As I was reading the day’s news, I found that what I have been saying is a bit more accurate than some would admit. The stocks took another slide, once again. Those of you with enough disposable income will or have already found, that is exactly what it is, disposable! You should take it and flush it down the toilet or better yet, use it to help some of those less fortunate. In this way you may see a quicker return of your investment.
I may not be an economic "expert" but I do believe I am in a better position to see what is happening.
I am one of the laid off "working class" and most of the people who have had salaries of $50,000 or less a year and even some that make a little bit more, are not spending. I literally laughed at those that thought Disney buying Marvel comics would help bring the stocks up a bit. REALLY? I mean it is just an entertainment company. What do the two produce that people really want? Nobody wants to spend on frivolous entertainment except those with a bunch of money! It is not creating more jobs, to the contrary, more people may now lose some jobs in both companies! It also shows that big money will just be making more money. It won't lower the cost of movies or comic books, period!
This did not produce lower fuel or food prices nor did it help in any way with healthcare and as I just stated, it will not produce jobs!
But some "experts" still see economic recovery around the corner. Too bad you can't hear me laughing!
I am now going to hit on something that will even make some of the working class gasp. Unions! I am sorry but for the most part, unions have outlived themselves. Sure they are good for some areas and people such as electricians, carpenters, and steel workers, if there are any left. Federal and state laws have been in effect for many years that can protect you in many of the ways a union says they protect you. The only difference is that the worker needs to negotiate his salary, not someone else. A worker pays a good amount of money to join and to stay in a union job and without a doubt they do bring higher wages to a certain amount of people. But let me tell you, some of the reasons are for the unions own pocket.
My father was a union man most of his adult life, right into retirement! And at one time the unions would force a company to add a label to the goods produced that stated "Made with Pride in the USA". And the products WERE quality. But that quality went out the window long before the jobs went to China and elsewhere.
An example; > My first job in engineering was at a sheet metal manufacturer back in the early 90's. The office workers were not union but the shop was. It was a smaller company but they paid a premium for those that had been in the union for quite some time. I got the chance to not only observe how these people worked, but also the quality of not only the final product, but also the attitude of the union workers. The quality was sub-par of both. The attitude was "I am union, you cannot fire me". Many of these workers made over $20.00 an hour and would move about their jobs that would make a tortoise seem like he was high energy. Any non-union employee would have been fired or at best laid off for doing the same type of work. Result? Those union workers basically forced the company to charge a higher price for a product that was CRAP! No customer wants to buy crap, so eventually the company went out of business!
I also worked as a union employee and found corruption was the name of the game. One textile company I had worked for had such a union. The company wanted to change the new 3 year contract after we were in it for only a few months. They wanted to shorten the contract to yearly as well as changing the workday to 12 hours without having to pay overtime and other cuts. We were only making around $7.50 an hour when the average union job was around $10.00 - $14.00 an hour for the same type of work. Our own shop steward endorsed this change and the union reps told some of my fellow employees that since we elected them as our bargaining agent, they would agree to the change without a vote. Unfortunately for them, I was not going to allow them to treat my fellow employees that way. I told them that if they chose to go that route I would contact our major customer and inform them of what was taking place. Our customer was the Federal Government! Their contract with the company stated that any labor dispute that was questionable would put an immediate halt to all orders. I forced a vote but before it could be taken I was fired from my position for sleeping on my lunch break.?? The union reps tried to keep me from the meeting hall because of this and stated that our contract went by New York labor laws and I did not have the right to be there because I was fired. I pulled out federal labor law and stuffed it in their face and they had no choice but to let me in and speak my mind. The change was voted down. The principles sold out their ownership of the company and a new ownership seamlessly took over!
Now you may say how could I work both sides of the street (union vs. non-union)? Well the union was not out for the workers. They stood on the side of the company and they were flawed! Ok so now you tell me other unions have gotten higher wages for many more people! True. However those people were not worth the paper that the contract was written on. A dock worker for a trucking company known by an "employee given name" of Corn Flakes paid most of their long time workers well over $20.00 an hour and that employee could not unload a full size trailer in a shift because they spent most of the time BSing with others. Mean while another Union worker known as a "casual" was making less than $14.00 an hour and could unload the same trailer plus half another one in a shift. The casual had to sign an agreement that forced them to pay full union dues but without all the benefits and security the union gave to the fulltime workers and a wage that was frozen at around 13.75 an hour. the wage was fair but the rest was not.
That trucking company no longer exists, but the union does.
My point on the unions is this, except for those listed previously, the unions only helped to breed sub-par quality, laziness in the employees, and forced many companies to go where labor is cheaper! The higher prices we pay for goods can be partly blamed on many of these unions. And when these companies leave the US and go to a foreign country to manufacture their goods without union labor, the price of those goods do not and have not nor will they, come down. This puts even more money in the pockets of the greedy corporations. The only good I could see coming from companies moving to China and elsewhere, is that it is shrinking these unions. After all, if the unions tried the same thing in China and elsewhere, they would be gone forever because those countries would not allow it and the reps would just disappear one by one.
Once again, I say that the energy that is being put into healthcare reform, would be better spent on bringing the jobs back to this country, raising the minimum wage to one that would allow survival as well as a mandatory cost of living raise and getting rid of many unions or at least stop them from getting super high wages for people who are not keeping up with their non-union counterparts. Granted that it is not as easy as it seems I am saying, but more jobs means more money in the economy and possibly more people being able to afford healthcare. And in the meantime focus on getting the price of healthcare down.
At the moment, if Healthcare reform were to be implemented without bringing more jobs, then our country will be nothing more than a welfare state.
Monday, August 31, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
False and misleading stories.
I would like to start off by laughing at the stock market and those that invest in it. I would like to say that I feel sorry for those people currently investing, but I won't. Why? Well I do not believe that the hard working people in this country are the ones investing. It seems that it is those that still have disposable income to work with. Part of the reason I see the market going up and down.
The real people are not investing anymore. No one wants to invest in something they will lose at.
This is how I see it going; Those with tons of money and interest in certain stocks may be investing in their favorite stock or in a company they own. Naturally this brings up the price. But there is no interest in owning that stock by the working class people. They want to hold on to what little they have. Naturally one person or even a few cannot sustain purchasing many stocks and the price continues to fall. For the most part people have proved that they cannot be fooled again. Not by the brokers, not by the media, and certainly not by the companies that desperately want and need that investment money.
I really LOVE the fact that people now view the media as if it were the "TRASH" news that is at the checkout lane at the supermarket! I have always known, since I was about 10 years old, that most people DID believe in the media and would go in the direction the media pointed them. However, the media always had a couple of bogus stories that could just be forgotten about, and life went on. In the last ten years though, the media has consistently shown that they jump the gun to be the first to get a story out and in the course of that haste there was little research and it goes to press as fact. The problem nowadays is that most people have already looked at information before it became news. They were already aware of the facts and when the media puts out their own version of what they think is fact, they lose what little confidence the people did have left in them.
You have seen it over the years. For example how many times have you heard that drug use is at a record low? MANY TIMES! And then you head out to the store and along the way you see people selling drugs on the street corner, kids heading off into the woods behind the mall after the parents drop them off, they certainly were not going to a movie!! The drugs being pulled out of your local schools, etc, etc! And then a week later you spot a little one paragraph story buried in the newspaper that states drug use is at an all time high? Hmmmm, who got it right? Ah yes it feels good to know that the majority of people no longer exhibit the "blindly following the lead" attitude of many years ago.
Those in power will try to steer the very people who put them there, in any direction they so choose. I will give a recent example of this, and it comes in the form of my 401K choices. Back in 1999 I could see the writing on the wall and decided to through a good chunk of my investments into International funds, after all that is where everything was going. I eventually changed jobs but was able to keep that 401K with that company. For whatever reasons the 401K provider was changed and one day as I looked at my statement and tried to understand why I lost $3000.00 in the quarter, I noticed that all my "elective" funds, were in domestic stocks. Naturally I called the provider demanding to know why my electives were changed. I was informed that since I did not return the form, that was never sent to me, they placed it all in domestic stocks of their choosing which was close to my original choices. When I pointed out that the ones they chose for me was almost identical to the domestic stock I chose originally minus the International Funds, I then received a letter a few days later that explained I could only invest a certain amount in the International funds and because my original percentage choice was higher than allowed, it all went to domestic. Real nice I thought.
Now I am not allowed to invest where I know I can make money and I was basically forced to take what they wanted me to have. Just another point about how the rich get richer and the poor will stay poor. I bet those with hundreds of thousands into their 401K were not forced to take losers.
We have always been misled and the people are not putting up with it anymore. You say you want proof of this? Okay. Pick any article that is online that is on any hot topic today, economics, jobs, housing, health etc.
Read the article and form your opinion. Now go all the way to the bottom of the page and read the comments posted by the people who have read them. If you were not an informed person about the subject, which way did your opinion go? Did it go in the direction of the author? Did it match the majority of opinions on the article? You may be surprised!! I blindly followed one article just the other day and I did disagree on how they came up with their figures. I then read the comments and found things I really did not look at. They made simple math mistakes which put them in an even harsher light to me. Essentially, my thoughts after I double checked figures were this... First was that it proved my point about the idiots in charge steering our direction, who in turn, hire more idiots to come up with data that is incorrect. My other thought was that it was such a basic math problem that any 2nd grader could have got it right, and now it seemed that numbers were just thrown out there to prove their point that does not exist.
Whatever happened to research? Research is the most valuable thing in this world, and the only thing more important, is knowing how to do that research. As an engineering person, my top talent is research. I have used it to not only produce a top quality product, but as a tool to keep informed of many new products and technologies in the industry. When I was presented with a problem during an engineering meeting, I usually had 4-5 ideas before the meeting was over.
I have been told that we will need to design a certain product to be used in an assembly of a final product. The explanation by the top engineer was that nothing exists for our application. I would later explain to the engineer that there is indeed a product on the market and would proceed to give him all the information he required to fit it in our design. Over the years I have adapted products from one technology into another technology and saved the company I worked for from a few bucks to thousands! I reported on research ACCURATELY, not slipshod and from the hip of what I think I know. I have learned more than a school could have ever taught me in a lifetime. All from thorough research. After all you can't tell a machine to work just because you THINK you got the right part.
Nowadays if you want to get your position across to the masses, be prepared to do your research thoroughly and present the data that is relevant, but your research may make you believe differently so be prepared! Perhaps that is the other side of it. These people did their research and found that they could NOT prove their point and decided to just throw it out there and in the process messed up the fake data they presented.
In any case I think the point I have made is that, the people today are more informed than ever and the combined brains of the masses are far superior to those people who THINK they are in charge and know better than everyone else! Now if we can just get the informed masses to speak out and get the idiots off the podium.
The real people are not investing anymore. No one wants to invest in something they will lose at.
This is how I see it going; Those with tons of money and interest in certain stocks may be investing in their favorite stock or in a company they own. Naturally this brings up the price. But there is no interest in owning that stock by the working class people. They want to hold on to what little they have. Naturally one person or even a few cannot sustain purchasing many stocks and the price continues to fall. For the most part people have proved that they cannot be fooled again. Not by the brokers, not by the media, and certainly not by the companies that desperately want and need that investment money.
I really LOVE the fact that people now view the media as if it were the "TRASH" news that is at the checkout lane at the supermarket! I have always known, since I was about 10 years old, that most people DID believe in the media and would go in the direction the media pointed them. However, the media always had a couple of bogus stories that could just be forgotten about, and life went on. In the last ten years though, the media has consistently shown that they jump the gun to be the first to get a story out and in the course of that haste there was little research and it goes to press as fact. The problem nowadays is that most people have already looked at information before it became news. They were already aware of the facts and when the media puts out their own version of what they think is fact, they lose what little confidence the people did have left in them.
You have seen it over the years. For example how many times have you heard that drug use is at a record low? MANY TIMES! And then you head out to the store and along the way you see people selling drugs on the street corner, kids heading off into the woods behind the mall after the parents drop them off, they certainly were not going to a movie!! The drugs being pulled out of your local schools, etc, etc! And then a week later you spot a little one paragraph story buried in the newspaper that states drug use is at an all time high? Hmmmm, who got it right? Ah yes it feels good to know that the majority of people no longer exhibit the "blindly following the lead" attitude of many years ago.
Those in power will try to steer the very people who put them there, in any direction they so choose. I will give a recent example of this, and it comes in the form of my 401K choices. Back in 1999 I could see the writing on the wall and decided to through a good chunk of my investments into International funds, after all that is where everything was going. I eventually changed jobs but was able to keep that 401K with that company. For whatever reasons the 401K provider was changed and one day as I looked at my statement and tried to understand why I lost $3000.00 in the quarter, I noticed that all my "elective" funds, were in domestic stocks. Naturally I called the provider demanding to know why my electives were changed. I was informed that since I did not return the form, that was never sent to me, they placed it all in domestic stocks of their choosing which was close to my original choices. When I pointed out that the ones they chose for me was almost identical to the domestic stock I chose originally minus the International Funds, I then received a letter a few days later that explained I could only invest a certain amount in the International funds and because my original percentage choice was higher than allowed, it all went to domestic. Real nice I thought.
Now I am not allowed to invest where I know I can make money and I was basically forced to take what they wanted me to have. Just another point about how the rich get richer and the poor will stay poor. I bet those with hundreds of thousands into their 401K were not forced to take losers.
We have always been misled and the people are not putting up with it anymore. You say you want proof of this? Okay. Pick any article that is online that is on any hot topic today, economics, jobs, housing, health etc.
Read the article and form your opinion. Now go all the way to the bottom of the page and read the comments posted by the people who have read them. If you were not an informed person about the subject, which way did your opinion go? Did it go in the direction of the author? Did it match the majority of opinions on the article? You may be surprised!! I blindly followed one article just the other day and I did disagree on how they came up with their figures. I then read the comments and found things I really did not look at. They made simple math mistakes which put them in an even harsher light to me. Essentially, my thoughts after I double checked figures were this... First was that it proved my point about the idiots in charge steering our direction, who in turn, hire more idiots to come up with data that is incorrect. My other thought was that it was such a basic math problem that any 2nd grader could have got it right, and now it seemed that numbers were just thrown out there to prove their point that does not exist.
Whatever happened to research? Research is the most valuable thing in this world, and the only thing more important, is knowing how to do that research. As an engineering person, my top talent is research. I have used it to not only produce a top quality product, but as a tool to keep informed of many new products and technologies in the industry. When I was presented with a problem during an engineering meeting, I usually had 4-5 ideas before the meeting was over.
I have been told that we will need to design a certain product to be used in an assembly of a final product. The explanation by the top engineer was that nothing exists for our application. I would later explain to the engineer that there is indeed a product on the market and would proceed to give him all the information he required to fit it in our design. Over the years I have adapted products from one technology into another technology and saved the company I worked for from a few bucks to thousands! I reported on research ACCURATELY, not slipshod and from the hip of what I think I know. I have learned more than a school could have ever taught me in a lifetime. All from thorough research. After all you can't tell a machine to work just because you THINK you got the right part.
Nowadays if you want to get your position across to the masses, be prepared to do your research thoroughly and present the data that is relevant, but your research may make you believe differently so be prepared! Perhaps that is the other side of it. These people did their research and found that they could NOT prove their point and decided to just throw it out there and in the process messed up the fake data they presented.
In any case I think the point I have made is that, the people today are more informed than ever and the combined brains of the masses are far superior to those people who THINK they are in charge and know better than everyone else! Now if we can just get the informed masses to speak out and get the idiots off the podium.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Recession or Depression?
Okay, I have been hearing a lot of flap about our economy? One of the things I just read was the report from the Whitehouse and Congress about record deficits. This came out as I was writing my last blog and did not get it in there. However, I thought that I could not let it go. First I need to say that I am a republican. I was formerly a democrat. And I now realize that either party is just pure B.S.
Apparently the republicans are already poised to blame the president and to make it their platform at next years elections. ALSO, apparently these idiots do not realize that less than a year ago they were in power and basically for the previous 8 years. THEY spent like hell and most of it was not for the benefit of the American people. Just take a peek at the Whithouse.gov site. Look at the programs that our President wants to cut and his reasons for wanting to cut them. I was enraged by what was there to begin with. My first thought was "Do we really have stupid people in Congress?" I cannot fathom that even half of those programs were ever started let alone continued.
One example would be the engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The Department of Defense (DOD) started 2 programs to reduce technical risk, understandably. But in 2007, with one of the programs working well, the DOD did not see a need for a second program and asked for it to be closed and did not request money for it. However the Wizards in congress decided to keep the program and have allotted money to it since then... I will now call them the whizzers of congress, since it seems that is what they are doing with our money..
I am sorry but who in heck do they think they are? I thought the experts in that area of need, would be the DOD? But hey, congress has always thought they know better than anyone else. That is why they tell our military how to fight a war!! Damn, you mean West Point and others, do not know how to teach warfare? We should just disband the military and send congress over to the hotspots and all the other spots that they have no problem in sending mere boys to die! Let them fight the wars, since they know better than the military!!! They listen to their own so-called-experts that probably never held a gun or did anything beyond classroom work. But OH WAIT....Aren't those experts called...LOBBYISTS? That is how I see it anyway!!!
Quite frankly, as long as the same "Good Ole Boys" are in congress, then the phrase "We the People" only means the people in political positions! The rest of us are expendable....to a point! I don't really like the moniker of being a sheep, that is why I am speaking out. I believe that many do not mind being called sheep.
I have always been the one to speak up for my rights as a human being. I have also seen MANY people only say "it isn't currently affecting me, so why should I make waves?" But when it gets to that point, it's then too little, too late!!
A little analogy here; We have this big hole that needs to be fixed. Congress has been stuffing money in it and it isn't even close to being filled. Soon, no one will have money to stick in it anymore and the hole will still be there. Lets stop putting money into holes and let's take a REAL look at what needs to be done, and fix it once and for all so that it can never open as big as it has. JOBS FIRST, then some of the other stuff like healthcare will come along without taking more from the working man!!!
Apparently the republicans are already poised to blame the president and to make it their platform at next years elections. ALSO, apparently these idiots do not realize that less than a year ago they were in power and basically for the previous 8 years. THEY spent like hell and most of it was not for the benefit of the American people. Just take a peek at the Whithouse.gov site. Look at the programs that our President wants to cut and his reasons for wanting to cut them. I was enraged by what was there to begin with. My first thought was "Do we really have stupid people in Congress?" I cannot fathom that even half of those programs were ever started let alone continued.
One example would be the engine program for the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft. The Department of Defense (DOD) started 2 programs to reduce technical risk, understandably. But in 2007, with one of the programs working well, the DOD did not see a need for a second program and asked for it to be closed and did not request money for it. However the Wizards in congress decided to keep the program and have allotted money to it since then... I will now call them the whizzers of congress, since it seems that is what they are doing with our money..
I am sorry but who in heck do they think they are? I thought the experts in that area of need, would be the DOD? But hey, congress has always thought they know better than anyone else. That is why they tell our military how to fight a war!! Damn, you mean West Point and others, do not know how to teach warfare? We should just disband the military and send congress over to the hotspots and all the other spots that they have no problem in sending mere boys to die! Let them fight the wars, since they know better than the military!!! They listen to their own so-called-experts that probably never held a gun or did anything beyond classroom work. But OH WAIT....Aren't those experts called...LOBBYISTS? That is how I see it anyway!!!
Quite frankly, as long as the same "Good Ole Boys" are in congress, then the phrase "We the People" only means the people in political positions! The rest of us are expendable....to a point! I don't really like the moniker of being a sheep, that is why I am speaking out. I believe that many do not mind being called sheep.
I have always been the one to speak up for my rights as a human being. I have also seen MANY people only say "it isn't currently affecting me, so why should I make waves?" But when it gets to that point, it's then too little, too late!!
A little analogy here; We have this big hole that needs to be fixed. Congress has been stuffing money in it and it isn't even close to being filled. Soon, no one will have money to stick in it anymore and the hole will still be there. Lets stop putting money into holes and let's take a REAL look at what needs to be done, and fix it once and for all so that it can never open as big as it has. JOBS FIRST, then some of the other stuff like healthcare will come along without taking more from the working man!!!
Great Depression - part 2?
I love being right, and who wouldn't? But sometimes, once in a great while, you hope that maybe, this time, you could be wrong. What am I talking about? Our economy, our jobs, or what used to be our jobs! The lifestyle that everyone has enjoyed for so long that, we just expect it to be there tomorrow. Will it? I am saying, probably not, and I hope I could be wrong, but let's look at one piece of data.
Of course I will have a ton of people saying that, you can't see the whole picture with only one piece of data. Well let's put it out there. The data I will discuss comes from a blog at the Whitehouse (see it here http://www.whitehouse.gov/StrongMiddleClass ) Dated Aug 11th. It is a quick read and the information is eye opening. It brings a little more credence to my fictional series I am doing on youtube.
In the blog they discuss and have a little chart on the "Income going to the top 1% of families from 1913-2007". They call it "ominous data". We will assume that there are 238 million working families, according to the recent census data. The chart in the whitehouse blog shows that 23.5% of income is made by 2.38 million families which means that 76.5% of the rest is divided among those, who are lucky enough to still be working > 235.5 million families. That's 1% of income per 3.08 million families!! Of course a majority of these families receive far less.
The last time the numbers were this high for the top 1%, was in the year before the Great Depression. In contrast, the top 1% only received 9% of the total income in 1978. Most of you remember 1978? The song "Good Times" said it all. They were good times. Most of us did more than just merely surviving. We built homes and paid a decent price. Most everything was in our reach and we had VERY GOOD TIMES!!
But like the Great Depression, things may soon come crashing down. Oh yea, everybody has made a valiant effort at trying to divert or stall another depression, but will it work? I don't think so!! Many of us have seen the market slide up and down and recently I have only seen and felt, that the market has been artificially inflated. My explanation for this is simple. over the last ten years I have seen friends, relatives, and coworkers, lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the market. They have now turned towards "safe investments". They are only getting a small return but it is guaranteed. The working class does not want to lose what little they have left.
And this is why so many of the "EXPERTS" have been wrong on so many levels. The media hype of years ago, no longer works on the minds of the people today. We all used to rely on what we heard on the news and read in the papers. Now people do their own research on the Internet and many base their decisions on the data they see, which is not good. The experts no longer have the credence they used to.
I have said a million times over, that people need to stand up for their rights. Unfortunately they feel that it is not their problem and they should not make waves. Most people choose to ignore what they know is wrong. We have become a passive society.
Well the numbers show a different story. Remember, these numbers I am talking about are not dollars. It is the percentage. You can't say that everything cost so little then and so much more now!!! If you go by the numbers, we are due to go into a depression.... and, apparently we need to go there. Perhaps it will wake everyone up!! That's right!! I said we need to go into a depression!
If you have a big hole that you can't see the bottom of, because it is filled with water, do you know how much dirt you need to bring in to fill it? Do you just start filling it in, hoping that the next load will fill it? Or do you do a thorough job and pump out the water and assess what needs to be done to ensure it is done correctly? I like a thorough job to be done. We have dumped money into just about everything, Failing companies, banks, even to people who bought homes they could never afford. It can't keep going. We can't see the bottom of the hole but we keep dumping money in there to fill it and there is only speculation as to how close to the top it is to being filled. This money comes from you and me, Oh yea, and CHINA!! If you look at this in terms of a corporation, then China owns a good chunk of the United States with the billions lent to us to stabilize our economy.
Let them fail. ALL OF THEM!! We don't have an endless supply of money and it will run out....SOON!
I have been cautious all of my life and if I had taken the plunge for a new house or new car, I would have lost it all and perhaps my family too!! But, as it stands now... if the whole economy collapsed tomorrow, my family and I would survive, and so would many poor to the lower middle class. Why? Because we have had to survive our own little independent depressions over the years. It isn't because we saved so much! It's because we can fix that piece of crap car so we can put off buying another. We do our own repairs on everything out of necessity. We hunt and fish for our food (in season) and we survive.
For those of you who "currently" are able to still live. Those of you who don't want to make "waves" or push for major changes and accountability! Be prepared to kiss it all goodbye. It happened before, remember the Great Depression? The money is going fast and I say GOOD!!!
What will happen? Well this world still needs all the things that are manufactured, and that will continue. I don't see the same multinational companies owning everything. They will lose too. But there will be the "mom & pop" shops that will step in and provide the goods and services. They do not have investors who push them one way or another that is not good for "their" company. Mom and Pop will only take from the business, what they need to survive and they will work to ensure they have the best people working for them and those people people will push mom and pop to prosper. In contrast, the large companies have only the upper echelon they care about (the 1% previously mentioned). Big money will only look out for big money.
So go ahead enjoy what little time you may have, if you are one of the top 1% or one of those, still not concerned! It will all go away and then it will be up to the rest of us to get us back to where we should be. And don't bring your greedy, fat butts around the "restofusville", since we will be busy trying to survive and not looking for a handout, because it won't be there for us to get. You won't see us crying because you lost 15 of your 20 cars or you have been reduced to only 2 vacation homes.
When you see us come running towards you, it will be because the foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings just put your millions in properties and personal items on the auction block for a fraction of their value, and we will now scoop up what was yours.. :-)
Certainly one piece of data won't show the whole picture, but sometimes, that one piece of data means the whole world!!!
Of course I will have a ton of people saying that, you can't see the whole picture with only one piece of data. Well let's put it out there. The data I will discuss comes from a blog at the Whitehouse (see it here http://www.whitehouse.gov/StrongMiddleClass ) Dated Aug 11th. It is a quick read and the information is eye opening. It brings a little more credence to my fictional series I am doing on youtube.
In the blog they discuss and have a little chart on the "Income going to the top 1% of families from 1913-2007". They call it "ominous data". We will assume that there are 238 million working families, according to the recent census data. The chart in the whitehouse blog shows that 23.5% of income is made by 2.38 million families which means that 76.5% of the rest is divided among those, who are lucky enough to still be working > 235.5 million families. That's 1% of income per 3.08 million families!! Of course a majority of these families receive far less.
The last time the numbers were this high for the top 1%, was in the year before the Great Depression. In contrast, the top 1% only received 9% of the total income in 1978. Most of you remember 1978? The song "Good Times" said it all. They were good times. Most of us did more than just merely surviving. We built homes and paid a decent price. Most everything was in our reach and we had VERY GOOD TIMES!!
But like the Great Depression, things may soon come crashing down. Oh yea, everybody has made a valiant effort at trying to divert or stall another depression, but will it work? I don't think so!! Many of us have seen the market slide up and down and recently I have only seen and felt, that the market has been artificially inflated. My explanation for this is simple. over the last ten years I have seen friends, relatives, and coworkers, lose hundreds of thousands of dollars in the market. They have now turned towards "safe investments". They are only getting a small return but it is guaranteed. The working class does not want to lose what little they have left.
And this is why so many of the "EXPERTS" have been wrong on so many levels. The media hype of years ago, no longer works on the minds of the people today. We all used to rely on what we heard on the news and read in the papers. Now people do their own research on the Internet and many base their decisions on the data they see, which is not good. The experts no longer have the credence they used to.
I have said a million times over, that people need to stand up for their rights. Unfortunately they feel that it is not their problem and they should not make waves. Most people choose to ignore what they know is wrong. We have become a passive society.
Well the numbers show a different story. Remember, these numbers I am talking about are not dollars. It is the percentage. You can't say that everything cost so little then and so much more now!!! If you go by the numbers, we are due to go into a depression.... and, apparently we need to go there. Perhaps it will wake everyone up!! That's right!! I said we need to go into a depression!
If you have a big hole that you can't see the bottom of, because it is filled with water, do you know how much dirt you need to bring in to fill it? Do you just start filling it in, hoping that the next load will fill it? Or do you do a thorough job and pump out the water and assess what needs to be done to ensure it is done correctly? I like a thorough job to be done. We have dumped money into just about everything, Failing companies, banks, even to people who bought homes they could never afford. It can't keep going. We can't see the bottom of the hole but we keep dumping money in there to fill it and there is only speculation as to how close to the top it is to being filled. This money comes from you and me, Oh yea, and CHINA!! If you look at this in terms of a corporation, then China owns a good chunk of the United States with the billions lent to us to stabilize our economy.
Let them fail. ALL OF THEM!! We don't have an endless supply of money and it will run out....SOON!
I have been cautious all of my life and if I had taken the plunge for a new house or new car, I would have lost it all and perhaps my family too!! But, as it stands now... if the whole economy collapsed tomorrow, my family and I would survive, and so would many poor to the lower middle class. Why? Because we have had to survive our own little independent depressions over the years. It isn't because we saved so much! It's because we can fix that piece of crap car so we can put off buying another. We do our own repairs on everything out of necessity. We hunt and fish for our food (in season) and we survive.
For those of you who "currently" are able to still live. Those of you who don't want to make "waves" or push for major changes and accountability! Be prepared to kiss it all goodbye. It happened before, remember the Great Depression? The money is going fast and I say GOOD!!!
What will happen? Well this world still needs all the things that are manufactured, and that will continue. I don't see the same multinational companies owning everything. They will lose too. But there will be the "mom & pop" shops that will step in and provide the goods and services. They do not have investors who push them one way or another that is not good for "their" company. Mom and Pop will only take from the business, what they need to survive and they will work to ensure they have the best people working for them and those people people will push mom and pop to prosper. In contrast, the large companies have only the upper echelon they care about (the 1% previously mentioned). Big money will only look out for big money.
So go ahead enjoy what little time you may have, if you are one of the top 1% or one of those, still not concerned! It will all go away and then it will be up to the rest of us to get us back to where we should be. And don't bring your greedy, fat butts around the "restofusville", since we will be busy trying to survive and not looking for a handout, because it won't be there for us to get. You won't see us crying because you lost 15 of your 20 cars or you have been reduced to only 2 vacation homes.
When you see us come running towards you, it will be because the foreclosure and bankruptcy proceedings just put your millions in properties and personal items on the auction block for a fraction of their value, and we will now scoop up what was yours.. :-)
Certainly one piece of data won't show the whole picture, but sometimes, that one piece of data means the whole world!!!
Friday, August 21, 2009
One example of how a company wastes.
Just shifting gears now, slightly, to show some points I am trying to make. I am going to give some observations from past work experience to prove my point. I will not mention companies or names, so it does not look as a sour apples or revenge story.
One such company is a very large and old Multinational Corporation. It will only from one departments and person's perspective.
I was hired to work an as Engineering Technician, testing tools. The mainstay of the tests was a room of test fixtures for testing the life of a tool and if failures occurred, the type, time, etc was recorded. These test systems were setup to closely mimic actual use of the tool.
One portion of this system was a brake assembly that utilized a high lead bronze as a "brake pad" that had grease injected into the braking surface. The whole system had been designed and implemented decades ago. And, as designed, the system worked perfectly, however the system was not working perfectly and I mentioned this to my boss about 2 months after being there. I was given a speech about the systems and everything was as it should be and I should concern myself with the setups only...
I did for 2 years, Will need to point out that in the meantime I had noticed a case of a tech taking shortcuts and guessing at test numbers to put in. I soon was pulled to the side by my boss and asked why I was slower than the other guys and I was seeing why but only said something when my boss became angry that I was talking to another employee about it. He did not believe me but decided to confront the other technician who admitted it. Well we all agreed to just not mention it again and that it would not happen again. It did with the same tech but with another partner on the test. It was not reported.
But needless to say that I thought my boss was worried that I had something over him. Which could be what may have sent him over when I informed him that I decided to do a hardness test on the Bronze we used for the test system and it was as much as ten times harder!!! I did it when I noticed different colors of bronze to which my boss and his boss both laughed at me and said "what do we need a metallurgist for, will just give it to you and you can tell us what it is. Well short story I gathered 3 sets plus one piece which I thought was all different, sent to metallurgist and confirmed for what I said and what it was and all different!
They had 60 combined years with the company... I had 2!
Kinda get my point so far?
My boss thought he would show his worth and find what we needed when I told him it would only take me hours! He was concerned that I may spend too much time on it. So a week later he came to me and said he could not find it, and did I have an idea? I had a company in an hour but they took to long on the quote and in the meantime one of my boss's friends in another division found and got a quote the same day my guy quoted and at a lower price.
My boss went with his find at the higher quote.........He also told me that the material had been changed for over 10 years, but that it did not mean the tests were invalid. I heard engineers say that almost 90% of the tools I tested, matched field results and they had all the data required where others had failures that did not match field results and they did not have enough data to tell them why???
Ok so your sayin sour grapes yadda yadda what's the point?
This is not the techs fault when you have bosses with decades of straight employment with the same company.. It's just the "internal politics" as they like to call it. It helps certain people to keep a job no matter how badly they do it, because it is only 1 person in 40,000 employees.
Now think of the costs put into an item because it was improperly tested. Time taken away from the development of new items because time is wasted on current products fixing problems that are nonexistent because the test system was not operating to specifications.
Now imagine some of those tech jobs moving to another country because their testing more closely matches literature when the lab in this country, tested those same tools after they were shipped back to the states and numbers changed.
These types of companies Really do need to rely on those people in these positions to know what they are doing. If a boss does not recognize a problem, or refuses to, then everyone in under him can be considered as part of the failure, if the failure is out in the open. Whether it is or not, but they stand a greater chance of losing their jobs than the boss will. Often these companies need to do a double take at some of those employees that were in the same dept for 30 years. Maybe they will find a big chunk of wasted money right there!
So until the executives bring their fat butts down under the clouds more often to check on their own company, then this type of waste will go on, and they still won't have a good sense of their own business.
One such company is a very large and old Multinational Corporation. It will only from one departments and person's perspective.
I was hired to work an as Engineering Technician, testing tools. The mainstay of the tests was a room of test fixtures for testing the life of a tool and if failures occurred, the type, time, etc was recorded. These test systems were setup to closely mimic actual use of the tool.
One portion of this system was a brake assembly that utilized a high lead bronze as a "brake pad" that had grease injected into the braking surface. The whole system had been designed and implemented decades ago. And, as designed, the system worked perfectly, however the system was not working perfectly and I mentioned this to my boss about 2 months after being there. I was given a speech about the systems and everything was as it should be and I should concern myself with the setups only...
I did for 2 years, Will need to point out that in the meantime I had noticed a case of a tech taking shortcuts and guessing at test numbers to put in. I soon was pulled to the side by my boss and asked why I was slower than the other guys and I was seeing why but only said something when my boss became angry that I was talking to another employee about it. He did not believe me but decided to confront the other technician who admitted it. Well we all agreed to just not mention it again and that it would not happen again. It did with the same tech but with another partner on the test. It was not reported.
But needless to say that I thought my boss was worried that I had something over him. Which could be what may have sent him over when I informed him that I decided to do a hardness test on the Bronze we used for the test system and it was as much as ten times harder!!! I did it when I noticed different colors of bronze to which my boss and his boss both laughed at me and said "what do we need a metallurgist for, will just give it to you and you can tell us what it is. Well short story I gathered 3 sets plus one piece which I thought was all different, sent to metallurgist and confirmed for what I said and what it was and all different!
They had 60 combined years with the company... I had 2!
Kinda get my point so far?
My boss thought he would show his worth and find what we needed when I told him it would only take me hours! He was concerned that I may spend too much time on it. So a week later he came to me and said he could not find it, and did I have an idea? I had a company in an hour but they took to long on the quote and in the meantime one of my boss's friends in another division found and got a quote the same day my guy quoted and at a lower price.
My boss went with his find at the higher quote.........He also told me that the material had been changed for over 10 years, but that it did not mean the tests were invalid. I heard engineers say that almost 90% of the tools I tested, matched field results and they had all the data required where others had failures that did not match field results and they did not have enough data to tell them why???
Ok so your sayin sour grapes yadda yadda what's the point?
This is not the techs fault when you have bosses with decades of straight employment with the same company.. It's just the "internal politics" as they like to call it. It helps certain people to keep a job no matter how badly they do it, because it is only 1 person in 40,000 employees.
Now think of the costs put into an item because it was improperly tested. Time taken away from the development of new items because time is wasted on current products fixing problems that are nonexistent because the test system was not operating to specifications.
Now imagine some of those tech jobs moving to another country because their testing more closely matches literature when the lab in this country, tested those same tools after they were shipped back to the states and numbers changed.
These types of companies Really do need to rely on those people in these positions to know what they are doing. If a boss does not recognize a problem, or refuses to, then everyone in under him can be considered as part of the failure, if the failure is out in the open. Whether it is or not, but they stand a greater chance of losing their jobs than the boss will. Often these companies need to do a double take at some of those employees that were in the same dept for 30 years. Maybe they will find a big chunk of wasted money right there!
So until the executives bring their fat butts down under the clouds more often to check on their own company, then this type of waste will go on, and they still won't have a good sense of their own business.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The Lies We Hear....Still!!!
Isn't it funny how we are currently being told that things are getting better? When was the last time you heard the truth about our economy? Search your memory deeply!! How about the experts in finance and what the media puts in our faces? NO? Yea me neither!
It is so funny how the media will compare our current gas prices to a couple months ago, but will compare housing costs to years ago! It is all to lull us into a false sense of security and give us that warm fuzzy feeling!
Well I for one am saying "NO MORE". Perhaps most of you don't believe the BS, but where are your voices? I should be able to open my door here in the country and hear the moans of the people who are in dire need. But no I do not! I try to understand the passive attitudes of the millions who are struggling in this world and I still do not understand. Ok. This entire blog will be dedicated to bringing out how we are lied to, and treated as nothing more than sheep that can be used for the wool!
I will now scrutinize the Free Trade Bulletin #36 by Daniel Griswold. People like Mr. Griswold is why most people still hang on to the hopes that things will get better. For the the things that I know first hand, he says is not so. He mentions in the beginning of his article About the Campaign promise of Barack Obama the he will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas and start giving them to companies that create good jobs here in America".
Then he goes on to explain how these US companies only created affiliates in other foreign countries to reach new customers that otherwise would be impossible without being in that part of the world. My response to that would be... Then how did we do business with the rest of the world in the last century?
He also says " Contrary to popular myth, U.S. multinational companies do not use their foreign operations as an "export platform" back to the United States. Close to 90% of the goods and services produced by U.S. owned affiliates abroad are sold to customers either in the host country or exported to consumers in third countries outside the U.S." And he also says "customers in the U.S. account for only 17% of sales". HUH?!!
Having worked in Engineering for the last 18 years, placed me in the unique position of seeing nearly all sides of how a company "creatively" does business when they have "divisions" of their companies overseas. Yes, Divisions and not affiliates! I am here to tell you that these type of companies I have worked for, do indeed leverage the "export platform" to return foreign made products for sale in the U.S. Just go to any store, pick up any product and look for where it is made and you will be hard pressed to find anything that says "Made in the USA".
One such company I worked for had divisions across the globe. They also had operations in China and Mexico. The U.S. divisions of this company were, at the time, in the northeast U.S., Silicon Valley in CA., Colorado and a few others. As their facilities grew in China and Mexico, the U.S. facilities disappeared and layoffs ensued. I went to an Engineering Design meeting at the corporation's home office in NJ and had breakfast with the owner of the privately held company.
We talked about U.S. jobs disappearing and going to these facilities overseas. He expressed his concern as an American. However he also pointed out that, he was a business man whose main concern was his investors and his own pocket. He told me about the import/export game and how he could have a 75% failure rate of his products from China and still make a profit. Not only because he had lower wages to pay in China but also because of the tax breaks and incentives he received from the U.S. He said he could not even have a 25% failure rate in the U.S. facilities or he would be out of business. Kinda makes you think!
Currently, the investors have successfully ousted him from control of the company and there are only 2 divisions left in the U.S. Their main manufacturing facilities are in China and Mexico. Because they still maintain their headquarters in New Jersey, They still receive the tax breaks and incentives that our politicians so generously give them. The other facility is now for prototypes. It gives the impression that they are manufacturing here in the states but those products are only used for testing, and in some cases those products have been tweaked to perfection by the engineers and technicians and given, yes given for free, to a potential customer for them to test, and then that customer will buy the inferior product that is made outside the U.S.
Oh yea, where did the couple thousand jobs go, that this company had here in the U.S.? They went to China or to Mexico!!!
This is only one example, the other companies I worked for are the same. The only reason they have manufacturing facilities in the U.S. , is for building Prototypes and for testing, that will eventually go to their China, Mexico, or India Divisions for manufacture and sold not only in those countries but also to U.S. customers.
I say to Mr. Griswold, "you are either an idiot or you do not know what you are doing". As I stated before, I worked in Engineering, I designed, built, and specified parts to be used in designs. I worked with the customers and manufacturing facilities. I touched everything that a company does because I am very thorough in my job and I know the reasons for every step a company makes to put out a product. I wrote the ISO procedures for the company that were tailored for these foreign facilities. I wrote "books" of instructions that would allow someone who never even touched a wrench, to build the products we designed.
Mr. Griswold does not think that taking away the tax breaks and incentives will change anything here in the U.S.!!??? Then how about we give it a try? Give companies tax breaks and incentives to keep and grow jobs here in the U.S. and then tell me and everyone else in 5 years how it did not make a difference in the U.S. You will not be able to.
Another question for Mr. Griswold - "Where do you invest YOUR money?" I bet it is with the very corporations that receive these tax breaks and other incentives.
And as I state in the purpose of my blog, Do not throw your education at me. Just because someone can commit their schooling to memory and graduate at the top of the class means nothing to me. Produce results and not just methane!
It is so funny how the media will compare our current gas prices to a couple months ago, but will compare housing costs to years ago! It is all to lull us into a false sense of security and give us that warm fuzzy feeling!
Well I for one am saying "NO MORE". Perhaps most of you don't believe the BS, but where are your voices? I should be able to open my door here in the country and hear the moans of the people who are in dire need. But no I do not! I try to understand the passive attitudes of the millions who are struggling in this world and I still do not understand. Ok. This entire blog will be dedicated to bringing out how we are lied to, and treated as nothing more than sheep that can be used for the wool!
I will now scrutinize the Free Trade Bulletin #36 by Daniel Griswold. People like Mr. Griswold is why most people still hang on to the hopes that things will get better. For the the things that I know first hand, he says is not so. He mentions in the beginning of his article About the Campaign promise of Barack Obama the he will stop giving tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas and start giving them to companies that create good jobs here in America".
Then he goes on to explain how these US companies only created affiliates in other foreign countries to reach new customers that otherwise would be impossible without being in that part of the world. My response to that would be... Then how did we do business with the rest of the world in the last century?
He also says " Contrary to popular myth, U.S. multinational companies do not use their foreign operations as an "export platform" back to the United States. Close to 90% of the goods and services produced by U.S. owned affiliates abroad are sold to customers either in the host country or exported to consumers in third countries outside the U.S." And he also says "customers in the U.S. account for only 17% of sales". HUH?!!
Having worked in Engineering for the last 18 years, placed me in the unique position of seeing nearly all sides of how a company "creatively" does business when they have "divisions" of their companies overseas. Yes, Divisions and not affiliates! I am here to tell you that these type of companies I have worked for, do indeed leverage the "export platform" to return foreign made products for sale in the U.S. Just go to any store, pick up any product and look for where it is made and you will be hard pressed to find anything that says "Made in the USA".
One such company I worked for had divisions across the globe. They also had operations in China and Mexico. The U.S. divisions of this company were, at the time, in the northeast U.S., Silicon Valley in CA., Colorado and a few others. As their facilities grew in China and Mexico, the U.S. facilities disappeared and layoffs ensued. I went to an Engineering Design meeting at the corporation's home office in NJ and had breakfast with the owner of the privately held company.
We talked about U.S. jobs disappearing and going to these facilities overseas. He expressed his concern as an American. However he also pointed out that, he was a business man whose main concern was his investors and his own pocket. He told me about the import/export game and how he could have a 75% failure rate of his products from China and still make a profit. Not only because he had lower wages to pay in China but also because of the tax breaks and incentives he received from the U.S. He said he could not even have a 25% failure rate in the U.S. facilities or he would be out of business. Kinda makes you think!
Currently, the investors have successfully ousted him from control of the company and there are only 2 divisions left in the U.S. Their main manufacturing facilities are in China and Mexico. Because they still maintain their headquarters in New Jersey, They still receive the tax breaks and incentives that our politicians so generously give them. The other facility is now for prototypes. It gives the impression that they are manufacturing here in the states but those products are only used for testing, and in some cases those products have been tweaked to perfection by the engineers and technicians and given, yes given for free, to a potential customer for them to test, and then that customer will buy the inferior product that is made outside the U.S.
Oh yea, where did the couple thousand jobs go, that this company had here in the U.S.? They went to China or to Mexico!!!
This is only one example, the other companies I worked for are the same. The only reason they have manufacturing facilities in the U.S. , is for building Prototypes and for testing, that will eventually go to their China, Mexico, or India Divisions for manufacture and sold not only in those countries but also to U.S. customers.
I say to Mr. Griswold, "you are either an idiot or you do not know what you are doing". As I stated before, I worked in Engineering, I designed, built, and specified parts to be used in designs. I worked with the customers and manufacturing facilities. I touched everything that a company does because I am very thorough in my job and I know the reasons for every step a company makes to put out a product. I wrote the ISO procedures for the company that were tailored for these foreign facilities. I wrote "books" of instructions that would allow someone who never even touched a wrench, to build the products we designed.
Mr. Griswold does not think that taking away the tax breaks and incentives will change anything here in the U.S.!!??? Then how about we give it a try? Give companies tax breaks and incentives to keep and grow jobs here in the U.S. and then tell me and everyone else in 5 years how it did not make a difference in the U.S. You will not be able to.
Another question for Mr. Griswold - "Where do you invest YOUR money?" I bet it is with the very corporations that receive these tax breaks and other incentives.
And as I state in the purpose of my blog, Do not throw your education at me. Just because someone can commit their schooling to memory and graduate at the top of the class means nothing to me. Produce results and not just methane!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
