Always the losers, forever acting defensively, never acting on a victory, “Republicans who control the Senate have no intention of scrapping the 60-vote threshold for legislation, fearing a loss of influence the next time Democrats hold the majority.”
1 Reason The State Department Turned On #RexTillerson: He Tried Trimming Budgets & Getting Rid Of Deadwood
Business, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Free Markets, Government, Political Economy, Taxation, The State
The Economist notes that Rex Tillerson was a poor secretary of state—but not for the reasons I would advance.
One reason for their opinion is that, “Disastrously for morale, he declined to defend his own department when the White House proposed cutting its budget by 25% or more … Mr Tillerson squandered goodwill with a corporate restructuring that felt to many staff like an invitation to resign. At one point, outside consultants sent round a questionnaire asking: “To optimally support the future mission of the Department, what one or two things should your work unit totally stop doing or providing?” (“Trump Unbound: In foreign affairs, America just moved closer to one-man rule,” March 17, 2018.)
TILLESRSON TRIED TO CUT GOVERNMENT! Defending your employees, The Economist here equates with increasing or maintaining the budget for the department, it diplomats, envoys and other career and or deadwood staff.
State institutions are self-reinforcing and not amenable to reform; they grow through failure.
So while it would be nice if state institutions were able to reform, because of the structure of incentives, the state cannot be corrected. The incentive structure underlying state institutions is antithetical to reform.
To correct processes that may be killing people—affirmative action, when the subject of special privileges isn’t qualified—you have to cut budgets in the billions. This likely will never happen, in state institutions, because they don’t abide by the profit motive. So to express belief in this is to express belief in the possibility of the state fixing itself.
The libertarian grasps that the state grows through inefficiency. The more it bungles—the greater its budget will be. Economically, the state’s incentives are inverted. A private company, on the other hand, grows through economic and performative efficiencies; by singles the customer. The state is the opposite. As a monopoly, it need please nobody. For example, the education system is a giant failure. Will it be scrapped? Of course not. The system will reward itself with MORE, not less, funds to fix the problem.
This is a structural fact of the state.
Why can the state grow and prosper through inefficiency? Because it has access to the funds of an indentured third party, taxpayers, and has the promiscuous use of the printing press.
A private institution can come back from the abyss, because, economically, it will go bust if it doesn’t start pleasing customers. However, if, like the Florida bridge collapse, a private enterprise is working in tandem with the state, then taxpayers bail it out.
Profit is privatized, loss is socialized.
Most people no longer read or understand the economics of the state. Ten years ago, I had readers who had at least read Hazlitt’s Economics in One Lesson.
American ‘Experts’ Call You Crazy If You Mention Our ‘Deep State.’ But Russia, Says US ‘Expert,’ Certainly Has One.
Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Propaganda, Russia, The State
To be accepted into polite company, we Americans are instructed to denounce the very concept of a Deep State (the unelected, extra-constitutional, entrenched, state apparatus).
Oddly, I first heard this eloquent, apt term from Bill Moyers, considered an august force on the Left.
But now, leftists in the era of Trump, joined by neocons and cuckservatives insist that the concept is all the product of Deplorable minds gripped by conspiracy.
Except when it comes to Russia. The American state apparatus they consider virtuous, but Russia certainly has a Deep State.
The Russian Deep State one American “expert” calls: “the natural state.”
Yes, the same kind of American experts who denounce Deep State when applied to the US government, have a term for the Russian Deep State: “the natural state.”
Douglass North, an American political economist, alludes to what sounds like Deep State reality, only it pertains to Russia.
[Putin] presides over the sort of power structure that Douglass North, an American political economist, has called the “natural state”. In this, rents are created by limiting access to economic and political resources, and the limits are enforced by “specialists in violence”. In Russia these are the siloviki of the assorted security and police forces, serving the system as they did in Soviet times. …
Our government goons may not kill us in the name of compliance, but they certainly marginalize us.
More Mediocre, IT Worker-Bees On The Way From Bangalore
Economy, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Outsourcing, Regulation, Technology
Nothing much has changed. “Government”—what a neutral way way of putting it—is preparing to hand out H-1B visas for so-called high-skilled (they’re not) foreign workers by lottery, without changes to previous policy. See “U.S. Prepares to Distribute H-1B Visas Without Trump-Demanded Changes.” Who’s the biggest winner, Tata, Infosys or Microsoft?
Again and again this column has relayed the truth about the H1B scam. The last time was in “Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed“:
… Why doesn’t the president know that the H-1B visa category is not a special visa for highly skilled individuals, but goes mostly to average workers? “Indian business-process outsourcing companies, which predominantly provide technology support to corporate back offices,” by the Economist’s accounting.
Overall, the work done by the H-1B intake does not require independent judgment, critical reasoning or higher-order thinking. “Average workers; ordinary talent doing ordinary work,” attest the experts who’ve been studying this intake for years. The master’s degree is the exception within the H-1B visa category.
More significant: THERE IS a visa category that is reserved exclusively for individuals with extraordinary abilities and achievement. I know, because the principal sponsor in our family received this visa. I first wrote about the visa that doesn’t displace ordinary Americans in … 2008:
It’s the O-1 visa.
“Extraordinary ability in the fields of science, education, business or athletics,” states the Department of Homeland Security, “means a level of expertise indicating that the person is one of the small percentage who has risen to the very top of the field of endeavor.”
Most significant: There is no cap on the number of O-1 visa entrants allowed. Access to this limited pool of talent is unlimited.
My point vis-à-vis the O-1 visa is this: The H-1B hogs are forever claiming that they are desperate for talent. In reality, they have unlimited access to individuals with unique abilities through the open-ended O-1 visa program.
There is no limit to the number of geniuses American companies can import.
Theoretically, the H-1B program could be completely abolished and all needed Einsteins imported through the O-1 program. (Why, even future first ladies would stand a chance under the business category of the O-1A visa, as a wealth-generating supermodel could certainly qualify.)
Now you understand my disappointment. In his April 18 Executive Order, President Trump promised to merely reform a program that needs abolishing. That is if “Hire American” means anything to anybody anymore.
MORE: “Why The H-1B Visa Racket Should Be Abolished, Not Reformed.”