RadioBanter - View Single Post - Beware of hams planting dis-information...

June 16th 05, 01:02 PM

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005 16:37:58 -0400, (I
AmnotGeorgeBush) wrote:

From: (Dave*Hall)
On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 11:29:46 -0400, (I
AmnotGeorgeBush) wrote:
David T. Hall (N3CVJ) wrote:
The number of
those without health care (seniors included) far outnumber those healthy
workers who get laid off.

Most companies who employ skilled workers,
have some form of healthcare coverage as
part of their benefits package. I've never had a
job without it.

Your personal situation is irrelevant to the majority.

Not really. Most people who are in full time
gainfully employed jobs have some form of
health care coverage. Unless you're a part
time worker, chances are you have some
coverage.

Each year (for the last 4 years) the number of part-time workers has
increased as the number of those laid off has increased.
A growing trend
has been major employers hiring at 32 hours or less to avoid offering
health care benefits.

There are laws to discourage this practice.

Bull****. Any company can fill their positions with ft or pt employees.
There is no law that claims copanies must offer ft work.

You are right. But wasn't there some provision that stated that if a
"part time" worker works consistently more than 32 hours that they
become considered full time?

Just as there are laws to prevent an employer
from paying you a "Salary" instead of an
hourly rate to avoid paying overtime. Look into
the federal wage and hour laws.
*

I have to abide by the laws you speak of but it seems you are not
familiar with them. Another easy way to avoid offering benefits is to
hire people as independent cotractors, from laborers to clerical..this
is very common in Fl. It also negates the need for federal withholding,
placing the burden on the worker with a 10-99.

Independent contractors are common here too. I know many professionals
who actually prefer working this way. My company hires contractors for
special projects. For the company it's a win-win situation since, if
they like the person and they do a good job, they have the option of
hiring them on full time. If not, they can just let him go when his
contract expires. But the thing is, the company usually pays much
more for a contractor than they pay for a full time employee. The
people who like contract work claim that they can make enough to
easily pay their own medical coverage and still end up ahead of the
game. The biggest downside is the uncertainty of finding consistent
contracts. Many of these people work through an agency to help them
find contract jobs. The downside to that though is that the agency
takes a "cut" of what a company would otherwise pay you. On the other
hand, some of these agencies will pick up medical coverage, and you
end up becoming an employee of the contract agency. There are many
variations.

*Resumption of healthcare coverage is tied to
.the laid-off worker's need to find another job.

So what happens in between when on needs prescription medication? When
one is laid off from their job and offered the mandated COBRA, the cost
is always greater than the original. Now, you have people who can not
only pay their bills, but can't afford their medical covereage. What is
your solution?

No one said that life would always be easy.

If you don't have a solution, say so, but saying resumption of
healthcare is tied to finding another job goes without say. Problem is,
the jobs do not exist..check your stats from the feds. Last month, the
feds fell short of 100,000 jobs they expected to add to the stats of
added jobs for the month.

On the other hand, the federal unemployment rate is around 5.1%. Even
if that number under represents the total number of unemployed people,
and it's really 10%, that also means that 90% of eligible people are
working.

Try growing up during the great depression in
the 30's as my parents did, and then tell me
what hardship is.

How are your parents any different from any other of our parents who did
the same thing?

They're different in that they understood the hardship and got through
it without screaming for the government to bale them out. What we are
going through today is a walk in the park compared to back then.

When I was a kid, all I would hear were
stories of how people did "this and that" to get
by. You've probably heard the stereotypical
stories of people walking to school with ratty
shoes full of holes in the snow.

Uphill,,,both ways.

And they were glad!

Except that these were true. I guess my
perspective is a bit different than yours. To
me, the examples you've given are a speed
bump compared to life during the depression.

Except you weren't there and did not experience anything remotely
associated with such a hardship as that.

Not directly no. But when the family would talk about it seemingly
endlessly when I was a kid, you'd swear they were reliving it.

That way, no one layoff can cripple a
significant portion of the population.

Depends what you consider a significant portion of the population. I can
think of several examples..Reagan importing cheaper metals from the
Asians decimated the steel industry in Pa and Ohio.

I live within an easy drive of 4 different steel
plants. The towns that surrounded them were
dependant on those mills for the majority of
their income.

Not one of those small towns you mentioned were major steel producing
towns. In fact, those towns are obscure to all but those who live near
them, except for Allentown, and that was made famous by Billy Joel.

But the problem was very real to those who lived there. Phoenixville
was especially hard hit when not only the steel mill closed, but the
Firestone tire plant closed, and the Budd Company (Made truck and
train bodies) closed as well. But today, the town is doing alright. A
whole new host of tech and office type jobs opened up.

But 20 years later and things
have pretty much recovered. People can get
pretty creative when they need to be.

Recovered from what? You said it couldn't happen, but by invoking the
fact they recovered, you unwittingly admit the towns were indeed
crippled from such layoffs..

Only temporarily.

It happened. An entire generation came of age and went during that
"temporary" era you refer.

20 years is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. Recovery
started sooner than that. It took 20 years to finally raze the old
buildings.

That's the whole point. Life goes on. People
adapt and adjust. Allow them to do that, give
them a few tools to help them, and they will
solve their own problem.

Except many cities did not recover.

Most did, and still do. If not, people always have the option to move.

We don't need the government mollycoddling
us and indoctrinating us into becoming
dependant on them.

Asking for health care from those who are charged with regulating it
when they have the best care available and toss our cash away like
****ing in the wind and give away health care to the very same people
you say are trying to kill us and wage war and terror on us, is not
mollycoddling. Kind of difficult to explain your position when you
suport these leaders who "mollycoddle" with healthcare those you
repeatedly insist are our enemy and hate us and want us dead.

I'm not so sure how true it is that we are giving free healthcare to
all Iraqi's. That was a rumor started by a liberal rag, based on war
related casualties. That doesn't mean that every sick person in Iraq
gets free healthcare at our expense.

If the government provided all of us healthcare, it would cost a huge
sum. Just the medicare prescription benefit that Bush signed in (And I
strongly opposed) is a huge adder to the deficit. To cover every
American, it would require a sizable increase in taxes. I already have
good coverage, and it costs me less than the tax increase to cover the
government's plan. So why should I favor it?

It's nothing more than socialism. Taking from those according to their
means, to give to those according to their needs. And when the
government is paying the bill, those "needs" will increase
exponentially. There is a certain segment of the population that like
to take advantage of as much free money as they can get.

In many of those
industry towns, this led to the closing of the mills and a significant
layoff of those town's populations and many of those towns became
ghettos or ghost towns because of that.

Not in my area. The towns (Allentown,
Phoenixville, Fairless Hills, and
Conshohocken) are still going strong, although
the people who live there are forced to
commute to work now.
The towns are going through a revitalization,
where the old factories have been leveled and
in their place have sprung up huge business
campuses.

Those towns were never considered large steel towns or large steel
industy towns.

Tell that to the thousands of people (And Billy
Joel) who lived and worked there and were
laid off when the mills closed.

They were small, tiny mills compared to the larger cities and employed a
fraction of the workers.*

*Think Pittsburgh and similar cities in Ohio.
Same can be said with coal
mining and to a certain extent, the auto industry. History repeats
itself.

Yes, as we continue to become more efficient
at manufacture,

Whaaaa? Manufacturing is DOWN, not becoming more efficient.

Down in this country. It's growing strong in
other places where it is cheaper (Hence more
efficient) to manufacture things.

Yea, but that isn't "we". "We" is,,,,er,,,are the USA!

"We" still own many of the companies and still manage the operations
overseas. That employs people. True, it requires a more advanced
management skillset, but the jobs usually pay better too.

**the nature of jobs have evolved along with it.
The automobile pretty much ended the
demand for blacksmiths.
*But we shouldn't
blame the automobile for causing the demise
of the blacksmith industry. The smart
blacksmith went back to school and learned to
repair cars.

Blacksmiths were never a large industry and the position was never one
of those that most in a city were employed, rendering the example
fruitless and non-related.

It's very much related. A particular vocation
doesn't have to be large to be relevant.

It does to be compared to an entire industry such as the steel industry
of which we were speaking.

The principle is the same, regardless of the size of the industry.
When technology allows the reduction of manual labor, or the
obsolescence of a particular vocation, and a savings in costs, should
we not take advantage of it? Isn't part of an individual's
responsibility to remain marketable?

The
blacksmith example highlights quite accurately
what happens when our society evolves and
old skills and crafts are no longer needed.

The loss of blacksmith jobs never crippled any towns or cities and that
was what we were speaking.

Again the scale of the effect is irrelevant. The principle is the
same. When jobs become obsolete, people must learn new current skills.

At the same time newer skills open up as a
result of advancing technology. People need
to keep up with the trends so that the skills
they posses are not obsolete.

That's one of the reasons why I still live where
I do. I was once contemplating a move to both
Florida and North Carolina. But the lack of
.diverse skilled jobs and much lower pay
scales pretty much nixed that move.

Lack of diverse skilled jobs?

Excuse me, I should have said diverse high
.paying skilled jobs.

When was the last time you checked the
stats? Florida has led the country in adding new jobs and has not felt
the inflation the country has felt the last so many years. The pay here
was always offset by the lower cost of living.

All that sounds fine and all, but the long and
short of it is that for the field that I am in, the
salaries offered were between 20 and 40%
lower than they are here. The employers there
(And I interviewed with quite a few) once they
find out where you're from, tell you right up
front not to expect a comparable salary.

Ok,,in the same manner you claimed one who lived in another state could
not tell you about Pa, what makes you feel you can tell a lifelong
resident of another state about their state?

Because I did some extensive research

So did Shark on your laws,

Says you. I saw no evidence of that. But please stay focussed.

but you stil claimed because one lived
somewhere else, they cold not know the particulars as well as one who
resided there.

Which is true in most cases.

when I was considering the move there 15
years ago.

15 years ago was another era in Fl.

Things have changed that much? Ok, I'll take your word for it, since
you live there.

I walked into a K-Mart and compared prices of
the things that I normally buy with what I pay
up here. My wife was especially knowledgable
about clothing prices.

It's not a myth, Dave. There is no state income tax and prices have
always been lower in Fl,,until recently (last 10 years).

Slightly lower in specific cases, like locally
produced goods like fruit and other food.
*Yes, there are certain costs which are lower
in Florida. The homestead exemption saves a
bundle on property tax. Homes are (were)
cheaper. There is no state tax, and utilities are
somewhat lower.

Utilites are higher, especially electric, as the majority of homes do
not have gas.

Actually, when I was checking, I was currently
paying 15 cents per kilowatt hour. In Florida
(In Brevard County), the rate was about 8
cents per kilowatt hour. Water rates varied
depending on whether you had "city" water or
a privately owned "utility", but they were
cheaper by and large than what I paid up
here.

What do you refer to as a privately owned utility? You either have city,
county, or well water. I have city -and- a well.

Wells were usually used to water the grass. The new homes I was
looking at all had one. What I meant by a privately owned utility was
a utility that was built by the housing developer to provide water to
their developments. It's not owned or operated by the city, it is a
private entity. I understand that after a certain number of years
passed many of these private utilities were sold to the city.

Heat was not an issue as most homes used
efficient heat pumps, which spent most of their
times as air conditioners. With insulation
ratings of R34 in most new homes, the cooling
costs offset the normal eastern PA winter
heating cost by a considerable margin.

Gas was only recently introduced as a choice for heating and cooking,
and even in most cities, it has to be trucked in (propane).

I prefer electric for cooking (When I'm not
grilling).

Not me. I hate it, but until we get gas lines, I'm not paying for
propane.

Personal choice I guess. I grew up with electric appliances, so that's
what I'm used to.

And heating in Florida is not normally an
issue, as you know. A couple of logs on the
fireplace will take the chill off on those few
chilly mornings.

Depends where you live. The top of the state, even from Ocala northward
use their heat all winter every winter. 30's is a bit chilly and a
fireplace can't heat the entire house.

I was in Central Florida (Brevard), and was told that heat was a
rarity for about a three week span in January.

*Yes, many costs ARE lower to an extent. But
if you try to buy something like a car, gasoline,
or a major appliance or consumer good, the

cost is pretty mush the same as it is in any
other state.

Again,,nope. Autos are not only in better condition (speaking of used,
of course) but new cars are somewhat cheaper here, so are most
manufactured goods.

Not according to what I found. I didn't bother
with used car pricing because there is a
certain amount of subjective perception.

(shrug) I go by NADA or edmunds.com perceptions, as does the auto
industry. Check resale and trade-in values.

But the MSRP of new cars there was the
same (or very close) as what I see up here.
Sure, no one pays MSRP, but the degree of
discount is not going to be any more
significant there than here.

Gasoline was actually more expensive back
then than up here. What do you pay for gas
now? Last week, I paid $1.94/gallon
*
Last week I paid 1.94 also. This week it's 2.03 but I haven't checked
gasbuddy.com in a few weeks.

I'm up to $2.04 as of today. But that just goes to show that there
isn't enough of a difference in most consumer costs in Florida to
justify a 30% reduction in salary.

*The exceptions are the tourist areas and coastal regions that are
developed. I can get a gallon of milk for 3 bucks here. I can get a
gallon of milk in Chiefland for 2.29. this is the norm, not the
exception.

I can do the same up here. Orange Juice is
$2.00 a half gallon (for the "Not from
concentrate" stuff). That's something I would
expect to be much cheaper in Florida.

It is, bit not in the stores. Go to the stands or groves.

And it's better there too. There's nothing tastier than a fresh from
the grove Florida Orange juice.

We have vegetable stands too. Obviously we can't grow citrus fruits,
but we do tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, lettuce and most common produce.
And it's cheaper than the stores usually too.

Dave
"Sandbagger"