So do I, but that doesn’t change that in general by the nature of the tasks government productivity is going to be lower.
But I would be careful to avoid assuming that there is NO room for government productivity improvement…
So would I, which is why I didn’t say that.
Note that one of the implications of the productivity shift is over the long run, assuming static relative preferences (as a baseline) between classes of goods, the low-productivity ones will end up with an increasing share of overall employment.
mrmolecule88:
Not necessarily.
There are all kinds of ways to measure widespread educational progress - generally via standardized testing of various sorts but that’s not the only way. The issue of testing methods and such for education could be an entirely separate thread (if it’s not already out somewhere on QT3).
I just think, in part based on some of my own searching, that not enough effort has been put into high quality measurement and research in the education area.
Part of the problem is that you’ve often got a lot of intermixed variables. If Johnny goes to a school with low classroom sizes and teachers with high salaries and/or PhDs, there’s a good chance Johnny lives in a wealthy area with highly educated parents, which makes comparisons to other areas difficult. What I’d like to see are more randomized, relatively long-term experiments.
But there can be problems with that, too. Wealthy parents may be less inclined to subject there kids, effectively, to experiments, and may opt out in various ways or exert political pressure.
And with lower income kids where the parents are less likely to raise a fuss or may even welcome the experiments, there are potential ethical issues and so on…
Eh, social sciences can be much harder than physical sciences…
Not necessarily.
There are all kinds of ways to measure educational progress - generally via standardized testing of various sorts but that’s not the only way. The issue of testing methods and such for education could be an entirely separate thread (if it’s not already out somewhere on QT3).
I just think, in part based on some of my own searching, that not enough effort has been put into high quality measurement and research in the education area.
Part of the problem is that you’ve often got a lot of intermixed variables. If Johnny goes to a school with low classroom sizes and teachers with high salaries and/or PhDs, there’s a good chance Johnny lives in a wealthy area with highly educated parents, which makes comparisons to other areas difficult. What I’d like to see are more randomized, relatively long-term experiments.
But there can be problems with that, too. Wealthy parents may be less inclined to subject there kids, effectively, to experiments, and may opt out in various ways or exert political pressure.
And with lower income kids where the parents are less likely to raise a fuss or may even welcome the experiments, there are potential ethical issues and so on…
Eh, social sciences are much harder than physical sciences…
Actually, it would not be “low-productivity ones”, but rather, ones where productivity improves slowly.
Some low productivity jobs (bolting something on an assembly line) have been in some cases subject to massive productivity improvements.
And some jobs that might be considered high productivity (if we use cost as a proxy for productivity) may be subject to below average productivity gains.
I’m sure there are people (and unions) happy to back paying for a recount.
Yes, if they think there is any prospect of success.
IainC
1607
More to the point (vis-a-vis the suddenly discovered votes) how can there be any faith in the electoral process if votes can be apparently lost and refound like this? The data is on one personal machine which the owner refused to let the state IT department have any access to and is apparently running self-authored software to process the data.
That alone would be bad enough but it’s all controlled by someone who is transparently partisan and has a vested interest in seeing one side benefit at the cost of the other. If the ‘missing votes’ had been for the other candidate then what audits or safeguards would ensure that they got reported and didn’t simply stay lost? Or that the reported votes are accurate at all?
This is why computerised voting is such a bad idea. With paper ballots, the number of slips of paper in the box either does or doesn’t match the number of people whose names have been ticked off on the roll, and it’s a hell of a lot harder to either make a couple of thousand physical, filled-in bits of paper either appear or disappear.
And apparently you’re not much of an observer since I’ve posted in a grand total of 4 threads here and have made about 60 posts.
For the record I don’t give a crap what you think, and the term think is used extremely loosly.
Simply combining duplicate programs would produce efficiencies.
I’m pretty sure they can’t automate the cop on the street but they can use technology like CityStat to give the police better chance of depolying police to fight crime more effetively or use of cameras to keep them from writing speeding tickets or streamline traffic court so officers don’t spend 3 days a month in court.
We’re asked to pay for the best government we can, what is so unreasonable about expecting them to improve their efficiency?
Maybe I’m not following you or I’m missing something. If the governemnt improves the efficiency of what they do then the only way government productivity won’t be lowered is if you add more inefficient parts to it.
Chicago didn’t seem to have a problem doing it back in the day!
Jesus dude triple posting is bad form
He has to pump that post count.
More posts = more credibility, right? In the absence of substantiative argument, of course.
You mean I should reply to 3 different people in the same post? I would think that would be a little confusing.
Dude, it was a quad. Try to keep up!
Kalle
1618
Martin, you should go away. If your only contribution to these forums is in P&R then that is an immediate and obvious sign that you’re yet another driveby troll who thinks his political genius must be heard. This isn’t your open ranting space, this is where people from the community come to argue politics, because we’re all bitchy know-it-alls. You’ve shown no desire to be part of the community (this takes place outside of P&R, in case you were wondering) and the community in turn couldn’t care less about your opinions.
Thanks for the advice. I do post in other areas. Is there a special number I should post in to meet the requirements of staying in this one?
