Valentin Golchev

🇺🇦Functional Programming enthusiast! 🧸 😻

[Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics]

Why Jeff Bezos wants to cut your taxes

[Valentin Golchev @valentingolchev]

💯💯💯

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

There’s a great Bulgarian proverb about this and the self-inflicted harm the US is currently experiencing:

Каквото сам си направиш, никой не може да ти направи.

[Christo Grozev @christogrozev]

Russia burning its asset.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Yes. The answer to @jurgen_nauditt is also yes.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Only in Bulgaria can you get rear-ended while driving in the wrong lane against traffic going the opposite way.

[Ruslan Trad @ruslantrad]

Bulgaria's main pro-Russian political movement, Revival ("Възраждане"), whose last active measure was an attack on the European Commission office in Sofia, signed an agreement on "cooperation and equal partnership" with Russia's ruling party, United Russia. (https://t.co/sSi7okrzbF)

The document was signed by Tsontcho Ganev, Deputy Chairman of Revival, and Vladimir Yakushev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma's Upper House. (on the photo)

The Revival party is represented in the Bulgarian parliament.

[Christo Grozev @christogrozev]

Spanish antiterrorism prosecutors open an investigation into suspected cyber sabotage as cause for the incapacitation of the electrical grids across much of Spain, Portugal and France.

[Christo Grozev @christogrozev]

Russia's foreign Intel agency SVR publishes a preemptive denial of "upcoming allegations about Trump's links to Russian political and business circles", blame "British and French services trying to detail Trump's peacemaker initiatives". If I didn't know how dumb these guys were, I'd have suspected an attempt at reverse psychology https://t.co/xU32Xf2C5w

[Любомир Жечев @LyubomirZhechev]

Гледай новия подкаст, в който гостуват ПЕТИМА баскетболисти на колички, за да разкажат за злоупотребите с тях https://t.co/fpWW1swGjF

[Любомир Жечев @LyubomirZhechev]

Гледай и сподели новото видео, за да изринем корупцията от Българска федерация по баскетбол https://t.co/ZT8nL7aixG

[Valentin Golchev @valentingolchev]

🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

[Fidelius Schmid @FideliusSchmid]

++++ Exclusive: Not only are Trump‘s top security advisors discussing attack plans on Yemen on Signal - their mobile numbers, E-Mail and passwords can be found in commercial databases and publickly available leaks. Our ⁦@derspiegel⁩ Investigation (1/ https://t.co/ByVq0SuMSa

[Valentin Golchev @valentingolchev]

@LyubomirZhechev Браво, Любо! Потресаваща липса на морал, просто…

[Любомир Жечев @LyubomirZhechev]

Този вторник в YouTube

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Friends: I did a brief commentary on the Trump-Putin call for the BBC.

[Christo Grozev @christogrozev]

Serbian opposition activists post photo of what is alleged to be a police Jeep with a mounted long range acoustic device. Visual and audio evidence already seen from open sources is compatible with the use of such devices. If this photo is verified then there's no doubt anymore.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Moral equivalency degenerate.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

No.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

It's very disappointing when a reasonable guy (I agree with his takes more often than I don't -- yes, that's my definition of reasonable, sue me!) succumbs to the old tired "I am just asking questions" which, one would do well to remember, is that idiot Tucker Carlson's favorite deflection.

Just as Carlson knows full well that the point is to frame the issue in a misleading way that would drive people who are not well informed on the issue toward the inference he wants them to make, this here is inexorably suggesting that Washington DC's high income is due to a bloated bureaucracy that is massively corrupt and inefficient.

The reality, of course, is that the federal government employs hundreds of thousands of highly competent and, because they have marketable skills, expensive people. My friends who work in DC have all effectively taken pay cuts relative to the private sector --- and I know this for a fact because I know what offers they have had and from whom. If it weren't for pay scales for federal employees, if the government had to pay market rates, these incomes would soar. Not everyone maximizes the immediate paycheck. Some people are willing to trade income for lower risks, others like living there, and yet others really have the minds of civil servants and gladly accept pay reductions for the opportunity to serve the nation.

One of the most idiotic myths of the destructive crowd cheering Musk and Trump in their devastation of the US government is that public sector employees make more than private sector workers do.

The opposite is true. Not only does private employment give workers higher wages (even after accounting for the benefits for government workers, which are usually more generous -- this is often brought up in defenses of lower pay, and of course need to be accounted for), the gap has grown for many years. Data by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that federal workers earn on average almost 24% less than private sector employees with similar job responsibilities. This, in fact, was the reason for the push behind Biden's 4.6% hike in federal pay, the largest in 20 years. (The 24% estimate is not without criticism. More conservative ones put it closer to 10%, which is still significant, https://t.co/iidzuKAngD)

The simple fact is that the US government is underpaying its workforce so systematically and thoroughly that it was becoming difficult to recruit talented people because while you might want to serve the nation, you still need to pay your bills.

Let me illustrate this with an example from the public institution that employs me: the University of California, the premier public university system in the world. We use internal pay-scales to set salaries at ridiculously low levels. Nobody I know here has been "on scale" for very long. The reason is that top talent gets constantly recruited by other universities and lucrative outside offers result in "off scale" compensation that is closer to the going market rate. An average "base salary" for a UC professor is about $179K compared to averages of about $250K at the top private universities. (In general, the difference is about 10% - 15%, although one must also account for location and other factors, https://t.co/gCgepQLWO3) Even though the UC retirement and health benefits used to be so great they were called "the golden fetters" because it was almost impossible to compete against them -- which led to a systemically lower pay in the system -- they have changed to be more in line with what the privates offer now. As a result, retaining top faculty has become more difficult and so salaries have grown as well. Unlike the federal government, the UC does have flexibility with the "off scale" bonuses to compete and what usually happens is that those who wish to be paid a market salary, go on the market and generate outside offers, which they can turn into counter-offers with similar compensation. So their salaries have been going up considerably. Because the US system employs so many highly sought after faculty, the average compensation went up as well. So much so that it created very serious pay gaps between those willing to go through the market and those who either did not or could not. The fact is, one cannot run a premier institution, be it a university or a federal agency, on a shoestring.

The "product" that's being here so glibly questioned is the machinery that runs the federal government. Which is the target of the current administration.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

It felt like a curiously Soviet entrance, as if every Republican there knew someone would be going over video to see who was clapping hardest and longest, but maybe my imagination...

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Many educated people are cheering DOGE gutting federal spending because “efficiency.” It’s distressing to me that they don’t seem to be aware of either basic economics or our own history in the matter.

Research, especially basic research, is always going to be under-provided by private agents because there are usually no immediate returns and a lot of uncertainty. The risk just isn’t worth it. This is why the government needs to step in, spreading the costs to the taxpayers who will be the ultimate beneficiaries of discoveries and innovations.

In the popular mind, small is beautiful and innovation is driven by two dudes in a garage.

In reality, one third of R&D in the US has been funded by the government. This research is the foundation for practically all modern life. It gave us the semiconductor, the microwave radar, the jet engine (competition with Germany), the internet, GPS, nuclear power, the touchscreen, MRI and CT scans, vaccines, solar power, batteries, AI, and these are just off the top of my head and mostly focused on American inventions.

There are over TWO THOUSAND civilian-use technologies that are spin-offs from NASA’s Apollo program. Venture capitalist finance is awesome and a powerful engine in its own right but much of what it accomplishes would not be possible without the foundation provided by state-sponsored research.

The magic sauce is cooperation between the government and the private sector, not the dominance of either.

If the state takes over, it will stifle development because it will focus on things the government wants and without the profit motive there will be no further innovation and network effects. The Soviets put the first satellite into space but could not compete with IBM’s computers. They could never have something like Google or Apple.

But if it’s entirely private enterprise, we would always think small and immediately profitable. There’s a reason why wars drive innovation: they provide incentives for the governments to invest in things they normally are loath to spend on and there’s public support for it. The fortune of the U.S. is that we mostly prepared for massive war instead of fighting one, this reaping the benefits without paying the costs.

Think twice, maybe three times even, before you start gutting the most amazing engine of progress the world has ever seen. You do realize that the reason China is so successful is that they understand this very well and the government has been pursuing these policies deliberately.