"Snow Crash" Fans and Lovers of Governmental Insanity

[BlackShanglan]

All we need now is an official 3-page memorandum describing the rules for possession and usage.

__________________________________________________________

Employees Bring Own Toilet Paper to Work

Mar 17, 7:23 AM (ET)


BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) - The Buffalo area's county budget crisis is taking a toll on the bathrooms in at least one public building.

Erie County has had to slash 2,000 jobs and cut back on services in order to close a more than $100 million budget shortfall.

In the Rath Building in downtown Buffalo, workers report that the bathrooms aren't being cleaned or maintained. One longtime worker in the building tells Buffalo's WGRZ-TV that there's no soap, paper towels or toilet paper in the restrooms.

The Rath Building is home to many county offices, including those of County Executive Joel Giambra, the Department of Social Services and the Health Department.

It's so bad, some county employees are bringing in their own toilet paper and other supplies. The worker told WGRZ that's "like working in another country - a bad country."

 

[OhMissScarlett]

All we need now is an official 3-page memorandum describing the rules for possession and usage.

Awesome, at least then they'll have something to wipe their asses with.

 

[Op_Cit]

Isn't this more in the category of karma? You know, government employees getting the level of service that they give... (and what happened to that $100 mil?)

 

[rgraham666]

Hey, we've decided taxes are theft and we're not willing to be stolen from anymore.

And modern management theory teaches that most of the things human beings require to live happily are non-essential.

The convergence of these two facts of modern life has produced this result.

We got what we wanted. It's unseemly to whine now.

Didn't read Snow Crash but I loved The Diamond Age - or - A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

 

[oggbashan]

During WWII a British submarine on patrol in the Mediterraean was depth charged after attacking an Italian convoy. The damage flooded one of the submarine's compartments which happened to be the one holding the total supply of toilet paper.

As the submarine limped back to Malta for repairs they used every piece of paper on the ship as a substitute for the missing paper. Then disaster - they had used all the forms needed to ask for new stores including toilet paper and even the form to order more order forms.

Their sister ship let them borrow a single form to order more order forms and lent them a few rolls of toilet paper. The damaged submarine's crew were the laughing stock of the submarine service when the Admiralty issued an instruction ordering that stores, including toilet paper, should be evenly distributed around a ship so that damage in one place did not make the ship unable to fight. Every time they entered port they were bombarded with toilet rolls by their fellow submariners.

Og

 

[Dar~]

Many county and city employees are underpaid anyway. It's the higher up government officials who are paid too much. When a gov't can'
t afford to buy toilet papaer, or in the extreme(right now) to pay hazard pay for their troops, then its time to give some senators and congressmen pay cuts instead of yet another "cost of living" raise.

Editted to say :End Rant!

 

[BlackShanglan]

Amen to Dndjsp's post. What kind of idiot decides that the way to plug a 100 million dollar debt is to stop buying toilet paper? The kind of idiot that gets into 100 million dollar debt to start with.

At the very least, I would want evidence that all offices of state legislators were also similarly deprived.

 

[SeaCat]

Many county and city employees are underpaid anyway. It's the higher up government officials who are paid too much. When a gov't can'
t afford to buy toilet papaer, or in the extreme(right now) to pay hazard pay for their troops, then its time to give some senators and congressmen pay cuts instead of yet another "cost of living" raise.

Editted to say :End Rant!

Gasp, Blasphemy!!!!! Burn the heretic!!!!!!

How dare you suggest our hard working government officials give up their low salaries when they are doing so much for us. Why they might have to sell one of their houses, send their children to public schools, drive themselves, or gasp, have their spouses work a little bit. Come on, what's wrong with you? Next you'll be suggesting our Congressmen and Senators stop taking their all expenses paid educational trips to such places as the bars of Hawaii, the whore houses of the orient, or the rug markets of India.

Cat

Personally I believe all lawmakers should be forced to work a low paying job, and live in the conditions their voters deal with every couple of years.

 

[cantdog]

Don't be bitter, cat. We'll save money like we always do. Cut back on the fire departments and emergency management stores and systems, because you never see that stuff until you suddenly need it and it's not there. Then starve the school systems, because you can; there's always someone willing to vote away education for the sake of lowered property taxes. Then rob social security. Problem solved. Now you have new problems, but hey.

My dad was a principal in a school district hit by deep cuts for the usual reasons. The superintendent of the district kept right on with books, teachers, music, art, and so on, as before, but he stopped all purchases of paint and soap, let all the windows get dingy until they were nearly opaque, all the grass grow to weeds and bare spots, let the paint peel and so on. The places looked so woebegone that people funded the district again, and no one had to do without an art program or a foreign language program in the meantime, as they ordinarily would have under a less imaginative superintendent.

 

[Dar~]

Yeah to that guy. they cut all sorts of funding in my hometown for school.it really sucked.

 

[SeaCat]

My father-in-Law is a ex-school superintendant, and is now a priciple for a school in Vermont. I have listened to his comments about the funding cuts they have to deal with. Not to mention the BS they have to deal with. It's incredible. Then people wonder why the students can't make change without a calculator.

Cat

 

[BlackShanglan]

It's interesting to see how money matches statements. We claim that children are precious and that life is beyond price, but I've never seen a school district that could afford busses with seat belts or school lunches that met a standard any parent would have been eager to eat five times a week.

As Cant point out - it's always easy to starve the services one no longer uses oneself.

Shanglan

(Edited to add: I actually heard this statement on the radio the other day, verbatim: "Surveys show that <my state> taxpayers are willing to fund education improvements, but they want to see results first." I can't imagine why the school districts have not yet taken them up on this generous offer, other than the need to travel in time in order to fulfill the conditions.

 

[SeaCat]

Don't be bitter, cat. We'll save money like we always do. Cut back on the fire departments and emergency management stores and systems, because you never see that stuff until you suddenly need it and it's not there. Then starve the school systems, because you can; there's always someone willing to vote away education for the sake of lowered property taxes. Then rob social security. Problem solved. Now you have new problems, but hey.

My dad was a principal in a school district hit by deep cuts for the usual reasons. The superintendent of the district kept right on with books, teachers, music, art, and so on, as before, but he stopped all purchases of paint and soap, let all the windows get dingy until they were nearly opaque, all the grass grow to weeds and bare spots, let the paint peel and so on. The places looked so woebegone that people funded the district again, and no one had to do without an art program or a foreign language program in the meantime, as they ordinarily would have under a less imaginative superintendent.

Bitter? Me? Never happen. I'm always amused by governmental inconsistancies. (No matter who is in office the government will always manage to screw something up. It's the nature of the beast.)

Cat

 

[Huckleman2000]

It's always easy to blame governmental waste, but it seems a bit presumptuous to decide that there is always waste in public services. A $100m shortfall isn't necessarily the fault of spending.

In government, like most things in life, you get what you pay for. The government we're getting now is paid for by corporations in a narrow, quid-pro-quo payoff designed to reduce government oversight of unfettered capitalism. To the detriment of the common good, by any measure.

Cut funding for services, then blame the administrators for not providing the services. Then "outsource" and "privatize" the services to companies like Haliburton, with no-bid contracts.

The Social Security Administration is already far more efficient than any mutual fund management can ever hope to be. Yet people intuitively believe that private accounts would take better care of the investable assets, despite all evidence to the contrary.

The "government" isn't some nameless, faceless monolith. It's people like any of us, going to work every day and trying to do a good job with little possibility of investment to make their work more efficient, and private sector businesses lined up to suck at the government teat as long as they can. There is, after all, no incentive for private sector businesses to complete government contracts in a way to maximize the government's return on investment.

In the private sector, companies that deliver in such a way as to harm their customers eventually harm themselves. Not so with the government; hence the awful bureaucracy to make sure the government isn't being taken advantage of. Eliminate the bureaucracy, and it opens the system to abuse - and the abusers blame the bureaucracy.

Before you know it, you're a banana republic, not a superpower.

 

[BlackShanglan]

The Social Security Administration is already far more efficient than any mutual fund management can ever hope to be.

Tell me more? I haven't heard this.

 

[snooper]

... It's so bad, some county employees are bringing in their own toilet paper ...

We used to do that on Government sites in the UK.

It was one of the saddest thoughts I ever had, when I realised that somewhere there was a factory making really nasty bathroom stationery, just to sell to the government!

I suspected it was an economy measure - to cut down the amount used.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Tell me more? I haven't heard this.

This, from the Center for Economic Policy & Research link

On average, less than 0.6 cents of every dollar paid out in Social Security benefits goes to pay administrative costs. By comparison, systems with individual accounts, like the ones in England or Chile, waste 15 cents of every dollar paid out in benefits on administrative fees. President Bush's Social Security commission estimated that under their system of individual accounts 5 cents of every dollar would go to pay administrative costs.

 

[BlackShanglan]

This, from the Center for Economic Policy & Research link

Hmm. Interesting, but I'm not convinced. A few problems:

(1) Calculating administrative costs does not account for disparity in relative earnings. When I was earning 17% from my mutual fund, I really didn't care if it cost me an extra 4 cents on the dollar. (As it happens, it didn't anyway.)

(2) The author states that it is flatly impossible for 7% per annum returns to be maintained on a regular basis. I've almost never seen a mutual fund whose 20 year average returns were under that. There are booms and busts, but in the end there are good investments. The author also assumes that stocks are the chief source of investment, and that investors will not diversify. I'd argue that with a good portfolio, you can do 7% or better.


(3) The author states that much higher dollar-figure earnings will balance out higher Social Security taxes in the projection to 2050. If the average wages have risen that much, the average prices will also rise, driven by the wages. There's nothing there about real buying power. Telling me that wages will be higher in 2050 gives me no sense of reassurance unless I've got some idea what the cost of living will be.

Sorry. This one didn't work for me.

Shanglan