10:31 – The signs of approaching autumn are unmistakable. Overnight lows are down into the low- to mid-60’s (upper teens C) and sometimes even the upper 50’s (14C to 15C). The leaves are still green, but we’re starting to see a lot of leaves on the ground. I’m looking forward to the cooler weather. I suppose I should check the natural gas logs in the den fireplace and use some canned air to blow the dust out of the oxygen sensor. We may be using the gas logs in the evenings before too long.
The economic news continues to be horrible. I saw yesterday that IBM announced that as of the end of this year they’re defaulting on their promise to provide health care for their 100,000 retirees. Now, IBM says that all retirees who are eligible for Medicare must use it. IBM will pay a subsidy for those people to buy third-party Medicare supplement policies. In so doing, IBM has shifted a major portion of the costs for retiree health care onto the federal government. I can’t really blame IBM. As they said, it’s no longer sustainable to keep doing what they had been doing.
And, speaking of horrible economic news, I saw several articles yesterday that were talking about the pathetic inability of our economy to generate real new jobs. I’m not sure what the source of one figure they quoted is, but if it’s true it’s stunning. According to these articles, of the net new jobs generated over the last 12 months, fully 96% of them are part-time jobs. Of course, the federal government tries to put the best face on it, counting any job as a job.
The government needs to start reporting things in terms of a “Standard Job”. I don’t know what the actual figures are, but assume that the average full-time job pays $30,000/year with $10,000/year in benefits. Define that as the Standard Job. If a company creates a new job that pays $7.50 per hour for 20 hours a week 50 weeks/year with no benefits, that’s $7,500/year total, or 0.1875 of a Standard Job. Actually, it’s worse than that because that minimum wage employee is a burden to taxpayers in terms of medical care, foodstamps, subsidized housing, and so on. Again, I don’t have the actual figures at hand, but assuming that that burden on taxpayers is $5,000/year, that job is actually netting $2,500/year, or 0.0625–one sixteenth–of a Standard Job. And so it should be reported. Of course it never will be.
Welcome to the new normal. Part time jobs paying minimum wage or a bit more, for 29 hours or less a week thanks to ObamaCare. And even these jobs are under the technological gun, as companies find ways to automate those jobs out of existence. I don’t know the source of it, but I’ve read that the break-even point for McDonalds is currently about $10/hour. Any more than that, and McDonalds would be better off fully automating their restaurants, with maybe one person on site to maintain the equipment and keep it functioning. Customers will punch in their orders on a touch screen and collect them without human intervention. A modern-day Automat, but without the people behind the wall. And even if that $10/hour figure is too low, it soon won’t be. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned about technology, it’s that it keeps getting better and cheaper every month.
Science kit sales have started to taper off, although they’re still running well ahead of this time last year.
No no no, that’s more proof that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real. One of the effects of AGW is declining temperatures, and if you question the validity of that claim then you are a Denialist and worse than Hitler!!@2!11!
“…IBM has shifted a major portion of the costs for retiree health care onto the federal government. I can’t really blame IBM. As they said, it’s no longer sustainable to keep doing what they had been doing.”
IBM should have set aside the dough for this when they were making good profits rather than shifting their burden on to the taxpayer. How much were IBM’s top executives being paid? I have little sympathy for companies that pay their executives megabucks but screw their peons.
“I don’t know the source of it, but I’ve read that the break-even point for McDonalds is currently about $10/hour. Any more than that, and McDonalds would be better off fully automating their restaurants, with maybe one person on site to maintain the equipment and keep it functioning.”
This won’t work if customers don’t like it. I prefer automated service for some products but want to be served by a human for others. If their customers go to a place that provides the service they want then McDs looses. If the peons don’t have any dough they can’t buy McDonalds’ products. That’s why its in no one’s interests to have a large and poor underclass.
Now, IBM says that all retirees who are eligible for Medicare must use it.
With the exception of IBM and some union contracts, this is pretty much standard for retiree health care. I’m now on my former employer’s retiree plan and that’s how it was explained to me when I signed on 27 years ago. At 65 you go on Medicare and they provide a subsidized medigap plan.
What’s more of a trend setter is the move by UPS to drop spouses from the plans of white collar employees if the spouse can get insurance through their job.
IBM should have set aside the dough for this when they were making good profits rather than shifting their burden on to the taxpayer. How much were IBM’s top executives being paid? I have little sympathy for companies that pay their executives megabucks but screw their peons.
IBM has been putting aside money for the health care for years. They paid the federal government 2.9% of the first $110k or so of employee pay in Medicare taxes. They may or may not have put aside money for the retiree health plan , but in any case have gotten slammed by a shrinking workforce, longer lives, and higher costs. You could have taken 100% of the megabucks paid to IBM honchos and it wouldn’t make a dent in the problem. IBM has a lot of retirees.
And IBM is probably much more egalitarian in pay than most companies. They pay very good salaries and had quite a few technical types that were making in the mid 6 figures – I worked with some back in the 80s that had salaries that would have been that high if inflation-adjusted to today.
“That’s why its in no one’s interests to have a large and poor underclass.”
Assume that our current regime are basically Bolsheviks. They love a large and poor underclass. And a permanent war footing. Orwell was off by about thirty years for this country but it’s happening now.
OFD, saw a joke this morning and thought of you…
A classics professor goes to a tailor to get his trousers mended. The tailor asks: “Euripides?”
The professor replies: “Yes. Eumenides?”
Off to India tonight to finalize my medical tourism business. Wish me luck dealing with the Permit Raj. I’ll need it.
Thanks for the joke and best of luck, sir. Us old farts may need medical tourist info off and on pretty regularly over our last few years, however many, as the current situation developing here in the land of the twee and home of the knaves is looking pretty grim.
IIRC Euripides was considered, at the time I was studying classics, the most modern of the Athenian dramatists and one who rendered a psychological portrait of his characters, almost as though he had read the god Freud in advance. The Eumenides are also known as the Furies, lovely entities, and we shall be seeing them soon here.
Assumptions are dangerous. Instead, apply this simple test: if Ogabe and friends weren’t Bolsheviks bent on the destruction of everything that made the United States of America unique, what would they be doing differently?
As for imminent visitation by the Furies, I largely agree, though I usually express it as the Gods of the Copybooks Headings coming soon.
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”
“As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!”
Well, it was one thing in the former USSR and Germany; their populations had been largely disarmed. This is a huge country and as we have discussed, there are probably half a billion to a billion firearms in private hands.
I give it twenty years, max.
I don’t know, Dave. I’ve revised my estimate down from one billion plus firearms in private hands to something in the range of 12 to 15.
Just about everyone I know has lost all of their guns.
I bow, therefore, to your superior anecdotal evidence, and will revise my own party line accordingly.
Of course, at the present sales rate, the number is apparently increasing by millions per month. I’m expecting the Brazos to be fully damned any day now.
And I see that Iowa cannot reject CC applicants who are completely blind. Now, I’m more radical about 2nd Amendment rights than anyone I know, but it gives even me pause to think about that one. I wonder if those people are eligible for drivers’ licences in Iowa?
…and why are there instructions in Braille at drive-through ATM’s?
[snip] …and why are there instructions in Braille at drive-through ATM’s? [snip]
Because it’s entirely possible for a car to park and disgorge a passenger who, while blind, needs to use the machine.
Ah! What a dumkopf I am! Of course! And I imagine spoken/audible instructions to replace the stuff on the little screens.
All the gun shops around here are busy all the time, with advertised sales going on constantly. Prior to the election, they were sleepy little shops, but not now—they are as packed as the sporting goods stores. I was up in Muncie yesterday, and there were people trying to find parking in a jam-packed lot of the gun store in one of the old converted houses on the town’s main shopping drag. I suspect gun shop owners are very glad to be in that business these days.
I have yet to see anybody at McDonald’s make any statement about automating at all, let alone at what price they would do so. Amazing how people outside McDonald’s know more about what is going on there than those in management at headquarters. Although they make enough mistakes with my orders already, that maybe automating would cut down on them.
The drive-through ATM’s in my area prohibit one from getting out of the car to use the machines—so I still wonder why the Braille? Unfortunately, the only inside ATM I knew about, was recently relocated to outside as a drive-through, so as far as I know, there is no ATM anywhere around here that allows you to get out of a car to use it. Exact opposite in Berlin—there were no drive-through ATM’s (or drive-through tellers) anywhere. They were considered a security risk there. All depends on how you look at it I suppose.
Over there, they charged for teller services. During the years we were there, banks consistently closed branch after branch of inside workers. Everything was increasingly done by electronic machines in small lobbies with computer screens to do everything from withdrawing/depositing money to paying bills. Computer home banking was really taking off as well, when I left there. There have been no checks in Germany for well over 20 years, so there is never the need for check depositing—probably the biggest job of tellers in the US. I do not suppose we will ever see the elimination of checks here, but it is definitely a preferable experience.
Btw, Indiana has a law that makes it illegal for anyone to approach a drive-through teller window on foot. If I recall correctly, so did Taxachusetts. Somewhere that I once lived had an outside walk-up teller window on the side of the building near the entrance. Cannot place where that was, though. Maybe Wellesley, Mass.
Speaking of MA and banks and tellers and suchlike; I did my annual viewing of “The Friends of Eddie Coyle,” set in eastern MA during the early 70s; most of the actors are dead now, including the great Robert Mitchum, but the landscape scenery, music, and the dialogue are fantastic, as I remember that time and place, early autumn. Based on the novel by the late, great George V. Higgins, a former MA district attorney. The flick was out of print for a while but is now back on DVD and Amazon.
The more recent movie, “The Town,” stole quite a few things from “Friends.” And was also great; I watched it at the theater up here twice and read the book and then watched it again via DVD. (the movie has a better ending than the book, incidentally).
And here it is again, late summer turning rapidly into early autumn, leaves have been turning for weeks up here and the last few nights have gone down into the fotties. It’s 59 right now on a gorgeous day; watched fireworks last night (250th anniversary of English nabob signing land grants up here that turned into colonial settlements and then towns, like this one.) They light them off the pier, directly diagonal from our front door, about two-hundred yahds. Quite a show, too.
The New South Wales cops are photographing every car they pass on the roads, whether the owners are doing anything illegal or not to create a searchable database. Pretty Orwellian.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/nsw-police-photographing-numberplates-and-storing-data/4944632
I’ve never seen a drive up ATM here, we have plenty in shopping centres and the outside walls of banks. We still have plenty of bank branches, they closed heaps of them 20-25 years ago but seem to have slowed down a bit now. My bank, the ANZ even admitted they’d closed too many. Banking used to soak up quite a few school leavers entering the workforce, that doesn’t happen much now. I haven’t had a cheque account for 20-25 years, they’re still around, but many people do EFT or credit card now.
I have yet to see anybody at McDonald’s make any statement about automating at all, let alone at what price they would do so.
There are already some McDonald’s that are using call centers to handle taking the orders at drive throughs. Some of the local Jack-in-the-Boxes are using automated cashiers at peak times. Walk up, pick your order, use credit/debit to pay.
That’s what I do now.
After 10 years in Germany of hardly anyone accepting credit cards for anything (they are sensitive to the surcharge don’t ‘cha know) I vowed when I returned that I would pay even for my McDonald’s with a credit card. And I do. Nearly all the fast food joints around here have the you-swipe-it hardware right in front of me, just begging for me to use it. Gotta love the US of A. What’s cash? Who needs an ATM?
…and why are there instructions in Braille at drive-through ATM’s?
Because the same keypad is used for both drive up and walk up machines. Only stocking one part instead of two.
In the federal election we had on the weekend NSW elected a libertarian from a minor party to the senate. He wants to allow people here to bear arms. Unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-09/nsw-sends-liberal-democrat-to-senate/4945080
Gotta love the US of A. What’s cash? Who needs an ATM?
Until the credit cards and ATM cards don’t work anymore as almost happened in 2008.
I’ve been paying cash for small bills (under $30) for quite a while, unless I want to force a receipt. There’s no benefit to me in paying by credit as I’m not in a loyalty programme and I have the cash. For larger bills I prefer credit unless the payee really wants cash or direct deposit in to their account.
The thing that surprised me in the US in 2003 was that *no one* checked the signature when I paid by card (but they wanted to check my drivers licence when buying grog, even though I was 45 at the time.)
The New South Wales cops are photographing every car they pass on the roads, whether the owners are doing anything illegal or not to create a searchable database. Pretty Orwellian.
Sugar Land is photographing all license plates on 5 roads now plus several patrol cars have the license plate readers also. They credit this with arresting several deadbeats now.
I do not have a minimum for charging anymore. We used to observe around $15 to $20, but after running to an ATM at least twice a week in Germany, I want to stop chasing my buns around town for currency altogether. I cannot remember the last time I went to an ATM. Occasionally, I get $20 over at Aldi—which they do without charge (they only accept debit cards)—and with that, I just never run out of cash, because I seldom ever need it.
The jetstream has been way up in Canada for almost the whole summer. Very unusual for it to remain there this late in the season. New England and the East Coast down to about Georgia, keeps getting dips of comfort as the jetstream wags its eastern tail, and another one is headed their way on Thursday, but except for one week-long stretch about a month ago, the Midwest has been hot and humid—just like the last 3 summers—up to the Canada border.
Even so, this cannot keep up, as the environment is already cooling as nights moderate. Nevertheless, I have the central air on, and I usually do not do that unless the house gets up over 79°F/27°C. Although we have not had the peak temps of well over 100° that we got the last couple of years, the relentless uncomfortable heat index makes staying inside a pleasure, and being outside a battle to stay hydrated.