"Scotty" wrote in message
...

"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
news:010320060011210810% Bingo. We've been running this
argument over on rec.crafts.metalworking
for years now. There are basically no US manufacturers of
small
precision tools like lathes, mills etc left. South Bend
didn't update
its lathe design in 50 years and that wasn't because it
was perfect.

I have a mix of US and British machinery and I like it.
But it's all
old. When I go to buy a new lathe or milling machine for
my people at
work, I buy one made in Taiwan or China. They aren't as
elegant or as
well finished, but they cut metal just fine and the
accuracy is
satisfactory.


Rockwell, a local plant made small printing presses
($500,000 a piece ) . The Japs copied them and offered them
for half price. Customers told me that the USA press was
made better, more precise, & lasted longer but for half
price, if you didn't run them as hard, the Jap copy did the
job okay.

That's the way it typically works. My Taiwanese woodworking machinery isn't
up to the quality standards of the original US-built machines that were
copied, but they cost a fraction of the originals, and they work well
enough.

Max

Has the pink paint faded?


"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
My jeep has 125K and runs fine.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Mar 2006 13:26:56 -0500, "Scotty"
said:

What year? My '91 Explorer, with 110K on runs fine.

Hey, so does my '89 Acclaim. But it's only got 74K on
it.

When I got it new, they had already painted over the undercoat, which I
believe _is_ pink. Interesting that you would know this... it is "forest
green." :-)

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Scotty" wrote in message
...
Has the pink paint faded?


"Capt. JG" wrote in message
...
My jeep has 125K and runs fine.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Dave" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 1 Mar 2006 13:26:56 -0500, "Scotty"
said:

What year? My '91 Explorer, with 110K on runs fine.

Hey, so does my '89 Acclaim. But it's only got 74K on
it.

In article , Scotty
wrote:

"katy" wrote in message
...

Ditto for vehicles. Almost nobody in Australia would buy
an imported US
made vehicle in preference to a Japanese or even Korean
made one.

PDW

We had a KIA and our son drives KIA's...junk cars....give
me a GM
anyday...or even a Ford....

Both my Son and Daughter own KIAs. They couldn't afford much
more and I told them with the long warranty they were better
than a used 'Merican car. I also told them I was tired of
working on cars.

Me too. That's why I sold my Range Rover and bought a Mitsubishi. It's
why my car is a Subaru Liberty AWD that's 15 years old, 227,000 on the
clock and works just fine, thanks. If/when I retire I'll buy a Subaru
Forester and I reckon that'll see me out nicely.

PDW

In article , Scotty
wrote:

"Peter Wiley" wrote in message
news:010320060011210810% Bingo. We've been running this
argument over on rec.crafts.metalworking
for years now. There are basically no US manufacturers of
small
precision tools like lathes, mills etc left. South Bend
didn't update
its lathe design in 50 years and that wasn't because it
was perfect.

I have a mix of US and British machinery and I like it.
But it's all
old. When I go to buy a new lathe or milling machine for
my people at
work, I buy one made in Taiwan or China. They aren't as
elegant or as
well finished, but they cut metal just fine and the
accuracy is
satisfactory.


Rockwell, a local plant made small printing presses
($500,000 a piece ) . The Japs copied them and offered them
for half price. Customers told me that the USA press was
made better, more precise, & lasted longer but for half
price, if you didn't run them as hard, the Jap copy did the
job okay.

People on r.c.m keep on about how old American iron is so superior to
new Asian stuff. They're dreaming. There are exceptions - Hardinge,
Monarch etc - but the price of a new Monarch 10EE would pay for a
house.

As for South Bend - they were trying to sell a flat belt lathe bare of
tools for 3X the cost of a bigger, more powerful, geared head Asian
machine with chucks, faceplate, camlock spindle etc etc. Unless you
have more money than sense, you'd never buy one. They never modernised,
they never changed the design and they went under. So sad, too bad.

I think my US made Grob Bros 18" bandsaw is a wonderful bit of gear. I
use it all the time. But I bought it used for 1/3 the price of a new
Asian unit. If I'd had to try to find a modern one, I would have been
buying Asian.

PDW

In article et,
Maxprop wrote:

America has sold herself out by not having the foresight to change
with the changing world.

America can compete nicely with just about anyone, but some changes are
necessary. To compete with one's competitors, one must at the very least
emulate them. Better yet one should create a cost advantage for the same
quality, or create a quality advantage for the same cost. The US is capable
of doing either, or both.

Yeah, but you don't. Instead you try to either convince your market
that an inferior prodict is somehow better via clever advertising, or
you run to the Govt and try to get the competition excluded from the
market somehow when option A doesn't work.

But labor is going to have to recognize some
major realignment, along with top-heavy industry. The $30 per hour jobs are
vanishing faster than spotted owls, and until organized labor acknowledges
that low-paying jobs are better than NO jobs, the situation will exacerbate.

I don't think this works either. You are then in a race to the bottom
with labor in other countries which have much lower living standards
and costs of living.

And CEOs and other top-level execs are going to have to face the fact that
multi-million dollar annual salaries and golden parachutes aren't compatible
with the world economic markets of the day.

Yeah, I agree. The cost of screwing up a business needs to be brought
home to those responsible. At the moment it seems that the stock
holders lose, and employees lose, but senior management are immune due
to their payment structures.

My take? Neither side will give an inch before the whole thing collapses
into a ruined American economy. I hope to be sailing somewhere in the
Caribbean with my money in offshore banks by then.

I plan on being in a nice 3rd World country with a good climate.
Fortunately for me NZ is only a week's sailing away. OTOH right where I
am is pretty good, too.

PDW

Maxprop wrote:
He's not worth a debate, Dave. Binary Bill, aka MysTerry, is little more
than an uninformed agitator. You're attempting a logical discussion with
him. It's unlikely he'll do more than engage in personal attacks.


I hope not. If so, you and Dave will start thinking he's me.

DSK

I'm sure this makes you angry, since you are one of the outsiders who
bought high-priced land less than a stone's throw from Bugsquat.


Maxprop wrote:
Angry? Surely you jest. I bought when Bugsquat was cheap. It ain't any
more.


No, you bought land in a swamp that overpriced (or would be,
in the absence of aggressive marketing) five years before
you bought it.

As long as there is a flood of rich retirees with loads of
cash keep believing the advertising, there will be a demand
and prices will keep going up.



.... No one is talking generalities here, so
save the homespun economics lesson for your neighborhood kids. Bore
them, not us.


And what is the trend for local wages over the same period, hmm? What is
the overall cost of living relative to other areas?


Chicago--wages haven't come close to staying up with RE values. Income has,
for certain groups of people, however, mostly entrepreneurs.

In other words, a big shift of income distribution that
hides the decline in overall real income?


Cost of living
(exclusive of home ownership/renting) has remained relatively on par with
the rest of the country. The cost of living index is only a few tenths of a
point higher on average in Chicago than it is in South Bend, IN, with
shelter costs removed from the equation. Add shelter expense and it's a
whole different story.


Makes sense to me.



As long as it is a desirable place to live, real estate will do well. When
does that trend reverse?


I think I asked first, since you implied that RE did not always sustain an
upward trend over the long haul.


You yourself have pointed out the oil-rush towns that are
dead. Add to that the Dust Bowl towns, the gold rush towns,
waterfront in Port Royal, etc etc. Isolated examples, true,
but it doesn't help the people who paid for that land and
had it turn worthless on them.

Human natu If it happens to someone else, it's a minor
fluctuation in the overal trend. If it happens to you, it's
an economic crisis.



NC is doing relatively well--I'm well aware of that, being a land owner
there and keeping up with such matters. But there is a dichotomy of
substantial proportions between the highly prosperous urban areas, such as
Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, etc. and the outlying rural areas where poverty
is and has been continuous for decades.

Don't know much about tobacco farming do you? Drive around
out in the country and see who has nice brick houses with
fancy toys in the yard.



... Subtract the urban factor and you
have a typically impoverished deep south state.

Really? You ignore the pharmeceutical & computer industries
stake, the financial development in Charlotte, etc etc.

The economy in NC is a good example of pretty smart
development, most ways.


... As for us tidewater (we
prefer that to swamp land, thank you kindly) types, we're crying all the way
to the bank.


Good. We wouldn't you to become one of the impoverished
rural types.


LOL. We're definitely not on the same page here.

Yep. Apparently you can't follow a chain of logic that far.
Sorry.




Of course it's happening elsewhere, but not anywhere near the same rate as
in the places mentioned. My property in Oriental has tripled in value since
Jan. '04.

Uh huh.
And you expect it to keep rising at that rate for how long?

What local economic development supports that high price?
What are average incomes in the area?


.... And for the record, Oriental is hardly swamp
land. The Neuse River has deposited soil at its mouth for centuries.

Who told you that? Where they laughing?



..... Next you're going to tell me that
someone is planning to backfill the sound to create more development land
all the way to the barrier islands (Outer Banks, for those who are curious).

Can't do that, then they couldn't advertise Oriental as "the
Sailing Capital of NC."


I think you're envious of those of us who bought when the prices were
reasonable.

Get real. I've owned land in the New Bern area and down the
county (not in downtown Oriental but close) for almost 25
years. It's gone up, and I expect to see it go down.




... Or perhaps your a xenophobe who hates any outsiders moving to
his precious state. Get over it.


Back to that again, eh?


... But as long as you raised the point, can you show me that the Dow
Jones Industrials average is lower now than, say 20 years ago? Or 50
years.

Easy enough to look it up. There have been long periods when the stock
marcket indexes were flat or downward.


Doug--you really need to learn to comprehend what you read.

???

I guess this is the sort of Jaxxian statement you can fall
back on when you've contradicted yourself multiple times and
been flat wrong the rest of the time (except for the part
about cycles).



...I'll ask again--show me any state where RE values are lower
today than 20 or 50 years ago. Same with the Dow.


Ahem, you said yourself that there were places land was
worth only 10% what it used to be.

As for the Dow, it's artificially manipulated to make it
look like it is going up when it really isn't. But you can
look at a graph of the S&P and find places where it is
flat... or drops cyclically to point below... over ten or
fifteen years. 20 or 50 years? Probably that would fall
pretty close to the all-time historical average of 12%
annual... which is one reason why I invest in the stock market.



You have missed the point. Is the value higher or lower *relative to
what*?


You've lost this argument, haven't you. You're grasping at straws.

Umm, no. I'm repeating a point you have repeatedly missed.

And you called me a Nazi, which means you've officially lost
anyway. I'm just carrying on with this discussion because
I'm a good sport.




Thanks, but I suspect we'll do fine without your titles. We all seem to be
able to identify the obvious.


???
Actually I would say that's one of your problems.

DSK

"katy" wrote in message
...
Maxprop wrote:
"DSK" wrote in message
news
Capt. JG wrote:

I think you're talking about Prop 13.



He's got it confused with Area 51


I've been afflicted with avian flu H5N1.

Max
I always knew you were bird-brained ; P

Kiss my tail feathers. g

Max

"Frank Boettcher" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 01 Mar 2006 20:16:02 GMT, "Maxprop"
wrote:


"katy" wrote in message
...
Maxprop wrote:
"Frank Boettcher" wrote in message
...


My Mother in law has waterfront in Florida. Value has doubled each of
the last two years. And it is real because the house is not for sale
but she has people knocking on the door making offers. It is not a
good thing unless you are flipping real estate. If you just want to
live there eventually the taxes and insurance will drive you out.


I thought Florida had passed a law similar to California's Prop 51,
which
freezes property taxes at the buy-in level. Not true?


I
feel sorry for people who retired on a fixed income and their dream
was to live near the water in Florida. Even though Florida limits
the amount of tax increase per year for a homstead, I expect it will
eventually drive them out.


Guess I should have read on--so FL *can* raise property taxes, but at a
fixed rate for homesteads. Hmmm. Not good for those on fixed incomes.
Then again the real estate moguls control that state, lock, stock, and
barrel, and increasing property taxes may be their way of forcing folks
out of their homes, which puts them on the market for them to sell
profitably. No one ever accused FL of being altruistic w/r/t real
estate.
One has only to look at all the coastal wetlands that got backfilled
between the 60s and the present, all in the name of creating canals for
more "waterfront" property.

Max
And it's a renewable resource to boot. One massive hurricane like
Katrina, and whammo, they get to start all over again.

The builders love it. So do the shyster, fly-by-night remodeling types.

Max


Actually each hurricane seems initiate code creation that improves the
chances of a structure surviving the next one. My mother in laws
place was totaled during a hurricane about ten years ago. walking
down the beach I noticed that all the homes that had been built to the
new coastal codes survived with minimal damage and all like hers that
had been built before the coastal codes were pretty much toast. Her
replacement home is built to the new codes and has gone through a
couple of minor hurricanes with no damage.

I've recently seen ads for picture windows which will withstand winds and
flying debris up to 125mph or so. Necessity is the mother of invention,
apparently.

Max