"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message
.com...

"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message
hlink.net...

"Dee D. Flint" wrote:

Let me make this as plain as possible. (snip)


You explained it just fine in the last message. I just don't agree
subsidies alone were the deciding factors - I suspect tariffs played a
much
bigger role than you suggest.



Well I go by what the auto industry journals said at the time since they
were circulated around the workplace. I give more credence to those
analysts than I would my personal opinions as they had the actual data.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE


Quite simply, it's easy to live in an alternate reality when one goes around
"just not agreeing" with things that are staring them in the face... I used
to do it, but I grew up...

Kim W5TIT

In article , "Ryan, KC8PMX"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote in message
. com...
"Ryan, KC8PMX" wrote in message
...
But its perfectly okay to pay some union bum a ton of wages for doing a
repetitive task, (a skill that same 14 y.o. that passed a ham test
could
do) therefore jacking the cost of a product, lets say a car for this
example, to a ridiculous price??? (actually both the fast food worker
and
the person on the line at the factory ARE BOTH doing repetitive
tasks....)

Hold on a sec....

"union bum"?

Yep... there are a ton of them in this state..... collect a "phat" wage ($20
per hour or more) for a job a kid could do, brag about only working 2 of the
8 hours in a shift, and admit to stealing and other fraudulant
practices..... .yeah, those are bums... Not all union workers are bums, but
there are alot that are.

Then they're bums, pure and simple - not "union bums".

As for "a job a kid could do", rest assured that if some employers could use
child labor, they would - and pay 'em less than minimum wage, too.

The basic concept that Dwight is talking about is a "living wage" -
meaning jobs that pay enough in wages and benefits to permit people to
live above the poverty line *without* government help. Yes, paying a
living wage makes products and services cost more, but it also removes
people from the govt. support system.

So.... basically, one way or another people have to pay for it, be it in
higher service/product costs or paying in taxes for a government program.

Sure. But which is more efficient economically - private industry or the govt.
programs?

Some say "the marketplace" should set wages. But "the marketplace" is
tilted by a bunch of factors, such as the exportation of jobs and the
importation of workers.

Yes, that is what is called an idealism, but in reality it doesn't work that
way. Let's look at my county for example..... Republican owners of
businesses and places to rent charge considerably higher for products,
services and housing. These are also in most of the cases the employers in
the area. For example, on average, a single bedroom apartment cannot be
found for less than $350-400. That does not even include utilities.

That's actually quite inexpensive compared to a lot of places.

The
average wage around here, what is considered the alleged "living" or minimum
wage is between $5.25-6.00 per hour. Now, do the math on that. The first
of the normal 2 paychecks (paid every 2 weeks) each month barely even
covers the rent, let alone the utilities. Factor in transportation of any
means, and basic food needs, and that exceeds the second check.

Sure - but that's if you live alone.

This does
not include for any savings, clothing or medicine purchases and of course
nothing in the "entertainment" category on the spreadsheet.
That is why alot of people around here are forced to work two jobs. Problem
there is, there is no time left over for family or even better, trying to
take classes to get a degree to get out of the ruts. Typically in my area
as well, certain market indicators such as milk, bread, gasoline etc, is at
least 10-20 percent higher than surrounding counties. Basically they want
you to work for as little as possible, but charge ya up the ying-yang for
everything. Guess that is the American way eh?

Supply and demand. Obviously there's no labor shortage there, so the employers
control the wages. The answer is to vote with your feet.

The "living wage" concept and reality are largely a result of
organized labor unions leveling the playing field a bit by unifying
the many workers in negotiating with the relatively few employees. The
really smart employers learned to treat their workers well enough that
they wouldn't unionize.

Look at what working conditions were like in various industries
100-150 years ago, before organized labor had any real power.

Just like they are for non-unionized labor now! hihi

Because of the weakening of the unions.


Yep. $20,000/yr isn't much at all anymore in many parts of the
country. Not to raise a family, anyway.

Or for a single person either...... that 20,000 grand is PRE-TAX and
PRE-BENEFIT (if any) and can quickly become as low as 13,000-15,000 dollars
depending on the circumstances.

The trick is to go where the good jobs are...

As for the $15 burrito and coke at Taco Bell, think about this:

At least here in EPA, we have a decent selection of independent diners
as an alternative to the fast food chains. The food in them is not
much more expensive than the chains, and usually better for you. The
workers in those places make at least as much as the fast food chains.
One reason for their survival is that they don't spend bazillions on
advertising. Another is local loyalty of customers.

So what's the answer, Dwight - Ryan - Kim?

I don't assume to have all of the answers, but I am sure that you can go
through just about any company or organization and thin out the dead-wood.

That depends on the company. Many are constantly doing just that.

People who just are not returning equivalent value for the service they are
supposed to provide as an employee. There is a case of 3 people who are
"riding the clock out" in my full time employment place of work. And
compared to the remainder of the department they are making more than twice
our wages for similar/same work but just have been here a while. With those
three people to finally retire or move on, that would allow for at least 4-5
more people to replace them, that will ACTUALLY WORK, and still allow for
the rest of the department to get a $1.00 per hour raise, and STILL SAVE
SOME MONEY on overall department wages.

How?

If there are 3 people slacking, they could probably be replaced by 1 or 2 good
workers, not 4 or 5.

The math has been figured out here
on this and it is true....

The other answer is for employers to finally see the value in helping the
employee with training/education. If an employer is credible enough, the
employee will stay with that employer with the new training they have
recieved.

Both my present and former employers do that.

Even though people want to believe otherwise, there are more and more people
having to, and trying to survive on what were supposed to be considered
"high school kid" jobs.

Why?

Do they refuse to relocate?
Do they lack education and other qualifications?

One thing *has* changed in the past 30-odd years. There used to be a lot of
jobs that a kid with a high-school diploma could get, that would lead up the
ladder to better paying jobs. Today those jobs take a college degree. Call it
education inflation or whatever, it's a fact.

73 de Jim, N2EY

N2EY wrote:


As for "a job a kid could do", rest assured that if some employers could use
child labor, they would - and pay 'em less than minimum wage, too.

Hehe, that brings us to one of the reasons that U****S got started in
the first place. The employers *were* using children, *were* paying them
almost nothing, and abusing them most terribly.

So the people who argue that raising the minimum wage is putting young
people out of work do know what they are talking about!

- Mike KB3EIA -

"Kim W5TIT" wrote:

Nope. Do it yourself. I've told you the information is
there to be had--and it's that simple. People get paid
good money to do what you're asking me to do, above.
If you do it, Dwight, maybe you'll have some facts
behind your opinions...


You and I both knew you couldn't do it, Kim. The information it not that
easily available and it would take considerable effort for consumers to
research the products they purchase each day, week, or year. In spite of
your claims otherwise, you don't do it. I certainly don't do it. And I don't
know anyone who does. But someone has to have some responsibility for which
products are sold and effects on the overall economy. Since it is beyond the
abilities of the average consumer, the burden automatically falls on
business, the government, and the courts.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/

"Mike Coslo" wrote:

(snip) As for a mid-life crisis, remember you worked
hard for it, you deserve it, and no one is going to
deprive you of it! 8^)


LOL. Oh, I think my wife might certainly try.


I hear the MLC car of choice is a BMW Z3. Almost
makes me want to have one so I can pick one up.


Anything white and expensive will do the job ("cute" is a bonus). I don't
know why, but women seem to love white vehicles. I suspect it has something
to do with the reason why women who would never do so elsewhere so easily
shed their cloths around water. Of course, this is clearly not the reason I
drive a white vehicle today - white is just a safer color on the road. ;-)


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/

In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

In the summer of 1972, I got my first job after high school. It paid
$2.40 per hour. Minimum at that time was $2.20.

You might want to check

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/chart.htm

It wasn't a living
wage then either. Entry level jobs have never provided the income to
support a family.

Agreed - nor were they meant to. But it *was* possible for a person to live
on them - probably more so than today.

I lived on that $2.40 per hour. Not well, but okay.

Anyone that I have ever known in my lifetime (52 years)
that made minimum wage either lived with their parents or other relatives,
a group of roommates, or had a working spouse even back when I was a
child.

Pretty much the same here.

Folks, conservative ot liberal, there is a whole other world out there!
I know of a number of families that had both parents working at minimum
or close to it.

No adult male that I knew stayed in a minimum wage job any longer than it
took to find something else because they could not pay groc, rent, and
transportation on that. It has never been high enough to do so.

'adult male'....ahem.....

The age of the "adult male" as the breadwinner is long gone. Both
husband and wife now pretty much *need* to work.

Yep. Think about why that is.

If a family is in the
situation where only one needs to work, then that's great. But let's
hope they don't gloat about it.

A lot has to do with choices made and their individual circumstances.

Besides the economic concerns, in a lot of professions today, a person cannot
simply stop working for several years and expect to be employable when they
return.

Wages versus costs is all relative. You have to look at how many hours it
takes to buy something.

Exactly! And you also have to take into account things like creeping
taxation
(even if the laws don't change, inflation causes people to pay more of
their
income in taxes) and increases in the number of 'necessities'.

Taxes are a big part of the game, too. At one time the income tax rules
were
such that people on the bottom end who knew the rules could pay very little
in
taxes. I remember when:

- *all* interest paid (not just home mortgage interest) was deductible.
- *all* documented sales tax and *most* documented medical costs were
deductible
- the various personal and dependent deductions were larger *in infaltion
adjusted dollars*

The majority of items but not all take fewer hours
of work to purchase than they did in 1976.

In some cases, yes, in others, no.

As I recall reading a while back, in 1950, it took 14 percent of an
average workers income to put a roof over "his head". That may have
changed a little bit! 8^)

It changed big time. Same for medical and education costs.

And did you know they are doing seven year loans on cars? If all was
equal, wages and prices, we would still be doing 2 and 3 year loans on them.

Part of that is people *choosing* to buy bigger and more luxurious cars.

There are two of the major outlays for the typical family. Add to that
education costs, which have outpaced inflation by in some cases 400
percent (in my area, we had an around 12 percent increase one year
recently) and you have a bit different picture!

Precisely. And a college degree is much more of a necessity today.

The cost of electronics is down
in terms of hours to buy.

True to a point - but on the other end of the scale, those electronics are
often non-repairable, and have limited useful lives, so that they must be
replaced more often.

It breaks, and you buy a new one. Break even at best.

Yep - and a losing game at worst.

It it actually easier to restore ham gear that is 30-40-50 years old than
much
of the newer stuff, because parts for much of the newer stuff are simply
unobtainable except from junker units. The displays in the popular TS-440S
is
one example - they are no longer made, and yet they are often one of the
first
major parts to fail, so your chances of lifting one from a junker are slim.

The cost of houses is about the same in terms of
hours.

disagree

A lot of that depends on the interest rate and taxes. Interest rates in the
'70s were double-digit, approaching 17% in some markets at times - for home
mortgages! But since all that interest was deductible, the *effective*
interest
rate was less, depending on your tax bracket.

Escalating home prices makes it harder to get started, though, because the
size
of the down payment keeps growing. And since many of the fees involved with
buying and selling are a percentage of the price, the amount of cash a
first-timer needs gets really high.

Compare this to 40-50 years ago, when interest rates, taxes and down
payments were low.

agree. I know some people who are paying over 50 percent of theie take
home pay in mortgage payment. Amazingly enough, their banks allowed them
to get into that situation.

Personal bankruptcies are going up, too.

And that's part of what Dwight would reform! (lack of caps on how much debt a
person can get into)

73 de Jim, N2EY

"N2EY" wrote:
Mike Coslo writes:

In the summer of 1972, I got my first job after
high school. It paid $2.40 per hour. Minimum
at that time was $2.20.

You might want to check

http://www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/chart.htm


The difference really isn't that unusual, Jim. You're obviously forgetting
state minimum wage laws which can add to the federal minimum wage. Perhaps
Mike lived in a state with it's own minimum wage laws at the time. As you
probably know, state minimum wage laws were a growing trend in the 70's, but
that growth has pretty much died out over the years. In fact, I'm not even
sure any state still has an active minimum wage law today.


(snip) Personal bankruptcies are going up, too.

And that's part of what Dwight would reform! (lack
of caps on how much debt a person can get into)


Hey, now wait a minute, Jim. I realize what you meant. But, before you
confuse people, watch how you word that. I'm not running for political
office, so I'm not likely to reform anything. Anyway, I do think this is one
of the areas that has to be addressed in any serious reform effort. It is
amazing how much debt is floating around out there. I see college students
who have not worked a day in their life graduating with debts exceeding
twenty, thirty, and even forty, thousand dollars (student and personal
loans). I see people buying homes and cars that are far beyond what they can
reasonably afford on their incomes. I've seen reports of average credit card
debts exceeding $8,000 today. Clearly, something has to be done to reel in
this madness. A cap on the percentage of a person's income that can be used
to establish monthly payments for all loans seems logical (and the least
intrusive) to me.


Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/

"KØHB" wrote in message thlink.net...
"N2EY" wrote

How do you determine "best value"?

Depending on the product it can be a variety of things, sometimes a very
complex mix of parameters determines "value". My factory purchases
products of many different types, complexities, which they range from pure
"commodities" like solder to specialty products like custom chips, plastic
moldings, and similar "proprietary" materials which find there way into our
finished goods.

Obviously price factors into the mix, and all other things being equal,
price wins.

But "all other things" are almost never equal. For example, some suppliers
have earned "dock to stock" status with us because their outgoing quality
control is good enough that we do not have to perform incoming quality
control. This saves us money (inspection labor) and time (no delay in
inspection) so we favor such suppliers even if they may charge slightly
higher prices, and they benefit by earlier payment because their invoice is
not held pending QA acceptance of their product. Other favorable factors
would be their willingness to deal with us on a "consigned inventory" basis,
shield us from part shortage allocations, and similar "pipeline" issues.

All of which are essentially "price" issues because you wind up
paying, one way or another.

Suppliers with a "track record" are generally favored over "new guys", but
new guys who can demonstrate "value added" (which can be a host of things)
will certainly be given some business to prove their case.

Plus it keeps you from becoming totally dependent on one supplier.

Within reason,
we will favor enterprises "close to home" because we feel an obligation to
contribute to the communities where we live and work, and there is an
obvious advantage to dealing with a supplier who you can quickly meet for
lunch to discuss issues, rather than by telecommunications or strapping a
757 to your ass for several hours.

As you can see, "best value" encompasses many factors and issues beyond the
actual physical product which you touch and feel.

Exactly! And I agree with all of these policies 100%.

Does it include things like whether the producers used
environmentally-friendly processes, the working
conditions of the workers who actually make the product,
etc.?

No ethical company would ignore those issues. Certainly we will not
knowingly deal with suppliers who pollute the environment or mistreat their
workers, but we are not staffed with EPA-like or OSHA-like inspectors and
evaluators In cases where we are qualifying a new significant new
supplier, we perform on-site evaluations which give us some visibility
of working conditions, etc., but it is naturally not an in depth review of
their HR practices, or validating their compliance with EPA standards.

Sounds like a very reasonable approach. And if a supplier were
deficient in those areas, or tried to hide things, I bet your company
wouldn't do business with them - even if it meant paying more,
elsewhere.

Were we a huge conglomerate like General Motors or IBM, I'm sure
we'd have more formal means of dealing with this issue, but in the
meantime they obviously are subject to the usual state, federal,
provincial (or whatever) regulatory constraints. We make a special
effort in the area of supplier diversity, and support many regional
Supplier Diversity Councils, such as Chicago Minority Business
Development Council, Dallas/Ft. Worth Minority Business Development
Council, Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council, Minnesota
Minority Supplier Development Council, Virginia Regional Minority
Supplier Development Council, Southern California Regional
Purchasing Councils, Inc., and others. This context includes woman-owned
or veteran-owned enterprises.

Thanks for a complete and concise answer, Hans. And for showing that
it's not just the bottom line that drives business decisions.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Dwight Stewart wrote:

"Mike Coslo" wrote:

(snip) As for a mid-life crisis, remember you worked
hard for it, you deserve it, and no one is going to
deprive you of it! 8^)



LOL. Oh, I think my wife might certainly try.



I hear the MLC car of choice is a BMW Z3. Almost
makes me want to have one so I can pick one up.



Anything white and expensive will do the job ("cute" is a bonus). I don't
know why, but women seem to love white vehicles. I suspect it has something
to do with the reason why women who would never do so elsewhere so easily
shed their cloths around water. Of course, this is clearly not the reason I
drive a white vehicle today - white is just a safer color on the road. ;-)

Side story, in 1980, I bought my first brand new car, a 1980 Fiesta. In
a fit of I don't know what, I bout it in a bright orange. Darn car was
run into by more people than any other car I've ever owned! 8^)

- Mike KB3EIA -

"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message
link.net...
"Kim W5TIT" wrote:

Nope. Do it yourself. I've told you the information is
there to be had--and it's that simple. People get paid
good money to do what you're asking me to do, above.
If you do it, Dwight, maybe you'll have some facts
behind your opinions...

You and I both knew you couldn't do it, Kim. The information it not that
easily available and it would take considerable effort for consumers to
research the products they purchase each day, week, or year. In spite of
your claims otherwise, you don't do it. I certainly don't do it. And I
don't
know anyone who does. But someone has to have some responsibility for
which
products are sold and effects on the overall economy. Since it is beyond
the
abilities of the average consumer, the burden automatically falls on
business, the government, and the courts.

Dwight Stewart (W5NET)

http://www.qsl.net/w5net/



Dwight, are you calling me a liar? Yes, I have done it, and yes it is not
all that difficult to do. Anyone on the internet has the capability and
it's not difficult at all. Try these sites, since you're apparently too
damned lazy to take the effort. You will have to add the typical front end
to each of these addresses:

ethicalconsumer.org (check out the research link)
epa.gov/tri (toxic release inventory)
greenchoices.org (has some links to fairly every-day things we buy)
corpgov.net (good primer on the topic)

I might also remind you of something, truly stupid I might add, that you
said above: "since it is beyond the abilities of the average consumer, the
burden automatically falls on business, the government, and the courts."
This in a follow-up to a brilliant observation you made: "...someone has to
have some responsibility for which products are sold and the effects on the
overall economy."

For cryin' out loud, Dwight, who the phucking (HansTM) hell do you think is
going to keep "business, the government, and the courts" responsible?

And, let me further make a suggestion: before *you* make yourself look any
more stupid, get some education on the topic we've been discussing in this
thread. Jim and Dee are far better at me than history and perspective and
you've repeatedly negated their points of view--even going so far as to say
[paraphrasing here] that you don't have to have facts because we are "just
debating." Go "just debate" with the Kindergartners...I take this subject
far more seriously.

Kim W5TIT