JayB

Thankfully for who? For consumers of their cheap plastic crap, so that Wallmart can stay afloat? Let face it, we here enjoy lower prices at the expense of others. Lets hope they don't figure that out! The moment they start demanding a quality of life equal to ours (maybe in the form of a union) we are screwed. So i guess its kill or be killed. Long live cheap plastic crap! In the case of "the government keeping the workers pay down" isn't starting a union akin to a democratic revolution? Would that not be a good thing? Are these governments just doing it because its profitable to keep the man down? Oh...it is our friend, the invisible hand. What would happen to the scores of millions of people who use the wages that they earn making the cheap plastic crap to provide themselves and their families with food, clothing, and shelter if no one bought it anymore? All that would happen is that we'd pay slightly more for a given set of goods until someone combined marginally lower labor costs with increased automation somewhere else and provided the same goods at a lower price, and they'd starve while some other country reaped the benefits of the trade and foreign direct investment that they relinquished. Don't look for the Chinese to chose door number two anytime soon. If I was concerned for anyone, I'd be concerned for the American or Euro who is convinced that the accident of his birth in a first world nation entitles him to a certain standard of living no matter what. Don't expect Ming-Li and Rahesh to cry any tears for Chet Guthrie because he can't parlay his high-school diploma into $80K a year with full bene's because they are working too hard over there. so you're saying lets go with the status quo because change is HARD and MESSY. and if we change it is will just screw up someone else's life. SOMEONE has to suffer, why change things. let the people who obviously enjoy suffering continue on. well thats a great attitude Jay. well, its not like our talking about it here is even going to make a scratch in anything. from my 1st world throne amid my plastic crap, why would i want to change anything. and you're right, they probably won't change anything. and unions are the root of all evil. and the invisible hand will care for all. conversation over. Was there ever a conversation to begin with? Sometimes it's reasonable to assume that the person that you are debating an issue with is doing so for less-than-honorable reasons, and if that's the assumption that you wish to make in my case you are free to do so, but how do you account for the fact that an individual like Nicholas Kristof advances the very same arguments? " Inviting All Democrats By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Published: January 14, 2004 I'd like to invite Richard Gephardt and the other Democratic candidates to come here to Cambodia and discuss trade policy with scavengers like Nhep Chanda, who spends her days rooting through filth in the city dump. One of the most unfortunate trends in the Democratic presidential race has been the way nearly all of the candidates, including Howard Dean, the front-runner, have been flirting with anti-trade positions by putting the emphasis on labor, environmental and human rights standards in international agreements. While Mr. Gephardt calls for an international minimum wage, Mr. Dean was quoted in USA Today in October as saying, ''I believe that trade also requires human rights and labor standards and environmental standards that are concurrent around the world.'' Perhaps the candidates are simply pandering to unions, or bashing President Bush. But my guess is that they sincerely believe that such trade policies would help poor people abroad -- and that's why they should all traipse through a Cambodian garbage dump to see how economically naïve these schemes would be. Nhep Chanda is a 17-year-old girl who is one of hundreds of Cambodians who toil all day, every day, picking through the dump for plastic bags, metal cans and bits of food. The stench clogs the nostrils, and parts of the dump are burning, producing acrid smoke that blinds the eyes. The scavengers are chased by swarms of flies and biting insects, their hands are caked with filth, and those who are barefoot cut their feet on glass. Some are small children. Nhep Chanda averages 75 cents a day for her efforts. For her, the idea of being exploited in a garment factory -- working only six days a week, inside instead of in the broiling sun, for up to $2 a day -- is a dream. ''I'd like to work in a factory, but I don't have any ID card, and you need one to show that you're old enough,'' she said wistfully. (Since the candidates are unlikely to find the time to travel to the third world anytime soon, I put an audio slide show of the Cambodian realities on the Web for them at www.nytimes.com/kristof.) All the complaints about third world sweatshops are true and then some: factories sometimes dump effluent into rivers or otherwise ravage the environment. But they have raised the standard of living in Singapore, South Korea and southern China, and they offer a leg up for people in countries like Cambodia. ''I want to work in a factory, but I'm in poor health and always feel dizzy,'' said Lay Eng, a 23-year-old woman. And no wonder: she has been picking through the filth, seven days a week, for six years. She has never been to a doctor. Here in Cambodia factory jobs are in such demand that workers usually have to bribe a factory insider with a month's salary just to get hired. Along the Bassac River, construction workers told me they wanted factory jobs because the work would be so much safer than clambering up scaffolding without safety harnesses. Some also said sweatshop jobs would be preferable because they would mean a lot less sweat. (Westerners call them ''sweatshops,'' but they offer one of the few third world jobs that doesn't involve constant sweat.) In Asia, moreover, the factories tend to hire mostly girls and young women with few other job opportunities. The result has been to begin to give girls and women some status and power, some hint of social equality, some alternative to the sex industry. Cambodia has a fair trade system and promotes itself as an enlightened garment producer. That's great. But if the U.S. tries to ban products from countries that don't meet international standards, jobs will be shifted from the most wretched areas to better-off nations like Malaysia or Mexico. Already there are very few factories in Africa or the poor countries of Asia, and if we raise the bar higher, there will be even fewer. That would hurt American consumers. But it would be particularly devastating for laborers in the poorest parts of the world. For the fundamental problem in the poor countries of Africa and Asia is not that sweatshops exploit too many workers; it's that they don't exploit enough." Link

Thankfully for who? For consumers of their cheap plastic crap, so that Wallmart can stay afloat? Let face it, we here enjoy lower prices at the expense of others. Lets hope they don't figure that out! The moment they start demanding a quality of life equal to ours (maybe in the form of a union) we are screwed. So i guess its kill or be killed. Long live cheap plastic crap! In the case of "the government keeping the workers pay down" isn't starting a union akin to a democratic revolution? Would that not be a good thing? Are these governments just doing it because its profitable to keep the man down? Oh...it is our friend, the invisible hand. What would happen to the scores of millions of people who use the wages that they earn making the cheap plastic crap to provide themselves and their families with food, clothing, and shelter if no one bought it anymore? All that would happen is that we'd pay slightly more for a given set of goods until someone combined marginally lower labor costs with increased automation somewhere else and provided the same goods at a lower price, and they'd starve while some other country reaped the benefits of the trade and foreign direct investment that they relinquished. Don't look for the Chinese to chose door number two anytime soon. If I was concerned for anyone, I'd be concerned for the American or Euro who is convinced that the accident of his birth in a first world nation entitles him to a certain standard of living no matter what. Don't expect Ming-Li and Rahesh to cry any tears for Chet Guthrie because he can't parlay his high-school diploma into $80K a year with full bene's because they are working too hard over there.

Matt: I think that SC's point was that you do an equal disservice when you exaggerate or mischaracterize the threats posed by a given administration for political gain. Were you saluting the Black-Helicopter/Patriot-Movement folks for their valuable contribution to the national political discourse when they were suggesting that Waco, Ruby-Ridge, etc were mere preludes to a Clinton orchestrated takeover by the UN/One-World-Government? Somewhere mixed in with the wild-eyed, crazy-ass gibberish were some points that may have been worth considering with regards to the power of the state under any administration, but they were completely lost amongst the aformentioned crazy-ass shit that no one in their right mind would actually give any credence to - and they wound up completely discrediting any argument that they were attempting to advance, and compromising any non-crazy-ass cause that they wished to further. Swap the Birkenstocks and beads for boots and bandoliers and I think you'd be surprised at how well you fit in with the folks in the fortified compounds.

The primary reason that they are poor is that they lived under governments which had nearly unlimited power to obstruct market forces for decades. The only way to make their pay go up in the long term is to increase the value of their output, which normally occurs when their employers invest the profits that their enterprises generate to invest in machinery or other capital equipment that increases the value of their output. At the same time the taxes that the employers paid on their profits typically allow the governments where they are operating to upgrade roads, bridges, railroads, ports, education, etc - all of which puts more capital at the worker's disposal and enables them to increase the value of their output still more. If you increase wages by a factor that exceeds the rate at which productivity increases, you eventually eliminate your profits - and the end result is that the workers lose their jobs, the employer never makes the investment in more capital equipment, the government never secures the funds necessary to upgrade the local infrastructure, and they remain mired in poverty. Thankfully, I think that most workers in the poorest parts of the world where they actually have the opportunity to work in such enterprises will understand that agitating for a temporary windfall won't help them much if it ultimately costs them their jobs, and will continue to choose working in factories because it appears to be the best option available to them at the time.

We don't need unions to preserve these laws any more than we need the Union Army to enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

She does though, early on in the video. She speaks of Stalinist Soviet Union, then compares how this administration is using his play-book. And you know what? This is fucked up. It discredits LEGITIMATE complaints about executive priveledge, end-arounds by-passing constitutional constraints, etc., everything this administration is GUILTY OF. It reeks of the same FEAR-MONGERING that these people accuse this FUCKED UP administration of DOING. AND IT SUCKS. I understand the fear of this administration, I share it myself, but the discourse must remain contextually balanced and free of the same hype that this administration is accused of, or else we are in the same fucking pit. I'll count this as my "odd-bedfellow" moment of the day.

Why do you think that the people in those countries have agreed to work under those conditions? Or have they been forced to do so? Are you confident that people living in the first-world understand the realities that they are contending with better than they do, and that they should let people in the first world make these decisions for them?

Also - aren't there laws on the books that protect workers, and agencies tasked with enforcing them? If these are inadequate, I think that you can make a stronger case for changing the laws, providing them with more resources, etc if your goal is to protect all workers, rather than secure above-market compensation for a small subset of them.

Questioning their right to exist, and questioning their right to eliminate secret ballot in unionization drives because it hasn't delivered the results that they want (people are clearly choosing not to join) and replace it a public "card check" that leaves people who don't want to join the union vulnerable to intimidation and retribution are two different things. There's also the question of the rights of non union workers. Who should decided whether or not a mentally competent adult that decides he wants to work for a given employer who wants to provide him a job? Should the right to make that choice be retained by the individual or not? The reason that union membership is declining is that people aren't terribly keen to join them, and businesses that employ union workers tend to be uncompetitive and go out of business unless they can convince the government to transfer the costs of the union worker's above market compensation to the rest of the public via tarriffs, subsidies, or other legal measures that artifically inflate the price of whatever it is that the workers in that particular industry are engaged in producing.

She'd certainly be much better off if her family sold her to brothel to help fend-off starvation. But yeah - that's pretty much what's happened this century. Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, etc - all much worse off than they once were on account of trade.

Which part of "that" are you referring to? Surely not the stats concerning the percentage of workers in the private workforce that are unionized. The numbers would be even lower in the absence of the aptly-named "Davis-Bacon Act."

On the contrary - I am quite free to judge at my leisure, since you volunteered the information on a public forum. In my judgment - if your claims are true, which I doubt - you and your female (?) in laws show less virtue, decorum, and restraint than one finds in a typical ferret colony. But - I agree - consenting adults should be free to do whatever they wish to one another, regardless of what anyone else thinks, so have at it.

A member of the Teamsters Union will be glad to check the "yes" box for you, if you are unable to do so... In the private sector, the union/private-business follows roughly the same dynamics as the host/parasite model, and the passage of this legislation won't affect the final outcome, which invariably ends with a contract guaranteeing above-market wages far beyond what the skill-set in question would warrant - with a company that no longer exists. So the means may change, but the end will remain the same.

"The signed cards are then submitted to the National Labor Relations Board, known as the NLRB. Under current U.S. law, the employer need not recognize the union as its employees' collective bargaining representative if a majority of employees express their intent to join the union under through card check; instead, employers may require a secret-ballot vote overseen by the NLRB. The Employee Free Choice Act, introduced in the United States Congress in 2005 and again in 2007, would require that the NLRB recognize the union's role as the official bargaining representative if a majority of employees have authorized that representation via card check, without any secret ballot vote. [1] It was passed by the House on March 1, 2007. Organized labor groups argue that the card check process is preferable to traditional NLRB elections because it avoids the anti-union campaigns that can accompany elections and leads to healthier workplace relations by avoiding a direct confrontation between employer and its employees. Critics of card check organizing argue that the process takes away employees' right to vote for or against the union in a secret ballot and permits union intimidation of workers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Card_check Just signed into law in MA recently. Should do wonders for the already stellar rates of private employment growth amongst the non-degreed population here.

That'd be roughly analogous to the "card-check" law that constitutes organized labor's foremost legislative priority these days.

"jayb to fw? as usual , you have nothing to say." Except for this, perhaps: It appears as though you are actually *less* discriminating when it comes to the deciding which ideas that you'll embrace than you are when it comes determining which of your female in-laws you'll commingle with - though the dignity of the former surely suffers more than the latter as a consequence of your affections.

With all due respect, I'm compelled to bluntly distance myself from your claim of agreement with Naomi Wolf, as your claim to her agreement is demonstrably not valid -- at no time has Wolf asserted that the events you cite are anything other than genuine acts of terrorism, and she did not assert that most acts of terrorism are fake. The relevance of the first item on the historical list of ten steps said to be consistently employed when open societies are incrementally closed down -- the invocation of a terrifying internal and external threat -- has nothing to do with supporting your conspiracy theories. The point made by Wolf is in how the threat (regardless of whether it is real or fake) is invoked as a rationale to ignore protections against abuse of power by the state. As you mentioned the tragic attack against the USS Cole, please note the presidency of that period did not invoke that event or any other terror attacks of the period as a rationale for subverting the American government, as has the current presidency continuously invoked numerous scary events and situations, both real and fake, to justify its criminal abuses of power extending back well before 9/11. What an amusing exhange. V7 is to Crux as: Id is to Ego. Golum is to Smeagol. Etc.

There's a bit of a distinction between a particular house and the housing market, but I'll be willing to split the difference and stake 50% of the bet on whatever house you choose, and 50% on the housing market as defined by the CSW index for Seattle. I think that the point that you are making by insisting on a single-home is a fair one, since you buy a home, not the market - but I think that it's also fair to include the sum of all such transactions into the analysis when attempting to evaluate the condition of the market. I'd also be happy to stake $50 on the single home, and $50 on the market via CSW, and stipulate that in the event of a "tie," we both pay $50 and kick in for $100 worth of free beer at the first Pub Club after Nov 1 of '08. Loser (wrong on both counts) kicks in $100, the pain of which can be offset by drinking as much of the beer as possible oneself. I also don't think that Zillow is especially accurate: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117142055516708035-O6WPplch_duU0zq_zhjQaI19vIg_20080214.html?mod=rss_free but it may be the only tool available. Unfortunately, I don't think that there's a metric out there that doesn't include valuations derived from refis (which are especially rife with appraisal fraud - appraiser plays ball and hits the magic number, broker gets commission, homeowner gets cash-in-hand), which accounts for bundling closing costs into the sales price, builder incentives, etc. I also think it's reasonable to look at real vs nominal returns, so I'll compute the real return on the money market account (less taxes on dividends and inflation), and you include commissions and closing costs, interest, insurance, taxes, maintenance, net cost remodels/upgrades (what you pay for the new kitchen vs standard calcs that determine the effect of the said kitchen on resale value) and inflation in your calculations on the minus side of the ledger, and any tax savings that you derive from acquisition on the plus side of the ledger. If you accept the bet - we can make this post a sticky in the cc.com events forum, so folks will have plenty of advance notice of the free beer. In the event that I end up leaving the country for a few months before Nov 1 of '08, I'll hand over two fifties for someone to keep in escrow (I nominate Porter), and if I lose on both counts there's the beer money. If I win on both counts you fork over the $100 beer tab at the next Pub Club, and I get my money back upon my return.

I'll do you one better. How about if my "investment" is a US treasury money fund (VMPXX), and your investment is the Case-Shiller-Weiss Index for Seattle between today's date and the same date next year? $50 sounds fine with me.

"Citigroup CEO Plans to Resign As Losses Grow Board Plans Meeting With Prince on Sunday; SEC Queries Accounting By ROBIN SIDEL, MONICA LANGLEY and GREGORY ZUCKERMAN November 3, 2007 Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Charles Prince is planning to resign at a board meeting Sunday, according to people familiar with the situation, as the bank faces big new losses from distressed mortgage assets." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119403363814780742.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news Thankfully the odds of he and Stan O' Neil facing foreclosure are rather low.

Yeah - but not permanently until the spring of '09, and won't be looking to buy any sooner than mid-to-late 2010, at the earliest. If the tax-adjusted rent-vs-mortgage differential is significant enough, the target date will be adjusted back accordingly. Housing is an expense that I hope to minimize within certain space/neighborhod parameters - that's it. If the tax-adjusted cost of owning reaches par with renting something the same size in the same neighborhood, and the rest of the cards are in order, then things may change. Profiting from the housing market? Who knows. I heard of people in some markets selling their homes from investors at current market prices, then signing multi-year contracts to lease the homes back from them at prevailing rates determined by a neutral third party, and granting the new lessors right of first refusal if the new owner decided that he/she/they wanted to sell. Doubt anyone would go for that kind of a deal anymore, but perhaps. Doesn't look like there's a futures market for residential real-estate in Seattle yet. IMO the primary impact of the subprime "issue" will be a significant reduction in investor's appetite for securities constructed from or containing non-traditional mortgages, which will translate into tighter lending standards on the retail side. This will probably have an effect on who can get a loan, and for how much, which will probably act to temper future price increases, at the very least. This may also have an effect on market psychology, which - in combination with incredibly lax lending standards - is what has driven the majority of the real appreciation since ~01-02 IMO. Foreclosures and REO sales by banks may have some impact on inventory/prices in some areas as well. It's entirely possible that home values in some areas will continue appreciating, or appreciate at increasing rates - but on balance I think that the distribution of probabilities is such that the number of places where this will occur will not be terribly numerous. None of this really matters if you are living in a home that you like, have a mortgage that you can afford, and don't need to sell. If a particular individual's prime motive for owning a home is near-term financial gain, then their situation is likely rather different. Ditto for folks who HELOC'd or cash-out-refied their way into the 100% LTV category or higher in 05-06.

There are quite a few other elements of the real estate business that need to be cleaned up so that market participants have accurate information. The buying/selling, and appraisal processes are especially flawed and rife with massive conflicts of interest, but thats another topic. Ka-ching! The New York attorney general accused an appraisal company yesterday of inflating the value of homes under pressure from Washington Mutual, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/02/business/02appraise.html?_r=1&ref=business&oref=slogin http://bp3.blogger.com/_pMscxxELHEg/RxzD0s_7EYI/AAAAAAAABB4/ljDSXZhMG3o/s1600-h/IMFresets.jpg Worth clicking on the second link for an overview of what's ahead for ALT-A and Option-ARM loans. IMF Report

My neighbors want to know if they still have to wear the big scarlet "C" around their necks since they haven't turned their heat on yet, and they live in a way colder climate.

Yup. Our own Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale.

The reason that I asked is that while the depth/extent of the snowpack that you'll have is a bit of a wild-card in December, as are the temperatures you'll be dealing with - the one thing that you can count on for certain is spending a hell of a lot of time in the dark. At Seattle's lattitude at that time of the year, you're looking at something like 7.5 hours between sunrise and sunset at the Winter solstice, which will probably fall right in the middle of the trip. It'll be much easier to pass the time, and much more comfortable in a hut IMO. There are obviously no guarantees, but IMO you're more likely to encounter a deeper snowpack and warmer temps (though not necessarily better snow/weather) on a trip that falls somewhere between late February and early April, and you are certain to spend a hell of a lot less time in the dark. By the end of March, you're looking at ~13 hours between sunrise and sunset. Changing the timing of the trip might not be an option, but if you have a choice, it might be worth considering and/or looking into a hut. The odds of finding good snow in December at Roger's Pass in BC are probably as high as anywhere, and they have a couple of huts there (or so I hear). Not sure how the booking works, or if you have to reserve spots way in advance, but this area might be worth considering.