The Last Blog Post - "Don't Be Safe"

This is a tough one to write, for emotional, physical, and coordination reasons....
A few months ago, I started having problems driving, walking, and accomplishing basic tasks.  After a quick trip to the ER,I was diagnosed with some nasty brain tumors.
So this is it, folks.....
Starting this website has been one of the best decisions I've ever made.  I't's gotten me politically involved, and has earned me friends and readers all over the world.
Im' gonna try really hard not go get too maudlin or sentimental here....

For the last 20 years or so, I've been responsible for running my company's morning Production Meeting.  I never figured out why I was the one to do it.   Perhaps it's because I'm the guy who hates meetings the most, and I was always able to keep the thing moving along at a decent pace.

Several years ago, some of our owners went to a trade show that featured some presenters from Disney.
The Disney people said that their #1 priority was to "Be Safe".
Well, that's bullshit.
Their #1 priority is to bring happiness to families everywhere" (you can look it up -- it's in their mission statement).
You don't dress a teenager up like Tinkerbell and zipline her from Cindederella's Castle to the top of The Matterhorn every night if your #1 priority is to be safe.
That's what you do if you want to be awesome.
Anyway,because of the report on the Disney speakers,  I got into a rut of saying "Be Safe" at the end of every meeting  It was our Amen,our dismissal, and our Benediction.  .  If I could take a "Do Over" on anything I've done at work in the last few years, it would be to come up with another closing line to use at the end of that meeting.

People once told my father that if he ever started growing and irrigating rice on his farm, it would poison the land.  Because of his decision to go ahead with a new rice  crop instead of cotton and sobybeans, I got to see The Colisseum in Rome.  I got to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Because Darrell Cooper Sr decided to have some "Entrepreneurial Seizures", I've had the glorious privilege of seeing the sun come up twice on the same day while flying over the Great Wall Of China.
So what should I have said for the last 20 years?
How about "Be Wise?"  "Be Cautious"?
I dunno.
But I'm now working with a very short clock, so to speak.  If I fit into the statistical norms, I've got anywhere from 15 to 18 months to be around.   I know that the first time I sat down with my daughter at a Blackjack table and saw her split 10's against a dealer Ace, that she would do just fine.  She was going to be ok.  She was going to terrify me, but she wasn't going to be held back by anything or anybody.
She will never (in TS Eliot
's phrase)  measure out her life with coffee spoons.  She's going to live it up to 11 every chance she gets.
So please don't ever, ever waste another minute of your wonderful life with "being safe"Take risks.
 Destroy your perrectly laid-out shop and put in a Specialty Department. (Hello Ray!!) Get involved in politics and put Mary Kelleher to work disrupting the most corrupt institution in Fort Worth  .Raise Hell.  Find some activists to associate with, and bang some pots and pans together in the street.  WIN the Fort Worth Gay Pride parade  and then wake up the nest morning to staff your booth at a gun rights show.  I promise you that if you ever get brain tumors everyone of of those beautiful people you meet will come see you in the hospital.
And yes, I'm very much aware that I'm one of the few people I know who has had to use a helicopter pilot as a designated driver.
That's part of the package.  (Yeah, there probably is some middle ground between getting drunk enough to see dead people and "Being safe".)
I'm writing this post with a head full of creepy-crawlies, and sorry for the lack of spelling, grammar, and coherence.
But folk, please don't ever, ever, ever waste your time in being too safe.
You know that idea you have of a better way to fix broken windshields?  Do it.  Start that business.  That book you've always wanted to write?  Those earrings you want to start designing to sell online?
Do it now.  Yeah, people might laugh.  Who cares?  There will always be people willing to wait in line to laugh at your ambitions.  Let them be the ones to be safe.
Whether you know it or not, you too, are working with a short clock.
If you can to one thing right now for me or for yourself, don't be safe.
It's been real.
Don't be safe.

Barack is going to Ohio to Increase Our Manufacturing Capacity!!!

You may not have read about it because he wasn't accompanied with his usual wave of unemployment, disaster, debt and racial discord, but Barack recently visited Ohio.

Here's an article that the good folks at Industry Week recently sent me.

President Obama will be in Cleveland, Ohio, today to talk about his plan to strengthen U.S. manufacturing by investing in new technology

.O, God, God almightty help us all...  Most of Barack's "investments" have been in green energy, America's Community Colleges, Solyndra, anti-global warmingscams, infrastructure, canisters of Leprechaun farts, sustainables, and other failed schemes.  

We've got the smallest percentage of our workforce employed than we have in a long, long time, and we're in big trouble. Hillary and Jeb Bush are warming up offstage.  This is sooo...scary.  

H CRAP!!! 

He's got his shirt sleeves rolled up.  that means he's ready to work.  And we all know what happens when he does that...

Manufacturers are adding jobs at the fastest rate in decades with nearly 900,000 new positions created in the last five years. Factory production is up by a third since the recession and factories across the U.S. are experiencing growth not seen since the 90s.

This fool has never even managed a Taco Bell Night Shift....

The new White House and Commerce Department plan looks to take advantage of the latest surge with a series of initiatives including:

Competitions

The Department of Defense is launching a competition for leading manufacturers, universities, and non-profits....

Hey, how would you describe Barack's donor base?  Let's start with universities and non-profits....

 to form a new manufacturing hub focused on revolutionary fibers and textiles technologies. The $75 million federal investment will be matched by more than $75 million of private sector resources.  These private sector resources" are often called "campaign contributions" in the real world.  

Also, there will be $320 million competition to strengthen small manufacturers. Non-profits in 12 states will compete for $158 million in Federal funds matched by $158 million or more in private investment over five years to provide technology and engineering expertise to small manufacturers through the latest round of competitions to strengthen the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP)’s network of centers in these states.

Supply Chain Innovation

A new White House and Commerce Department Report describes a dense network of small manufacturers that make up the backbone of America’s supply chains, contributing more than 40% of all manufacturing employment. However, even as their share of U.S. manufacturing employment grows, small firms continue to face stiff challenges in innovation. As the new report finds:

Small manufacturers are playing an increasingly important role in U.S. supply chains and the manufacturing sector overall. Today, small manufacturers employ 42% - or nearly half of all U.S. manufacturing workers - up ten percentage points from their share in the 1980s. 

Dense networks of these small manufacturers are vital to the process of taking a product from concept to market, and the exchange of manufacturing know-how across suppliers is essential for the diffusion of the new product ideas and innovative processes that give U.S. manufacturing its cutting edge.

However, because of the barriers they face, small manufacturers often lag behind their larger peers in adopting critical new technologies. 

Ok, class, raise your hands if you've heard this before....

"Most of our job growth comes from small businesses."  

Heard it before?  

Of course you have.  It's one of those obvious factoids that government gnomes and their media friends love to repeat.  

It's like saying "Most of the growth in forests comes from trees that aren't grown yet."  But they say it like it's brilliant.  Wisdom.  Waaaaay smart. 

For example, a recent survey found that fewer than 60% of small manufacturers were experimenting in any way with 3-D printing, a potentially transformative technology that is especially beneficial for small companies due to its flexibility. In contrast, over 75% of large firms were using the technology.

The White House Supply Chain Innovation Initiative will focus on public-private partnerships and new federal efforts to strengthen U.S. manufacturing overall by closing this gap.

The event will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live.

God helps us all.  

Barack has come up with another public-private partnership.  

Any time you hear public-private partnership, cover up your wallet, lock your purse in the trunk, and bury the family silver in your back yard.  

The risks are going to be public, and any profits will be privatized.  

I'm sorry for repeating that cliche, but as long as "public-private partnership"is polling well with idiots,Democrats, I've got to repeat it..

Ok, here's my point....

American manufacturing will regain it's place at #1 in the world when we do the following:

1. Reassure investors, manufacturers, and other risk-takers that our government isn't going to confiscate and redistribute any profits.  

2.  Eliminate the risk of hiring someone.  If I hire someone to unload shipping containers, all I want is to have my containers unloaded.  I don't want to take on a dependent.  I don't want to be sued if he's black or brown, and I decide to stop purchasing his labor.  I don't want Nancy Pelosi to dictate what I have to pay him to unload my containers.

4.  And finally, it doesn't matter if I'm getting raw material from Canada, Mexico, Cuba, South Africa, or Kenya, it should all come into the country at the same tariff rate.  We have tens of thousands of government Munchkins earning great salaries slapping tariffs and quota restrictions on imported stuff.  All of those people should be propped against a wall and shot.  

5.  We gotta end our public school system, then bulldoze every public school, plow salt into the ground so nothing can every grow there again, and try something different.  

6.  Imagine interviewing high school graduates day after day after day, who can't read a tape measure, fill out an application, or answer a simple question.  

Shit, folks, it ain't working any more. It was good while it lasted.  End it.  Let's do something different.    

On Firing Drunk Temps

The City Of Fort Worth's Human Relations Commission sent me a letter a few days ago.

It marked the end of a long, tiresome, wasteful process that hit on employment law, civil rights, racism, ageism, skinism, alcoholism, paternalism, bureaucracies, and whether or not I should have the right to purchase the labor of whoever I dang well please. 

It also touches on whether I should be able to stop purchasing someone's labor when it suits me.

I've clipped (and redacted) various parts of the letter so as to protect the guilty. 

Here's the cast of characters:

1)  The Charging Party - an employee that a temp service sent us back in freakin' June.  He showed up around 8:00 a.m., and we sent him back before 9:00 a.m.  (It's not unusual for me to send temps back to Their Mother Ship before their shift has ended, BTW.  We're nice about it, we're apologetic, and we wish them best of luck in all future endeavors.  But there's a good reason that some of those folks don't work for NASA or the Nobel Prize Committee.)  The Charging Party is the guy who sued us for discrimination. 

2)  The Temp Service - many employers now use temp or personnel services to screen their potential employees for 3 months before hiring them.  The temp services generally charge twice what the employee gets paid.  Yeah, twice.  But it's worth it to avoid paying Unemployment Compensation, or risk paying big bucks in an Unlawful Discharge lawsuit.  Some temps don't last but a few days, and there's a huge paperwork cost associated with bringing on a new employee, so after 3 months you have a better idea if the employee will work out or not.  Until three months have passed, the temp employee works for the Temp Service, and not for the facility where he is actually doing work. 

3)  Randy Morales - he doesn't exist. 

4)  The White Trainer who was supposedly drunk - he doesn't exist either, despite your sneaking suspicion that he is me. 

5)  The Respondent - my employer, Jukt Micronics.  The organization that had to respond to, deal with, and be burdened by this mess. 

6)  The Assistant Human Resources Director - the lady who is our Assistant Human Resources Director. 

Another group was kept busy determining our percentages of Black, Latino, Asian and White employees.  Then they had to calculate our ratio of employees older and younger than 54.  Try doing that with 700 people.  More on that later....

That's all you need to know to enjoy the following.    Here's part of the letter. 

Sorry for blacking out a lot of the pertinent case numbers, but I don't want the emissions people, the water inspectors, OSHA, or the noise abatement teams of Fort Worth to start swarming me because I picked on one of their bureaucracies. 

Please note that this process started on June 5th, and we got the resolution letter on December 2nd. 
God help the USA if other nations ever discover free market economics.

I gotta make a correction to that 2nd paragraph.  "The Charging Party" wasn't accused of just drinking on the job.  He was freakin' hammered.  Gapped.  Faced.  Blotto.  Some of our notorious alcoholics, guys who spend their weekends with faint traces of blood in their alcohol, they were asking us to send this guy away. 

At this point, if you've been paying attention, you're wondering why I'm involved in this at all, right?  The guy didn't even work for me !!! 

It seems that if you hire a temp employee, then send him away, he can still claim discrimination against you based on "his Race, Black, and his Age", to use the awkward phrase of the City Of Fort Worth's Human Relations Division.  I didn't know that until June. 

The letter refers to a White man who was drinking but was not disciplined or discharged.  It wasn't me.  Swear to God, it wasn't me. 

Back to the letter....

Ok, here's how this thing went down.  Ordinarily when a temp isn't working out, I just tell him that we don't need his services any more, and that he can clock out and go home.  Then I call the temp service and tell them to never, ever send that guy back to us. 

But when the temp is drunker than the Quality Control department at Jack Daniels?  We call the temp service manager in to deal with it. 

When they're that drunk, we let THEM send the dude home.  The Temp Service Manager came in, told the guy he couldn't work drunk, and sent him home. 

Regarding the last sentence in the letter, the one about Randy Morales....  there is no one in our company named Randy Morales.  We've never had a foreman named Randy Morales.  But if anyone named Randy Morales had been around, he would've smelled alcohol on this guy. 

So it was the trainer who smelled of alcohol, but just in case it was the temp smelled of alcohol it was because of his mouthwash and toothpaste.  Lordy. 

Here's a quick summary. 

The drunk temp demanded that the Personnel Service give him a drug and alcohol test.  They refused.  So he went to JPS (John Peter Smith Hospital) in Fort Worth and asked them to give him an alcohol test. 

John Peter Smith is our county hospital.  They treat a lot of low-income, indigent patients, and do a great job of it. 
But you can go in there with an amputated arm and you will still wait for a long, long time before getting treatment. 
This guy got sent home by the temp service, was denied a drug/alcohol test, drove to JPS, waited long enough for small mammals to evolve, and was still feeling a "Buzz".   It had to be hours and hours later!!

To paraphrase Meg Ryan, "I'll have what he's drinking". 

Here comes the part that should make you angry:

Here's why I hope you're angry. 

1)  Yeah, we hire lots of older people.  And we hire Black, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian, Mexican, Puerto Rican, El Salvadoran, Laotian, and Mississippi Rednecks.  My shop looks like the United Freakin' Nations.  180 people from...Earth. 
But our office employees had to drop everything else and do some racist nose-counting, just like we were separating the Hutus from the Tutsis, and report our racial makeup to the Fort Worth Freakin' Human Relations Commission. 

2)  The guy doesn't even work for me. 

3)  The process took 6 months. 

4)  We're paying the government to investigate this stuff. 
If you get tired of purchasing burgers from McDonald's and decide to purchase burgers from Wendy's, you don't have to do a verbal warning, a written warning, a 3-day suspension, and then formally terminate McDonald's.  You can just switch.  For reasons that I'll never understand, labor doesn't work that way, and most of us live diminished lives because of it. 

Our employers are expected to withhold and pay our taxes, provide our healthcare, take care of child support payments, our retirement, and our 40 acres and our mule.   Employment Law creates a huge burden for companies, increases the cost of goods without providing a benefit, and creates massive HR Departments which cost a fortune, but that add no value to the products the companies were founded to produce.

Think of how much easier it would be for you to go work someplace else if it weren't so much like changing plantations in 1845.   

5)  Finally, this process, designed to ensure racial fairness, often creates racists. 

Yeah.  It creates racists. 

I employ people from all over the world.  Most of them are awesome, personally and professionally. 

But will I now hesitate to hire someone who is of a different race, or of an advanced age?  Someone who could sue me if it doesn't work out? 

You tell me. 

Oh yeah, here's the end of the letter.  We weren't guilty of anything. 

There are days when I want to resign and turn the whole thing over to Randy Morales. 
 

Yes, I'm still alive

Yes, I'm still alive. 
Working 75-hour weeks. 
I'm "temporary" manager of our wood shop. 
I have 143 employees, on two shifts. 
I will be back to regularly scheduled ranting and blogging as soon as we find a permanent wood shop manager. 

In the meantime, we're building circular bakery fixtures and displays like this one:

 

Our government is like a bad factory

Next week I'll be going to Indiana. 

My employer purchased a percentage of a company up there.  It's an 8 million dollar per year operation that somehow managed to lose 3 million dollars. 

Yeah.  3 million. 

How in the hell can that happen?

Well, here are the basic reasons....

1) The old owners were not present.  "Everyone" was supposed to own the factory.  Therefore, nobody owned it.  The inmates were running the asylum. 

2) There were no incentives to keep costs down.  They were buying things from buddies and family.  (And they're still trying to, which I will end about one hour after walking in the door.)   

3) The place has a strong union mentality.  One co-worker of mine went up there to help out for a few weeks, and he swears that they weren't going to ship $300,000.00 worth of products because they had run out of #8 machine screws.  He drove down to Home Depot and bought some freakin' machine screws, and the orders shipped on time. 

4) Everyone was getting raises like clockwork, profitability and performance be damned. 

Those are the big reasons why the factory was losing money.  We almost have the place sorted out, but there's still a lot of work to do.

Does that factory remind you of another organization?  It should.   

Here are the reasons government doesn't work. 

1) Nobody owns the government.  "Everyone" is supposed to own it.  Therefore nobody owns it.  The inmates get to run the asylum. 

2) There are no incentives to keep costs down.  Bureaucrats are actually incentivized to create bigger budgets and hire more and more people. Therefore, their pay scale goes up. 

3) Government has the strongest union mentality in our nation.  Examples abound. 

4) Everyone working in government can probably tell you, plus or minus a few percentage points, how much they'll be earning five years from now, efficiency and performance be damned. 

That's all I got.  Hope you've had a good weekend !! 

 

I love this picture

I wish I could say that we built these bread racks at my employer, Jukt Micronics.  But that's not how we make our wire front guards. 

Awesome comparison, don't you think??

 

Let's Protect Canadian Cheese !!

I've been going through some old stuff that I've saved for a few months and came across this gem of an essay that run in Industry Week a while back. 
The United States sugar industry has been protected (for various, ever-changing reasons) since the James Madison administration in 1816. 
Remember that when you get to the part about artisan Canadian cheese-makers ! 

This is good stuff.  From an economist named Brian Beaulieau. 

Canada and the European Union are on track to ratify a free-trade deal in 2015. Leaders in both countries expect the deal to be approved without a lot of resistance. The deal, called CETA, would eliminate tariffs on goods and provide for greater access of services both ways across the Atlantic. Some regulatory dismantling would also occur. Free trade with less regulation in Canada and the EU – that's great news if you are a cheerleader for the free market.

The estimate is that this deal would increase the current EU-Canada trade volume of €80 billion (aprox $109 billion) a year by 23%. Consummation of CETA would also mean that Canada is the only Group of Eight nation to have preferential access to the US and Europe, the two biggest consumer markets in theworld.

The European Commission estimates that up to a quarter of the economic benefits will come from eliminating regulatory barriers to trade. Reducing barriers sounds like a terrible idea to protectionists or to uncompetitive industries, but it fosters competition, efficiencies, and in the end, results in economic gains for consumers.

There's an old joke that I love that goes "If you don't go to other peoples' funerals, they won't go to yours." 
But seriously.....  If your citizens aren't allowed to buy other countries' goods and services, those countries aren't going to buy yours.  Protectionists just don't get it. 

There are those who would prefer that the protective barriers would continue. Canada's cheese industry is one such group. They state that Canada will lose its small, artisan local cheese makers as Europe's name-brand makers have easy access to their market. This is exactly the protectionist versus free market point. These small Canada cheese makers are not seeing the potential of access to a huge market; they fear that superior goods will take away market share.

The free market answer is to improve your quality and marketing and compete on a larger stage. If the local cheese makers truly produce an inferior product, why should they be protected from those who are better at their trade? The reality is most will probably improve their process, product and positioning, and in doing so be better entities because of this. That's the beauty of the free-market system; it pushes participants to new heights.

Go here to read about the Florida's Fanjul family and their (protected) sugar empire.  God has more competition than they do. 

The worst thing you'll see today - The horror....The horror....

Henry Farrish, my friend since high school, does home repair and maintenance. 

He knows that I love the "What's The Weirdest Thing You've Seen At Work?" conversation starter. 

I've been asking that question for twenty years. 

It might be time to retire the trophy. 

A few days ago, Henry got a call at 1:30 a.m. Somebody's toilet was flooding.  The guy sounded drunk. 

Henry got to the guy's house and checked out the situation. 

(The next few sentences are pure speculation.)

The man was incredibly drunk. 

From the looks of the bathroom and the toilet, the old guy had been puking.  Throwing his guts up.  And something else.  Maybe he passed out. 

When he got sober enough to clean up the place, the toilet overflowed. 

(End of speculation.) 

Henry shut off the water and disassembled the crapper. 

What he found in the toilet will haunt him the rest of his life. 

Click here to see. 




 

The Libertarian View Of Going On Strike

IMHO, the Libertarian view of organized striking is as follows....

Anyone selling their labor and services should be free to organize, unionize, picket and strike. 

Anyone purchasing labor and services should be free to fire, terminate, retrain and replace. 

You do it all the time when you pick Burger King over McDonald's.  

No labor relations board is necessary.

You're welcome. 

In Praise Of Planet-Warming, Highway-Congesting, Port-Clogging Shipping And Freight !!

I might stop putting original content on this site, and start scraping Don Boudreaux's and Russ Roberts' Café Hayek posts every day.  Just out of awe.  And maybe laziness. 
As long as those two are alive, I really don't have much to say about anything but dachshunds. 

Here's a recent post that Boudreaux put together about shipping and freight:

The Quotation Of The Day is from page 2 of Rose George’s 2013 Ninety Percent of Everything: Inside Shipping, The Invisible Industry That Puts Clothes On Your Back, Gas In Your Car, and Food On Your Plate:

But who looks behind a television now and sees the ship that brought it?  Who cares about the man who steered your breakfast cereal through winter storms?  How ironic that the more ships have grown in size, the less space they now take up in our imagination.

It is one of the most historically unique and amazing features of life in modern market economies: almost everything that each of us daily consumes – stuff mundane to us, such as toothpaste, laundry detergent, underwear, houses with solid floors, walls, and roofs, motor transportation, blueberries and pineapple year-round in Boston and Berlin – is stuff that no one person knows how to make.  It’s not just that you didn’t make and don’t know how to make, say, the drip-coffee maker that you used this morning to brew your cup of coffee.  No one knows how to make that coffee maker.  And nor is all of the knowledge necessary to make that coffee maker, and to get it at reasonably cost into your kitchen, available in any one place or to any one self-consciously cooperating group of minds.

Of course, there is an organization of people – working, say, for a company called Krups – in which there exists the knowledge of how to assemble various component parts – wires, metal, glass carafes, heating elements, and so on – into a coffee maker.  But Krups (as is the case with the likes of Braun, and Cuisinart, and Black & Decker) only does the final assembly (and, perhaps, had a creative idea or two for just how to assemble component parts together into an unusually good coffee maker).

But tap into all of the knowledge in all of the brains of all of the people who have ever worked for Krups and you’ll not get one one-billionth of all the knowledge that is necessary to transforms all of the materials that are ‘in’ your coffee maker from their raw stage and into the machine that now sits patiently on your kitchen counter, ready to allow you to brew more delicious coffee within minutes, with no sweat or danger, and with just a few small and minor muscle movements on your part.

     ****************************************

One day I'm going to write an illustrated post about how my employer makes products as fundamentally ridiculous as fruitstands, but showing how the process now involves people in four continents. 

I've been wanting to write this "I, Fruitstand" post for years. 

But, to Dr. Boudreaux's point, I'm around them every day. 

It doesn't fascinate me that the metal comes from Mexico just how we want it, and that the wood comes from the Appalachians and the casters from China and the plastic bumper from the Philippines, or wherever.  We take this process for granted, simply because it works. 

 

Our First ObamaCare Meeting

My employer, known on this site as Jukt Micronics, had its first real ObamaCare meetings today. 

Fun, fun, fun.  Lots of Democrats, in Nancy Pelosi's immortal phrase, found out "what's in the bill". 

The good parts, in order.....

1) The rep from the insurance company explained that for the 1st time since 1984, the year of Jukt Micronics' founding, our employees would have to pay for part of their insurance coverage.  Up until The Year Of Obama 2013, we've had 100% of our coverage paid by Jukt Micronics.  That pissed 'em off. 

2) Then they explained that the government (i.e. - The White House) had decided to ignore the law of the land and push back the employer mandate to provide coverage, but did NOT push back the individual mandate to purchase coverage.  The employer mandate doesn't kick in until January 2014.  That pissed 'em off. 

3) Then the poor bastards from the insurance company had to explain that if you didn't purchase their product (or that of a competitor), you had to pay a $95.00 fine, or pay 1% of your income to Obama at tax time.  ($95.00 or 1%.  Whichever is greater.)  And the 1% penalty increases rapidly over the next few years.  That pissed 'em off. 

4) I couldn't help myself.  I asked for some clarification on the pre-existing conditions bidness, the part where insurers can't turn anyone away, and where individuals can sign up for insurance in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, which negates the purpose of insurance.  That pissed 'em off (the insurance reps, not the dumbass Democrats). 

5) They explained that the pre-existing conditions bidness doesn't kick in until January of 2015.  That pissed 'em off. 

You get what you vote for.  Unless, of course, it turns out to be very unpopular.  Then, you get what you voted for, but not until after the November 2014 election cycle. 

On the danger to the U.S. from cheap foreign.....robots

Pardon me while I geek out for a moment. 

Here's the BMW F30 3-Series production video.  Truly amazing. 

Because of spending about a quarter million dollars with Peterbilt a few months ago, I got to tour their mega-factory about 45 miles north of Fort Worth in Denton, TX. 

What this video doesn't properly show is how little inventory of parts there likely is on the BMW factory floor.  Nobody wants to pay for a 3-month supply of parts.  You have to pay for the space that the parts require, money that could be invested elsewhere is tied up in the parts, etc etc etc.  Auto and truck makers save themselves (and therefore you) a staggering amount of money by getting the parts just in time.   The Peterbilt factory, for instance, seemed to have no more than an hour's worth of tires at any given moment. 

Another thing the video doesn't reveal: there are probably different models going down that assembly line.  The robots don't care.  The suppliers all have their parts and components arriving in the correct order.  God, I love this stuff!!! 

But there are always Luddites who don't appreciate the glory of something like this, that the time and money saved by these robots can be applied to other purchases and desires.  Saving the last BetaMax factory (to save the jobs there) doesn't make sense.  Wait a couple of years, and saving the last VHS factory (to save the jobs there) doesn't make sense either.

Here's one idjit Youtube commenter, typical of the tribe:

james alphajet 1 month ago

this robotisation is a shame to the face of human future. thousands of people lost their jobs and millions were spent to fit machines into these transformers factories.
At the end the consumer pays the same and his neighbour lost his job!!

James doesn't understand that what was once the toy of the top .0001% is now available to even the lowest-paid American worker.  Yes, in America, even commoners drive these "horseless carriages". 

Here's Don Boudreaux, chiming in on the video:

Oh, to any of you who watch this video and lament the fact that so very much of the work that was once done by humans is now done by robots, I’ve a question for you: if a bizarre meteorological event occurs that causes millions of brand-new automobiles – indistinguishable in quality, comfort, and performance from the 2014 models now rolling off of the assembly lines at BMW, Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, etc. – to rain down safely into everyone’s driveways and parking spaces, would people, as a result, be made richer or poorer?

Here's The Whited Sepulchre, kicking it up to the next level:

Oh, to any of you who watch a random video of South Korean laborers manufacturing your pants and shoes and water hoses, work that was once done by Americans, I've a question for you: if a bizarre meterological event occurs that causes millions of brand-new pants and shoes and water hoses (all of excellent quality) to rain down safely into everyone's homes, would people in the USA, as a result, be made richer or poorer? 

Spank. 
It's called the Law Of Comparative Advantage.  Nations (but not many consumers who are given a choice) ignore it regularly. 

CSA 2010 - Large Carriers vs. Small Carriers

The trucking industry has recently been plagued by a new set of government regulations called CSA 2010.  (Compliance, Safety, and Accountability)

The purpose of CSA 2010 is to give large carriers an advantage over small carriers, to act as a classic "barrier to entry" for any start-ups that might consider getting into trucking, and to create jobs in the Democrat Party. 
The paperwork requirements are astounding. 
Go here to get an idea of what is involved.  Any time they use the word "stakeholder", what they generally mean is "victim". 

The chart below was put out by Commercial Carrier Journal.  Good stuff, good stuff. 

The scores you see are achieved by maintaining perfect paperwork, perfect (new) vehicles and trailers, and perfect driver logs.  It's going to force any older rigs off the road.  I've not had time to research who all lobbied for this mess, but I suspect my friends at Peterbilt, Mack, and International are in there. 

Heck, if I didn't know better, I'd think that large carriers make huge contributions to politicians and that small carriers don't. 

Our employees just found out "what's in the bill"

Joy.  Bliss. 

About 500 employees at my workplace, Jukt Micronics, recently found out "what's in the bill" (to quote Nancy Pelosi).
 


This questionnaire went out to each shop, just to kinda get a feel for how the employees felt about things. 

Here's how the thing was worded:

**************************

Starting in 2014, the US government is enacting a law which requires every person to have health insurance or be charged an additional tax.  As a requirement of this law, Jukt Micronics will be providing a plan that you may join.  We need to get an idea of how many employees might be interested in this coverage.  there will be a cost to us as employees with these options. 

* Option 1:  Pay approximately $1,800.00 per year (this breaks down to $150.00 per month or $34.00 per week) for company-provided health care coverage with an estimated deductible of $3,000.00 per individual.

* Option 2: Pay a government fine or tax of $95.00 for the first year or 1% of your annual income, whichever is greater.  (If you made $18,000.00 in box 2 of your W-2 last year, 1% of $180 - just move the decimal point over two places.) 

*Option 3: Obtain insurance coverage through the individual market, i.e. Blue Cross, Aetna, or some other "family plan". 

**************************

Work kinda ground to a halt as everyone digested this. 

But let's say you're a low-income worker, making $8.50 per hour.  You're going to pay the fine.  Every time.  They can't turn away pre-existing conditions.  If you get cancer or if you accidentally saw your leg off, you can sign up for insurance in the ambulance (or in my case, the helicopter) on the way to the hospital.  The damn fools wrote it where insurance companies can't turn away anyone with a pre-existing condition. 

Ok, how about high-income workers? 

Same thing.  The only people who will pay $1,800.00 per year with a $3,000.00 deductible are those with incomes higher than $180,000.00
Otherwise, they're better off paying the fine.  (Yeah, the fines go up each year after 2014, but there's no penalty for getting a good deal the first year!!)
They can't turn anyone away from insurance coverage, so signing up for it after you've gotten sick seems to be the only rational response to the law.
As I wrote multiple times during the debates about this madness, no one will stay in the business of insuring the houses that have already caught on fire, but that's what The Teleprompter Jesus has asked insurance companies to do.

As our cleaning guy said, "This thing kinda sounds like slavery." 

I'll be writing more (with some input from our H.R. department) as the questionnaires come in. 

Why free markets are better than quotas for achieving "diversity"

I have a co-worker/friend at Jukt Micronics that I'm going to call "Jim". 
Jim is gay. 
He's not political about it, he doesn't go to the bars, and he doesn't crusade. It doesn't matter either way, and long-time readers of this site know that I don't care.
 
Jim just got one heck of a promotion.  He's been elevated into the stratosphere of the Jukt Micronics sales department where he'll be taking care of what'll soon be Canada's #1 retailer, if it isn't already.

Jim wasn't given this job to fill a quota, or to show off how "diverse" we are.  Jim did a heck of a job when he was running Customer Service, and if we hadn't hired and promoted him, someone else would've hired him and possibly made a lot of money with him selling to Canada's #1 retailer.

Our #1 salesperson is usually a woman named....  Well, I dare not speak it.   We all fear her.  Competitors won't hire her, because they're afraid she'd take over.  One doesn't achieve the highest sales total every year by merely being quota-filler.  She has the highest sales by making heroic personal sacrifices, taking care of bidness, and squashing everyone else like a bug.   

Our plastic, wood and metal shop Production Managers are Black, Hispanic, and Black, respectively.  Dig down a little deeper and you'll find a Cambodian clear plastic supervisor, a Cambodian design supervisor, a Serbian wire shop supervisor, and another gaggle of bosses who all seem to be from the same neighborhood in Mexico.  My boss, the Operations V.P., is from Juarez. 

Our meetings sometimes look like the United Nations' break room.  Nobody planned it, nobody even wanted it.  The owners just started going for the best people they could afford, and that's what happened.

Compare my workplace to this....  It's from an article in City Journal by Heather MacDonald called "Multiculti U", about the insane expenses associated with "diversity" programs in the California college system.  Hit this link to read the whole thing. 

In September 2012, for instance, as the university system faced the threat of another $250 million in state funding cuts on top of the $1 billion lost since 2007, UC San Diego hired its first vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion. This new diversocrat would pull in a starting salary of $250,000, plus a relocation allowance of $60,000, a temporary housing allowance of $13,500, and the reimbursement of all moving expenses. (A pricey but appropriately “diverse” female-owned executive search firm had found this latest diversity accretion.) In May 2011, UCLA named a professional bureaucrat with a master’s degree in student-affairs administration as its first assistant dean for “campus climate,” tasked with “maintaining the campus as a safe, welcoming, respectful place,” in the words of UCLA’s assistant vice chancellor and dean of students. In December 2010, UC San Francisco appointed its first vice chancellor of diversity and outreach—with a starting salary of $270,000—to create a “diverse and inclusive environment,” announced UC San Francisco chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. Each of these new posts is wildly redundant with the armies of diversity functionaries already larding UC’s bloated bureaucracy.

Good God in heaven, what a mess. 

Full disclosure:  Jukt Micronics isn't remotely "normal".  It's an insane place to work.  Hours are long.  It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter.  The first time I went to lunch with a plant manager, he warned me that "we are a screaming company".  And yet we've accidentally achieved a level of diversity that other places can't even dream of, and it didn't cost us a dime.  We made money doing it!!!   

Competition for employees, for raw materials, and for ideas has a way of cleansing and purifying things.  What if we had decided early on to not hire any ethnic or social minorities?  Who would it have hurt more, Jukt Micronics or the potential employees that we would've unwisely declined to hire?  I think it would've killed us. 

Read the entire Heather MacDonald piece if you get a chance.  And then try to decide which organization has the best approach to achieving diversity: California's college system, or a bunch of Texans who wanted to make the best display fixtures for the best price.

And congratulations, Jim!   

Globalization - Whose Wife Will She Be In The Resurrection?

This is from the Gospel Of Luke, Chapter 20:27 

Now some Sadducees, who claim there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no child, the man should marry the widow and have children for his brother.  Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died childless.  Then the second.  And the third married her. In the same way, all seven died and left no children.  Finally, the woman died, too.  Now in the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be, since the seven had married her?”

It was during moments like these that Jesus would freak out and start throwing things and calling people "Sons Of Vipers" and "Whited Sepulchres".  He supposedly wanted to worry about the big questions.

Fast forward 2,000 years.   

If you are a U.S. citizen, you pay people to walk around the countryside, into our ports, ships, warehouses and trucks, and ask the following questions.....

Who made this?
Where was it made?
Who paid for it to be made? 
Did it ship assembled or unassembled?
What is it made of ?
For what purpose?

Billions of dollars are paid, or not paid, based on the answers to these questions.  There are tens of thousands of different import rates for different products and purposes.  It all depends on which lawmakers have been paid off, and if they've remained paid off.  (I'm working on an epic post about the tariff implications of X-Men Action Figures representing humans or non-humans.  True story.  It made hundreds of thousands of dollars' difference in the taxes/tariffs. Stay tuned....) 

Anyway, I work for a Texas company that hired a Cambodian to design this clothing fixture that was prototyped by a Serbian for an Italian clothing company and made in China under the oversight of a French manager for use in stores in Japan and Russia. 

It's called "Globalization".  I hope that you all are adjusting to it nicely.  Whatever you're using to read this rant, that device is affordable because of Globalization. 

When goods and services can cross national boundaries as easily as they currently cross zip codes, you will be able to knock another 10% off the price you pay for just about everything. 

So.... If you had to put a nationality on this clothing rack, what would it be?  Whose wife will it be in the Resurrection?  How long is a string?  How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?  And why does it still matter? 

Yeah. More Work Needs To Be Done. But Not By You.

One of the minor teleprompters at the White House apparently has a virus, a bad one that causes Alan Krueger to repeat himself every month. 

(BTW, this is the same Krueger of the infamous Krueger and Card minimum wage study of New Jersey restaurants that survived a mandatory wage increase.  You could use the same methodology to prove that no one has ever died from Russian roulette.  Don't interview anyone but the survivors.) 

The following is from The Weekly Standard:

When the monthly employment report came out Friday morning, Alan Krueger, Chairman of President Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, quickly commented on the White House blog.  He began with the observation that "more work remains to be done":

April 4, 2013 - "While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are helping to build an economy that creates jobs and works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007."

If the words sound familiar, there's a good reason.  After a brief respite in March, Mr. Krueger used the same two opening sentences in the April post that were used in the preceding seven Employment Situation blog posts (although to be fair, Megan Slack is credited with the November 2012 entry).

February 1, 2013 - "While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we pursue the policies needed to build an economy that works for the middle class as we continue to dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

January 4, 2013 - "While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

December 7, 2012 - "While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

November 2, 2012 - "While more work remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

October 5, 2012 - "While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to heal from the wounds inflicted by the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

September 7, 2012 - "While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression. It is critical that we continue the policies that are building an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007." 

August 3, 2012 - "While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.  It is critical that we continue the policies that build an economy that works for the middle class as we dig our way out of the deep hole that was caused by the severe recession that began in December 2007."

Please, please, please, Mr. Krueger.  Stop working. 

Food For The Machine - Anger Management Edition

We worked last Saturday (yesterday) .
One of my temp employees asked if he could leave at 9:30 in the morning.  It seems that he has to go to a series of  court-ordered "Anger Management" sessions on Saturday mornings.

Any time the government mandates that someone do something for his own good, I'm automatically skeptical, so I asked the kid if the meetings were worthwhile.  Here's what he said:

Well, you have to pay this lady $15.00, and then we sit around and smoke for about the first 30 minutes because it never starts on time.  Then this dude comes in and we sit in a circle and bullshit for a while, then somebody tells about how he was in this bar a few days ago and somebody bumped him, and how before the meetings he woulda kicked that dude's ass, but now that he's going to the meetings he didn't.
And we'll all start clappin' and shit, and some other dudes will start crying, and the counselor dude says that's really good and how we all need to keep it up.
You don't have to talk or even be awake.  The main thing is giving that lady $15.00.  

This kid could've spent most of his morning building displays for grocery stores.  Instead, he had to give his time and money to a couple of government lifers.

The more I learn about our government, the greater the likelihood that I'll be going to the Anger-Management sessions.  Sheesh.

The Tragedy Of The Commons

I used to be in charge of a warehouse in Everman, TX.  Everything that happened in the place was my fault, for better or worse.  The warehouse usually looked good.  We had good controls on the inventory there. 

We eventually outgrew it and moved into a much bigger facility in north Fort Worth. 

In the meantime, we still had the lease for the Everman facility, and kept a few dead or slow-moving products there.  And so did everyone else at other shops in the company.  Instead of a facility devoted to shipping only, it has become a storage bin for a wood shop, a metal shop, a plastics shop, and a trade show group.    

It isn't my place any longer.  It belongs to everyone in the company who has more crap than space.  It looks like hammered shit.  I would post before and after pics if I was sure it wouldn't offend co-workers. 

Here's why the place is now a dump.  And incidentally, it's why Socialism usually doesn't work very well.  This is from the Library of Economics and Liberty, on a concept called "The Tragedy Of The Commons":

In 1974 the general public got a graphic illustration of the “tragedy of the commons” in satellite photos of the earth. Pictures of northern Africa showed an irregular dark patch 390 square miles in area. Ground-level investigation revealed a fenced area inside of which there was plenty of grass. Outside, the ground cover had been devastated.


The explanation was simple. The fenced area was private property, subdivided into five portions. Each year the owners moved their animals to a new section. Fallow periods of four years gave the pastures time to recover from the grazing. The owners did this because they had an incentive to take care of their land. But no one owned the land outside the ranch. It was open to nomads and their herds. Though knowing nothing of Karl Marx, the herdsmen followed his famous advice of 1875: “To each according to his needs.” Their needs were uncontrolled and grew with the increase in the number of animals. But supply was governed by nature and decreased drastically during the drought of the early 1970s. The herds exceeded the natural “carrying capacity” of their environment, soil was compacted and eroded, and “weedy” plants, unfit for cattle consumption, replaced good plants. Many cattle died, and so did humans.

The rational explanation for such ruin was given more than 170 years ago. In 1832 William Forster Lloyd, a political economist at Oxford University, looking at the recurring devastation of common (i.e., not privately owned) pastures in England, asked: “Why are the cattle on a common so puny and stunted? Why is the common itself so bare-worn, and cropped so differently from the adjoining inclosures?”

Lloyd’s answer assumed that each human exploiter of the common was guided by self-interest. At the point when the carrying capacity of the commons was fully reached, a herdsman might ask himself, “Should I add another animal to my herd?” Because the herdsman owned his animals, the gain of so doing would come solely to him. But the loss incurred by overloading the pasture would be “commonized” among all the herdsmen. Because the privatized gain would exceed his share of the commonized loss, a self-seeking herdsman would add another animal to his herd. And another. And reasoning in the same way, so would all the other herdsmen. Ultimately, the common property would be ruined.

Even when herdsmen understand the long-run consequences of their actions, they generally are powerless to prevent such damage without some coercive means of controlling the actions of each individual. Idealists may appeal to individuals caught in such a system, asking them to let the long-term effects govern their actions. But each individual must first survive in the short run. If all decision makers were unselfish and idealistic calculators, a distribution governed by the rule “to each according to his needs” might work. But such is not our world. As James Madison said in 1788, “If men were angels, no Government would be necessary” (Federalist, no. 51). That is, if all men were angels. But in a world in which all resources are limited, a single nonangel in the commons spoils the environment for all.

Hit this link to read the whole thing.  I'm working to try to appoint ONE random person to be in charge of the place.  That's really all it takes - ownership and authority. 

People are strange

This is the desk of my freight broker/dispatcher, Linda. 
Linda is the only person who can find anything on this monstrosity. 
Linda is a "pile" person, and not a "file" person. 
She's very good at her job. 
We'd be lost without her. 
But God help us if she ever dies. 
We'll have to deal with this:

If there is any order or structure to that mess, I can't define it. 
But this is how Linda eats Skittles.  She has to sort them by color first. 

People are strange.