Category: Economics (Page 1 of 6)

The good old days are gone unless America stops screwing around.

October 11, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are vowing to engineer a manufacturing renaissance. Such promises evoke 1950s-era memories of strong communities full of ordinary Americans, many without college degrees, earning attractive pay and benefits for their hard work.

The author believes the US cannot get back to the fully functioning country we had in the 1950’s. That is a widely held opinion, so talking about this article is as good as any other.

Manufacturing bottomed out at around 10 percent of nonfarm workers by 2019. The numbers employed in manufacturing started to recover under President Biden and may continue to rebound.

The author shows her bias. If the bottom was in 2019, then it started to recover after that. Biden took office in 2021, so it wasn’t his policies that turned things around.

While women and immigrants helped offset the slowing growth of the native-born population, it hasn’t been enough: Two-thirds of respondents to a National Association of Manufacturing survey this past spring said that their biggest challenge was attracting and retaining employees.

Attracting and retaining employees is simple. Pay more and improve the working conditions.

WSJ: Boeing machinists are on strike.

September 14, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: Boeing workers reject contract.

New teachers coming in face a bunch of HR paperwork and a visit from a teachers union official. At Normandy and North Royalton, I declined to join the union. In both cases, the union official was curious, courteous and reasonable. I had a collegial relationship with both through out my career.

Public sector unions are a sham. The union backs a school board member, the member get elected, the union and board negotiate a contract, and everyone goes to the district residents to ask for more money.

Private sector unions don’t have that issue. As an engineer at Caterpillar, I spent quite a bit of time in Caterpillar and Chrysler manufacturing plants. Those unions have different problems, but it isn’t an ethical issue. Industrial unions are prone to being unreasonable.

The invasion of Springfield

September 12, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WE: Immigration in Springfield Ohio

This article is like the rest of the news reports that are presented if “Haitian immigrants Springfield Ohio” is Googled. All the articles emphasize that Haitians are not eating cats and dogs, or killing geese and ducks. The residents are being pressured into making enthusiastic statements about the Haitian immigrants or get accused of being a racist.

Nobody asks about life in Springfield.

Germany’s disastrous switch away from nuclear power

August 27, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

RCS: Germany’s Disastrous Switch Away From Nuclear

It’s interesting to watch a country intentionally destroy itself. Germany presents itself as a technically-minded country with high-quality manufacturing, not a country that makes uninformed and impetuous decisions.

WSJ: Go Woke, Go Broke, but not for Ben and Jerry.

June 26, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

WSJ: Go Woke, Go Broke. Ben and Jerry’s

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are about as well known for their progressive politics as they are for quirky ice cream flavors like Chunky Monkey and Phish Food.

Their experiment in melding business with social justice for years seemed like a model to which many in the corporate world were warming up. And then attitudes cooled.

Ben and Jerry are old people who don’t realize the world has changed. When they started making ice cream, crunchy progressives wanted to save the whales, recycle and wear hemp clothing.

Ben and Jerry didn’t notice that modern progressives are antisemitic, despise law and order, and insist on libraries bringing in deviant sex clowns to read queerotic porn to children.

I’d like to believe that the corporate world is less interested in pushing a divisive progressive agenda.

NYT: Financial Independence Retire Early

June 15, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

NYT: Retiring Early

Life after early retirement: the elephant in the room. What to do after the cruises, the skydiving, the teetering stack of books on the night stand? The main danger of FIRE is that you might be running hard away from something rather than toward it — that you’re propelled only by the too-nebulous idea of escape. And then, even for those who lay out a clear road map for decades of nirvana, the loneliness can eat at you.

FIRE means Financial Independence Retire Early.

The article is helpful for people who don’t understand money. Life works better if you understand yourself.

Movie theaters are dinosaurs.

June 6, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Box Office Mojo provides up-to-date ticket sales for movies that are in theatrical release. Looking back 20 years, there is a trend that hasn’t been commented on elsewhere. Based on the trend, movie theaters will close and more movies will be sequels.

Disney’s Star Wars hotel was never going to work.

May 31, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Disney spent a quarter billion dollars to build, Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel, and it only remained open for a year and a half. This girl spent $6000 to be immersed in the experience. Fortunately, she’s cute and made an engaging 4-hour video about her Star Wars adventure that’s been viewed by 7 million people. She should recoup her expenses.

Disney is a big company, with a net profit of 1.7 billion dollars last year. They can’t keep making big mistakes like this. How did they screw this up so bad?

Your favorite brands made a big mistake.

May 30, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Vox: Companies don’t care about Woke.

Have you ever wondered why people you know to be smart and reasonable, can be so politically different from you? People get their information from different sources and this article is a perfect example. Nothing is necessarily wrong, it just misses the point and leaves out some important parts.

The Happiness Index

May 21, 2024 / Richard Nestoff / 0 Comments

Happiness Gap

Because I just finished The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt, the World Happiness Report is of interest.

The US is ranked #23 on the Happiness Index. Only two spots up from Mexico, and 8 spots below Canada. I’ve been to Canada, it ain’t so great.