Americans eat paper and ink, dollar bills, bureaucratic paralysis

[fpb]

Seriously. They must feed on them. That is the only explanation of their business practices. A British or Italian translation agency will get in touch, describe the job, ask whether I'm available, and leave me to it till delivery. But with Americans, I am not even allowed to read the document before I have got through two or three pieces of formal, elaborate paperwork; which, given that most outsourced translation work tends to be needed urgently, can be a nuisance. I recently had to give up a last-minute job because the damned paperwork was cutting into it too much.

Comments

[elise-the-great.livejournal.com]

Dangit, you're onto us! Somebody call National Security!

[bookwrm17.livejournal.com]

More like we're paranoid about getting everything in writing. Thank the lawyers. :P

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I've heard similar things from other foreign friends who have had to do business in the US or with US nationals. The universal complaint is crushing amounts of paperwork and bureaucracy. The country seems to be a paradise for bureaucrats, middle managers, and lawyers who make their living interpreting overcomplicated law.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Surely the greatest economy in the world cannot have been built like that?

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

Lawyers, we has way too many. Everything has to be in writing to fend off lawsuits. I worked with a guy at Macy's who was so horrid and rude to customers he actually drove them away. He was notorious in a city of 60,000 people. It took 4 years to fire this assmonkey, because that's how much paperwork they had to have on him in order not to get sued for wrongful termination.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I can't imagine it was always like this, and certainly it has gotten dramatically worse in the past few decades. (If I had to guess, I'd say that the late 70s/early 80s was when the rot really started to set in.) But combined with rampant partisanship, it's turning into a condition of absolute paralysis.

The decades-old situation with the one-dollar coin is fairly representative: most Americans don't want to use them as currency (an issue I was reminded of at a convenience store last night), but we keep minting them anyway, to the point that the government's stockpile of unused one-dollar coins has exceeded a billion dollars worth. We could stop making dollar coins, or stop printing dollar bills, but we seem incapable of doing either, so the pile of useless and uncirculated currency (which itself costs money to transport and store) just continues to grow.

Similarly, our transportation infrastructure is falling apart. There's essentially no high-speed rail here (which is really miserable in a country this size), and as I learned on a train trip along the coast, even regular passenger rail often has to run slower because the tracks are only maintained to the bare standard required for freight. The backlog of road and bridge maintenance is about 20 years behind and getting worse.

I needn't even mention health care.

Sometimes it feels a bit like living with an addicted and self-destructive parent.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Which reminds me that at present rates, the dollar bill is really ridiculously low for a banknote. Even in Britain the half-pound and pound notes were phased out long ago.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

At least we'll be able to burn them for fuel in a few years. Can't do that with coins.

[rfachir.livejournal.com]

Printing money is one thing the government is very good at! We can't lower the government's self-esteem by removing jobs they are good at. Especially during a recession. Maybe we can open a sheltered-workshop and start printing more paper money and government bonds? Short-term, of course.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

I was reminded today that we've actually reached the point of tearing up paved roads all across the country.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913304575370950363737746.html

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

You know where those dollar coins go? Laundromats. I shit you not, the laundry I go to has a change machine that dispenses nothing but dollar coins, so you don't have to have a purse or pocket full of quarters to do laundry with.