{"id":229,"date":"2009-07-13T13:45:14","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T17:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/000af36.netsolhost.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/07\/13\/measuring-productivity\/"},"modified":"2009-07-13T13:45:14","modified_gmt":"2009-07-13T17:45:14","slug":"measuring-productivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/2009\/07\/13\/measuring-productivity\/","title":{"rendered":"Measuring Productivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure there are many ways of measuring productivity.  The economists have one definition<\/a>.  It is nebulous if you try to fashion a yardstick to measure it.  My wife has another.  She uses what I call the humping factor, as in \u201cThe trash men who jump off the back of the truck, run to the trash can, dump your refuse in the truck, send the can hurling back to the curb and then run to the next can, those guys are productive.\u201d  It may be said that those guys are humping it.  <\/p>\n

Then again, there is the Tax Foundation\u2019s definition of productive.  It apparently means anyone who\u2019s rich. Asked to comment by Lori Montgomery, a Washington Post reporter, on the taxes Democrats are considering to pay for health care reform, a senior fellow, Robert Carroll, of the Tax Foundation, said it\u2019s not the poor schleps who toss your trash can around<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

"One has to decide whether the health-care reform package they’re talking about is worth imposing such high tax rates on the most productive members of society," Carroll said.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

What makes them productive, he doesn\u2019t say, and apparently Montgomery never asked.  She just let him make the assertion that rich people are the most productive.  Which means the economy lost a great leader when Michael Jackson died.<\/p>\n

It also means stenography is alive and well at The Post.<\/p>\n

But let me find lemonade in this lemon of a story.  Montgomery didn\u2019t identify the Tax Foundation as \u201cliberal\u201d or \u201cconservative,\u201d as is often the case when quoting sources that represent an organization.  Thanks for that.  <\/p>\n

So I get to guess whether this comment is colored by a ideological prejudice.  That\u2019s fine.  I just wish I had some way of evaluating whether his statement is correct.  Ms. Montgomery could have helped me here instead of just recording his comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sure there are many ways of measuring productivity.  The economists have one definition.  It is nebulous if you try to fashion a yardstick to measure it.  My wife has another.  She uses what I call the humping factor, as in \u201cThe trash men who jump off the back of the truck, run to the… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,36,78],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/griendling.com\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}