The Death of Newsprint: Waiting for Car Service

I take my car to the dealer for service, and always wait for it.  Over the years the waiting room has changed, gotten fancier and fancier.  The last cycle boasts fancy leather chairs with arms for your computer; the previous cycle had just four  seats against the wall for PC users.  Of course, I'm not sure the chairs work so well for people using smartphones and iPads, but that's another story.

Anyhow, back in the day half the people waiting would be reading the newspaper, the other half zoned out watching CNN on the TV.  Today there was one person reading the paper, me, and the rest were on their laptops or phones.  The TV was going, but no one was watching.

The other change in 30 years has been from a mostly white clientele, through a mixed white and Latino clientele, to a Heinz 57 varieties from every continent.

Surprising Sentence

" Government employment is declining nationally by the sharpest annual rate since the 1940s."

That's from this Atlantic post on government employment--the discussion is of government at all levels.  It doesn't allow for contractors (I think I saw something that more American contractors died in Afghanistan last year than military troops.)

It was surprising to see Mississippi, Louisiana, and South Caroline, three states with Republican governors which vote red consistently, among the 10 states with the most government employees.

Government Service from IRS

Recently I had occasion to deal with the IRS (I made a stupid mistake on my 2009 schedule D).  All in all I was pleased with my interactions: one in-person call to the local office, two phone calls.  In all three cases I had to wait, but that's expectable because Congress doesn't fund tax collection as it should.  In all three cases the IRS people were pleasant and competent and the IT systems they had available to them worked well. And, most importantly of course, I finished the series of interactions without owing more taxes.

So, a hat tip to the IRS.

One thing of interest I did note, given the concerns over PPI (Social security number, etc.)  When I went to the office, instead of asking for my SSN I was asked to enter it on a separate keypad--apparently such entry hides the SSN from the employee while authorizing access to one's tax files.  It's an interesting approach.

Bureaucrats = Condoms?

Or isn't that what John Holbo meant in this:

(The principle that layers of bureaucracy are semi-prophylactic against moral pollution is subject to doubt. But we seem to have no other principle, so this will have to do in the case of prophylactics.)…

From a post on the requirement contraception be included in health insurance policies.

Crop Insurance Versus NASCOE

Via Farm Policy, the crop insurance industry counters NASCOE arguments:

Those who call for greater Farm Service Agency involvement in claims adjustment as a way of saving Federal jobs in the countryside do not have the interests of farmers at heart. The “modern” crop insurance program started out in the 1980s with a dual system of delivery in which farmers were given the choice of buying policies sold by private agents who contracted with the government and had the government service claims, or they could buy policies from private companies who would both sell policies and service claims. Because the private sector outperformed the government, especially in terms of quality of
farmer services, timeliness and accuracy of claims processing and cost (1989 Arthur Andersen study reported government cost was more than twice that of the private sector), all program delivery was assigned to the private sector by the end of the 1980s.

I wonder about the context of the 1989 study.  That would FCIC representing government delivery and probably a mostly manual process.  I doubt the Reagan administration would have supported a fair test.  Myself, I don't believe FSA could sell insurance effectively; they just don't have the incentives to do so, but servicing the policies ought to be within their capability.

The AACI statement goes on to bemoan the fact that crop insurance isn't available everywhere, which makes me laugh since FSA's involvement with CAT was ended because it was available everywhere.

John Phipps on Crop Insurance and Market Distortion

Have I said recently I hadn't noticed much concern about WTO rules vis a vis the next farm bill?  Seems to me in past cycles it was a top concern.  Indeed the delinking of payments and current plantings in the Freedom to Farm of 1996 was, I think, a big issue, at least for those who weren't bewitched by the dream of getting government out of agriculture.

John Phipps reports here the Brazilians are taking the position that crop insurance is market distorting. You'll remember they've already won a WTO case against our upland cotton program.

NASCOE Versus Crop Insurance

NASCOE has asked Congress to de-privatize crop insurance according to DTN's Jerry Hagstrom.  DTN editorial opposes.

Some random comments:

I didn't see this position on the NASCOE site until I doublechecked and found this consultants report.  Don't understand why the report was dated in September but, unless I have been missing it consistently, which is possible, not posted until recently. The report seems impressive enough (that's what consultants do--impress) that it should be up front in NASCOE's pitch. The DTN editorial rightly says this is FSA trying to preserve jobs, but without mention of the data in the report.  If NASCOE is serious they should be highlighting the dollar savings in short talking points.

Having gone through the process of parallel sales and servicing of CAT policies in 1994-6, I've some wisdom thoughts to offer. I think we ended up doing a pretty good job with CAT and I think GAO was reasonably positive about our work, though that may be an old man's rosy memories.  But the point is it was a real battle of sweat and tears to get to where we ended up.  There was a very big learning curve.  It's easy to assume crop insurance is simple, just another program to administer.  But it's not, particularly because the differences are subtle.  I've posted before about the different acreage reporting dates of ASCS/FSA and RMA--there's good reasons for many of them, reasons which someone raised in the crop insurance world understands automatically (as regards crop insurance) and someone raised in the FSA world understands automatically (as regards farm programs). 

I've posted before about the 80/20 rules: it's those subtle differences and the odd-ball (to an FSA person) crops which would cause 80 percent of the work.  

So I'd fault the consultants for not recognizing transition costs and learning curves, which would be major.   If Congress really wanted to explore saving a billion or so (which I doubt they will--just look at the map of crop insurance agents in the report and remember those people have influence) I'd suggest they haul some branch chiefs and division directors from FSA and RMA up before their committees to thrash out the proposal.

I was struck by the statement in the report that most crop insurance acreage reports are rekeyings from FSA acreage reports.  By now I would have hoped that offices could have been working directly from GIS-based reports, but I guess not.

Opting Out and Rational Decisionmaking

Here's an interesting post, on a book which argues that some blacks in higher education end up going away from STEM and towards the softer side.

, according to the 2000 Census, the top 20 white-collar careers among both black and white employees include elementary and secondary education as well as registered nursing. But break it down further and you’ll find that white people hold proportionately more high-status positions: lawyers, physicians, surgeons, chief executives and financial, general and operations managers. Black employees, in contrast, trend toward “service-oriented, racialized jobs” including counselors, education administrators, preschool and kindergarten teachers and community and social service specialists. Taken together, the differences in employment result in: chief executives being the fifth most common white-collar occupation among whites, but 35th among blacks; lawyers being 10th among whites but 27th among blacks; and physicians being 19th among whites but 31st among blacks.

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/12/02/new-book-says-elite-black-students-dont-try-high-paying-jobs#ixzz1lowMKYaL
Inside Higher Ed

I'd argue a part, perhaps a small part, but a part of this is a rational choice based maximizing one's assets.  Since this is a touchy subject, let me use myself as an example.  As a farm boy I could bring some intangibles to some jobs, and not to others. I tried to play this card when interviewing for college: when asked what I could contribute to Harvard I argued they didn't have many farm boys in the student body.  Unfortunately, my argument from diversity fell flat and they rejected me.  But my background was an asset in my work for USDA.  It wouldn't have been an asset had I gone into math or science, or even computer programming.

I think much the same applies to the occupations above: the jobs may be "racialized" (not sure what that means but it sounds bad) but when you think about it, on the average most blacks will have had more experience dealing with more different people than most whites. More experience usually translates into more capable.

As I said, this may be a small part, but it makes sense to me.

Don't Grow Old: Nature Conservancy and Climate Change Denial

I was amused to find two age-related posts in my Grist feed: one reports that the Nature Conservancy's members are old and gray, which causes concern; the other reports that climate change deniers are old and gray, which causes pleasure.

The mantra of my household is: don't grow old.

Those Destructive Government Employees

Did you hear that Obama shot off a cannon in the State Dining Room?  Not content with destroying our free enterprise system, he's now intent on destroying the White House so Mitt can't take it over.