-90k range you lose
a lot of people to law school, medicine, technical fields, grad school,
finance, and even other public sector work like police and fire and so on.

So rather than asking "is school underfunded or overfunded?", a better
starting point is:

(A) what would it cost to get the people we'd want to be teachers doing the
job at a level we'd be happy with? We don't have to resort to guesswork and
rhetoric here: think of people you know, and figure out what the pay would
have to be to get them to take up teaching instead. That's your answer.

(B) Once you've figured out what it'd cost, then you can start figuring out
"is it worth it?" Most people jump in with a particular agenda to push and
never do the gut check "would anyone I know who's capable of being a good
teacher work for 45k starting?".

There's certainly a lot of bureaucratic overhead that could be reduced, if the
political-economic cost of reducing it was outweighed by the benefits of doing
so; that's another fact-based question you could derive answers to with some
real legwork.

If anything, though, the above highlights one of the less-discussed issues
with "rising income inequality": as the best "attainable" private sector
outcomes become increasingly more attractive than the best public sector
outcomes, you either have to spend a ton of money to get anyone to take a
public sector job or you have to settle for only incompetents and failures
going for public sector work; witness also, eg, the SEC or FDA.

~~~
fizzer9
> Once you've figured out what it'd cost, then you can start figuring out "is
> it worth it?"

There's more to it than money. Public school teaching is currently a lousy job
for a number of reasons:

* very large amounts of work to take home

* having to deal with complaints from parents and administrators if you raise the rigor of your classes

* if you're male, the possibility of losing your career if a female student decides to lie and say you did something wrong

* the monotony of only a small portion of your work being actually academic-related. Most of the work is babysitting-style work or else administrative work. For people who like to work with their minds, this is a big deal and a reason against going into teaching.

Also, I don't know where you're getting your numbers from. Who (non-teachers)
is making these enormous salaries you quote? Those are big numbers.

~~~
frig
I checked, and I was a bit off on the numbers.

My basic assumption is that there's a minimal amount of smarts you'd need to
have to be capable of being an effective teacher.

I then looked @ people I know who I think have at least that minimal amount of
smarts, took their job titles, than was going off of the local salaries for
those kinds of jobs.

My mistake was comparing local salaries for those kinds of jobs to the
nationwide median for k-12 teachers; since "local" for me means "expensive
eastern seaboard city", I'm comparing expensive apples to median oranges, and
thus I'm a bit off.

For reference:

[http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary...](http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary/by_Years_Experience)

That said, I do think people's expectations are off for how much teachers
"ought" to be getting paid.

We can probably agree that there's some N for which "you probably have to have
been in -- or have been capable of being in -- the top N% of your high school
class to be capable of being a good teacher".

We might not agree on that N -- 5%? 15%? 25%? -- but let's look at what each N
means if do a naive mapping to individual income levels:

top 5% -> 100k+ top 10% -> ~75k+ top 15% -> ~62.5k+ (I'm ballparking this from
the table)

etc., via
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_S...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States)

So pick your top N% and pick a salary range and you've got a ballpark range
for what it'd take to staff a school with teachers culled from the top N% of
achievers (and note that I'm actually lowballing it: the $ for each N is the
minimum amount to put you into the top-N%, not the average or median income of
the top N% of earners).

I'll happily admit that the above is a horribly inaccurate ballpark, but it's
a place to start from instead of handwaving as to why teachers are/are not
paid that much.

As a side note: one of the things that isn't mentioned when looking @ how much
school costs in, say, South Korea is that relative salaries are usually higher
for teachers than their domestic counterparts, and on top of that due to
cultural reasons they're more "respected" by their fellow adults than they are
in the USA, which makes it cheaper to attract quality people to be teachers.

------
mdasen
The problem with his argument is that it rests on the American economy having
a realistic chance of collapse that at least equals if not exceeds that of the
Great Depression. "With 20 or 30 percent of Americans facing a realistic
probability of losing their jobs" - I don't think that's realistic. We've seen
worse unemployment rates in my state within the past decade. We haven't even
hit the problems of the early 80s. So, it's premature to assume that we're
going to see a massive collapse that sees unemployment at 25-35% as he
suggests.

In terms of government spending, there are some areas that we should scale
back, but government spending doesn't hurt economic growth _unless_ it's
simply spending for consumption. If it's spending for investment (such as
improvements in infrastructure, education of future generations, etc.) it
doesn't harm economic growth. The few trillion we're spending overseas in
military jaunts will hopefully get a huge cut in the next administration.

Pensions need a complete overhaul. The problem is that people want pensions
that are written as "you get x% of your final salary each year for the rest of
your life plus health insurance". That's a nebulous liability. If you want to
pay an insurance company to take on that liability, you can't afford it and
governments are the only ones that won't go bankrupt paying it (since they'll
just push the burden onto future generations). Towns and cities are getting
hit by this bad. It is my belief that the government _should_ provide for you
as long as you live - BUT the government should be providing for you at a
_very_ low rate. Any luxuries you want are your problem. If you want to be
able to pass your house to your kids, you better have saved up to cover your
retirement or you can reverse mortgage the house and when you pass, the house
goes to the bank. I _do_ believe that government must provide for its
citizens. It should _not_ provide a middle-class lifestyle. It can't. It's
definitionally impossible to provide everyone with a middle-class lifestyle or
better.

Likewise, health must be re-understood. First, we love new things in America
more than anywhere and as such we demand new (even if it isn't better). For
example, there is no evidence that Nexium is better than Prilosec (both made
by AstraZenica and Nexium being an isomer of Prilosec), but Nexium is newer
and under patent and Rx and costing many times more. And so many people go for
it because the cost is likely to be the same to them (via insurance). People
aren't price-sensitive in medicine. I don't want people depriving themselves
of treatment, but Rx allergy medicine is often near identical to what you can
get OTC today. However, many go for the Rx because it's just as cheap (for
them). It's wasteful! Incredibly! Similarly, new treatments are expensive and
then come down in price (much the same way computer technology works). Blu-Ray
players cost $1,000 a couple years ago. Now you can find them for under $300.
The problem is that we won't tell someone, "sorry, that treatment is really
new and we just won't cover it until it gets cheaper". The questions is: how
do we enable people to get the latest treatments as soon as possible without
causing costs to be enormous? And there might be trade-offs that no one wants
to make. We also need to become a more fit society. No matter how much
efficiency we put into our healthcare system, we will pay a lot more than
anyone else because we are a really unhealthy people. We need to change that.
Now! I hate suggesting that a monetary incentive be in there, but that's what
does it for people. No environmental or congestion plea could stop SUVs, but
$4 gasoline did in a couple months. If you tried to sell one, you were getting
nothing for it. Part of the issue here is what health problems are a person's
fault and what aren't? We like to think of weight as a person's problem.
Smoking definitely is and it's time smokers paid more in group insurance
policies. Weight is hard. You definitely have some control over it, but then
again, you have some control over cancer as well (from sun block to eating
well and having regular screenings). I don't want to propose anything because
I think it's all crap, but we need to loose the weight or stop complaining
that health care costs too much.

As he mentioned, liability reform is important. Every time you buy anything -
from an x-ray at the hospital to a DVD at Target - you're paying for liability
insurance on top of the product's price. Insurance is expensive because, while
one can mostly calculate out things with fun actuaries, you need to keep quite
the pad in case you're under with your calculations.

I'd disagree that we don't want to increase spending - at least temporarily.
What keeps a market economy going is stability. With instability, we hoard. In
the short term, we need people to feel like there is stability so that they
act normally. If that involves the government putting some money out there, so
be it. A lot of the suggestions are great in the long-run, but I think the
next 12-18 months are important too.

I'm not as anti-union as he comes off, but to an extent unions are biting the
hand that feeds them. No, not the companies they work for. Rather, the market
force that drives up wages: automation. Workers can only be compensated (at
maximum) at their rate of production minus costs (like hiring and
administration). If the production of the average worker in a union doesn't go
up, neither can wages or benefits. In fact, benefits might slip if the cost of
such benefits outpaces inflation. Right now, we're seeing a very anti-
automation union stance. Europe and Asia are starting to use more capital per
worker than the United States. Americans are great workers, but you just can't
compete en-masse if you put yourself at such a huge capital disadvantage. I
like unions EXCEPT for their anti-automation stance. Restricting capital kills
businesses.

In terms of education, I think we need more informal education. How much have
we all learned on this site? Wikipedia? We're seeing the opportunity to really
get knowledge out there and to interact more efficiently. Heck, those online
chat things that businesses employ for support are a great source of
inspiration. They allow one employ to deal with several customers at once. And
unlike a classroom, you don't have the issue of interrupting a lecture to ask.
And that knowledge could be gone over and made into an FAQ-like structure for
a topic.

In terms of labor markets, we're plenty deregulated. American businesses
already see incredible freedom here. Minimum wages are very, very low. I'm not
someone that goes around saying that the poverty line is set 3x too low (that
it should be 30k for a single person rather than 10k), but I'd really rather
not see wages fall at the lowest end. I'm a single person living in walking
distance of the T (subway) in Cambridge and live off $15k per year for
everything (except this year which saw a shiny new MacBook Pro). I'm not
depriving myself of anything I want, but I don't just spend to spend. I don't
regularly eat out, buy drinks at bars, spend lots on random expensive things,
whatnot. Still, people need a certain level.

Similarly, I think affirmative action is in my best interest in the long-run.
It's annoying as hell. Heck, even most African-Americans surveyed are against
it. However, underclasses are bad for a society. Underclasses cause friction
and havoc that take money from me. People who think a system is stacked
against them try to go around it. PG commented a few days ago saying, "Markets
interpret social engineering as damage and route around it." If there is one
thing I want, it's that people work inside the system. Plus, it's inherently
unfair that some people are the decedents of historically discriminated people
and, well, I am as well, but they're people that are seen in a good light in
modern America which gives me an advantage. But beyond the unfairness, giving
people stuff gives them things to loose. That's good for me because the more
you have to loose the less chance you're going to do something stupid to me.

I really want to applaud Dr Greenspun for offering his knowledge to others
freely. It's wonderful.

------
tptacek
Here's a choice quote, just so you know where he's coming from
philosophically:

"If the product kills someone with a salary of $50,000 per year and 20 working
years remaining, that is approximately $1 million in liability. [...] Punitive
damages must be eliminated."

Somehow, I'm just having a hard time believing that the challenges we face are
due to businesses not investing because they're afraid of transit union
strikes, or businesses not building products because of our failure to adopt a
Rand-ian strategy for valuing human life.

~~~
sokoloff
You need to recognize that he's coming from an aviation background, where
multi-million dollar awards against parts manufacturers for pilot-judgment
accidents were routine, and in fact did chase businesses (both manufacturers
and service centers) out of the business as they couldn't afford liability
insurance.

~~~
tptacek
Isn't extremely high liability insurance costs a structural part of the
aviation industry? I'm sure many of the same forces drive companies away from
the nuclear power industry.

Regardless, I can hold both thoughts in my head at the same time: that we need
punitive damages to ensure that companies don't factor in predictable loss-of-
life liability into their business plans, as they do with many other
liabilities, _and_ that we need to consider whether punitive damages are out
of control. Greenspun apparently can't.

~~~
sokoloff
$53 million in _compensatory_ damage against a _carburetor_ company for the
crash of a single-engined 2-seater due to an _exhaust valve_ failure? (Because
the carb was recently replaced, and thus was within the statute of
limitations.) [http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/torts-
damages/8890265-1.htm...](http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/torts-
damages/8890265-1.html)

Granted, that's only one case, but how many $500 carbs does that company have
to sell to cover $53mm in exposure? How many more times than the tiny market
for those carbs (that engine is no longer in use in a production aircraft)?
I've left explicit instructions to my family that if I should pass crashing my
airplane, that they are not to sue my maintenance facility or anyone else in
the aviation industry. I hope that never comes to pass, but if it does, I
wouldn't want to be part of perpetuating this ridiculousness.

~~~
tptacek
So, three points:

First, liability is clearly a structural disadvantage of the aviation
industry. But that doesn't make it a crisis for business in general.

Second, the story you've cited seems not to be a clear cut case of tort abuse.
The plaintiffs built a case around an FAA finding that implicated the carb,
they were armed with a record of unanswered complaints about the same carb
part, and the carb company staged an ineffective defense, blaming ice, oil
changes, and pilot errors in ways that were apparently easily refuted.

Third, even if this was a clear-cut case of tort abuse, it doesn't really
answer my argument. I concede that tort abuse is an issue. I just think it's
ludicrous to respond to it by eliminating the concept of punitive damages.
Companies really do factor predictable liabilities into their business plans.
Look how every health care organization handles HIPAA.

------
aaronsw
Wow, this article is so wildly ignorant of the basic economics.

Let's start at the beginning. Depressions are caused by a slight increase in
people's preference to hold onto cash, which causes a downward spiral where
the economy slows and then people want to hold onto cash more.

The first thing you try to do in this instance is increase the money supply,
but we've gone as far as we can go on that -- the Fed has sent the interest
rate to zero and it can't go any lower.

So, as Keynes said, the second thing you try to do in that scenario is let
government spending pick up the slack and take advantage of the productive
capacity that isn't being used on anything to get the economy moving again.

Greenspun claims this won't work because "a lot more globalized today and
there is much more competition among countries." First, we've only recently
caught up to the levels of international integration we had during the first
wave of globalization, starting in 1870. Second, countries don't compete with
each other. The fundamental well-being of a country is determined by simply
its domestic productivity. What would we be competing for?

He seems to suggest that we're competing for international investment dollars.
But then why do you think government investment won't work? Why is
international investment this magical thing we must attract to start
businesses?

He claims that Japan's huge fiscal stimulus proves stimulus doesn't work. But
in Japan, stimulus did work -- when it was tried. As the leading scholar
wrote: "the 1995 stimulus package ... did result in solid growth in 1996,
demonstrating that fiscal policy does work when it is tried. As on earlier
occasions in the 1990s, however, the positive response to fiscal stimulus was
undercut by fiscal contraction in 1996 and 1997."

See <http://mediamatters.org/items/200812220005> for more.

------
tokenadult
"Nobody has ever made a compelling argument for how having unionized teachers
helps students. Nor has anyone ever made a compelling argument for how having
tenured teachers helps student performance. Our country's best performing
schools (all of them private) have non-unionized teaching staffs. We can't
afford to experiment with unionized teachers anymore. The government created
the right for public employees to unionize and it can remove that right very
quickly if it has the political will.

"How good a job would you do at your company if customers were required by law
to buy your product? That's the situation faced by public school management
today. It would be illegal for a 14-year-old not to attend the local school,
unless his or her family can scratch up a huge tuition payment for a private
school. We need to set a deadline by which every American family has the
choice to send children to a school other than the local one. There wouldn't
be a problem with 'failing schools' anymore because parents would have
withdrawn nearly all of their kids from such a school and the building would
end up being taken over by a new school with new management."

Hear. Hear.

~~~
mixmax
Denmark has unionized teachers, and has a long history of public schools.
Danes have invented C++(Bjarne Stoustrup), Turbo Pascal, C#, Dephi (Anders
Hejlsberg) and Ruby on Rails (DHH). For a country with a population half of
New York I think that's pretty impressive. I can't help to notice when working
with foreigners that Danes have a much better knack at understanding a problem
domain and coming up with creative solutions. This is widely accredited to the
system of public schools that encourage all students to help each other, argue
about possible solutions and come up with the best one.

~~~
laut
PHP too (Rasmus Ledorf).

But where do all these people you mention live now? On the other side of the
Atlantic.

Another success story is Skype, which was founded by a Dane and a Swede. Did
they decide to start the company in Denmark or Sweden? No, it's a Luxemborg
company.

Denmark has a history of a relatively free economy. In the 1960's the
government was smaller than in the US. And the biggest companies in Denmark
today were founded a long time ago. Before the welfare state in Denmark grew
really big. Maersk, the biggest container shipping company in the world, for
instance.

Today the average child born in Denmark is going to be a net cost to the Ponzi
scheme called the welfare state. So it's an unsustainable system. I think the
country is still coasting on the culture and work ethic of the previous
generations. But the work ethic is deteriorating now that the welfare state
has been around so long there are families where the parents have always lived
from welfare and never really had a job.

It still "works" despite the big government, not because of it. Also, it could
be worse, Denmark is #11 on the Economic Freedom Index. It is easy to start a
company, there are relatively few restrictions on investment etc. But - the
taxes are very high.
[http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cf...](http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/countries.cfm)

Denmark has something a similar to Milton Friedmans idea of a school voucher
system, where you can put your kid in a private school and you'll get a
subsidy from the state. So you kind of get the taxes paid for government
school back and the private school gets the money. The parents just have to
pay a smaller fee to the private school in addition to the government "voucher
money". There is no good reason why government should run the school. But they
do. Some of them are private though. So if you think Denmark's school system
is so great, maybe you should support getting the government out of schools in
the US.

\- another Dane who left Denmark.

~~~
mixmax
Yes that is the contradiction - an apparently great educational system paid
for by taxes that are so high that the smart and successful Danes leave the
country and make their money elsewhere in order not to pay the high taxes.

~~~
pelle
This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel
bad.

While not as bad now, there was a time when the word "udenlandsdansker"
(Danish emigrant) was synonymous with traitor when used by Danish politicians.

The way I look at it is that my parents paid 70% taxes when I was going
through the educational system, so I could go through the educational system.
I have also paid plenty of Danish taxes myself to put other peoples children
through school.

While I have great love for my country, I am not indebted nor indentured to
it.

We already went through a period in Danish history
<http://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stavnsbånd> (in Danish) where men between 18 and
36 were forced to stay and work for the local land owner.

I do not think there is a need through law, guilt or propaganda to enforce a
new version of this indentureship.

There are many reasons to stay in Denmark, but there are also plenty of good
reasons for entrepreneurs and other over achievers to leave:

[http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/07/01/silicon-
vikings...](http://stakeventures.com/articles/2007/07/01/silicon-vikings-talk-
on-danish-entrepreneurship)

~~~
mixmax
_This is a common argument heard in Denmark to make us the Danes who left feel
bad._ it wasn't meant that way, just pointing out the bad politics of not
letting people reap the rewards of what they sow.

I'm thinking of moving away myself, if it wasn't for the good friends and
beautiful girls I would have gone already.

~~~
pelle
Guess I misunderstood ;-)

Just heard the argument I thought I heard so many times before.

~~~
mixmax
No worries, just wanted to clear it up since I've heard the argument endless
times too.

And I hate whiners...

Btw. are you ever in Copenhagen?

------
Hellblazer
Wondering what possible expertise Greenspun brings to this arena. Worse, this
post of his is just a long list of assertions without any references,
supporting material or backup. I guess we're just supposed to accept on faith
that he knows what he's talking about.

Which is kind of how we got into this cluster F in the first place, isn't it?

Thinking that your experience in specialty X translates to great insights into
specialty Y is a known FAIL. Greenspun needs to operate with the minimum
debate rules that he'd demand from someone making equally blatant assertions
about electrical engineering or web based computing.

~~~
gcv
You have a point, but unfortunately, the only discipline which claims any real
insights into fixing the economy is economics. You know, the "dismal science."
It is the discipline in which the introductory books outline the basic rules.
Supply, demand, production possibilities curves, all that sensible, good
stuff. It all makes sense --- experts in economics should be able to wisely
guide nations and markets, right?

Then, the intermediate-level books and classes teach you that some of that
intro-level supply-demand stuff is pretty wrong. It only operates under all
sorts of unrealistic conditions, kind of like equations in high school physics
which disregard friction. So intermediate econ outline all sorts of
complications which supposedly help in the real world.

Then, in the seminar-level classes, you learn that none of the intermediate-
level theories really ever worked except by accident, and no one who tries to
predict or model real-world economic conditions agrees on anything.

~~~
DaniFong
I think that the dynamics of the latest bubble burst had more to do with
psychology, sociology and the moral questions of old than economics, and
increasingly people are viewing it that way. What we're dealing with is to a
large extent an emotional phenomenon. Trust has flown out, fear has arisen,
panic has set in, assumptions are being reanalyzed, and blame is being placed.

------
gaius
I would love to see Greenspun and Paul Graham battle in rhymes to settle once
and for all who is the one true PG.

~~~
sutro
It would be like Jesus versus Santa in the original South Park. "There can be
only one."

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zudtoD-4vyo>

------
fizzer9
His ideas about schools and education are incomplete. One reason we have
teacher's unions is to help avoid good teachers being fired due to ignorant
complaining noisy parents (and students). And by the way, even with unions a
female student can ruin a male teacher's career with a simple "he touched me"
lie.

Smart parents will do their best to send their kids to private schools, but
the less fortunate kids will get stuck in public. If it were even
easier/cheaper to send your kids to private, then there would be an even
greater separation between the kids who's parents care and the kids who's
parents don't give a damn (the haves and have-nots).

The answer isn't to make more private schools, the answer is to fix public
schools. And the problem with public schools is not the teachers. The teachers
are working within a system that is broken. Rather than go into the details,
here's a quick example: you're a teacher. You cover the material in class.
You're inventive, dynamic, clear, withit, the whole nine yards. You assign
homework on the material, go over the homework, and then give a quiz (on that
material). Students fail because they didn't study and don't care (and this
stems from most parents not giving a shit about school as long as their kids
are out of the house and having some fun in sports). You go over the quiz in
class, and give a test later in the week (on the same material). The students
fail because they don't care and didn't study. You have a choice: do you fail
a bunch of students and bring down a shitstorm of parent complaints and
administration complaints? Or do you yet again make things even easier and
maybe even curve the grades so only the _very_ least prepared students fail?

If you fail a bunch of students, administration will claim that you're a bad
teacher. You'll have constant visits by "guests" (from administration) in the
back of the room evaluating you. Parents will complain loudly that you're
inept. Everyone will turn you into a scapegoat. If you're not tenured, you're
gone.

Let me give you a hint: teaching is just a job, like any other job except that
you're helping kids and so you try to go the extra mile if you can. But it's
still just a job, and its not worth all the shit you get to make it rigorous
if no one else is doing it, if you get no help from administration, and if you
in fact get severely punished for it.

You want to fix education? Let the teachers teach, and let them _fail_
students who fail. And for Pete's sake, get rid of the fucking standardized
tests. They turn education into color-by-numbers.

~~~
yummyfajitas
"Or do you yet again make things even easier and maybe even curve the grades
so only the very least prepared students fail?...get rid of the fucking
standardized tests. "

Standardized tests are the solution to the first problem. This is what we do
at both NYU and Rutgers (with intro classes), and it works quite well.

~~~
fizzer9
Greenspun seemed to be talking about public high schools, and that's what I
was talking about as well.

Standardized testing is just a race to the bottom. As soon as everyone agrees
upon the standardized test, anyone who teaches anything outside of the box at
all gets punished because an hour spent on something that's interesting and
happens to catch the students' fancy on a given day is one less hour spent
preparing them for the standardized test.

~~~
yummyfajitas
If the students are doing well, spending an hour on interesting side topics
won't hurt the test results. If students are doing poorly, then sticking to
the basics is the way to go. Walk before running, and all that.

As far as the race to the bottom, standardized testing _prevents_ it. The race
to the bottom is what you described; make your test easier than others to
avoid problems with whiny parents/students. A standardized test puts a floor
on how far down you can go.

~~~
fizzer9
The existing situation is this: there _are_ standardized tests, teachers _are_
sticking to the basics -- they have no choice since they've got to teach to
the test like everyone else (lest your students score a percentage point lower
than another teacher's students), students _are_ doing poorly, students _are_
passing anyway because of the enormous forces on teachers in the broken
system.

The standardized tests are part of what's broken in the system. _Also_ part of
what's broken is that there are enormous forces preventing teachers from
failing students who actually fail.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Wait, I'm confused:

a) _there are standardized tests_

b) _students are passing anyway because of the enormous forces on teachers_

If the standardized tests from a) determine the grades, then how is b)
possible? How can pressure on the teachers cause a student to pass if the
teachers are not the ones assigning grades?

~~~
fizzer9
Sorry. To clarify, there are statewide standardized tests, which in turn end
up resulting in department-wide (within a public school) standardized tests (a
regular "chapter test", but the same one is given by all teachers in a given
department).

When there's a state-mandated standardized test in, say, science,
administration immediately jumps on it and says, "Ok! Now we know what _our_
science tests should look like!" and in turn, science teachers must all toe
the line, give tests that look just like the state standardized test, and
teach to those tests. If Mr. A's students score lower than Mrs. B's students
(and administration looks very closely at these test results), [sarcasm] then
Mrs. B must be the better teacher! [/sarcasm]

Students "pass" their own class's chapter tests, partly due to teachers just
passing them for the reasons previously explained, but also partly because
they've been prepped and groomed specifically to _pass the test_.

Students "pass" the state-wide standardized tests partly because that's what
they've been prepped for, and partly because of the nature of standardized
testing. Think about it: if everyone does poorly on a state-wide standardized
test, the state administrators making the test assume they've made it too
difficult, and so water it down. Makes sense also because they want their
state to compare favorably with other states. But regardless, what they want
is that bell curve. They want it bad. They want to point to the districts on
the low side of the bell curve, tell them to improve, and believe they've done
something useful.

In turn, local districts want their own bell curves. They want to point to
teachers with students on the low side of that bell curve, eliminate them (or
otherwise reprimand them), and believe that they've done something useful.

Then net result of all this for the students is that they become pretty good
at passing standardized tests but not terribly good at critical thinking. In
class, teachers will hear over and over again from students, "will this be on
the test?". The students crave bytes of information that sound like a multiple
choice question with the answer attached, because that's the sort of thing
that leads to success on tests.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_Students "pass" their own class's chapter tests, partly due to teachers just
passing them for the reasons previously explained, but also partly because
they've been prepped and groomed specifically to pass the test._

So the chapter tests aren't standardized.

As I said, "standardized tests" and "race to the bottom" are incompatible.

Perhaps the current standardized tests are a poor measure of performance. On
this matter, I can't comment without seeing the tests. From what you describe,
they sound easy to game. If that is the case, then fix the tests.

I can't see any reason why standardized tests would be worse than non-
standardized ones. Due to economies of scale (more data, you can hire a
statistician to help, and test designers have time to work on i) and a decent
selection process (don't put the worst teachers in charge of designing the
test), I see compelling reasons why standardized tests would be better than
the average individualized test.

Additionally, teachers do not have the _ability_ to "race to the bottom".
Perhaps the floor set by the tests is too low, but eliminating the floor
entirely won't fix that.

~~~
fizzer9
yf, I'd glad you're interested. I skipped a few details in my OP thinking no
one would be interested, yet here you are.

The state standardized tests are pretty long, but not long enough to make all
your tests from. Teachers have to give tests every few weeks (partly because
students will forget things after too long, but also because the
administration demands assessments, assessments, and more assessments). So
what happens is, _some_ chapter tests are standardized. The students do _ok_
on these, since they've been prepped over and over for them. However, teachers
need to make their own tests too, of course, and these were the ones I was
originally referring to (where, if you require critical thinking, too many
students fail).

> Perhaps the current standardized tests are a poor measure of performance.

They are a good measure of how well students perform on standardized tests.

> I can't see any reason why standardized tests would be worse than non-
> standardized ones.

Good teachers know how to ask good questions. Sometimes those questions change
depending upon the students, any extra/different material covered in class,
and so on. Regardless, good teachers can ask students to perform critical
thinking and can tell if the student can really do it or not -- but it takes
time. Administrators want lots of assessments. So many that good teachers will
drown under all the grading if they are making students do real critical
thinking and providing detailed assessments of it all.

> Additionally, teachers do not have the ability to "race to the bottom".

The forces in place now are resulting in bad patterns. Patterns like good
teachers leaving, and the only ones staying are the ones willing to play the
game and do all the assessments. "Race to the bottom" means teachers becoming
robots who

* cover the required material ("electricity is movement of electrons!"),

* assign homework on it ("what is electricity?"),

* quiz on it ("is electricity, a. movement of protons, b. movement of neutrons, c..."),

* review it ("does everyone remember what electricity is?")

* test on it ("what is electricity? a. movement of electrons b. ..."),

then move on to the next topic. That's what standardized testing gets you and
why it's a race to the bottom: find teachers who can shovel the most of that
to the most students in the shortest amount of time and get the highest
scores.

------
mhb
_When school children start paying union dues, that 's when I'll start
representing the interests of school children_

Albert Shanker, AFT President

~~~
newt0311
Which just goes to show why the AFT is an idiotic idea to begin with.

------
trominos
Every single piece of Philip Greenspun's writing I've ever read has seemed (to
me) to be a massive collection of assertions with absolutely no logic backing
up any of them.

Some of those assertions turn out to be correct, of course. But in terms of
quality of discourse, Greenspun is roughly even with your average internet
troll.

I guess it's ironic that this post is itself completely unfounded. But it's
like 2:00 and I'm really tired and it astonishes me that this blog post could
get so much support here, so I'd just like to get this ball rolling and see if
any of you agree with me.

------
mattmaroon
I'm not sure he's doing enough about entitlements. Even if taxes were lowered
and the social security age pushed back a few years, we're still going to be
eaten alive in 20 years, or so it appears to a lot of people.

------
Prrometheus
This is a fluff article. Tempting fluff that causes everybody to come to the
comment section and offer up their preconceived ideas. But fluff is fluff,
even if it's tasty.

I don't see what I would gain from reading Greenspun's opinion on economic
policy matters that I wouldn't get from reading Hayek, Friedman, or Keynes, or
modern empirical arguments from places like Cato. What comparative advantage
does Greenspun have here?

~~~
rsheridan6
Do you have any actual problems with the article that would rate more than a
DH0 response? <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

~~~
tptacek
Can we not use shorthand from a blog post where well-established terminology
already applies? Almost any fallacy you'd like to point out in someone else's
argument here is better explained in the Nizkor list.

~~~
rsheridan6
There was no fallacy, just an assertion that the article was fluff.

------
preview
"Nobody has ever made a compelling argument for how having unionized teachers
helps students. Nor has anyone ever made a compelling argument for how having
tenured teachers helps student performance."

I agree with these statements. However, there are many public school systems
in the USA that are successful. Why? That is the right question to ask.

The education problem is much more complicated than simply giving parents and
students the choice of school to attend. The "good" schools would then be
overrun with perspective students, requiring a selection procedure to
determine who to accept. And so, the rest of your life will be determined at
earlier ages by some standardized test. The top few percent get the good
education while the rest scramble to get what they can. That is not a better
solution and does not fix the problem.

~~~
Brushfire
The successful public schools are successful based on parents almost
exclusively. Where I'm at, the township schools that surround the cities
public schools are dramatically better. The people that live in these areas as
a whole have more money and more time to commit to their childrens education,
and they value education more.

Clearly, the issue is more complicated than choice, but choice is a step in
the right direction. But if we are to do choice, we much also do vouchers, so
that the public tax money can go to public schools or to private schools. This
process will eliminate the teacher union qualms stated by the article
naturally, as people filter into private schools or functional public schools.

The best schools will be more competitive, yes. How is this any different than
the rest of life? We use merit based systems for university and graduate
schools, and on some level for job placement. Why would it not work in lower
levels? I maintain that with choice, and vouchers, more private schools would
pop up to cater to the excess supply of fantastic students, if such a surplus
exists.

The real problem with this whole equation, just like in healthcare and other
government services is the problem of the extreme low class. Parents have more
of an impact, and without good parents, smart children may never become good
students, which would prvent them from participating in the meritocratic
system described above. I can find no good solution to deal with the parents
who do not value education over all else, and this is the real crux of the
problem.

------
vitaminj
He's got some good ideas, but most are politically intractable.

------
jbert
"eliminate government-owned housing so that these properties can be returned
to the tax base and used to their full potential"

Would the government really make more ongoing income from taxes on rent rather
than rent? That seems unlikely.

------
akronim
I think this needs to be read under the same terms as his blog - "A posting
every day; an interesting idea every three months…". Of course it's up to you
to decide which this is...

------
hank777
These are nothing but assertions of fact which are really unsubstantiated
opinions. It is striking to watch people engage in this level of intellectual
onanism.

I dont mind people making arguments that are reasoned and carefully
successively built. But to just start with one opinion, pretend it is a fact,
and then build another assertion on top of that is a bit much. I do not
believe that you have to have a degree in economics to opine about economics,
but whatever your arguments are, at least make them as arguments as opposed to
"I am smart so everything I say must be true" style pronouncements.

------
chadmalik
The word "debt" appears way too little. The word "credit" isn't even in the
article. The whole mess we're in is because of borrowing from the future via a
debt bubble to escape deflation after the dotcom/telecom bust of the early
2000's. I think Greenspun needs to read up a bit more on whats really
happened.

