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Re:Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? by Retric on Thursday January 21, 2016 @05:12PM (#10948871)
Government spending often involves a huge number of well paid workers. The phrase "Good enough for Government work." started because governments often have very high standards. ex: Compare accessibility on the web between government websites and startups. It's been diluted for various reasons that basically boil down to indirect corruption.

PS: One of the odd things is just how poor people used to be. Work minimum wage for 1 week and you can avoid starvation for ~1 year. Yet, people used to regularly starve.

Re:Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? by hueving on Thursday January 21, 2016 @06:38PM (#10949458)
That's not what that phrase means at all. "good enough for government work" is akin to "close enough", a reference to the half-assed nature of most government work.
Re:Why Are Corporations Hoarding Trillions? by Retric on Thursday January 21, 2016 @09:08PM (#10950277)
That's what we take it to mean today. And sure it was used in a negative context as early as 1960, but was first used in 1906.

Remember historically most people where poor by our standards. Yes, the things that survive where of high quality, but a lot of junk did not make it. Consider what a 'sod' roof meant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_roof#/media/File:Norskfolk...

Now picture such a thing without modern materials to keep dirt from falling on you. Granted, the floor is often hard pack dirt anyway and done well it's ok. But, again poor and minimally trained.

PS: Sure, if you where rich or competent you could go beyond that standard and there was plenty of high quality stuff made. But, the average farm house, private trail, foot bridge etc... was crap.