Murphy SidingHey you kids! Get off my lawn!
LOL! I don't know about this site, but I know a few rail-related websites where that should be their mission statement.
Euclid ouibejamn Euclid I do not expect it to ever recover to robust growth. Never? Seriously? Anybody older than about twenty has seen our economy go through boom and bust cycles. Where you are in that cycle depends on what type of work you do and where you do it, I suppose. Yes, I mean never, but I suppose I should qualify that because I do not mean "never" in terms of geological time. What I mean is to never return as a country to the economic prosperity of the past. I am referring to the average performance since there will be performance spurts here and there.
ouibejamn Euclid I do not expect it to ever recover to robust growth. Never? Seriously? Anybody older than about twenty has seen our economy go through boom and bust cycles. Where you are in that cycle depends on what type of work you do and where you do it, I suppose.
Euclid I do not expect it to ever recover to robust growth.
Never? Seriously? Anybody older than about twenty has seen our economy go through boom and bust cycles. Where you are in that cycle depends on what type of work you do and where you do it, I suppose.
Yes, I mean never, but I suppose I should qualify that because I do not mean "never" in terms of geological time. What I mean is to never return as a country to the economic prosperity of the past. I am referring to the average performance since there will be performance spurts here and there.
Well it would if you stopped playing on the computer all the time and got a job ike the rest of us.
Just sayin'....
I agree, there will have to be a major shift in policy or coal to be a growth commodity again. The only problem with using intermodal to replace coal is that the average revenue from a carload of IM is much less than the average revenue from a carload of coal. Saw some figures not long ago (which I can't remember specifically) that I believe had the revenue from IM about half that of coal.
BaltACD SCotUS knocks down EPA Mercury rules http://news.yahoo.com/us-supreme-court-rejects-mercury-emissions-regulation-153652063.html
SCotUS knocks down EPA Mercury rules
http://news.yahoo.com/us-supreme-court-rejects-mercury-emissions-regulation-153652063.html
The fight was led by the AG of Michigan, where I live. However, the two big power companies in the state have already largely completed the upgrades for their baseload plants. They are mostly retiring smaller obsolete plants that are not worth upgrading. I'm sure the ruling will save some dirty power plants somewhere, but I would not count on it steming the downward trend in thermal coal.
How well is the Union Pacific's competition doing?
I think the economy is great for some, not so great for others. If you get most of your income from wages, it's not so good. Sure we've had cycles before and will have them in the future. Problem is, so much has changed.
Years past, when the economy has come back the quality and quantity of jobs returned or surpassed what had been. We may have even lost entire industries, but new ones took their place to employ those displaced. Now the jobs return much slower, the quality for most is less than what they lost. And with globalization there is always someone who can do it cheaper somewhere else. That is, if they don't find a way to automate the job and eliminate it entirely.
I read an article last year where some economists said we could eventually see 50% unemployment rates become normal. That because of technology becoming better and cheaper.
Jeff
Unfortunatly it's too late for the replacement plant in Bay City Consumers wanted to build. Much cleaner than the existing plant but the environmentists had Gov. Barbie on their side at the time and she pushed through a law requiring 10% of power to come from windmills and solar. UP and BNSF won't be sending many coal trains to Michigan.
jeffhergert ouibejamn Euclid I do not expect it to ever recover to robust growth. Never? Seriously? Anybody older than about twenty has seen our economy go through boom and bust cycles. Where you are in that cycle depends on what type of work you do and where you do it, I suppose. I think the economy is great for some, not so great for others. If you get most of your income from wages, it's not so good. Sure we've had cycles before and will have them in the future. Problem is, so much has changed. Years past, when the economy has come back the quality and quantity of jobs returned or surpassed what had been. We may have even lost entire industries, but new ones took their place to employ those displaced. Now the jobs return much slower, the quality for most is less than what they lost. And with globalization there is always someone who can do it cheaper somewhere else. That is, if they don't find a way to automate the job and eliminate it entirely. I read an article last year where some economists said we could eventually see 50% unemployment rates become normal. That because of technology becoming better and cheaper. Jeff
I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Look at how life was just 50 years ago. Go back another 50 years and life was truly brutish and usually short by today's standards. We're going to be okay.
Ulrich I wouldn't be so pessimistic. Look at how life was just 50 years ago.
And what, exactly, was wrong with life in Canada and the U.S. 50 years ago?
Ulrich,
Don't just judge quality of life by material possessions or technological advances. Life in the early 60's might have moved slower than today but it was pretty good for most in the USA. (The exception was those still trapped in segregation and unable to move elsewhere.) But if you were willing to work hard, you could get ahead before too long.
The USA will be OK in the future only if the right decisions are made by most individuals and reflected in all levels of commerce and government. I admit my thought is greatly influenced by my having constantly worked the last 20 years of my career with government bureaucrats at all levels and seeing how "crushing" they could be as well as a too prevalent lack of common sense on their part. Between civil service and even more by the union protections that they all had, too many were either duds or little dictators.
You could get ahead so long as you weren't female or of a color other than white, in which case your options were severely limited. The 60s and earlier were good years, I'll agree with that. I was a little too young then to remember much, but I do remember that we always seemed to have enough money and mom didn't have to trapse off to work (although she dearly wanted to.. working and independence weren't options for her so housewife it was).
I'm not big on materialism either.. whenever my wife drags me off to the mall I become depressed for two reasons.. 1) I hate shopping and 2) seeing how awash in excess we are. Where soap used to be good enough we now have 50 types of pimple cream and 100 types of toothpaste to choose from.. very few people are skinny apart from the very few who seem to work out at something. We're drowning in excess and we seem to want more and more everyday. 50 years ago a nice bungalow was good enough... now people are wanting 3000 sq. ft. homes just to start out.. Expectations today are through the roof it seems. When my sister in law and her husband came over to my place to discuss the purchase of their first home I tried to gently persuade them that renting might be a better option for them given their sparse finances. Well, they didn't talk to me for a week.. wife gave me hell too. How dare I make such a suggestion.. spent the better part of a week in the dog house for it. Now they've got themselves into a home they can't afford.. and of course its not their fault!
If we could manage our expectations better and learn to live more frugally 90% of our problems would be gone. That's alot more than most folks in other parts of the world can say.
UP is doing fine.. stock up today which is notable given the issues with Greece. I would have expected investors to sell off in droves.. maybe that's still coming.
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Ulrich If we could manage our expectations better and learn to live more frugally 90% of our problems would be gone. That's alot more than most folks in other parts of the world can say.
Sage advice but I fear it would lead to a precipitous drop in railborne container traffic..after all;a lot of people's "living beyond means" these days sails from Asia to Long Beach on a container ship and crosses the country on a stack train (insert emoticon here)..
"I Often Dream of Trains"-From the Album of the Same Name by Robyn Hitchcock
That would be bad news for the railroads and their shareholders at least temporarily. But looking at the big picture does it makes sense to ship all of that stuff from Asia to begin with? Why can't we make our own toys and toothpaste? There's a whole lot of superfluous transportation out there that makes no sense at all.. I'll add to the list with trucking bottled water out of California.. (its happening now believe it or not) trucking garbage through Canada's biggest city to landfills in Michigan.. the container deal from Asia falls in the same category.. or maybe making plastic chairs and toothpicks is now beyond our capabilities and we have to get that stuff from China and India.
So was it just cheaper to dump your trash in Michigan or does Ontario have some tough rules about having landfills. Always bugs me to see the Canadian plates on trash trucks in the Flint area dumps with lakes all around the trash mountains.
It's a cost thing Bob, and it bugs me too. Sending trash by truck across an international border. This is happening for a number of reasons.. controls in Ontario, a good deal courtesy of the state of Michigan, and overall shortsightedness by all involved. What a colossal waste of resources.. at least rail it, and preferrably to site within the same jursidiction.
Other states are dumping here as well. Because of NAFTA the state claims it can't refuse it from Ontario and the dump owners won't raise their prices because they might lose some business. Oh well, I'm moving to Indiana anyway.
UlrichWhy can't we make our own toys and toothpaste?
We can't afford to - we've priced ourselves out of the labor market. Unskilled labor (fast food) now wants $15 an hour - as much as we pay some paramedics. A manufacturing employee in a Chinese urban area got $2.85 an hour in 2009. Only in Europe are wages as high as here. In much of the rest of the world, manufacturing wages are about 20% of US wages.
http://www.bls.gov/fls/china.htm
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Ulrich UP is doing fine.. stock up today which is notable given the issues with Greece. I would have expected investors to sell off in droves.. maybe that's still coming.
Ulrich, that sell-off was last week -- Dow Jones losing c. 350 on Thursday or Friday. Already people are over it. Greece is about as important to UP as it is to the European Union, which is to say not very. The EU will be better off without this deadbeat that makes little (except maybe government paper) and buys less.
tree68 we've priced ourselves out of the labor market
Does that include railroad employees? Transportation is certainly part of the cost of everything. I'm waiting to hear anybody on this site say they make too much money and deserve a pay cut. Fast food workers wages are no where near the main concern in our ability to compete on the world market. But on a rail related website are an easy target.
I agree Fred, I really don't think Greece is all that important apart from perhaps being the tip of the default iceburg. Italy and Spain won't be far behind, and then we're looking at trillions, not billions, anymore. And then who knows what effect these massive defaults will have on the world as a whole and on markets.
ouibejamnDoes that include railroad employees? Transportation is certainly part of the cost of everything. I'm waiting to hear anybody on this site say they make too much money and deserve a pay cut. Fast food workers wages are no where near the main concern in our ability to compete on the world market.
Everything is related, and it's circular. We're able to spend $X on a house because we make $Y. Ditto vehicles, and pretty much everything else. Labor is a major cost in the production of pretty much everything, so when labor costs go up, so does the price of what that labor produces.
Of course, then people see their "real" income go down, so they want more money so they can afford the standard of living to which they've become accustomed. They get raises, and ....
I blame part of the problem on the period when folks insisted on increases in pay that far exceeded that which was necessary to maintain their standard of living.
We won't get into fat cat types who get paid insane wages and/or take their money off-shore, etc, and so on.
Those parts of the world that we're buying containers-ful of products from aren't currently dealing with those same pressures. You can bet, though, that if China paid manufacturing workers the equivalent of $15/hr, instead of less than $3/hr, that we probably wouldn't be buying anywhere near what we do from them...
tree68 ouibejamn Does that include railroad employees? Transportation is certainly part of the cost of everything. I'm waiting to hear anybody on this site say they make too much money and deserve a pay cut. Fast food workers wages are no where near the main concern in our ability to compete on the world market. Everything is related, and it's circular. We're able to spend $X on a house because we make $Y. Ditto vehicles, and pretty much everything else. Labor is a major cost in the production of pretty much everything, so when labor costs go up, so does the price of what that labor produces. Of course, then people see their "real" income go down, so they want more money so they can afford the standard of living to which they've become accustomed. They get raises, and .... I blame part of the problem on the period when folks insisted on increases in pay that far exceeded that which was necessary to maintain their standard of living. We won't get into fat cat types who get paid insane wages and/or take their money off-shore, etc, and so on. Those parts of the world that we're buying containers-ful of products from aren't currently dealing with those same pressures. You can bet, though, that if China paid manufacturing workers the equivalent of $15/hr, instead of less than $3/hr, that we probably wouldn't be buying anywhere near what we do from them...
ouibejamn Does that include railroad employees? Transportation is certainly part of the cost of everything. I'm waiting to hear anybody on this site say they make too much money and deserve a pay cut. Fast food workers wages are no where near the main concern in our ability to compete on the world market.
tree68I blame part of the problem on the period when folks insisted on increases in pay that far exceeded that which was necessary to maintain their standard of living.
Agreed, but that's a can of worms I don't even want to think about opening. Can you imagine labor negotiatiations based on need, rather than what ever you can get away with? Many states are finding pension liabilities negotiated during cheaper times finally coming home to roost.
Ulrich It's a cost thing Bob, and it bugs me too. Sending trash by truck across an international border. This is happening for a number of reasons.. controls in Ontario, a good deal courtesy of the state of Michigan, and overall shortsightedness by all involved. What a colossal waste of resources.. at least rail it, and preferrably to site within the same jursidiction.
There was local opposition to taking trash from outside the area, however, the landfill companies claimed restraint of commerce. If the landfill meets environmental standards, they can take any permitted type of material.
BOB WITHORN Unfortunatly it's too late for the replacement plant in Bay City Consumers wanted to build. Much cleaner than the existing plant but the environmentists had Gov. Barbie on their side at the time and she pushed through a law requiring 10% of power to come from windmills and solar. UP and BNSF won't be sending many coal trains to Michigan.
Most states have renewable portfoleo standards.
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=4850
Some even higher than Michigan. There is not a lot of investor interest in building new coal fired power plants. Investors are flocking to alternative energy projects with their tax incentives.
tree68 Ulrich Why can't we make our own toys and toothpaste?
Ulrich Why can't we make our own toys and toothpaste?
Can't agree. Our politicians, Republican and Democratic, priced us out of the market with their lousy trade deals. What, exactly, would have been wrong with a little protectionist ring around the U.S. and our formerly superior standard of living? This is what I will never understand.
Twenty years of "free trade" have brought our economy to the pretty pass we're talking about. If free trade were so great, why are we still running a half-trillion annual trade deficit, with 94 percent of the world's population to sell to?
Think of the national wealth that has been lost to overseas, especially to China, which buys missiles pointed at us -- along with U.S. companies -- with its trade surplus.
Politicians are many things except dumb, which makes me think we've been sold out.
tree68 Those parts of the world that we're buying containers-ful of products from aren't currently dealing with those same pressures. You can bet, though, that if China paid manufacturing workers the equivalent of $15/hr, instead of less than $3/hr, that we probably wouldn't be buying anywhere near what we do from them...
They I guess we would have to start making stuff ourselves again.
I remember reading articles some years back about jobs leaving Mexico and going to China/Asia because companies felt they were paying Mexicans too much.
There's still manufacturing here. My own customers are primarily steel mills in Canada and the USA.. all made here, with North American labor and at North American pay rates. I love visiting these steel mills... they are the model of efficiency and very profitable. Most of the steel we move goes to other manufacturers in Canada and the US... mostly steel fabrication plants, some for the auto industry, but there sure seem to be more than a few steel places around that are prospering. For some reason the Chinese and the Mexicans haven't taken that over, and steel industry wages are for the most part pretty good albeit very much tied to performance. I don't know why we can make steel products yet toothpaste and toys and clothing need to be made in low wage countries.. Maybe because heavy industry has escaped the clutches of aggessive big box store buyers.
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