Oil's Watershed Week: Why It Changes Everything [View article]
One size fits all prescriptions, handed down on high from Washington, will never work.
Would you want to depend on a solar water heater in Seattle? Where it's cloudy sometimes for literally weeks on end? Or how about in Minneapolis - where the vast majority of people are out of bed, dressed, and out the door before the sun rises in winter, and the outdoor air temperature can reach -40F?
Passive solar works great in the southern half of the US. Not so great in the northeast or northern plains.;
Raising taxes on consumption makes sense. It increases the cost effectiveness of conservation and renewables. But creating yet more massive, wasteful burocracy in Washington is not the way. Once you create a federal agency, it will be captured by special interests and lobbyists and will become nothing but yet another tool for creating windfalls and carve outs for special interests, and will do NOTHING to help our energy problems.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
Kinda hard to enforce emissions laws without annual vehicle inspections of some sort.
And before you start in on govornment intrusion, many municipalities (like mine) are required by the EPA to use ethanol blended or other oxygenated fuels for several months each year due to ozone levels. Most of the reason for high ozone levels is automobile exhaust. The higher price of fuel in the winter months is much more than the cost of an annual vehicle inspection.
So unless we also are going to dismantle emissions requirements, its hard to say that inspection requirements should go away.
The "stimulus" was kinda like the dentist shooting your jaw full of novacaine and sending you on your way - WITHOUT removing that abcessed tooth.
Now the stimulus is wearing off and we're starting to feel the pain again. All 50 states have major budget gaps which are going to result in SERIOUS and PAINFUL cuts in services and increases in fees. I found out my property taxes are going up by 25% beginning this year; the water department is talking about adding a $6/mo flat fee to everyone's water bills in Charlotte, temporary sales tax increases are becoming permanent, etc.
And here we are, 2+ years after the $800B stimulus package and payrolls aren't any more than they were 2 years ago. On the bright side, the unemployment rate IS dropping quickly - but only because millions of people have become so discouraged about ever finding a job that they're quitting looking for a job and, apparently, abandoning working permanently in favor of whatever meager existance they can find on permanent public assistance.
Obama campaigned on "Change you can believe in." I certainly believe that the changes I'm seeing are permanent. But I don't think they are changes for the better.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
My brother live in DC and I live in NC. Both have mandatory annual safety inspections (or at least, they did when he and I had this discussion, and assume things haven't changed), the difference being that in DC they are done by the DMV and in NC they are done at local service stations.
In NC, the inspection stations are licensed by the state, but anyone who wants to do inspections can get a license and they get to keep a portion of the price of the inspection. ,I can get my vehicle inspected 7 days a week, usually at the same place that changes my oil, and it takes MAYBE 10 minutes. By contrast, license tags are issued at state run DMV offices, its a huge hassle, and sometime the wait is an hour or more.
In DC there is ONE inspection station for the entire city. It's only open on weekdays, at certain hours, and certainly not on weekends or holidays. It's quite a hassle and you might wait in line for quite a while.
Yes, many services could and should be privatized.
Oil's Watershed Week: Why It Changes Everything [View article]
V-
As I understand it, the divergence of WTI from Brent is because there is no way to get oil from the Alberta tar sands region onto an oil tanker - the major pipelines from Canada are to the Cushing, OK oil storage facility, and that does not connect to any GOM oil ports. Thus, WTI prices are held in check because no matter how much oil is produced in Canada it must be delivered at Cushing.
The Canadians are in negotiations with the US to allow the construction of a pipeline from Cushing to the GOM so that Canada can export oil to somewhere beyond the American Midwest.
If that happens, WTI would align much better wtih Brent. But the $64 qestion is, will the US allow the construction of the pipeline, which is not in its own narrow best interest.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
Michael-
If INDUSTRY tried the same tactic - all the employers in a region banding together, to set wages, work rules, prices and hiring standards - this would stopped immediately by the courts, and rightly so, as illegal collusion.
I fail to understand how, in a country whose very constitution guarantees an INDIVIDUAL right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that it can be considered legal, even constitutional, to allow unions the prerogotive of a "closed shop" in which it is MANDATED by law and by union contract that one MUST be a union member in order to find employment.
I think the right to offer one's services to an employer at a price agreed upon by the individual and the employer without unwanted interference from a third party certainly falls under the right to pursue life liberty and happiness. Certainly, without a job it is difficult to achieve or maintain any of those. I also believe that contract law would support such an employment agreement. And if I disagree with the way in which my union dues are used, I should be able accept work at a payrate I agree to and for a company I choose without the union interfering with me.
If one of the five families came to your place of business and said "You can only hire people who are members of my union to work in your establishment, and must pay them what I say, and they answer to me not you" that would be called RACKETEERING. Why are unions allowed to to this. The reason the unions never really caught on in the south is that our state legislatures wisely kept "right to work" laws on the books which prevents the unions from forcing people to join the union in order to find work.
I can think of a lot of words to describe this unions and closed shops. None of them are pretty.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
Funny, what I hear most often is that our EDUCATION system is ridiculous - filled with social engineering experiments, stupid requirements and testing regimens, and educational techniques designed more to edify and entertain the educators than to educate the pupils.
For example: grading 50 arithmetic problems daily for 30 students is quite boring and time consuming. But drill work, repetition, and memorization are still the most effective teaching methods for simple basic skills, such as addition and multiplication. But are these time proven methods in widespread use in the US today? No. They've been abandoned, mostly because the people responsible for designing the instruction methods and curriculum have decided that they aren't "modern" and "progressive".
I think that almost everyone who comments on this subject recognizes that there are many gifted, devoted, and competent teachers in the field. And all too often due to the bureaucratic and hidebound SYSTEM they work in they become disillusioned and leave the field.
Both my parents were career educators, both were well respected in their communities AND in their school systems. The problem is NOT teachers. It's politics and career bureaucrats.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
And as far as the Democrat legislators in Wisconsin, they absolutely are NOT serving the interests of the public at large. They are serving the narrow political interest of the unions in return for the the massive campaign contributions the receive from them - essentially, the Democrats are voting themselves campaign funds from the state's coffers.
Follow the money: Huge donations by the unions to political races, which assure the continued union contracts, the flow of union dues into the unions coffers, to be doled out to the Democratic candidates in the next cycle.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
Phil-
As someone whose livelihood and profits depend on a free and fare market, and as someone who decries govornment interventions in and distortions of the free market, you should be 100% diametrically opposed to unions.
What greater distortion of a free market is there than to tell an actor in the market "You can only hire a union member, and must pay the wages and benefits the union decides."
In the private sector, there are two strong, obvious, key checks placed on union wage demands by the free market:
1) If employers yield to union demands and those demands are excessive compared to the rest of the market, the employer loses competitiveness and eventually goes bankrupt.
2) If the employer doesn't yeild to union demands he is free to relocate to an area where he can hire non-union labor.
Those two harsh realities of the market have resulted in millions of manufacturing jobs leaving the US and also in the bankruptcies of hundreds or thousands of businesses. It is the reason unions have dwindled into near irrelevance vis a vis private employers.
Unfortunately, cities, counties, and states can't avail of the second option. They are forced to operate where the are located. And the first option doesn't exist. There is no "market competition" for govornment or govornment services.
Unionization of employees is completely incompatible with provision of public services. In a private labor dispute, the stockholders and managment, the parties in control of compensation, are the parties directly affected by a work stoppage.
Is govornment harmed by a teachers strike? Is govornment harmed by a firefighters strike? Is govornmetn harmed by a police officers strike?
No to all three. The injured parties - students, property owners, citizens - have absolutely no voice in labor negotiations.
If I held a gun to your child's head, and said, "Pay me or I'll injure your child" I'd be imprisoned for assault.
If I threatened to burn your house down if you don't pay me, that's extortion.
Yet those are exactly the threats public unions use to extort money from taxpayers.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
@ Lightway:
You must have typed that post on your lap top, perched on your vista in the Wisconsin State House.
No one (but you) dismisses teachers on the basis of their occupation, or firefighters as being overpaid and lazy.
But what many of us ARE dismissive of is trade unions in general, and public employee unions in particular, who create MASSIVE distortions in the labor market. What we oppose is any entity, public or private, being forced to pay well above market rates for labor. This has forced many private enterprises into bankruptcy, and is now about to force many states and cities there as well.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
"Goldman Sachs, of course, is the company where the CEO recently said of his employees that “If we could do it, we would have their bonus be 100 percent of their comp” — in other words, no salary whatsoever, no job security, give all the power to management and give the workers no rights at all."
IOTW, a commision only sales job - of which there are tens of thousands in industries across the board - and which any real producer would take 1000% of the time over salary +.
Much like manufacturing positions like a couple I have in my own business which are "piece work" - you are paid for however much work you complete, rather than hourly rate. The employee then has the greates motivation to produce, and good workers on piece work make more money than hourly workers, as they should.
I can tell a lot about a potential hire from their answer to the question "how do you feel about being paid by the piece, rather than by the hour?"
Magna International Fails on Earnings, As Input Costs Start to Hurt [View article]
I own a small machine shop and buy metals, albeit in small quantities, on an almost daily basis. Luckily, practically all of my work is short run, non-enventory items and my pricing is per order - I don't have any set pricing for inventory or stocked items. Some of my customers do, though, and they're sweating.
The regional outside sales rep for AM Castle was in my shop a couple of days ago, and all she would say about metlas pricing this year was that "2011 is going to be really interesting". Most of what I buy is aluminum, followed by chrome-moly and carbon steels, with a very small amount of stainless, red metals, and polymers thrown in.
I'm glad I'm not buying any significant amounts of red metals. The outlook for those metals is pretty scary, especially for vendors who have standardized pricing. Margins squeeze is going to hit sellers of items like copper electrical conductors, plumbing pipe and fittings, and electric motors. There is possible short interest in companies in this area. I haven't investigated, but a company like lectric motor manufacturor Baldor, for example, might be a good short candidate. On the other side, Thyssen-Krup and their Copper and Brass Sales division, might be set to do quite well in an environment of rising copper prices. Copper and Brass is about the only game in town for manufacturors who buy copper, brass, or bronze bar, rod or tube for processing.
Looking down the road, rising materials prices and overall economic weakness in the wake of the recent recession may precipitate a second dip; especially with the entire middle east experiencing political upheaval.
We are currently pricing every job we bid very agressively, trying to lock up as much work as quickly as possible, because in 12-18 months, there may not be anything like the opportunities there are now.
First, don't conflate federal profligacy with state budgets.
Second, let's suppose that I'm the chairman of the Board of Education of Appleton, WI. (I'm not). Let's suppose, too, that I can advertise for teaching positions in my school system at a salary, say, 10k below the union contract and fill all of my vacant positions.
How, exactly, is that detrimental to anyone but the union bosses? The taxpayers reap a benefit, the students reap a benefit, and the [formerly] unemployed teachers benefit.
When my father was a child, in the 1930's, the local textile mill owner and only employer for miles, locked out his employees one long hot summer rather than raise wages. He swore he'd close the mill permanently before allowing a union. There were a couple of shootings, a "dynamiting", and near riots. Eventually the mill reopened and people went back to work sans union. In that day, with no legal worker protections unions were definitely needed.
But today, with labor mobility and extremely over-developed legal worker protections, unions are little more than legalized racketeering designed to artificially restrict acces of companies to labor and artificially raise labor costs. In the private sector, "job mobility" has seen much manufacturing move offshore or at least to "right to work" states. The unions are a dieing breed. It's time to remove the stranglehold public employee unions have on state budgets.
Then we can turn our attention to Federal employee unions, like the postal union. Mail delivery on my street is somewhat random, I and several other people I know have all had checks stolen at the local PO, the postmaster can't do anything about removing the culprits because the required documentation requirement in the union work rules is almost impossible to meet and the grievance process drags on for months even if the documentation is provided. All the while, the problem employee (who probably knows the eventual outcome) collects his salary and benefits, all the while doing even less work than the little he did before the whole process started.
Oil's Watershed Week: Why It Changes Everything [View article]
Would you want to depend on a solar water heater in Seattle? Where it's cloudy sometimes for literally weeks on end? Or how about in Minneapolis - where the vast majority of people are out of bed, dressed, and out the door before the sun rises in winter, and the outdoor air temperature can reach -40F?
Passive solar works great in the southern half of the US. Not so great in the northeast or northern plains.;
Raising taxes on consumption makes sense. It increases the cost effectiveness of conservation and renewables. But creating yet more massive, wasteful burocracy in Washington is not the way. Once you create a federal agency, it will be captured by special interests and lobbyists and will become nothing but yet another tool for creating windfalls and carve outs for special interests, and will do NOTHING to help our energy problems.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
And before you start in on govornment intrusion, many municipalities (like mine) are required by the EPA to use ethanol blended or other oxygenated fuels for several months each year due to ozone levels. Most of the reason for high ozone levels is automobile exhaust. The higher price of fuel in the winter months is much more than the cost of an annual vehicle inspection.
So unless we also are going to dismantle emissions requirements, its hard to say that inspection requirements should go away.
Downside of the 2009 Stimulus [View article]
Now the stimulus is wearing off and we're starting to feel the pain again. All 50 states have major budget gaps which are going to result in SERIOUS and PAINFUL cuts in services and increases in fees. I found out my property taxes are going up by 25% beginning this year; the water department is talking about adding a $6/mo flat fee to everyone's water bills in Charlotte, temporary sales tax increases are becoming permanent, etc.
And here we are, 2+ years after the $800B stimulus package and payrolls aren't any more than they were 2 years ago. On the bright side, the unemployment rate IS dropping quickly - but only because millions of people have become so discouraged about ever finding a job that they're quitting looking for a job and, apparently, abandoning working permanently in favor of whatever meager existance they can find on permanent public assistance.
Obama campaigned on "Change you can believe in." I certainly believe that the changes I'm seeing are permanent. But I don't think they are changes for the better.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
In NC, the inspection stations are licensed by the state, but anyone who wants to do inspections can get a license and they get to keep a portion of the price of the inspection. ,I can get my vehicle inspected 7 days a week, usually at the same place that changes my oil, and it takes MAYBE 10 minutes. By contrast, license tags are issued at state run DMV offices, its a huge hassle, and sometime the wait is an hour or more.
In DC there is ONE inspection station for the entire city. It's only open on weekdays, at certain hours, and certainly not on weekends or holidays. It's quite a hassle and you might wait in line for quite a while.
Yes, many services could and should be privatized.
Oil's Watershed Week: Why It Changes Everything [View article]
As I understand it, the divergence of WTI from Brent is because there is no way to get oil from the Alberta tar sands region onto an oil tanker - the major pipelines from Canada are to the Cushing, OK oil storage facility, and that does not connect to any GOM oil ports. Thus, WTI prices are held in check because no matter how much oil is produced in Canada it must be delivered at Cushing.
The Canadians are in negotiations with the US to allow the construction of a pipeline from Cushing to the GOM so that Canada can export oil to somewhere beyond the American Midwest.
If that happens, WTI would align much better wtih Brent. But the $64 qestion is, will the US allow the construction of the pipeline, which is not in its own narrow best interest.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
If INDUSTRY tried the same tactic - all the employers in a region banding together, to set wages, work rules, prices and hiring standards - this would stopped immediately by the courts, and rightly so, as illegal collusion.
I fail to understand how, in a country whose very constitution guarantees an INDIVIDUAL right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that it can be considered legal, even constitutional, to allow unions the prerogotive of a "closed shop" in which it is MANDATED by law and by union contract that one MUST be a union member in order to find employment.
I think the right to offer one's services to an employer at a price agreed upon by the individual and the employer without unwanted interference from a third party certainly falls under the right to pursue life liberty and happiness. Certainly, without a job it is difficult to achieve or maintain any of those. I also believe that contract law would support such an employment agreement. And if I disagree with the way in which my union dues are used, I should be able accept work at a payrate I agree to and for a company I choose without the union interfering with me.
If one of the five families came to your place of business and said "You can only hire people who are members of my union to work in your establishment, and must pay them what I say, and they answer to me not you" that would be called RACKETEERING. Why are unions allowed to to this. The reason the unions never really caught on in the south is that our state legislatures wisely kept "right to work" laws on the books which prevents the unions from forcing people to join the union in order to find work.
I can think of a lot of words to describe this unions and closed shops. None of them are pretty.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
For example: grading 50 arithmetic problems daily for 30 students is quite boring and time consuming. But drill work, repetition, and memorization are still the most effective teaching methods for simple basic skills, such as addition and multiplication. But are these time proven methods in widespread use in the US today? No. They've been abandoned, mostly because the people responsible for designing the instruction methods and curriculum have decided that they aren't "modern" and "progressive".
I think that almost everyone who comments on this subject recognizes that there are many gifted, devoted, and competent teachers in the field. And all too often due to the bureaucratic and hidebound SYSTEM they work in they become disillusioned and leave the field.
Both my parents were career educators, both were well respected in their communities AND in their school systems. The problem is NOT teachers. It's politics and career bureaucrats.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
Follow the money: Huge donations by the unions to political races, which assure the continued union contracts, the flow of union dues into the unions coffers, to be doled out to the Democratic candidates in the next cycle.
Corruption, pure and simple.
Fuggedaboutit Friday - Dip? I Didn't See No Dip? [View article]
As someone whose livelihood and profits depend on a free and fare market, and as someone who decries govornment interventions in and distortions of the free market, you should be 100% diametrically opposed to unions.
What greater distortion of a free market is there than to tell an actor in the market "You can only hire a union member, and must pay the wages and benefits the union decides."
In the private sector, there are two strong, obvious, key checks placed on union wage demands by the free market:
1) If employers yield to union demands and those demands are excessive compared to the rest of the market, the employer loses competitiveness and eventually goes bankrupt.
2) If the employer doesn't yeild to union demands he is free to relocate to an area where he can hire non-union labor.
Those two harsh realities of the market have resulted in millions of manufacturing jobs leaving the US and also in the bankruptcies of hundreds or thousands of businesses. It is the reason unions have dwindled into near irrelevance vis a vis private employers.
Unfortunately, cities, counties, and states can't avail of the second option. They are forced to operate where the are located. And the first option doesn't exist. There is no "market competition" for govornment or govornment services.
Unionization of employees is completely incompatible with provision of public services. In a private labor dispute, the stockholders and managment, the parties in control of compensation, are the parties directly affected by a work stoppage.
Is govornment harmed by a teachers strike?
Is govornment harmed by a firefighters strike?
Is govornmetn harmed by a police officers strike?
No to all three. The injured parties - students, property owners, citizens - have absolutely no voice in labor negotiations.
If I held a gun to your child's head, and said, "Pay me or I'll injure your child" I'd be imprisoned for assault.
If I threatened to burn your house down if you don't pay me, that's extortion.
Yet those are exactly the threats public unions use to extort money from taxpayers.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
You must have typed that post on your lap top, perched on your vista in the Wisconsin State House.
No one (but you) dismisses teachers on the basis of their occupation, or firefighters as being overpaid and lazy.
But what many of us ARE dismissive of is trade unions in general, and public employee unions in particular, who create MASSIVE distortions in the labor market. What we oppose is any entity, public or private, being forced to pay well above market rates for labor. This has forced many private enterprises into bankruptcy, and is now about to force many states and cities there as well.
How Goldman Sachs Is Still Running New Jersey [View article]
IOTW, a commision only sales job - of which there are tens of thousands in industries across the board - and which any real producer would take 1000% of the time over salary +.
Much like manufacturing positions like a couple I have in my own business which are "piece work" - you are paid for however much work you complete, rather than hourly rate. The employee then has the greates motivation to produce, and good workers on piece work make more money than hourly workers, as they should.
I can tell a lot about a potential hire from their answer to the question "how do you feel about being paid by the piece, rather than by the hour?"
Magna International Fails on Earnings, As Input Costs Start to Hurt [View article]
The regional outside sales rep for AM Castle was in my shop a couple of days ago, and all she would say about metlas pricing this year was that "2011 is going to be really interesting". Most of what I buy is aluminum, followed by chrome-moly and carbon steels, with a very small amount of stainless, red metals, and polymers thrown in.
I'm glad I'm not buying any significant amounts of red metals. The outlook for those metals is pretty scary, especially for vendors who have standardized pricing. Margins squeeze is going to hit sellers of items like copper electrical conductors, plumbing pipe and fittings, and electric motors. There is possible short interest in companies in this area. I haven't investigated, but a company like lectric motor manufacturor Baldor, for example, might be a good short candidate. On the other side, Thyssen-Krup and their Copper and Brass Sales division, might be set to do quite well in an environment of rising copper prices. Copper and Brass is about the only game in town for manufacturors who buy copper, brass, or bronze bar, rod or tube for processing.
Looking down the road, rising materials prices and overall economic weakness in the wake of the recent recession may precipitate a second dip; especially with the entire middle east experiencing political upheaval.
We are currently pricing every job we bid very agressively, trying to lock up as much work as quickly as possible, because in 12-18 months, there may not be anything like the opportunities there are now.
Existing Home Sales Rise 2.7% in January [View article]
And yeah, NAR are just a bunch of pump monkeys.
Austerity's Inauspicious Historical Precedents [View article]
Second, let's suppose that I'm the chairman of the Board of Education of Appleton, WI. (I'm not). Let's suppose, too, that I can advertise for teaching positions in my school system at a salary, say, 10k below the union contract and fill all of my vacant positions.
How, exactly, is that detrimental to anyone but the union bosses? The taxpayers reap a benefit, the students reap a benefit, and the [formerly] unemployed teachers benefit.
When my father was a child, in the 1930's, the local textile mill owner and only employer for miles, locked out his employees one long hot summer rather than raise wages. He swore he'd close the mill permanently before allowing a union. There were a couple of shootings, a "dynamiting", and near riots. Eventually the mill reopened and people went back to work sans union. In that day, with no legal worker protections unions were definitely needed.
But today, with labor mobility and extremely over-developed legal worker protections, unions are little more than legalized racketeering designed to artificially restrict acces of companies to labor and artificially raise labor costs. In the private sector, "job mobility" has seen much manufacturing move offshore or at least to "right to work" states. The unions are a dieing breed. It's time to remove the stranglehold public employee unions have on state budgets.
Then we can turn our attention to Federal employee unions, like the postal union. Mail delivery on my street is somewhat random, I and several other people I know have all had checks stolen at the local PO, the postmaster can't do anything about removing the culprits because the required documentation requirement in the union work rules is almost impossible to meet and the grievance process drags on for months even if the documentation is provided. All the while, the problem employee (who probably knows the eventual outcome) collects his salary and benefits, all the while doing even less work than the little he did before the whole process started.
Technical Thursday - The Needle and the Damage Done [View article]