Where will inflation stop?

In reply to Toyman01 + Sized and :

I am really not sure how wanting to have a functioning school system is some super leftist idea...

93EXCivic said:

In reply to Toyman01 + Sized and :

I am really not sure how wanting to have a functioning school system is some super leftist idea...

Especially since the best school districts tend to be in expensive Republican suburbs and they actually vote to spend more money on their schools.

ProDarwin said:

aircooled said:

To add to the absurdity.  And I have to say I have NO idea how this is supposed to work, and I suspect very much will not.  The port will be adding a penalty charge to container ($100 a day I believe) to encourage shippers to pick them up with trucks...

...which are critically short on drivers, to take them to distributions centers..

...which are packed because they can't get drivers to move product out...

I really have no idea how this is going to work.  They say it will encourage companies involved to solve the problem.  Yeah, like the companies involved don't already have a HUGE interest in solving the issue.  I do suspect it WILL do one thing...

...make shipping that much more expensive!.... which of course will be passed on....

...argh.

I dont think it is a magic bullet, but it will help force their hand to get more drivers all the way down the chain.  I'm guessing it also helps the port cover some of the losses from such a backup?

I talked with my neighbor recently and he was saying that he knows several fleet operators that have >30% of their fleets just parked because they can't find drivers.

 

From what I have read about driver retention in the trucking industry, I am not surprised.  300% turnover in the first year, because they royally screw new drivers over with scheduling and pay/training payback.

Wasn't truck driving once a really lucrative career about 40-50 years ago?

So if fining the shipping companies does nothing to make drivers want to take crappy jobs, now what? 

Look for more places to stack containers?

How about big bonuses for drivers? Catered meals? Hookers?

Paid time off??

Pay more due to increased demand for low supply.  No, that can't be.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Wasn't truck driving once a really lucrative career about 40-50 years ago?

Yes and they were referred to as "professional drivers"...parents would include them on the list of people they told their kids to run to if they were ever in trouble.

Today, truck drivers routinely tailgate, drift over the line, have improperly secured loads, etc..  

I think it would have to be more than just money. Too many are burned out from working too many hours.

Maybe give them 8 hour shifts, weekends off and paid time off would help.

Even $10,000 a week may not attract them if you are still asking them to drive until they can't stand up any more. There is also the safety issue.

I am almost willing to bet that these companies would not consider short shifts, lots of money and paid time off to get the mess cleaned up. And actually hire more drivers. That would be expensive. Better to just make you wait for your stuff till ..... who the hell even knows. Let the E36 M3 pile up. Pay the fines or hire lawyers to fight them. It's not like the guys who own the company live in that neighborhood.

In reply to bearmtnmartin (Forum Supporter) :

During the pandemic people stopped traveling and going out to eat.  Instead they spent money on their homes  and stuff for beside it.  That drove up demand and prices reflect that. Plus more imported stuff since we no longer make things here. 
We've neglected our ports for decades. And as a result ran into massive inefficiencies.      As a result prices have increased again. 
      Finally politicians ( of both parties ) trying to keep the economy afloat have written giant checks to every group.  So once again America is in debt.  Nothing new to see here folks. It's how we do business. Since no one wants to raise taxes we raise inflation.  
   While trillions of dollar's seems like big numbers,   It's not.  I'm guessing here but about 1&1/2 years GDP.  Seems about cover it.  
 Since most of that is owed to ourselves, we're OK. No bushel baskets full of money to buy an Orange.  
      

      

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

From what I have read about driver retention in the trucking industry, I am not surprised.  300% turnover in the first year, because they royally screw new drivers over with scheduling and pay/training payback.

Wasn't truck driving once a really lucrative career about 40-50 years ago?

Yeah the stories about how much of that industry relies on scamming first time drivers are scary.  Definitely not sustainable.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged

ShawnG said:

z31maniac said:

ShawnG said:

In reply to Toyman01 + Sized and :

Then ask if you can opt-out and do things yourself.

I like the fire department, police, garbage pickup, running water and a toilet that flushes.

Well, to be fair, your utilities aren't paid for through property taxes, those mostly go toward education. Trash pickup? Part of your city utility bill. Running water and sewer? Part of your city utility bill. EMS service, at least here, part of your utility bill, then an extra monster charge when you actually use it. Cable/internet, your locally approved private monopoly.

Gas/electricity, from your local energy provider. 

As for the "nice try though," no need for the snark. I was just pointing out something factual and wasn't implying you wouldn't pay your taxes. 

The point is, you don't really "own" something if not paying a few thousand to the government every year means they can seize it. 

My water is on my property tax assessment, it's shown there, as is transit, garbage and sewer.

Electricity and gas are separate.

As for the snark, my apologies, your post seemed snarky as well.

My apologies as well, wasn't meant to. 

Guess that just goes to show how differently they get our money everywhere. For example, Texas has no state income to OK's 4.8% State income tax......but their property tax is 2-3x more than it is here. 

That's kind of weird about the water. Is it just a flat fee or ? Here we are charged a set fee for the delivery and maintenance of the lines, then a flat rate per 1000 gallons of water used, don't remember the exact amount.  

ProDarwin said:

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

From what I have read about driver retention in the trucking industry, I am not surprised.  300% turnover in the first year, because they royally screw new drivers over with scheduling and pay/training payback.

Wasn't truck driving once a really lucrative career about 40-50 years ago?

Yeah the stories about how much of that industry relies on scamming first time drivers are scary.  Definitely not sustainable.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/10/901110994/big-rigged

What ever happened to the Teamsters?

In reply to z31maniac :

Water is a flat fee here, we have a meter, nobody ever reads it and we're not charged for how much we use. Next town over has meters and you pay by how much you use. 

It costs me nothing extra to fill my hot tub but my friend has a roughly $100 hit to fill his pool in the summer.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

I think it would have to be more than just money. Too many are burned out from working too many hours.

Maybe give them 8 hour shifts, weekends off and paid time off would help.

Even $10,000 a week may not attract them if you are still asking them to drive until they can't stand up any more. There is also the safety issue.

I am almost willing to bet that these companies would not consider short shifts, lots of money and paid time off to get the mess cleaned up. And actually hire more drivers. That would be expensive. Better to just make you wait for your stuff till ..... who the hell even knows. Let the E36 M3 pile up. Pay the fines or hire lawyers to fight them. It's not like the guys who own the company live in that neighborhood.

My source on this is that my mother in law's husband drove hazmat for a few decades before he retired last year: According to him, one of the big problems was that the new work hour rules and the electronic log books meant that the drivers couldn't drive as much as they used to.  They were still paid the same way, though, and that was all based on miles driven.  If you could drive more hours in a day and then maybe fudge the log a little, you could get more loads delivered in a given month then you can now and that would mean more pay.

I have no idea how much of that applies to the industry in general, but he was a company driver for a long time and that was his big beef.

Putting politics aside on the school issue- I think we are overlooking a big contribution to inflation in that example, and everyone missed it. I saw time and time again that more budget equals better education. There is zero evidence to support that. Yet here we are in a vicious cycle of giving underperforming schools more and more money and expecting a different result without addressing the core problems. We get so one dimensional with our TAXES GOOD or TAXES BAD beliefs that we miss the truth- taxes are necessary, but they are also grossly squandered. When the results are poor, instead of looking to see if the already generous funding was used appropriately and hold people accountable- it's become acceptable to just blindly give them more money to waste. On the flip side, we created this monster long ago, by punishing those that ran under budget with cuts and rewarding those that used it all. Use it or lose it has been pervasive for decades. 

Boost_Crazy said:

Putting politics aside on the school issue- I think we are overlooking a big contribution to inflation in that example, and everyone missed it. I saw time and time again that more budget equals better education. There is zero evidence to support that. Yet here we are in a vicious cycle of giving underperforming schools more and more money and expecting a different result without addressing the core problems. We get so one dimensional with our TAXES GOOD or TAXES BAD beliefs that we miss the truth- taxes are necessary, but they are also grossly squandered. When the results are poor, instead of looking to see if the already generous funding was used appropriately and hold people accountable- it's become acceptable to just blindly give them more money to waste. On the flip side, we created this monster long ago, by punishing those that ran under budget with cuts and rewarding those that used it all. Use it or lose it has been pervasive for decades. 

There is no simple answer. There are schools that aren't underperforming but they tend to be in neighborhoods where there is plenty of property tax revenue and educated parents who support the schools as volunteers, and make damned sure that the teachers do their jobs and their kids do their homework. There are other schools where the culture is anti-education, the parents are absent and the kids don't respect the teachers, and strangely enough, the least experienced and least effective teachers end up working there. If the kids aren't listening or paying attention, no amount of money in the world is going to fix that. Schools in some neighborhoods are little more than expensive baby sitting services so the parents can go to work

In big cities, guys who own construction companies get their cousins or brothers in law on the school board so that money is spent on new buildings instead of things that would actually improve the education of the children, adding to the costs. In other districts things are so mismanaged that buildings don't get maintenance and are falling apart. Sometimes big city school districts are simply expensive baby sitting services in nice buildings.

In most places teachers get little support from the administration. If a kid accuses a teacher of just about anything there are lawyers involved and careers at risk. Students often disrespect teachers, heckle them and film them with their phone cameras for future abuse on social media. Parents can be even worse. New teachers see what a mess it is and bail out after the first few years, leaving some schools with an endless revolving door of new inexperienced teachers. Some administrators even prefer have new teachers on the staff because they don't have to pay them as much.

Textbook manufacturers and school supply companies are another scam. New versions have to be bought every year and sometimes have only superficial changes. There are all kinds of programs, videos and other supplies, some good, some not so good, all expensive. I used to have a girlfriend who worked for one of those companies. They hired hard core salesmen, not educators, to go to districts all over  the country and call on whoever bought materials for the classroom. They also had trade shows. This is a whole other crazy world and this world is about making money, not necessarily teaching children.

I could go into a lot more. My mother was once California Teacher of the Year but is now in a nursing home. My grandmother was also a teacher back in a one room school house in Arkansas and she is long gone now. My father was an engineer but was also elected several times to the local school board. Grandma taught Mom how to be an excellent teacher and my mother wanted to teach me. I chose a different profession for reasons stated above.

Much reform needs to be done but my opinion is that most politicians today don't have the guts to take it on. They would rather create false issues that throw red meat to their supporters.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

It is hard for a school to perform if they are underfunded, though.  And then they get their funding cut because they aren't performing?

The public school system in one area where I lived was absolutely horrible because the majority of residents always voted down funding increases, because they sent their kids to private schools, because the public school system sucked.  So we had textbooks that were 10 years old at the newest, lots of metal plates in windows where glass should have been, teachers paying for classroom supplies out of their own underpaid pockets, etc.

Boost_Crazy said:

Putting politics aside on the school issue- I think we are overlooking a big contribution to inflation in that example, and everyone missed it. I saw time and time again that more budget equals better education. There is zero evidence to support that. Yet here we are in a vicious cycle of giving underperforming schools more and more money and expecting a different result without addressing the core problems. We get so one dimensional with our TAXES GOOD or TAXES BAD beliefs that we miss the truth- taxes are necessary, but they are also grossly squandered. When the results are poor, instead of looking to see if the already generous funding was used appropriately and hold people accountable- it's become acceptable to just blindly give them more money to waste. On the flip side, we created this monster long ago, by punishing those that ran under budget with cuts and rewarding those that used it all. Use it or lose it has been pervasive for decades. 

It's not just schools. I saw the same thing  for 9 years in the military. Funds wasted for political reasons.  Because they needed to be spent.  

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Underfunding can be a problem. Like I said, every district is different. It amazes me that some teachers are so dedicated that they pay for their own supplies. 

Dallas has plenty of tax revenue but their graduation rates are abysmal in some parts of town, yet they also have magnet schools that are the best in the state. There are suburbs North of town that are cranking out new schools at an accelerated rate and paying decent salaries to experienced teachers they steal from surrounding states. Parents with resources make sure that  either public or private, their kids will have access to the best schools and the best teachers. It has always been that way. The poor kids are the ones that get screwed. But resources is only part of your problem. Using the resources well is the other part of the equation. 

Just as the difference between rich and poor is more than just money. You can shower a school district with money, but if the people running it don't know how to run it, the teachers can't teach and the students don't listen, all you have is an expensive mess. 

Cutting funding on underperforming schools won't fix anything either. Sounds like the work of lazy politicians who would rather punish than engage in real reform.

The difference between the rich and poor have nothing to do with the public school system.  Not sure where that came from- the lowest end of the pay scale has gone up *roughly* just below inflation.  Whereas the top end has gone up orders of magnitude.  Instead of 20x between the bottom and top of most companies, it's now over 300x.

And the top are the people who made the decisions in the supply chain that has lead to where we are now- between moving manufacturing off shore and how the supply chain is timed, etc...  Given how tenuous the system is, IMHO, it's very fair to ask if the top earned that pay raise or not.  Given that we had a CEO get a golden parachute worth more than almost all employees got just working, when he actually tanked our company almost into oblivion, my opinion is that we are VERY, VERY much overpaying for the top.  They are not any more talented or valuable than anyone else, and they make massive mistakes with light consequence.

That has nothing to do with public schools.

BTW, public schools are not universally bad.  Only a handful are- colleges are companies are still being filled with very well educated HS graduates that go on to do good things.  So we have avoid extrapolating bad outcomes onto the entire system.

alfadriver said:

...Given that we had a CEO get a golden parachute worth more than almost all employees got just working, when he actually tanked our company almost into oblivion, my opinion is that we are VERY, VERY much overpaying for the top.  They are not any more talented or valuable than anyone else, and they make massive mistakes with light consequence...

I think you're absolutely right that something weird and out of control has happened with c-suite compensation lately.  Look at what Eddie Lampert has done to Sears.  Or the lasting impact of Jack Welsh's philosophy on GE.  In some organizations - and my experience is with a global conglomerate that generally makes electric things - compensation and advancement is based on taking cost out of whatever it is that's in front of you and nothing else.  Take cost out with no regard to anything else, get promoted to somewhere else, then when the chickens return to their roost it's someone's problem.

But I think it's slightly disingenuous to say that they're not any more talented or valuable.  While there are many examples of CEOs that are doing it poorly, you can't just plug any old line worker into the big office and expect things to go well.  To a point, the CEOs and other leaders are paid more because they are more skilled at running a business and they do have more value to the organization because it's easier to replace the guy who wipes down the crapper than it is to replace the CEO that is navigating a publicly traded company in a regulated industry through an acquisition, for example.

Again, not that every CEO needs to have their butt kissed or that they all are compensated in a way that provides the correct incentive structure.  But the fact of the matter is that some skillsets are just more valuable than others and there are people that are way more talented and/or willing to work way harder than other folks.

In reply to wae :

Why is it disingenuous to say they are not more talented or valuable?  Given how most promotions happen and what is actually valued for promotion, it's very clear that talent has little to do with promotions at some point.  Heck, I've seen promotion STAND after bad decisions they made in their prior job made it to production- decisions that has cost our company in billions for warrantee costs, and they keep their positions in upper management.   Boggles my mind that they get immediate credit for saving a dollar a part, and no consequence that the long term cost of saving that is actually billions in losses.

And the decisions they make are based on work that other people do, and the recommendations that other people-who know the details- come up with.  The actual value is in the work to decide if a decision is worth it or not, not the actual decision.

The only thing that I can see as valuable would be a real vision to make the company valuable by selling a lot of stuff over decades (instead of years) that makes lots of money.  And I've yet to see that kind of real vision- we JUST got over another "shareholder value" time.  None of our vision is new- it's just the same thing in different words.  And just as bad, when CEO's change, there's always a massive change in direction, even when the direction we are going is the right one (see Mullaly to Fields).  

No, I will stand behind the talent and value part.  I'll given them the 20x, but no more than that.

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

I am not saying that money isn't wasted in the school system. What I am saying is that we aren't funding what might actually make a difference, teacher's salaries. You aren't going to attract and keep top talent in general without paying them and imo the single most important thing in education is the teachers not new buildings or technology or whatever. 

Boost_Crazy said:

We get so one dimensional with our TAXES GOOD or TAXES BAD beliefs that we miss the truth- taxes are necessary, but they are also grossly squandered. 

I agree.  While I am more than happy to pay for services, and pay more for better ones, I am also very aware of how berkeleying inefficient some of the govt. systems are.  I can empathize with those who think govt. spending is an absolute waste for this reason.

I worked for a defense contractor earlier in my career and the salary waste was absolutely astounding.  I was paid a pretty respectable salary to do nothing, because that's the way the contract was written.  There were 5 others just like me.  All of us work for subcontractors who took a cut on top of the prime contractor's cut.  So in the end the govt paid the equivalent of having 12-15 degreed engineers on staff for absolutely no reason, just on this one tiny program.

Really what I want is both an increase in funding and massive increase in pressure to improve efficiency.

Boost_Crazy said:

...I saw time and time again that more budget equals better education. There is zero evidence to support that...

There are multiple studies that support the assertion that, generally speaking, more funding leads to better student outcomes.  You can argue that funding doesn't always improve student outcomes or, that funding needs to be applied appropriately and that the metrics used for evaluation need to be appropriate for the funding bu,t your assertion that there's no evidence that improved funding improves education is patently untrue. 

That's not to say that there aren't cases of corruption, incompetence and fraud in education.  There are and they need to be dealt with.  However, they need to be dealt with independently of funding. 

Like most of the problems that the US (and the world face) this is a complicated topic.  The studies themselves are a slog to get through and it's a lot of reading.  If you want a good summary NPR did a great series on this topic Link to first artical in series

I'm totally fine with taxes.

What I'm not fine with is some public servant blowing through more than all the money I had to give them that year because they didn't like the colour of the walls in their building.

Politicians need to remember, the government doesn't actually have any money. They have my money and it's their job to not piss it all away.