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Califbill

Justan Olphart wrote:
On 1/8/2016 1:44 PM, John H. wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 10:15:27 -0800, Califbill billnews wrote:

Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 1/8/2016 12:13 PM, wrote:
On Fri, 8 Jan 2016 08:22:49 -0500, Justan Olphart
wrote:

O'Bama's liberals are driving us into the second recession of his ever
so tedious reign as president. Join me in prayer for relief from these
liberal assholes.

I don't think we ever really got out of the last recession. They
dumped massive amounts of federal money into the economy and made it
look better but there is not really much actual growth. The employment
participation rate (the number of actual jobs) is flat since 2007.
It is easy to argue that "middle class" jobs have been going down
since the GHWB administration. That was when the words "down sized"
and "outsourced" entered the lexicon and it was in the Clinton
administration when IBM had it's first layoff ... ever. (including the
depression) That was when we started hearing "offshoring".

That is the elephant in the room nobody will mention. Most of our
growth is in construction and we have already seen that we need to
limit that to need or we end up in a bubble. China is really looking
at that one and their economy is suffering like ours did because they
have so much "built and unsold".

Everyone thinks computers will be the answer but there were more
people making a good living in the computer business in 1980 than
there are now. This is a "cut open the box and plug it in" business
now and that is not a good living. We hear a lot about the
opportunities in software but that is not an opportunity for a lot of
people and those people can be in a boiler room in Bangladesh.

No offense Greg and certainly not an insult but I don't think I have
*ever* known anyone with a more depressing and pessimistic outlook than
that you often express here. One of the strongest pillars of success
is an optimistic approach to a problem or issue, even when the reasons
to remain optimistic seem far and few between.

I made my living in computers for 40 years. Greg is correct. When I
started, we had 36 weeks of school to learn to maintain a mainframe. Plus
additional weeks to learn new peripherals. These were discrete transistor
systems. The NCR-315 computer I started with filled a room, just like an
IBM 1401. 20 years later, the NCR 605 mini controller was released pretty
much a 315 on 4 boards. Integrated circuits. Send out an FE with 4 boards
and he could swap on the system. Now you had 2 weeks training, and 20% of
the manpower requirement. Outsourcing was accelerated by minimum wage /
living wages requirements. We priced our uneducated labor out of the
market. When I worked for Maxtor in the early 90's, cost us $3.50 an hour
fully bundled labor cost to run a headstack assembly factory in Penang,
Malaysia. About $35 here. 10x the cost. In the 60's was probably a 3x
cost factor. Plus in the 50-60's, US high school graduates could actually
read and write and add and subtract. Now we have high wages for minimal
jobs and graduates who are uneducated. Next time you go to a fast food
place, look at the person making change. If American. They struggle. Here
the Mexican worker can even make change if you add a couple cents to round
out the amount. We are in deep **** here. Exorbitant debt we are piling
on our grandkids. And no smokestack industries to employ the majority of
the workers. We pay more to a local bus driver here than to a teacher with
a masters. As to Silicon Valley, they bring in India and China workers for
less than we pay the bus driver. Hyper loop is hype. Governor Brown has
pushed through a high speed rail project for California. Price has.
Already tripled and cost to go to Los Angeles on a subsidized train is
going to be more than buying an airplane ticket.

Well by golly, that's a lot of *good* news!
--

Ban idiots, not guns!

I hope California rail will be safer than The new Sun Rail project in
Florida. Sun Rail is killing drivers at about one crash per week. And
that's not even a high speed system.

If the train to nowhere ever gets built, it will not have car train crashes
as all crossing will be over or under, not across.

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