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Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

philip.greenspun.com

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Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#11

Post by gcv »

Hellblazer wrote: post #3

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 int…

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.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#12

Post by hank777 »

tptacek wrote: post #5
Hellblazer wrote: post #3

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 int…

Presumably, we're just meant to go look all these things up at the Cato Institute.

Based on the article posted here on rent control the other day,it does indeed seem as though greenspun uses the same unsubstantiated assertion strategy for building arguments as does the cato institute. I guess I have to give him credit for being no worse than folks that get paid to write this crap.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#13

Post by Prrometheus »

mixmax wrote: post #6

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 in…

I don't think it matters as much how great a percentage of the GDP government spends, so much as how it is spent. Is the government spending money in ways that produce net positive social return? This becomes much harder as the absolute size of the bureaucracy grows. It is harder to manage a multi-trillion dollar budget than it is to manage Sweden.

The United States has a large amount of military spending and redundant bureaucracy, so we have high taxes and low social benefit. For example, the US is usually either #1 or #2 in the world in the amount of money spent per pupil in public schools, and yet the results are not good.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#14

Post by mixmax »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

"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 unio…

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.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#15

Post by Prrometheus »

metaguri wrote: post #9
mixmax wrote: post #6

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 in…

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 educat…

>"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...

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#18

Post by Prrometheus »

mixmax wrote: post #14
tokenadult wrote: post #2

"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 unio…

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 so…

The suburbs outside Arlington county near DC have great public schools as well. They regularly send their students to Ivy League schools and many go on to become CEOs and Senators.

I don't see what either example has to offer a diverse, sprawling nation of 300,000,000 people where school unions often block any education reform proposal that is not "more money for schools".

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#19

Post by tptacek »

hank777 wrote: post #12
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably, we're just meant to go look all these things up at the Cato Institute.

Based on the article posted here on rent control the other day,it does indeed seem as though greenspun uses the same unsubstantiated assertion strategy for building arguments as does the cato institute. I guess I have to give him credit for being no worse than folks that get paid to write this crap.

One of the few problems the Cato people don't have is being strong, reasoned, effective debate opponents.

Re: Philip Greenspun's Economy Recovery Plan

#20

Post by mixmax »

Prrometheus wrote: post #13
mixmax wrote: post #6

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 in…

I don't think it matters as much how great a percentage of the GDP government spends, so much as how it is spent. Is the government spending money in ways that produce net positive social return? This becomes much harder as the absolute size of the bureaucracy grows. It is harder to manage a multi-trillion dollar budget than it is to manage Sweden. The United States has a large amount of military spending and redunda…

You're hinting at a very interesting problem here: The absolute size of bureaucracy.

It seems ( I have no data to back this up) that the efficiency of bureaucracy decreases exponentially with it's size. This is obviously a bigger problem for large countries such as the US. There are advantages to size (setting the global agenda, advantages in areas where absolute amounts of money matter (for instance military - your military is twice as good if you spend twice the money no matter how large your population. Roughly...) . , etc.). Whether these advantages outweigh the disadvantage of a large bureaucracy I don't know.

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