Back when I was working for the state. It would be EXTREMELY unpopular among Government Employees, but in the long run would save *any* government a good deal of money.
Bureaucracies are an excellent example of an expert system.
Just about any Bureaucratic job (and I'm personally really bad at this, which is how I got myself fired) is an if-then-else tree of Policies, Laws, Use of Public Funds, and Self Ethics. The first three are EXTREMELY well defined, the last not so well, which is where most of the mistakes in government come into play (including my own, I'll readily admit- being a member of the internet generation, I have a different definition in my Self-Ethics on proper use of public funds than Baby Boomers do).
However, having said this- this means 99% of what government bureaucracies do in serving the public can be regulated to a website with a relational database or LISP back end. It's just a matter of asking the questions, first from the policies then from the laws, and finally calculating the budget hit and fitting it into the budget, and then returning a simple Yes or No answer on the proposed action.
Computer programmers have been doing that sort of thing since the Animals program that came with the Apple IIe- it's not exactly cutting edge science to program an AI Expert System at that level.
It would certainly be worthwhile to target individual bureaucrats who are retiring- get a good knowledge transfer of their job to the programmer, and have a web based expert system ready to replace any public-facing employee at retirement. You could probably save around $48,000/year/project this way, over hiring somebody new to take over the job- and the savings would continue long after the depression ends.
You can seek and receive occasional "subprime" medical care in hospital emergency rooms. But the days of serious attention to an ongoing condition, arthritis for example, are over for you.
Heck, I earn $36/hr, my wife runs a daycare out of our home, we're rightside up on our mortgage, but thanks to the way insurance companies treat "pre-existing conditions" and the fact that I'm only a "marginally attached" worker, I can't get serious attention for my asthma, my Aspergers, or my kid's Cerebral Palsy (luckily Shriner's is helping on that last, vaguely).
through other programs, but found other conflicts. It was much easier for me to do these quotes in Photoshop. Though keep in mind that Notables is still in the "beta" stage, expect improvements! Glad you liked them.
With vehicles- it can really pay on a conventional battlefield if your enemy is using the same vehicle equipment you are. It means that during and after the battle, there will be a hell of a lot of spare parts lying around to get you out of the danger zone.
Well said. Everyone wants to dance around the fact that free trade is the root of our economic problems. The slow destruction of the middle class has been masked by a series of economic bubbles (tech, housing, financial services, etc) that have now burst. Protectionism has been made to be a dirty word (blamed falsly for the great depression), but is the only answer to getting our economy back up on its feet.
On the Peterson Institute, that's how I read it but I am very wary of the privatization agenda so I too look for it at every turn.
I am for H.R. 676, or single payer universal health care. I can see from the statistics, this nation is getting royally screwed on costs and think health care is a public service, a public works, a right. Call me Canadian but I also think our health care system makes us as a location for corporations much less cost effective. I have heard this from many CEOs who point to their costs. I also think our system is one of the reasons behind institutionalized age discrimination as well as discrimination against single mothers.
In terms of social justice I'm kind of a mix on what works and what does not but ya know, quality of life, *I thought* was an economic goal.
Medicaid and medicare are definitely underfunded, and therefore need to be addressed forthwith. If your take is right, that they are only looking at Medicaid and Medicare, then I apologize for being a worry wart.
However, as you can surmise from my blogname, I am concerned with every American, rich and poor alike. I don't begrudge wealth, but I think there is a role for every person in the success story of an institution. I feel fortunate to have been involved in founding and nurturing three successful start-up corporations in my career. My management philosophy was always that everyone, from janitor to CEO, has a vital role to play in the organizational success, and would be compensated accordingly. But the end of year achievement (bonus) would be shared equally from top to bottom.
I don't delude myself that this kind of egalitarianism is prevalent in our society, but I do think that it is right. I only hope that this administration at least takes the view point that finding solutions to problems that consider the "common good" as an important, if not an overriding, concern is a change from the past and reflects the will of the electorate. I just want every part of the American society to have a fair hearing in the process.
It's the same companies that keep on winning the big projects: IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Northrop Grumman, Accenture..
One of them will be prime on project A, then the rest will be subcontractors.
On Project B, Lockheed Martin will be prime and IBM will be subcontractor. It's always the same players and the wheel just rotates on who is prime contractor and who are subcontractors.
The government starts big with a lot of personnel and sites.By the time they discover that the infrastructure and technology don't work they have spent millions of dollars. The daily burn rate on these projects are enormous like a million a day. They should start a small project, validate the infrastructure before going full bore.
we have billions of bits and if the economy is going into the slide I suspect, probably we have a lot more free time than normal to start analyzing truth or fiction or half truth on this.
I've watched the film and also listened to the discussion and I just didn't get the feeling they were going after SS so much or really privatization, what I did get the feeling they were going after was Medicare and Medicaid.
My attitude is if other nations can provide health care to all and not break the bank, clearly something is corrupt and wrong in America and go after those health profiteers but a very ineffectual system.
I have been called a conspiracy theorist before, and a DFH more often than I care to remember. Still, I have to ask why a self-promoting, billionaire, hedge fund trader is so interested in the long range fiscal stability of the United States? And why is he and his foundation (read movement synchophants) concerned about "entitlement programs" as being the chief threat to that stability? I.O.U.S.A is a slick piece of propaganda, designed to appeal to the household mentality of dealing with federal deficits. Just like Joe the Plumber the other day, asking why we need a stimulus. For Joe, if you have a tight budget you just cut the cable service and the like. This is the simple-minded appeal that resonates with fiscal conservatives in this country. Pete Peterson and his acolytes are way better than Joe the Plumber at creating smoke screens and diversions.
But I absolutely agree with you Robert, the economic team that Obama has assembled is at the very least, worrisome. It is this realization that makes me especially wary of any promises he has made to the Blue Dogs. We can talk about SS, Medicaid and Medicare until the cows come home. In fact, I really think we should. But we better be doing it in the open, with input from everyday people, retirees, the young, union workers, economists from the left and right, actuaries, and any other interested parties you can think of. This is truly the democratic way of reaching consensus.
Others share your opinion that "entitlement reforms" might just mean raising tax brackets and benefits. If that is what it is, I am interested in discussing how we get there. But you have to believe your lying eyes. Look at who makes up the panel and what their basis is for discussion and tell me that it is even likely that is what they might come up with.
"Warning folks: Wall Street's happy-talking bulls are now hyping economic recovery and a new bull this year. That's a slower, but equally lethal 2009 version of that famous 1720 trick." Paul B. Farrell
are really bad DoD contractors who bid and get these projects. That is SAIC, Accenture, Boeing.
Of course these are great projects but I have no idea how/why they cannot take these in house with U.S. citizen engineers, manage them properly so they actually get real working code without "cost bloat".
I think the FBI paid SAIC $150 billion dollars (or was it millioins?) but they got zero lines of working code, not a one.
You can do a very well funded start-up for $24 million dollars and start this project, easily, get the deliverable in a couple of years....seriously they could.
So, something is very wrong in the bid system the contract award and they frankly we need more DoD type "start-ups" or contractors who are engineers, software engineers, who know how to manage a high tech project some how connected to get this government money.
Something is seriously wrong right now and maybe the DoD needs to "meet the VCs" or have an "outreach" conference or something to get organizations started who can actually design and deliver on those need technologies.
Question 18: Which statement best describes your business? A career that presently supplies the main source of income in my household. 71.9%
It seems to me that these are the key people in terms of job creation and retention. Do you have cross tabs for this group for questions 5, 6, 10, 14, 16?
Also, do you have an estimate of possible job losses among the survey population and/or extrapolations about wider job losses from this economic crisis? This is very sobering.
"Main street" is still waiting or a hand but they've already had the arm put on them.
I find this all so interesting. I think for David Walker to become more credible to the left they need to state very firmly under no circumstances will they privatize social security or reduce benefits for most people (the idea of reducing benefits for the super rich who really do not need it seems ok).
But I do not think the left is being completely fair to the Peterson Institute either but the reason they are not is the "powers behind" what they are saying and their motivations.
I do think both Baker and Greider are right in warning about those "privatize" agenda honing on on the rest of entitlements instead of fixing the system.
I'm not surprised by the story on Obama at all because during the campaign that was something I saw via interests, economic advisers.
This is a key point you make. I'm going to read the survey now and come back with questions. The Option ARMs are a nightmare with interest only payments and "betting on the come" by borrowers. When this wave hits, the working poor and "entry level" middle class will no longer be the subject of ridicule. You're right, small business owners, rising mid thirties executives, etc. will be in the midst of it. Their homes will go and they'll be in major debt on top of that. What a fraud we've seen committed on the public, initiated by Greenspan while he had many warnings that this was a scam.
The market is so artificial that the meaning of home prices depends on where you're located. In NYC, Los Angeles, and the DC suburbs, you can barely buy a home for $500,000. The salaries are higher but the relative position of the purchasers is still at the lower end of the pay scale. If it's Little Rock or Topeka, that's an entirely different story.
The system is truly dead, it just needs to fall over. In the mean time, imho, we need to push forward with temporary measures to keep people as whole as possible.
What's happened to the people in the 2.4 million homes that were taken back by the banks in 2008? Hard to find that information and that says a lot about our political system and the heavy censorship that we endure to keep a few in power.
Well, it appears William Greider struck a nerve at the Peterson Foundation. Digby has the details here. The whole idea that the Obama administration wants to look at "entitlements" seems counter-intuitive to me. There is much to be worried about here unless the discussion and review happens in the sunlight.
I gotta wonder about precisely how some people are getting advanced degrees and major soup can labels of credentials when they puke out papers that have such obvious errors in them as well. Think tanks, quite often and CATO is probably the worse, put out studies that are so full of flaws one really has to wonder what the hell is going on?
We know corporations set up (cough, cough) independent nonprofits to write (cough,cough) studies promoting their agenda but it seems also to be prevalent within Academia now.
The only thing I know to do is to read the papers for ourselves and analyze them directly. Seems like peer review is turning into a friend of my pal these days. I don't want to poo poo Academia here because most are exceptional, have integrity and also even almost chase around others who are misinterpreting their particular work.
Back when I was working for the state. It would be EXTREMELY unpopular among Government Employees, but in the long run would save *any* government a good deal of money.
Bureaucracies are an excellent example of an expert system.
Just about any Bureaucratic job (and I'm personally really bad at this, which is how I got myself fired) is an if-then-else tree of Policies, Laws, Use of Public Funds, and Self Ethics. The first three are EXTREMELY well defined, the last not so well, which is where most of the mistakes in government come into play (including my own, I'll readily admit- being a member of the internet generation, I have a different definition in my Self-Ethics on proper use of public funds than Baby Boomers do).
However, having said this- this means 99% of what government bureaucracies do in serving the public can be regulated to a website with a relational database or LISP back end. It's just a matter of asking the questions, first from the policies then from the laws, and finally calculating the budget hit and fitting it into the budget, and then returning a simple Yes or No answer on the proposed action.
Computer programmers have been doing that sort of thing since the Animals program that came with the Apple IIe- it's not exactly cutting edge science to program an AI Expert System at that level.
It would certainly be worthwhile to target individual bureaucrats who are retiring- get a good knowledge transfer of their job to the programmer, and have a web based expert system ready to replace any public-facing employee at retirement. You could probably save around $48,000/year/project this way, over hiring somebody new to take over the job- and the savings would continue long after the depression ends.
Heck, I earn $36/hr, my wife runs a daycare out of our home, we're rightside up on our mortgage, but thanks to the way insurance companies treat "pre-existing conditions" and the fact that I'm only a "marginally attached" worker, I can't get serious attention for my asthma, my Aspergers, or my kid's Cerebral Palsy (luckily Shriner's is helping on that last, vaguely).
through other programs, but found other conflicts. It was much easier for me to do these quotes in Photoshop. Though keep in mind that Notables is still in the "beta" stage, expect improvements! Glad you liked them.
With vehicles- it can really pay on a conventional battlefield if your enemy is using the same vehicle equipment you are. It means that during and after the battle, there will be a hell of a lot of spare parts lying around to get you out of the danger zone.
Well said. Everyone wants to dance around the fact that free trade is the root of our economic problems. The slow destruction of the middle class has been masked by a series of economic bubbles (tech, housing, financial services, etc) that have now burst. Protectionism has been made to be a dirty word (blamed falsly for the great depression), but is the only answer to getting our economy back up on its feet.
This is awesome, we're getting a lot of new bloggers putting out some interesting writing.
On the Peterson Institute, that's how I read it but I am very wary of the privatization agenda so I too look for it at every turn.
I am for H.R. 676, or single payer universal health care. I can see from the statistics, this nation is getting royally screwed on costs and think health care is a public service, a public works, a right. Call me Canadian but I also think our health care system makes us as a location for corporations much less cost effective. I have heard this from many CEOs who point to their costs. I also think our system is one of the reasons behind institutionalized age discrimination as well as discrimination against single mothers.
In terms of social justice I'm kind of a mix on what works and what does not but ya know, quality of life, *I thought* was an economic goal.
Medicaid and medicare are definitely underfunded, and therefore need to be addressed forthwith. If your take is right, that they are only looking at Medicaid and Medicare, then I apologize for being a worry wart.
However, as you can surmise from my blogname, I am concerned with every American, rich and poor alike. I don't begrudge wealth, but I think there is a role for every person in the success story of an institution. I feel fortunate to have been involved in founding and nurturing three successful start-up corporations in my career. My management philosophy was always that everyone, from janitor to CEO, has a vital role to play in the organizational success, and would be compensated accordingly. But the end of year achievement (bonus) would be shared equally from top to bottom.
I don't delude myself that this kind of egalitarianism is prevalent in our society, but I do think that it is right. I only hope that this administration at least takes the view point that finding solutions to problems that consider the "common good" as an important, if not an overriding, concern is a change from the past and reflects the will of the electorate. I just want every part of the American society to have a fair hearing in the process.
It's the same companies that keep on winning the big projects: IBM, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Northrop Grumman, Accenture..
One of them will be prime on project A, then the rest will be subcontractors.
On Project B, Lockheed Martin will be prime and IBM will be subcontractor. It's always the same players and the wheel just rotates on who is prime contractor and who are subcontractors.
The government starts big with a lot of personnel and sites.By the time they discover that the infrastructure and technology don't work they have spent millions of dollars. The daily burn rate on these projects are enormous like a million a day. They should start a small project, validate the infrastructure before going full bore.
we have billions of bits and if the economy is going into the slide I suspect, probably we have a lot more free time than normal to start analyzing truth or fiction or half truth on this.
I've watched the film and also listened to the discussion and I just didn't get the feeling they were going after SS so much or really privatization, what I did get the feeling they were going after was Medicare and Medicaid.
My attitude is if other nations can provide health care to all and not break the bank, clearly something is corrupt and wrong in America and go after those health profiteers but a very ineffectual system.
I have been called a conspiracy theorist before, and a DFH more often than I care to remember. Still, I have to ask why a self-promoting, billionaire, hedge fund trader is so interested in the long range fiscal stability of the United States? And why is he and his foundation (read movement synchophants) concerned about "entitlement programs" as being the chief threat to that stability? I.O.U.S.A is a slick piece of propaganda, designed to appeal to the household mentality of dealing with federal deficits. Just like Joe the Plumber the other day, asking why we need a stimulus. For Joe, if you have a tight budget you just cut the cable service and the like. This is the simple-minded appeal that resonates with fiscal conservatives in this country. Pete Peterson and his acolytes are way better than Joe the Plumber at creating smoke screens and diversions.
But I absolutely agree with you Robert, the economic team that Obama has assembled is at the very least, worrisome. It is this realization that makes me especially wary of any promises he has made to the Blue Dogs. We can talk about SS, Medicaid and Medicare until the cows come home. In fact, I really think we should. But we better be doing it in the open, with input from everyday people, retirees, the young, union workers, economists from the left and right, actuaries, and any other interested parties you can think of. This is truly the democratic way of reaching consensus.
Others share your opinion that "entitlement reforms" might just mean raising tax brackets and benefits. If that is what it is, I am interested in discussing how we get there. But you have to believe your lying eyes. Look at who makes up the panel and what their basis is for discussion and tell me that it is even likely that is what they might come up with.
"Warning folks: Wall Street's happy-talking bulls are now hyping economic recovery and a new bull this year. That's a slower, but equally lethal 2009 version of that famous 1720 trick." Paul B. Farrell
They're relentless.
are really bad DoD contractors who bid and get these projects. That is SAIC, Accenture, Boeing.
Of course these are great projects but I have no idea how/why they cannot take these in house with U.S. citizen engineers, manage them properly so they actually get real working code without "cost bloat".
I think the FBI paid SAIC $150 billion dollars (or was it millioins?) but they got zero lines of working code, not a one.
You can do a very well funded start-up for $24 million dollars and start this project, easily, get the deliverable in a couple of years....seriously they could.
So, something is very wrong in the bid system the contract award and they frankly we need more DoD type "start-ups" or contractors who are engineers, software engineers, who know how to manage a high tech project some how connected to get this government money.
Something is seriously wrong right now and maybe the DoD needs to "meet the VCs" or have an "outreach" conference or something to get organizations started who can actually design and deliver on those need technologies.
That's an excellent survey.
Question 18: Which statement best describes your business? A career that presently supplies the main source of income in my household. 71.9%
It seems to me that these are the key people in terms of job creation and retention. Do you have cross tabs for this group for questions 5, 6, 10, 14, 16?
Also, do you have an estimate of possible job losses among the survey population and/or extrapolations about wider job losses from this economic crisis? This is very sobering.
"Main street" is still waiting or a hand but they've already had the arm put on them.
home prices need to fall to when they are in alignment with real incomes and I fear they are going to try to re-inflate the bubble to stop the pain.
I find this all so interesting. I think for David Walker to become more credible to the left they need to state very firmly under no circumstances will they privatize social security or reduce benefits for most people (the idea of reducing benefits for the super rich who really do not need it seems ok).
But I do not think the left is being completely fair to the Peterson Institute either but the reason they are not is the "powers behind" what they are saying and their motivations.
I do think both Baker and Greider are right in warning about those "privatize" agenda honing on on the rest of entitlements instead of fixing the system.
I'm not surprised by the story on Obama at all because during the campaign that was something I saw via interests, economic advisers.
This is a key point you make. I'm going to read the survey now and come back with questions. The Option ARMs are a nightmare with interest only payments and "betting on the come" by borrowers. When this wave hits, the working poor and "entry level" middle class will no longer be the subject of ridicule. You're right, small business owners, rising mid thirties executives, etc. will be in the midst of it. Their homes will go and they'll be in major debt on top of that. What a fraud we've seen committed on the public, initiated by Greenspan while he had many warnings that this was a scam.
The market is so artificial that the meaning of home prices depends on where you're located. In NYC, Los Angeles, and the DC suburbs, you can barely buy a home for $500,000. The salaries are higher but the relative position of the purchasers is still at the lower end of the pay scale. If it's Little Rock or Topeka, that's an entirely different story.
The system is truly dead, it just needs to fall over. In the mean time, imho, we need to push forward with temporary measures to keep people as whole as possible.
What's happened to the people in the 2.4 million homes that were taken back by the banks in 2008? Hard to find that information and that says a lot about our political system and the heavy censorship that we endure to keep a few in power.
Well, it appears William Greider struck a nerve at the Peterson Foundation. Digby has the details here. The whole idea that the Obama administration wants to look at "entitlements" seems counter-intuitive to me. There is much to be worried about here unless the discussion and review happens in the sunlight.
I gotta wonder about precisely how some people are getting advanced degrees and major soup can labels of credentials when they puke out papers that have such obvious errors in them as well. Think tanks, quite often and CATO is probably the worse, put out studies that are so full of flaws one really has to wonder what the hell is going on?
We know corporations set up (cough, cough) independent nonprofits to write (cough,cough) studies promoting their agenda but it seems also to be prevalent within Academia now.
The only thing I know to do is to read the papers for ourselves and analyze them directly. Seems like peer review is turning into a friend of my pal these days. I don't want to poo poo Academia here because most are exceptional, have integrity and also even almost chase around others who are misinterpreting their particular work.
Pages