TRAIN WRECK UPDATE: So, California, how are your Obamacare health plans working out so far?
Archive for 2014
January 23, 2014
HERE’S THE C-SPAN VIDEO of my Manhattan Institute talk about The New School.
WHY KNOWLEDGE WORKERS ARE OVERWORKED:
When people complain about work-family balance, they frequently complain that two people who each work 30 hours a week are paid much less than half as much as one person working 60 hours a week. Surowiecki notes that it’s more expensive to hire two people (benefits, desks, etc.). But that’s not the only cost. In specialized jobs, two people who are each working 30 hours a week may actually be much less productive than one working 60 — even if working 60 hours makes each of those hours much less productive than they could be.
The problem is that when work is specialized, each worker has individual knowledge about the job that has to be passed off to anyone else working on that job. If you split the job, you increase the amount of time that is spent telling the other person what you know . . . and increase the risk that something will be missed because one person knew one thing and the other knew something else, and those two pieces of information never met in the same head.
More workers also means more time managing those workers. Ever been at a firm or department that went from five people to 35? How much more of your time got sucked up in meetings? As work teams grow, you start to need elaborate hierarchies of communication and control that absorb lots of time and require extra people whose jobs are just managing all the others.
And as the pace of communications has accelerated, it has paradoxically gotten more difficult to do without people. If you’re an American working with folks in Europe, you quickly learn to write off the summer, because it’s impossible to get anything done when everyone takes multiweek vacations. By the time one person gets back, the other person is off. This is maddening if you’re working on anything time-sensitive.
On my own account, I find it very hard to delegate my work to anyone — the overhead involved in explaining and managing exceeds the benefit.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: Help! My Mom And Stepdad Want To Harvest My Eggs!
NO, NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HERE: Obama Critic Dinesh D’Souza Indicted By Eric Holder’s DOJ.
Read my Ham Sandwich Nation for general background . . . .
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Law School Price War in Philadelphia. “A month or two ago, Penn State announced that it would offer Pennsylvania residents a $20,000 annual tuition discount irrespective of credentials. And now, Villanova has levied a massive volley at all market competitors, offering three years of free tuition for applicants with a 157/3.6 GPA. … The price of law school in Philly is dropping fast. A month ago I said that a person with a 161 could attend a very good law school for free in Philly. Now I’d have to make that a 157, with significant discounts available to folks with a 154 or 155.”
HEALTHCARE: Lessons From A Broken Neck.
A BLOG FULL OF CHEERFUL, BUT USEFUL, STUFF: JoyHacks.
HEY, WHERE ARE ALL THOSE UNINSURED PEOPLE WHO WERE SUPPOSED TO BE SIGNING UP FOR OBAMACARE? “There may be something seriously wrong with our understanding of who the uninsured are, and what they are willing and able to buy in the way of insurance. I don’t know exactly what the fault may be in our understanding. But if the numbers stay this low, I’d say we need to reassess the state of our knowledge about the uninsured — and the vast program we created to cover them.”
Maybe the whole thing was a crock — or just an excuse for a government takeover of a huge industry.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Registered Sex Offender Fights Back By Creating “Idiot Registry” of Politicians. Sex-offender registries have suffered an absurd politicized mission creep, resulting in due process violations. Meanwhile, what he’s doing sounds like free speech.
FLASHBACK: The Game: Who Goes Nazi?
TECHNO-DATING ADVICE: Taking A Swipe: 5 Valuable Lessons From Using Tinder.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Horrors for Wendy Davis campaign: Candidate’s embellishments upgraded to ‘gate’ (as in scandal) status.
A quote from a one-time Fort Worth City Council colleague of Davis’ who alleges a gender-driven double standard. Excerpt from the column, quoting former FW City Council member Becky Haskin:
“If this involved a man running for office, none of this would ever come up,” she said.
“It’s so sad. Every time I ran, somebody said I needed to be home with my kids. Nobody ever talks about men being responsible parents.”
That would be a powerful argument if it were material, or true. Just because it’s a woman charging a double standard in this matter doesn’t make it so.
The image that the Davis people are putting out was exemplified by her willingness to play along with the Today show’s Maria Shriver under the theme #DoingItAll. Shriver went to Fort Worth and did a fawning piece on Davis’ life and career as an example of a woman who worked hard and overcame odds. . . .
As for the double standard, there may be people who think Davis abandoned the kids in pursuit of career, and maybe some of those people wouldn’t be prone to criticize absent dads. That’s beside the point.
If a man campaigned on something like “family values” or a similar theme, and if he had two failed marriages in his past, and if he left two small kids with a spouse for an extended time a couple thousand miles away, and if he dumped that spouse later on, he would run into the same buzzsaw that Davis hit this week.
The public sees when a candidate is trying to have it both ways. And that has nothing to do with a man-woman double standard.
Indeed.
WHAT TO DO with used tires.
AT AMAZON, deals on Bestselling Cookware Sets.
SEAN TRENDE: Why the 2014 Senate Races Matter So Much. “Obama is a lame duck, and the GOP already has blocking power with the House. A Republican majority in the Senate could provide added leverage by forcing Obama to use his veto, and it could force vulnerable Democrats to cast tough votes. But where it really matters — where it could make a huge difference — is in the next round of Senate elections.”
WHAT EVERYONE NEEDS: A tracked F-150 Raptor.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF BIG DATA if it doesn’t help you make decisions?
FORD’S ALUMINUM TRUCKS: What are they really made of? “I’m telling you all of this because I kind of wanted it to be true, for there to be a scandal at the auto show for a change, and also as a reminder to not trust everything you read. Except this.”
MICHAEL S. GREVE: Geithner’s Gangster Government. “Here and there I’ve noodled over the prospect that the U.S. might turn into Argentina. I did not mean it as a policy recommendation.”
ON C-SPAN, Prof. Nicholas Johnson talks about his new book, Negroes And The Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms, the most important work on this topic since Robert Williams’ 1962 book, Negroes With Guns.