I don't understand why one wouldn't be helpful to anyone one works with, or anyone at all. Just, why not?
Early in my banking career I was in a position where I had a fair understanding of a new convertible bond system being rolled out, and of convertible bonds themselves (it doesn't matter it you don't know what they are). A colleague in the USA (I was in London) was responsible for getting things set up in the new system: I helped her a lot. Later it transpired that her husband became a megabucks trader. I got skiing holidays in Aspen as a result.
But if I hadn't, I would still have wanted to be helpful.
I just find it harder and harder to have anything to say about any of these people.
They're like a bunch of monkeys in a barrel. "Oh look, those monkeys are out of control, just flinging poo around, bearing their teeth and shrieking!".
Yes, because they're monkeys. In a barrel.
I look for ways to minimize the blast radius of this crazy juvenile bullshit, but it's mostly - almost completely - beyond whatever meager resources I can bring to bear.
I mean, I can call my rep and senators, but they're basically already doing what they can. I can show up for the demonstrations etc. but the folks driving the bus at the moment obviously do not give one single solitary flying f*** about any of that.
I appreciate the efforts of those folks who have some influence over it all, but a lot of the time either their hands are tied too, or the process of containing these knuckleheads through legal or procedural means just takes too long to prevent damage from being done.
I'm just waiting for this crap to be over. We'll see what's left at that point.
If we really, really, really want to keep people like these the hell away from any kind of social or political power going forward, there are going to have to be some serious come to Jesus moments at some point.
And I just don't think we - Americans, collectively - have the stomach for it.
"It'd be too divisive"
"Let's come together now"
"Look forward, not back"
All of that is no small part of how we got here.
Trump et al are gonna come after anyone and anything they don't like, and they're gonna use as much of the full power of the state as they can muster to do it. Because Trump himself is a nasty vindictive piece of work, and the folks he has surrounded himself with are a bunch of loser weirdos who find hurting other people - ruining the lives of other people in no small number of cases - to be a lot of fun.
The rest of the world is basically just working around us at this point. And are looking for ways to make us as irrelevant - as unnecessary for their own security and prosperity - as they can.
Or else figuring out ways to play our leadership for their own advantage.
It's a nightmare. If there wasn't so much damage being done, it'd be comical. And, at moments, it kinda is.
But mostly it's a nightmare.
Good luck to Bolton, he said mean things about Trump and now Trump has an army. And a long memory.
I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired
When I retired one of my goals was to spend as much time as possible around living things.
So far, so good.
russell, GftNC, thanks? Turns out I'm pretty good at it. Other than one day to do my taxes I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired. Phone handles it all
At the moment, Bolton is merely a private citizen, who will have to impoverish himself to defend against charges that will eventually be dropped. Powell is still Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. I know Trump has some serious nut cases at DOJ, but even those have to be somewhat reluctant to piss off most of the rich people in the country by attacking Powell on fictitious grounds.
For Bolton, the Fibbies were searching for "classified documents".
If they find a grocery list, they'll just hand it to Trump and he'll "classify it with his mind", and PRESTO: criminal case.
It's an outrage and a travesty, and it's happening to a person whose misfortune I read with great satisfaction. I hope that this outrage is prevented - slowly - and that the perpetrators' misfortune is the source of great future satisfaction.
...and the horses they rode in on (which, I suspect, were all nidstangs).
So many poxes. So many houses.
I assume the 'mortgage fraud' charges are already being prepared, that's the newest shtick (and stick). Once they get bored of that, it will probably be 'insider trading' for the next couple of targets. One day they will throw dice on what charges to use in a new case (maybe with a betting pool).
The thing is, Powell is merely not doing something that Trump wants done. Whereas Bolton has been actively slamming Trump on social media. That's a lot harder for Trump's fragile ego to deal with.
It won't be a surprise if he has one of his minion officials go after Powell eventually. But . . . priorities. Powell isn't one. Yet. If/when the economy tanks to the point where it can't be ignored, then Powell moves into the cross hairs.
these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
Being nice to (not just junior) administrative staff is the right thing to do. Assuming one is, or aspires to be, a decent human being.
But this is why it is also a useful thing to do. Those administrative staff are the ones who know how to navigate the system in order to get things done. Including the back channels that can dramatically reduce the time and effort required. Or get something done at all.
I would hope that anyone who has worked in a large organization would know that. But experience shows that remarkably few do. Including at the senior levels, where it is not obvious how they get their jobs done without knowing. (Perhaps theur Administrative Assistants grease the wheels for them...? That would explain why such staff frequently follow the executive from job to job, rather than remaining where they are to work for the new guy.)
Connected (ever so slightly) to the discussion about being "polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people" https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage One of my favorite academic papers about organizations is by Ruthanne Huising, and it tells the story of teams that were assigned to create process maps of their company, tracing what the organization actually did, from raw materials to finished goods. As they created this map, they realized how much of the work seemed strange and unplanned. They discovered entire processes that produced outputs nobody used, weird semi-official pathways to getting things done, and repeated duplication of efforts. Many of the employees working on the map, once rising stars of the company, became disillusioned.
I’ll let Prof. Huising explain what happened next: “Some held out hope that one or two people at the top knew of these design and operation issues; however, they were often disabused of this optimism. For example, a manager walked the CEO through the map, presenting him with a view he had never seen before and illustrating for him the lack of design and the disconnect between strategy and operations. The CEO, after being walked through the map, sat down, put his head on the table, and said, "This is even more fucked up than I imagined." The CEO revealed that not only was the operation of his organization out of his control but that his grasp on it was imaginary.”
For many people, this may not be a surprise. One thing you learn studying (or working in) organizations is that they are all actually a bit of a mess. In fact, one classic organizational theory is actually called the Garbage Can Model. This views organizations as chaotic "garbage cans" where problems, solutions, and decision-makers are dumped in together, and decisions often happen when these elements collide randomly, rather than through a fully rational process. Of course, it is easy to take this view too far - organizations do have structures, decision-makers, and processes that actually matter. It is just that these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
The Garbage Can represents a world where unwritten rules, bespoke knowledge, and complex and undocumented processes are critical.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and how one overcomes it or at least works around it.
About Cheez Whiz's comment about David Brooks (and the pointer to Driftglass) with the tag David Brooks, definitely worth a look)
his wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
has this As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. His senior year, he wrote a spoof of the lifestyle of wealthy conservative William F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping." To his piece, Brooks appended the note: "Some would say I'm envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?" When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered him a job.
Don't know if it is sucking up to Buckley, or somethingelseentirely (each word is a different link), but the story seems strangely apropros.
Yes, I agree with Cain's Third Law (any further ones welcome), and with wj, russell and Marty. Treating people of every degree as people, and equals worthy of respect, is one of the most foundational rules for living a good life. Any personal benefits which accrue, while welcome, are a purely secondary matter.
Marty - congratulations!
I spent 30 years in Operations at a software company in San Jose (Manufacturing Software Engineering, a job title with an odd history). It was where revenue recognition happened, the rubber met the road, and as I put it, I implemented other people's bad ideas. All the stories above ring true to me.
Re: lukewarm David Brooks. When that name comes up I will always refer to Driftglass, who was tracking Brooks before it was cool, and has the receipts. Go back to Brooks' early days at the Weekly Standard and you'll find a man the opposite of lukewarm. He's become much more moderate as the checks kept rolling in from the Times, Yale, Aspen, Davos, etc. but the anger still remains, as Paul Simon once sang.
Showing a basic respect for people, no matter their station in life, is a pretty good path to take through life. Costs nothing, builds trust and connection. Makes that good serendipity flow. Even if there's nothing in it for you, personally, it's worthwhile.
People respond to being seen and heard.
Congratulations on retiring, Marty!! As my brother-in-law says, you have entered the promised land. :)
Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day.
As Marty suggests, it can have big benefits for you, too. And not just admin folks. Perhaps the best thing I did, as someone (at least nominally) in Systems Programming, was to spend time with the computer operations people and listen to them.**
Operation folks get no respect. Even if the Systems Programmers are polite enough to them in passing, it's strictly superficial. But I found that they knew far more about the state of the systems than any monitor could tell me.
As an early warning system, they were unbeatable.
All it took was spending some time occasionally hanging out in Operations. Not only would they tell me, and show me, where things were deteriorating, after a while they would reach out when something didn't look right. Made my job a lot easier, and improved my performance too. I kept doing it, every place I ever worked.
It was helpful enough that my boss push the other members of our team to do the same. Pushed pretty hard. But they just couldn't be bothered to walk ten yards, go thru a door, and visit. I never understood it. I was willing to fly from San Francisco to Phoenix and spend a couple of days talking to all three shifts. But they just wouldn't budge.
** I still remember the first time that, as a very junior Systems Programmer at Bank of America in the mid-70s, I happened to be passing thru Operations and overheard somebody griping about something which was making their job difficult.
I did a little digging when I got back to my desk, found they were right, wrote it up, and got it fixed. Because, after all, I was in a position to get something done. Next time I was in Operations they were waiting for me. With lists! Because they'd found a channel where their problems would get addressed.
"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day."
Being nice to lower level admin people somehow allowed me to have a career. As I needed emotional/environmental calm to function I somehow ended up lucky enough to get that support from the admin people. It was odd but they recognized how much I needed routine to deal with chaos and were always there to maintain it. I did, in turn, appreciate and respect them. And as I recently retired I find they are really all I miss about work.
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day." I once asked the waiter, when it was dessert time and based on a hint on the menu, if they had any single-barrel bourbons. She literally lit up, and started through the choices and their relative merits.
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
I suppose I should have written them down :^) They cover a wide range of topics, eg, "To the extent that the limits of technology and the budget will support, put the tricky parts in software." Following that one came close to getting me canned. What saved me was that it eventually got pushed high enough up the chain that my SVP could say to the other side's SVP, in front of the CEO, "But Mike's solution worked and we met the politically-sensitive goal. We're 18 months past the court-ordered deadline and your solution still doesn't work."
Since this is the recent open thread...
Mostly for wj, who purports to be an eventual user of what is currently a piece of toy software for dewarping images. After a small frenzy of coding today, here's a very simple-minded cut at color. I chose this image to see if it preserved the red-eye effect in the right eye. (After looking at the original Polaroid print under 5x magnification, this is surprisingly good.) Among the things on my mind as I kept cutting corners were: (a) how many serial color-space and gamma conversions am I ignoring here, and (b) how much information am I losing by forcing intermediate values back to eight-bit integers? Still, I'm not unhappy with the results. http://www.mcain6925.com/obsidian/dewarp/obsidian09.jpg
How high the floor and how to deliver it are open for discussion; anyone who argues against a floor is arguing for the pitchforks and torches to come out eventually.
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
Absolutist free-market ideology and anti-government rhetoric have poisoned the minds of too many. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics and his "nine most terrifying words" got "nice" people to buy into what it becoming a klepto-techno oligarchic feudalism.
I don't know how to convince people that they've been talked into becoming modern-day serfs when they blame everything on wokeness, immigrants, and what they think is socialism.
I distinctly remember GOP complaints (not just the WH imbecile*) that any insurance that is not a net win for the person insured is a scam (and those who pay more in than they get out are losers). In particular, if one does not get out (much) more out of social security/medicare/medicaid etc. than one has paid in, the system is a rip-off and thus needs to be abolished (iirc in favor of a private system that ideally guarantees that only those that run it get anything out of it, i.e. overhead should be at minimum 100%).
*I first mistyped that as imbevil ;-)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
Just, why not?
because some people are jerks and enjoy throwing their weight around.
for whatever reason.
"
I don't understand why one wouldn't be helpful to anyone one works with, or anyone at all. Just, why not?
Early in my banking career I was in a position where I had a fair understanding of a new convertible bond system being rolled out, and of convertible bonds themselves (it doesn't matter it you don't know what they are). A colleague in the USA (I was in London) was responsible for getting things set up in the new system: I helped her a lot. Later it transpired that her husband became a megabucks trader. I got skiing holidays in Aspen as a result.
But if I hadn't, I would still have wanted to be helpful.
On “The Schadenfreude Express”
I just find it harder and harder to have anything to say about any of these people.
They're like a bunch of monkeys in a barrel. "Oh look, those monkeys are out of control, just flinging poo around, bearing their teeth and shrieking!".
Yes, because they're monkeys. In a barrel.
I look for ways to minimize the blast radius of this crazy juvenile bullshit, but it's mostly - almost completely - beyond whatever meager resources I can bring to bear.
I mean, I can call my rep and senators, but they're basically already doing what they can. I can show up for the demonstrations etc. but the folks driving the bus at the moment obviously do not give one single solitary flying f*** about any of that.
I appreciate the efforts of those folks who have some influence over it all, but a lot of the time either their hands are tied too, or the process of containing these knuckleheads through legal or procedural means just takes too long to prevent damage from being done.
I'm just waiting for this crap to be over. We'll see what's left at that point.
If we really, really, really want to keep people like these the hell away from any kind of social or political power going forward, there are going to have to be some serious come to Jesus moments at some point.
And I just don't think we - Americans, collectively - have the stomach for it.
"It'd be too divisive"
"Let's come together now"
"Look forward, not back"
All of that is no small part of how we got here.
Trump et al are gonna come after anyone and anything they don't like, and they're gonna use as much of the full power of the state as they can muster to do it. Because Trump himself is a nasty vindictive piece of work, and the folks he has surrounded himself with are a bunch of loser weirdos who find hurting other people - ruining the lives of other people in no small number of cases - to be a lot of fun.
The rest of the world is basically just working around us at this point. And are looking for ways to make us as irrelevant - as unnecessary for their own security and prosperity - as they can.
Or else figuring out ways to play our leadership for their own advantage.
It's a nightmare. If there wasn't so much damage being done, it'd be comical. And, at moments, it kinda is.
But mostly it's a nightmare.
Good luck to Bolton, he said mean things about Trump and now Trump has an army. And a long memory.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired
When I retired one of my goals was to spend as much time as possible around living things.
So far, so good.
"
Thanks ! Not?
"
russell, GftNC, thanks? Turns out I'm pretty good at it. Other than one day to do my taxes I haven't logged on to a computer since I retired. Phone handles it all
On “The Schadenfreude Express”
At the moment, Bolton is merely a private citizen, who will have to impoverish himself to defend against charges that will eventually be dropped. Powell is still Chair of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. I know Trump has some serious nut cases at DOJ, but even those have to be somewhat reluctant to piss off most of the rich people in the country by attacking Powell on fictitious grounds.
"
For Bolton, the Fibbies were searching for "classified documents".
If they find a grocery list, they'll just hand it to Trump and he'll "classify it with his mind", and PRESTO: criminal case.
"
It's an outrage and a travesty, and it's happening to a person whose misfortune I read with great satisfaction. I hope that this outrage is prevented - slowly - and that the perpetrators' misfortune is the source of great future satisfaction.
...and the horses they rode in on (which, I suspect, were all nidstangs).
So many poxes. So many houses.
"
I assume the 'mortgage fraud' charges are already being prepared, that's the newest shtick (and stick). Once they get bored of that, it will probably be 'insider trading' for the next couple of targets. One day they will throw dice on what charges to use in a new case (maybe with a betting pool).
"
The thing is, Powell is merely not doing something that Trump wants done. Whereas Bolton has been actively slamming Trump on social media. That's a lot harder for Trump's fragile ego to deal with.
It won't be a surprise if he has one of his minion officials go after Powell eventually. But . . . priorities. Powell isn't one. Yet. If/when the economy tanks to the point where it can't be ignored, then Powell moves into the cross hairs.
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
Being nice to (not just junior) administrative staff is the right thing to do. Assuming one is, or aspires to be, a decent human being.
But this is why it is also a useful thing to do. Those administrative staff are the ones who know how to navigate the system in order to get things done. Including the back channels that can dramatically reduce the time and effort required. Or get something done at all.
I would hope that anyone who has worked in a large organization would know that. But experience shows that remarkably few do. Including at the senior levels, where it is not obvious how they get their jobs done without knowing. (Perhaps theur Administrative Assistants grease the wheels for them...? That would explain why such staff frequently follow the executive from job to job, rather than remaining where they are to work for the new guy.)
"
Connected (ever so slightly) to the discussion about being "polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people"
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-bitter-lesson-versus-the-garbage
One of my favorite academic papers about organizations is by Ruthanne Huising, and it tells the story of teams that were assigned to create process maps of their company, tracing what the organization actually did, from raw materials to finished goods. As they created this map, they realized how much of the work seemed strange and unplanned. They discovered entire processes that produced outputs nobody used, weird semi-official pathways to getting things done, and repeated duplication of efforts. Many of the employees working on the map, once rising stars of the company, became disillusioned.
I’ll let Prof. Huising explain what happened next: “Some held out hope that one or two people at the top knew of these design and operation issues; however, they were often disabused of this optimism. For example, a manager walked the CEO through the map, presenting him with a view he had never seen before and illustrating for him the lack of design and the disconnect between strategy and operations. The CEO, after being walked through the map, sat down, put his head on the table, and said, "This is even more fucked up than I imagined." The CEO revealed that not only was the operation of his organization out of his control but that his grasp on it was imaginary.”
For many people, this may not be a surprise. One thing you learn studying (or working in) organizations is that they are all actually a bit of a mess. In fact, one classic organizational theory is actually called the Garbage Can Model. This views organizations as chaotic "garbage cans" where problems, solutions, and decision-makers are dumped in together, and decisions often happen when these elements collide randomly, rather than through a fully rational process. Of course, it is easy to take this view too far - organizations do have structures, decision-makers, and processes that actually matter. It is just that these structures often evolved and were negotiated among people, rather than being carefully designed and well-recorded.
The Garbage Can represents a world where unwritten rules, bespoke knowledge, and complex and undocumented processes are critical.
I've been thinking about this a bit, and how one overcomes it or at least works around it.
About Cheez Whiz's comment about David Brooks (and the pointer to Driftglass) with the tag David Brooks, definitely worth a look)
his wikipedia entry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
has this
As an undergraduate, Brooks frequently contributed reviews and satirical pieces to campus publications. His senior year, he wrote a spoof of the lifestyle of wealthy conservative William F. Buckley Jr., who was scheduled to speak at the university: "In the afternoons he is in the habit of going into crowded rooms and making everybody else feel inferior. The evenings are reserved for extended bouts of name-dropping." To his piece, Brooks appended the note: "Some would say I'm envious of Mr. Buckley. But if truth be known, I just want a job and have a peculiar way of asking. So how about it, Billy? Can you spare a dime?" When Buckley arrived to give his talk, he asked whether Brooks was in the lecture audience and offered him a job.
Don't know if it is sucking up to Buckley, or something else entirely (each word is a different link), but the story seems strangely apropros.
"
Yes, I agree with Cain's Third Law (any further ones welcome), and with wj, russell and Marty. Treating people of every degree as people, and equals worthy of respect, is one of the most foundational rules for living a good life. Any personal benefits which accrue, while welcome, are a purely secondary matter.
Marty - congratulations!
"
I spent 30 years in Operations at a software company in San Jose (Manufacturing Software Engineering, a job title with an odd history). It was where revenue recognition happened, the rubber met the road, and as I put it, I implemented other people's bad ideas. All the stories above ring true to me.
Re: lukewarm David Brooks. When that name comes up I will always refer to Driftglass, who was tracking Brooks before it was cool, and has the receipts. Go back to Brooks' early days at the Weekly Standard and you'll find a man the opposite of lukewarm. He's become much more moderate as the checks kept rolling in from the Times, Yale, Aspen, Davos, etc. but the anger still remains, as Paul Simon once sang.
"
Showing a basic respect for people, no matter their station in life, is a pretty good path to take through life. Costs nothing, builds trust and connection. Makes that good serendipity flow. Even if there's nothing in it for you, personally, it's worthwhile.
People respond to being seen and heard.
Congratulations on retiring, Marty!! As my brother-in-law says, you have entered the promised land. :)
"
Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day.
As Marty suggests, it can have big benefits for you, too. And not just admin folks. Perhaps the best thing I did, as someone (at least nominally) in Systems Programming, was to spend time with the computer operations people and listen to them.**
Operation folks get no respect. Even if the Systems Programmers are polite enough to them in passing, it's strictly superficial. But I found that they knew far more about the state of the systems than any monitor could tell me.
As an early warning system, they were unbeatable.
All it took was spending some time occasionally hanging out in Operations. Not only would they tell me, and show me, where things were deteriorating, after a while they would reach out when something didn't look right. Made my job a lot easier, and improved my performance too. I kept doing it, every place I ever worked.
It was helpful enough that my boss push the other members of our team to do the same. Pushed pretty hard. But they just couldn't be bothered to walk ten yards, go thru a door, and visit. I never understood it. I was willing to fly from San Francisco to Phoenix and spend a couple of days talking to all three shifts. But they just wouldn't budge.
** I still remember the first time that, as a very junior Systems Programmer at Bank of America in the mid-70s, I happened to be passing thru Operations and overheard somebody griping about something which was making their job difficult.
I did a little digging when I got back to my desk, found they were right, wrote it up, and got it fixed. Because, after all, I was in a position to get something done. Next time I was in Operations they were waiting for me. With lists! Because they'd found a channel where their problems would get addressed.
"
"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day."
Being nice to lower level admin people somehow allowed me to have a career. As I needed emotional/environmental calm to function I somehow ended up lucky enough to get that support from the admin people. It was odd but they recognized how much I needed routine to deal with chaos and were always there to maintain it. I did, in turn, appreciate and respect them. And as I recently retired I find they are really all I miss about work.
"
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
"Always be polite and considerate to the lower level administrative/service people. It costs you nothing and can make someone's day." I once asked the waiter, when it was dessert time and based on a hint on the menu, if they had any single-barrel bourbons. She literally lit up, and started through the choices and their relative merits.
"
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
I suppose I should have written them down :^) They cover a wide range of topics, eg, "To the extent that the limits of technology and the budget will support, put the tricky parts in software." Following that one came close to getting me canned. What saved me was that it eventually got pushed high enough up the chain that my SVP could say to the other side's SVP, in front of the CEO, "But Mike's solution worked and we met the politically-sensitive goal. We're 18 months past the court-ordered deadline and your solution still doesn't work."
On “Giving Away the Store”
Since this is the recent open thread...
Mostly for wj, who purports to be an eventual user of what is currently a piece of toy software for dewarping images. After a small frenzy of coding today, here's a very simple-minded cut at color. I chose this image to see if it preserved the red-eye effect in the right eye. (After looking at the original Polaroid print under 5x magnification, this is surprisingly good.) Among the things on my mind as I kept cutting corners were: (a) how many serial color-space and gamma conversions am I ignoring here, and (b) how much information am I losing by forcing intermediate values back to eight-bit integers? Still, I'm not unhappy with the results.
http://www.mcain6925.com/obsidian/dewarp/obsidian09.jpg
"
An interview with Netanyahu.
Asking Benjamin Netanyahu The Tough Questions
On “David Brooks in Laodicea”
How high the floor and how to deliver it are open for discussion; anyone who argues against a floor is arguing for the pitchforks and torches to come out eventually.
Quite right. What are the other Cain's Laws?
"
Absolutist free-market ideology and anti-government rhetoric have poisoned the minds of too many. Ronald Reagan's trickle-down economics and his "nine most terrifying words" got "nice" people to buy into what it becoming a klepto-techno oligarchic feudalism.
I don't know how to convince people that they've been talked into becoming modern-day serfs when they blame everything on wokeness, immigrants, and what they think is socialism.
"
I distinctly remember GOP complaints (not just the WH imbecile*) that any insurance that is not a net win for the person insured is a scam (and those who pay more in than they get out are losers). In particular, if one does not get out (much) more out of social security/medicare/medicaid etc. than one has paid in, the system is a rip-off and thus needs to be abolished (iirc in favor of a private system that ideally guarantees that only those that run it get anything out of it, i.e. overhead should be at minimum 100%).
*I first mistyped that as imbevil ;-)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.