I think Buenos Aires might be onto something here. They have a way of creating a plethora of jobs- leaving no man without an option to find work. Let me explain.
Greg and I live a half block from an ice cream place. We walk by it several times a day- and there are always the same two men- chatting away- bored out of their minds because it is almost always empty. It is not empty because they do not get business- rather because the amount of time it takes for one to go inside, choose their ice cream, pay, and leave is relatively short.... and they are not overloaded with customers. When you go to get your ice cream, there is a definite process to keep order in the unchaotic place. You tell one man what size you would like and pay him, and then you tell the other man the flavors you want and he scoops them. In the US, this job could and would be done by one person. It is never busy enough to warrant paying another person, and in the event it did get that busy- people would just have to wait. (Which is not something unusual here- it is not uncommon to see a line out the door and around the building at banks).
This is just one example.... but it is repeated in all stores. You usually go inside and see five people standing around waiting to help you. However, there will never be an opportunity for all five people to be busy.
The garbage man comes every night. Trash bags here are not bought, they are given to you when you buy things. It is why only one or two items are placed in each plastic bag when you check out at the grocery store- you need several bags for your trash. So every night, you take your trash to the curb between 8-9, adorning the streets with small tied up bundles of garbage. Then a group of workers comes along and tears open the bags, looking for glass and plastic bottles, which get put into a special clear bag. In the process, the trash spills like confetti into the streets and sidewalks, where it remains until morning. The sorters put what is left of the small bags into a large, black plastic bag- similar to what you would use to rake leaves into. Then men in a garbage truck come and pick up the black plastic bags- and often leave a "trail of crumbs" behind the overflowing trash storage vehicle. So in the morning, a whole new group goes out and cleans up the mess left over from the other two groups- with a broom, dustpan, plastic gloves, and garbage bag. The streets remain clean for a few hours- and then it starts again. Trash is picked up Mon- Sun- no exceptions- not even holidays.
Streets are torn up unnecessarily and repaired. If there is a street with a small pothole, they take a jackhammer and completely tear it up. They are rather efficient at doing this as well. It would be completely unacceptable for a project of street repair (replacement is probably a better word) here to take more than a few days at the absolute most.
When we run by a house or building being painted- it is always being done by hand and not machine. Restaurants are fully staffed with waiters at the opening time of 7:30- even though people never go out to dinner before 9:30-10, with the busiest hours running from 10:45-12:30. Often as you walk on the side walk, there are ten people replacing 30 tiles by hand (the side walks are all square tiles- not cement)- and a few watching because there is not enough room for all of them to work.
The list goes on and on. Perhaps the only place that they actually need more staff is in the grocery stores, where lines often run down all of the isles- making it a bit of a challenge to get things off the shelve. I often have to reach between someones legs to do it (an advantage of being small?). And there is no such thing as a quick trip to the grocery store because of it.
So, can we learn from this? Is it a good idea to just hire people and create work to keep people busy? Perhaps if we had a vat tax of 21%, forced all of the products sold in the country to be made in the country,charged ridiculous fees for getting your mail, did not maintain public hospitals and schools, did not have NASA or other research projects to contribute to, were not trying to save the planet through conservation and animal protection, had a military of a few thousand men weighing in at 130 lbs. and armed with BB guns, etc.... then we could afford to.
I have come to sort of the same conclusion. After reading of your computer/shipping woes and sharing my own, I have become convinced of 2 things: internet support has in fact been outsourced to the Argentinean post office and Argentina has annexed the Philippines to provide tech support. That is the reason that it takes forever and multiple phone calls to multiple companies to finally resolve any internet problem.
ReplyDeleteTo help you with platform planks for your presidential campaign, I have these 2 really seductive programs created by Kairos that would be useful in developing statistics regarding job creation. The first is Ezra (euphemistically called "The Leader's Helper" which is designed to make recruiting and preparations for a Kairos weekend simpler. By my calculations it roughly triples the time involved and requires obtaining a programming certification in Java and C++ to debug. The second is Donor which is an accounting program described as "like having a full time 24/7 bookkeeper" which actually requires hiring a live body and a half to actually use the thing. My thought is this: if I were to send them to you and you were to work with your contacts at the BA post office, you might be able to tweak the programs to make them impossibly daunting and therefore instantly create 50 million new high tech jobs world wide to provide support and upgrades. Since the Philippines are now an Argentinean colony, I estimate it would improve the employment numbers by at least 10% in a couple of months. Who knows, you might be viewed as the second coming of Evita.
Dad