Why there will be no XL pipeline: Warren Buffett

[gfretwell]

Detroit was destroyed by socialism. Unions and the welfare system

[gfretwell]

Why would soil erosion be any worse after they bury the pipe than before? Most of that area is pool table flat anyway, There is no place for the soil to go unless the wind takes it.

[Django Chained]

Plenty of whites enjoy unions and welfare and other aspects of socialism.

Detroit was destroyed by blacks and their habbit of forming fatherless families, which led to "white-flight".

By the way, Canadian tar-sands oil is being pumped to a Marathon refinery in Detroit. The refinery for the first time is processing heavy Canadian crude oil brought in by pipeline from the Alberta oilsands.

Marathon Oil refinery completed a $2-billion facility upgrade to process Alberta oilsands crude oil last fall.

There is presently several piles of petroleum coke (the byproduct of processing the oil) accumulating on the Detroit side of the river, apparently waiting to be taken by ship to China.

Lots of people are apparently not happy about the mountains of this stuff accumulating on the waterfront.

[The Daring Dufas]

Oh come on, you don't want to hurt Harry or folks like him. With the opposition gone, what would you do for entertainment? ^_^

TDD

[harry]

e quoted text -

You need to get your facts right.

380_vs_Boeing_747

[harry]

Who wrote that? One of your tea leafs? Capitalists got greedy, short termism ran riot. GM had to turn to the taxpayer to bail them out. Capitalism failed.

[gfretwell]

The UAW crushed General Motors. They became a health care and pension company that made cars. The most significant part if the government bail out was that they took over the pensions. If they could have divested themselves of that, they could have survived. The PR of discharging that debt in Chapter 11 bankruptcy was worse than being taken over by the government.

[Kurt Ullman]

The health care problems were the main reason the UAW was given so much stock in the new company.

[Dean Hoffman]

My workplace charges $70 for the service call plus $70 per hour. They charge for driving time both ways. We try to group the calls and run a route but that isn't always possible. There is no mileage charge. This is on irrigation systems in Nebraska. Our service season runs from late June to the first week in September or so. The national economy might stink but things are exceptionally good down on the farms.

[Dan Espen]

[The Daring Dufas]

UAW workers were being paid an estimated $73.00/hr which is more than I charge a customer per hour for a mechanical/electrical service call. o_O

TDD

[gfretwell]

Those sound like pretty cheap rates. IBM's "per call" rate was $176 an hour 1st shift, $253 2d shift and $322 3d shift in the 80s and early 90s. Later they offered a contract rate for scheduled jobs at $155.

That is why people bought maintenance contracts.

My inspector contract with the state was $58.50 and 29 cents a mile door to door in 2000.

[gfretwell]

The UAW took a pretty good haircut recently. They also bought out most of the people who were really making the big bucks but they left with fat pensions. All of my wife's family are UAW folks (Kokomo In, Chrysler and Delco). The thing that really pumped up their gross was overtime. They make (made?) double or even triple time for some schedules and the old timers knew how to squeeze that schedule for every dime possible. My brother in law's kid made almost $65,000 the first year out of high school (1987) putting transmission cases up on the line, setting a bearing and hitting it with an air hammer.

[The Daring Dufas]

I'll charge $65/hr for mechanical/electrical service calls and $85/hr for telecom and computer or network related work. The stuff I do with JH for contracting companies varies greatly depending on a bid price. I have one job coming up for $50/hr involving cash register notifiers, those things with the lit numbers and a voice announce telling customers in the queue which register is open. ^_^

TDD

[The Daring Dufas]

The number I read was a conglomeration of all pay and benefits. The site where I saw the $73/hr number is below. Perhaps I should have indicated that in the previous post? o_O

TDD

[Dan Espen]

I clicked on the link for "$73/hour" to see what the source was. I get blocked by a login page for rightvoices.com.

So I still have no idea where that number comes from.

Or what it means.

The claim is that some time in the past, someone estimated that a UAW worker made $73/hr, (possibly including benefits).

I don't know if base pay for the UAW was ever 73, that sounds extreme. Clearly that's not what they make now.

[The Daring Dufas]

1 and 2 man operations usually charge a lower rate than big corporations and we have a much smaller customer base and don't advertise. Me and my late friend GB with whom I did a lot of HVAC work would charge a lower rate to old folks on fixed incomes. Quite often, all of the old folk's family would call us to do work for them at full price. Amazing how that works. ^_^

TDD

[The Daring Dufas]

I believe that's what the comment on the site meant. In the past, the demands of the unions were so egregious that it put American automobile manufacturers at a great disadvantage. The $73 amount must include an average of all benefits plus overtime. I can remember working hourly as a peasant and I lived for overtime but the tax on the overtime pay often wiped out any gains unless the overtime was extreme. o_O

TDD

[Attila Iskander]

I'm sure I can find something else.

[Attila Iskander]

# # You need to get your facts right. #

Poor harry. not even able to track the conversation. Or are you stupid enough to imagine that the Concorde is the A380 ?

And by the way, did you even read the article ? " ... Following another delay to the A380 program in October 2006, FedEx and the United Parcel Service cancelled their orders for the A380-800 freighter." "Some A380 launch customers deferred delivery or considered switching to the 747-8 and 777F aircraft." "Boeing's advertising claims the 747-8I to be over 10% lighter per seat and have 11% less fuel consumption per passenger, with a trip-cost reduction of 21% and a seat-mile cost reduction of more than 6%, compared to the A380. The 747-8F's empty weight is expected to be 80 tonnes (88 tons) lighter and

24% lower fuel burnt per ton with 21% lower trip costs and 23% lower ton-mile costs than the A380F." "Boeing currently has four commercial airline orders for the 747-8I: Lufthansa (20), Korean Airlines (5), Air China (5), and Arik Air (2)"