Autoworkers do NOT make $70 an hour. Why can’t anyone tell the truth?

Union autoworkers are being flayed this week, for supposedly making $70 an hour.  They are, of course, blamed for the downfall of our three automakers.

Problem is: its not true.  They make $41 an hour, at most, and that is not CASH.  That includes health care costs and retirement costs.

The auto companies played with their numbers and added in the value of future retirement costs of current workers and health insurance and retirement benefits for retired workers:

How does the New York Times get from $41 to $70? Well the trick is to add in GM’s legacy costs, the pension and health care costs for retired workers. These legacy costs are a serious expense for GM, but this is not money being paid to current workers. The person on the line in 2008 is not benefiting from these legacy costs.

The New York Times publishes an incendiary accusation, blaming workers for the failure of automakers, with no correction.  The automakers, who could have righted their ships a long time ago by simply listening to peak oil analysts and global warming scientists, decided to stay their unsustainable course, building HUGE gas guzzlers, while their executives flew private jets to Congress, asking to be relieved of the pain of ‘high wages of line workers’.

Where is the leadership?

On the November 20 edition of Hardball, Heritage Foundation senior research fellow James Gattuso stated, “I think that there’s no reason that a UAW worker should get total compensation of $70 an hour when the average American only makes about $25 an hour in total compensation.” Matthews responded, in part: “They negotiate for their salaries, and they’re getting 70 bucks. So that’s how the free market works.” While speaking about the “unskilled, high-school graduate workers” in U.S. auto plants on his November 19 radio show, Larson said, “When you’re paying $73.73 an hour to those people with salary and benefits and your competition is paying $48 to its workers, you’re going to get your butt kicked in the marketplace unfortunately.”

The autoworkers might actually NEED their unions, to protect them from the lies and false blame of their employers…

They’ve been unfairly hung out to dry by automakers who took jobs out of the US, destroyed communities, refused to be sustainable and now want the US taxpayer to clean up after their bullying, blame-dodging behavior.

Posted in Financial Craziness, Regular Americans | No Comments »

The proper way to help your constituents during the coming economic hardships

I received this letter from Father Stephen A. Privett, a Jesuit priest in charge of the University of San Francisco.

Amazing.  Its so kind.  Its so thoughtful.  It asks its people to come in for help…  It talks of community and why each part of the community is important to the whole.

I wish our government could come up with a letter like this, and every single company that takes a dollar of bailout money should send out letters like this…

Dear Alumni and Friends,

I write regarding the University of San Francisco’s response to the nation’s economic downturn. The University, like you and your family, is paying close attention to its finances, even as we hope for a quick recovery in the borrowing markets and employment outlook.

USF is approaching this challenge from a position of enrollment strength. In the last 10 years, applications to USF have doubled. They are up 36% in the last three years alone, resulting in a waiting list of several hundred qualified applicants to whom we could not extend an offer of admission. We are also experiencing an increase in applications for the spring semester, 2009. Alumni and friends have played important roles in this increase. I thank you for your referrals and ask that you continue to encourage potential students to visit our campus and apply for admission and financial aid.

Help for Our Students

Nevertheless, we are concerned for our students and their families. Some families will face job loss or experience a reduction in available funds from sources such as home equity loans. Accordingly, this week, I am sending a letter to all undergraduates and their parents, and to all graduate students, promising personalized attention if financial issues threaten their ability to continue at USF. They will be encouraged to email Susan Murphy, Financial Aid Officer at usfcares@usfca.edu.

Also, I am asking the Board of Trustees for the lowest tuition increase in more than thirty years, and for an increase in university-funded financial aid for the 2009-2010 academic year. Now, more than ever, USF is committed to doing everything possible to continue to enroll and graduate all deserving students regardless of backgrounds.

Tightening Our Belts

The University is redoubling its efforts to be fiscally responsible and plan prudently for the potential impact of the downturn on our campus. Each Dean and Vice President is identifying ways to reduce costs and operate more efficiently, emphasizing reductions that do not compromise the high quality of our Jesuit education or the services we provide to students. With cooperation from every corner of campus, we have cut $8.5 million from this year’s operating budget. Examples of these cuts include restricting travel expenses and replacing desktop computers every four years instead of every three. We have also implemented a hiring freeze on most positions.

Reducing expenses is only part of the solution. I have also asked the Deans and Vice Presidents to identify ways we can increase revenue. We have a number of promising opportunities to expand and create new programs, often in areas where a modest investment could add significantly to our bottom line.

Looking Ahead

We do not know where this economy will lead us, but I am confident that USF has the talent and processes in place that will allow us to act nimbly and responsibly. Our community has distinguished itself over 153 years in times like these and even worse. The great San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 leveled our campus, but like the phoenix, we emerged from the ashes even stronger. Personal care for our students and prudent management will position the university for growth in the years ahead.

The USF Community

As an alumnus or friend of the University of San Francisco, you are in my thoughts, and I pray that you find the strength to overcome adversity in these uncertain times. I am sure that those who are struggling will find support among other members of the USF community, both on-campus and off.

If you have any comments or suggestions on how USF might address the challenges we face, I invite you to send them to me at: privett@usfca.edu. During this Thanksgiving season, may the serious economic challenges we face not blind us to the many blessings that we enjoy.

Sincerely,

Stephen A. Privett, S.J.
President

Posted in Financial Craziness, Regular Americans | No Comments »

Volunteered at homeless kitchen again

This time, I got the job of washing pots and pans, and washing the inside of two refrigerators, scraping crud.

It was so beautiful to be able to help with cleanup.

By being off in a corner with a bucket of hot, soapy water, a sponge and a wet towel, I was able to see things around me in a way I wouldn’t have had I been in the center of the kitchen cutting up food with the other volunteers.

Know what I saw?

The media is only now recognizing that the US economy is in the pits.  But there are many, many Americans way below Main Street.  For them, there is no oppressively unfolding recession.  They’re poor.  They don’t have home, mortgages, credit cards.  They don’t know where their next meal is coming from.  They have lost jobs, lost homes.

Now they are being joined by the first round of those destroyed by the profit-making focus of our business systems, that put multi-million dollar incomes and bonuses before people.

There is a new slide into poverty that is a trickle but will be a huge wave in the next year.  You can see it at the soup kitchen.  Even while you’re washing the donated Halloween sugar crumbs off the bottom of a refrigerator.

Posted in Regular Americans | No Comments »

Our EPIC instantaneous interconnectedness

I’m 48. When I was growing up, something might happen to you in your day and you’d wait until you ran into a buddy or your family in order to share the ’story’. You’d have the ’story’ in your head and you’d process it in the minutes/hours until you shared it.  Many times, you’d forget it, with the next arising ’story’.  Now we process things instantly, thru text messaging, each and every thing that happens theoretically gets shared instantaneously. We’re sharing at warp speed.

Read,Write,Web blogs about the massive increase in instant mobile messaging. We’re interconnected, especially while ‘on the go’:

According to new numbers being released by VeriSign, Inc., mobile messaging is a fast-growing trend worldwide. The medium experienced a surge here in the U.S. thanks to the recent presidential elections as Obama utilized the platform for making announcements, but that isn’t the only reason for the growth.

Explosive Growth

In Q3 2008, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media Divison’s mobile messaging networks enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day to travel through their pipes…10% more than in the previous quarter and up from 280 million per day in Q3. Based on these record-breaking numbers, VeriSign projects that their mobile messaging networks will enable close to 200 billion total messages by the end of the year.

Enterprises and financial institutions have seen growing numbers of mobile messages sent, too. From Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, the total number of messages delivered rose from 129 to 227 million - a 115% increase.

Much of that activity comes from SMS’s new position as the preferred platform for mobile banking. VeriSign’s Mobile Banking platform, which includes seven of the top ten banking brands and three of the top five credit card companies, has grown 35% since last quarter alone.

My read: we are in the throes of global interconnectedness that will re-write all of our paradigms and systems.  We just can’t see how that will yet unfold.

Posted in News, Regular Americans, Um, NO! | No Comments »

Car Repos UP, what a surprise. New furniture sold at Consignment Stores

Moms generally know when economic trends change, before Corporate America gets wind of it.  We see it, in our every day lives, managing households.  A good friend once bought Snapple stock and made a killing in the early 1980’s, because she knew how many cases she loaded into her car each week at COSTCO.

Car Repossessions 101

In these tough economic times, not only are home foreclosures on the rise but also car repossessions.

By CRAIG HOWIE | AOL AUTOS

Story Highlights

1. Car repossessions hit a 10-year high in 2008, according to most industry studies
2. Repo agents suggest an average rise of 15-20% in the number of repo vehicles they are processing daily
3. Repo’s jumped 10% in 2007
4. Repossessions of luxury cars are soaring in upscale areas where the housing downturn hit particularly hard like Florida and Southern California.

After my divorce finalized at the beginning of this year, I had two more big life changes: sold my car and moved myself and my kids from a home we owned (sold it before the market collapse, thank goodness) to a rental home.

I was driving around one day, wondering where the heck I’d come up with $10,000 for 1st, last and security to rent a home so that my home could be fixed up for sale (um, 3 kids, two dogs, not especially ‘new buyer’ friendly), when I realized I was driving an asset.  I drove my two year old Land Rover into the dealer and traded it for a 2000 Ford Expedition, got the cash I needed.  I owned the Land Rover and now I own the much less valuable, but very serviceable for driving loads of kids, Ford.

I started hearing stories about car repossessions.  That’s when you know the economy is really hitting the skids.  People can’t afford their car payments.  It also shows how much of an edge we live on, that we don’t even own our own cars.  We’ve been so mesmerized by the whole ‘low interest rate, no money down’ concept, that we don’t seem to OWN anything.  My son wondered why we got rid of the car with the 13 internal speakers and got a car that has a tape deck, and a CD player.  I explained the economics and he was fine with my decision.

When I moved my kids, to a gorgeous home with lovely landlords, I needed a few pieces of furniture.  I wandered thru Macy’s Furniture Store, did a lot of online looking and ended up walking thru my local Home Consignment Store.  Guess what I found?  New furniture.  Tags still on each piece, never been used.  Not really the old-fashioned version of consignment (bring in your old stuff, sell it, get part of the proceeds) The new furniture was brought in by small stores.  They know that some money is flowing, but its not flowing at full-price stores.  It is flowing, not so much at outlet stores as at consignment stores.  If a piece of furniture sits on the floor for more than a week?  At the consignment store, you can ask for and get 10-20% off the already shockingly low price.

According to Bloomberg:

U.S. Retail Sales Drop in October by Most on Record (Update2)

By Shobhana Chandra

Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — Retail sales in the U.S. dropped in October by the most on record, pushing the economy toward the worst slump in decades.

The 2.8 percent decrease was the fourth consecutive drop and the biggest since records began in 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Purchases excluding automobiles also posted their worst performance.

Spending may continue to falter as mounting job losses, plunging stocks and falling home values leave household finances in tatters. Retailers from Best Buy Co. to Nordstrom Inc. are cutting revenue forecasts ahead of what may be the worst holiday shopping season in six years.

“We are in the eye of the storm,” said James O’Sullivan, a senior economist at UBS Securities LLC in Stamford, Connecticut, who accurately projected the decline in sales. “The recession is clearly intensifying. The next few months will look pretty bad. The fourth quarter will be even weaker.”

So I purchased a sofa, three tables and then went into the back room of our local flooring store and bought a gorgeous rug, all for less than the price of one sofa at Macy’s…

Posted in Financial Craziness, Regular Americans | No Comments »

Obama’s webpage: I asked and I received

Man, oh man.  Go to www.change.gov: Obama and Biden at their best.

He’s asking for stories, from us.

He has his AWESOME agenda at the bottom of the page.

This guy is ready to rock.

Posted in Regular Americans | No Comments »

Lying about US statistics: Bullnomics

The US government has been jerry-rigging statistics like the CPI for a decade, effectively lying to us about the financial instability of our money system.  According to the government’s abandoned formula, we’ve been in a recession since at least 2007, but have been stumbling for years.  So a governmental admission like the one on Huffington Post today is insulting to the middle class who work hard, pay taxes and struggle to get by, because they’ve been ‘hurtling’ for years.

In his book, BAD MONEY, Kevin Phillips says: ‘The debt the United States has been piling on in the last few years has provided only 30-40 percent as much stimulus per dollar to the national economy as did the debt added twenty-five or forty years ago. Why? Because money borrowed in 1970 or 1984 to be spent on factories, new jet fighter aircraft, teachers, or interstate highways had a lot more grassroots impact than money borrowed by ten thousand hedge funds to double the leverage of their various self-serving speculations.”

My read from this book is that Phillips says that the CPI is now made up of a strange mix of things to avoid showing that regular Americans have been suffering the ravages of inflation for years: Instead of counting in your mortgage payment, property tax, home insurance and declining property values, the CPI includes a formula for ‘what you could rent your home for’.  It does not count things like increased cost of travel, food and living expenses but does give itself a deduction for the money we’d spend if banks charged us more fees.  Its ridiculous.

We need a simple message from some politician that will tell the truth: “Hey, America? This is how it is. We’ve overspent. We have no money. We know you have very little money and that we’ve wasted your tax dollars. But we’re in a recession, have been for a few years.  The way out is going to involve a bit of sacrifice from you and us. You hold your belt tight but also take care of your neighbor.  We’ll stop spending on crazy things and we’ll make sure basic services are kept up and that we put all our weight behind what will get us out of this and so many other messes, GREEN JOBS.  We’ll bail out parts of the auto industry, but only those who make and sell GREEN CARS.  No more tax deductions for anything but GREEN.  No more throwing good money after bad.  That way, you can feed yourself and your family.  The economy will have a boom.  Global warming will arrest.  We’ll slow our dependence on foreign oil.  And money will flow into the pockets of workers.  Where it will be spent back in the economy.

Buy the book, here: http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Money-Reckless-Politics-Capitalism/dp/0670019070

Posted in Regular Americans, What the ????? | 1 Comment »

How many slices in a loaf of bread?

This morning I parent-volunteered at my kid’s high school, walking students a few blocks away to a free dining hall that serves three meals a day to homeless and low income people.  Our job was making 120 sandwiches that would be handed out after the hot lunch, so that someone has food for later.  We opened bags and bags of donated days old loaves of bread, swiped a big gob of mayo/mustard mix onto each slice and put two pieces of meat on one side, made the sandwich and then bagged it.  We made two boxes of 60 sandwiches each.

As we opened loaf after loaf, I noticed that some loaves give you 8 sandwiches, some give you seven and some give you ten.

We’re in a recession.  I’m pretty blessed.  I’ve never had to figure out if the loaf I have has enough to make sandwiches for my whole family.

Just saying.

Posted in Regular Americans | No Comments »