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There was a story once told by Eric Schmidt that while on a trip to China he was touring a bridge construction and no heavy machinery was being used, the Chines
by dudus 6y ago
There was a story once told by Eric Schmidt that while on a trip to China he was touring a bridge construction and no heavy machinery was being used, the Chinese officials were pointing it out as something positive because it meant more people worked at the site and it generated more jobs.
Eric said they should have given the workers spoons if that was the goal, which caused a couple laughs that were met with anxious stares by local officials.
- samatman 6y agoEric Schmidt stole this story from Milton Friedman. I'll restrain myself from any commentary on what sort of person that shows him to be, other than that implied in this sentence.
- dudus 6y agoI didn't include a source because there probably isn't one. But he def told this story. I was there in person at a google off-site keynote
- samatman 6y agoIt certainly didn't originate with Schmidt, but according to this, it probably didn't originate with Friedman either: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/ Though he's best known for it.
- dudus 6y agoIt's kind of depressing seeing how much even leaders just blatantly copy each other quotes.
- Animats 6y agoLarge steel bridge construction involves much hand labor. Here's a big job in China.[1] If you're not seeing the foundation work or crane work, it may look like it's all hand labor. Large bridges are custom-designed prefabs. Somewhere else, there's a factory making the parts. [1] https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA https://youtu.be/kJ1ciG7IjKA
- phobosanomaly 6y agoIf it's a government project, the employment may actually be the real goal, less so than the bridge.
- CamperBob2 6y agoSee also: countries that maintain a military big enough to fight off an attack from two hostile star systems at once, never mind two hostile countries. It's the ultimate jobs program.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoThe defense industrial complex is the go-to, but I got a kind of novel jobs program that doesn't get thrown around a lot: Private Health Insurance. There's a straightforward transaction that occurs between healthcare provider and patient. But every...single...dollar that flows through the healthcare system is diverted through the massive private health insurance industry, which is essentially an artificial middleman skimming money off the top of the transaction between healthcare provider and patient. This provides employment for millions of accountants, and MBAs, and marketing people, and database engineers, and statisticians, and lobbyists, and etc. It's the more touchy-feely cousin of the Defense Industrial Complex that must vacuum up money somewhere in the same order of magnitude.
- Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y agoIn places with, relatively speaking, rich social services programs are essentially jobs programs. The budgets are caseloads are never reflective of need, and most families would be better served with getting a check than meeting with a burnt/checked out social worker. Often times programs run by the state are so taxed that they are entirely incapable of meeting the metrics required by law. Those trillions would have been better spent expanding government programs in: land preservation, social services, healthcare, stem, and infrastructure maintenance and expansion. Instead it's just sloshing around the accounts of people who neither understand nor care about the plights of the average American.