Transients. People that have no roots, and do not plan to stay in an area.
Transients that are not citizens are not as bad as those that are citizens, and know they are not going to be here in five years. Why? One reason I have some knowledge concerning people that know they will be moving out of the area in a short amount of time.
A while back, my pastor was talking with a gentleman (I use the term loosely) about the taxes and how much the education costs are for Loudoun county. In particular, he brought up bond issues. The person with whom he was speaking stated he always votes for spending for education no matter what, even if it is frivolous. When my pastor, slack jawed, asked why the gentleman replied that he did not intend on living here for long, his company would be moving him in a matter of 3 or 4 years at most, and the single most important factor for housing price increase is “what are the schools like”. If the schools are excellent, then the housing is in high demand, and supply/demand dictates an increase in price. He stated he would not be here for more than a couple of years for paying on the bonds, so it made perfect sense for him to vote for every bond issue related to schools that comes up. While “past performance is no predictor of future value” this guy had figured that the highest probability of him getting a capital appreciation of the house he bought was to plunge the county in debt. It wouldn’t hurt him — he’d be long gone when the debt came due.
In a sense, this guy was a bigger drag on the taxes than illegal aliens. He knew that the county would pay 3 times as much for the capital improvements, but he also knew he would not be paying it himself. Those that were staying would pay (with those that move in later) while he had long since moved out. Don’t even ask me what I think of the people that vote with that as their mindset — matter of fact I’ll tell you anyway. They are bigger thieves than the politicians. They figured a way to scam the system and take money from others through the use of their vote.
The only way around such a scam is to pay up front on all projects. Don’t allow the government to borrow for anything, but only to allow the government to tax based on voting. In other words, have funding questions stated “Do you support a $.05 cent per hundred increase in the tax rate for construction of a school ….” The tax bill would be assessed at the time of the vote. You vote for a tax increase, you pay the tax.
Is it going to happen? I doubt it seriously. Would it be fair? Yes.
it can set wages to unskilled workers. It happened in the town I grew up in. the cashiers who had worked at the local drug store for years lost their jobs and were hired in at min. wage at wal-mart. in part, Wal-mart posts great profits by effectively causing people to earn lower wages and extracting the difference. Wal-mart could afford to pay higher wages without laying people off. If would mean a cut in profit, but who cares? A $1000 I don’t see limits to this sort of thing as the epitome of socialism, and I don’t understand your insistence on a black-and-white interpretation, where anything other than laissez faire capitalism is framed as absolute communism.
wal-marts low-wage practices are well known. Here’s a resource for you:
http://www.walmartmovie.com/facts.php
The question is, was WalMart offering higher wages while the drug store in question was still open, and then lower the wages when there was no more competition. THAT was your accusation. If the drug store had paid minimum wage, would it have remained open?
i didn’t finish that thought: 100 workers at the bottom of the walmart pyramid would derive more utility from a $1000 increase in yearly income than one person at the top would from an additional $100,000 a year (diminishing marginal utility)
that wasn’t my accusation. stores close when they can’t compete with walmart, which pays lower wages. Once it’s the main purchaser of unskilled labor in a market, it does have price (of labor) setting power. and workers are in fact paid lower wages. perhaps the drug store could have competed by cutting it’s workers wages workers wages. Is this likely to be beneficial or harmful the workers, or to the community in general?
So you judge a person’s quality as an individual based on how much money they bring in? If someone has a low income, it’s because they aren’t good enough? Typical conservative!
No, but evidentally you do, smore. You make the money you make. If you are happy with it, GOD bless you. If you aren’t, then go earn some more. It is up to the individual as to how he/she wants to live. Who am I to judge them? I was saying that the Dems will give something for nothing because others cry foul or are too lazy to compete or succeed. People never have to justify “good enough” to me.
You want to hang everything on Wal-Mart and nothing on the employees. If Wal-Mart is the only job in town and you aren’t game for its employment standards, boycott. Move to another town where there is more opportunity. What is it that you don’t understand? Just like the unions. Pays all good till they need something else they don’t deserve. Then they want to strike. Who wins and loses on that one? I know cause I’ve been there too mnay times. The company always wins. Union losses in the long run and the consumer is ALWAYS left holding the bag.
You liberals would be funny if you weren’t so sad. You are definitely a puzzle without a solution. No means and no end in sight.
Gosh, I can’t believe I’m doing this. I’m going to at least partially agree with SPMM.
Oppression of workers is NOT right, and when a company is capable of manipulating the supply chain, the distribution, and labor force because of size, they can easily become the one who oppresses the poor. What is oppression of the poor? Paying a wage that one knows cannot sustain living would be one good definition. The only reason a person can work at a place like WalMart is because they have multiple incomes within a household. At some point, it becomes oppression of the poor — and from a Biblical basis, that is a recipe for judgment. Now is it all bad? No. WalMart here in Leesburg is competing against many other stores, and they all have a limited supply of labor — there is balance. Do they pay well enough to live here? No. Do they pay better than some other places? Yes. So while I know oppressing the poor is not good, I don’t know as I see WalMart doing that … yet.
A Biblical model would be for those that own a business to trust to God for profit, while working fervently to reduce waste and maximize productivity (notice I don’t say reduce costs). What is unconscionable is a company that collaborates with their competition on the wages of workers in order to fix labor costs. (I know it happens, I was high enough in two separate organizations that had their HR departments active in groups that shared first quartile, median, and third quartile salaries for engineers. When hiring, we were informed the ranges, and we were told in one of those companies to hire H-1b applicants at a significantly reduced rate.
That is clearly beyond what ought to be allowed. Cartels and monopoly positions are not free competition for the good of all, but a perversion of the capitalism at its worst.
All that said, I still would disagree with SPMM on much of what he would suggest is the cure. Regulation of monopolies I see as the worst possible outcome. What would be much better would be divestiture of parts. As an example, I’ll use what happened with AT&T. If you don’t remember, a long-distance phone call from the east coast to the west coast would cost something on the order of $4.00 a minute back in the ’70s. It was impossible for competition to really flourish until after Judge Green’s Modified Final Judgment that had AT&T break up into the long distance company, and seven local companies. It also required that the local companies provide the same quality and cost connections to competitive service providers that it did for AT&T. The breakup of “Ma Bell” was radical at the time, but what did it do? I can call *anywhere* in the continental US for the same price as my parents basic phone service then. There are no “per minute” charges for phone calls. There are no hidden fees. The price is about the same (30 years later, the number of dollars price, not the adjusted for inflation price). Service is *much* better (if I have a problem with the phone company, they respond next day at the worst case–because they know I’ll take my business elsewhere if they don’t). Did it cause some pain for some? Yes, but not AT&T stockholders — at least in the short term, they made out like bandits (the pieces were worth far more than the whole).
A free market can work only as long as their is a low bar to entry into competition. Microsoft thrived because of a low bar. Firefox has thrived because Microsoft came under the microscope of an anti-trust investigation. What would have been better for everyone would have been the breakup of Microsoft. We would have had twice the innovation, prices going through the floor (remember “dime a minute” then nickel a minute long distance advertisements? Then long distance was free.) If there is a low bar to competition, free markets work, and they work well. When there is no competition, and a high bar to entering competition, free markets are ruled by the greed of the one person that owns the market. Not good.
act, “too lazy” “go earn some more”
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the reality of many peoples’ situations. Sure, there will always be Mos out there, who have inspiring rags to riches stories. That’s great, those stories will always be woven into the fabric of our country. The only problem is that the lower you start on the totem pole, the more you have to rely on good luck, and the less likely you are, statistically, to rise to the top.
Someone making 101% of Fed. Poverty Level doesn’t qualify for medicaid in most states. If their kid gets pneumonia it could set them back months. Of course, it’s not going to be easy, and getting ahead takes lots of hard work. But it shouldn’t be impossible. I’m sorry about your experience with unions. Unchecked unionization isn’t a solution any more than laissez faire capitalism. (in fact, unionization is a product of laissez faire capitalism, which requires gov. regulations to prevent just as much as any of walmarts negative business practices) Asking the gov. to take take over the private sector, and turn more and more things into state-run enterprises is socialism, asking the gov., as the only legitimate representative of all citizens, to work toward maintaining a level playing field is not.
“stores close when they can’t compete with walmart, which pays lower wages.”
How can WalMart pay lower wages BEFORE it has put the other stores out of business? No-one would go work for them.
Jack,
People with no job will work for less wages. But that’s not what Wal-Mart does. They start out with wages at least as high, perhaps higher, with prices lower than the Mom-And-Pops. After the Mom-And-Pops go under, then they let go their higher-wage workers and bring in cheaper labor.
The Mom-And-Pops can’t do that because they don’t have the bankroll that Wal-Mart has (by a number of orders of magnitude).
A free market (or pure capitalism) assumes a couple things:
(1) The market size is infinitely big, and
(2) Local and short-term disruptions are tolerated for the good of the whole, long-term.
None of these is completely valid, and (2) is becoming less and less tolerated. Is it bad for a county or a state to pass regulations to protect its interests? And how does one force cooperation against a common threat? Without regulations of this sort, we would end up with the economic equivalent of Gaul.
Once a monopoly (or a close facsimile) is achieved, the only answers are (1) a breakup, (2) regulation of the monopoly, or (3) let the monopoly endure until it becomes lazy and irrelevant. We tried (1) with AT&T which then became (2). We also do (2) with most other utilities. (3) is IBM (old days) and Microsoft (new days). It will probably be Google soon. For products that change frequently, (3) isn’t a bad choice.
Being a monopoly is good in the short-term, but having wily competitors is often better in the long-term (from the companies’ point-of-view). Having competitors is almost always good from the consumers point of view, though, regulated standards are often necessary.
That’s exactly what puffalump was NOT accusing WalMart of doing. Now you are. OK — show me the evidence.
AT&T was a poor example to be used. It was government regulated all along. Sure, its seperate parts were worth more in the beginning but some of the parts went under. Instead of causing competition (local teles) it actually stiffled it because of the costs to create infrastructure. Even with the advent of fiber-optics, it took 20 years and a lot of regulation/de-regulation to get where we are today with true competition starting to arise. Just remember; because one name offers you the service, it doesn’t necessarilly mean that they OWN that service. Probably just renting. And it was the long-distance side of the house that kept your local phone bill low. Sure, you can call anywhere cheap but you usually have to bundle. Use the internet. Look at the cost for good service. With taxes, accesses and “universal service” charges, if you aren’t paying $100 a month for phone and net, then you don’t have much service. And that is without TV.
Monopolies can be great if regulated correctly. That ain’t the governments job. And they also don’t give a level playing field. Again, in the long run the consumer loses. And business suffers. And jobs are farmed out overseas or at cheaper rates.
Cheap products/service or fair labor practices. Think you can have both? Think again.
Act,
If you are paying $100/month for phone and net, you are paying *way* too much. I pay $65/month, which will rise to $70/month in a couple of months (introductory rate on VOIP of $15/month goes to $20/month — and includes all fees, plus $50/month for FIOS at 5d/2u Mbs).
The service I get now is way cheaper, more complete (it includes voice mail, forwarding, caller ID, number blocking, speed dial) and doesn’t include hidden costs. I’ve been paying $15.31 every month. I can call *Germany* for $0.03/minute — which was out of the question prior to the breakup. It is true that AT&T was regulated, they were not only regulated, but they were very profitable. The breakup made a lot of money for those that owned AT&T stock (at least those that sold off at least part of the stock).
Brian,
Long distance unlimited, local/toll unlimited and DSL is actually $110 a month. That doesn’t include mama’s wireless. These are landline services. For security and emergency purposes, I would never be without a landline.
As far as stock goes, I’ve lost over $85,000 since the breakup.
You’ve lost $85K because other companies have come in and eaten their lunch.
Technologically, we’re so far beyond what we were in the “Ma Bell” days it ain’t funny. We would have never seen anywhere near the innovation without the breakup. AT&T was the best example because it was a government-mandated monopoly.
Microsoft stifles innovation too, but at least others are ALLOWED to compete (even when it’s futile).
I also can’t help but note that Microsoft keeps saying their doing what their actually preventing. Kind of like Repub rhetoric.
“I also can’t help but note that Microsoft keeps saying their doing what their actually preventing. Kind of like Repub rhetoric.”
Your ignorance is showing again.
Act,
The neighborhood is fiber, so no matter what, I have a form of “VOIP” from the start (though Verizon doesn’t call it VOIP, it is still digital at the ONT hanging on the back of the house out). There is essentially no difference between “land line” and VOIP. Get that from Verizon, and yes, it costs about $100/month. Get the minimal fiber data connect, and then use your own VOIP service, and you have exactly the same reliability as you do with fiber connect land lines.
The service is better (ever try to get Verizon to fix something quickly?) The features are far superior.
As to you losing $85,000 on the stock, when did you sell? Long after the breakup? To loose that much I’d hope you had a huge amount invested in many other stocks (if you follow “rule of thumb” for diversification, you would have no more than 10 – 20% in any single stock — or sector). Did you get nuked by not putting in stop losses? Long term loss is different from short term loss. Obviously, because telecomm became such a commodity item in the long run, the price of the stock *should* have gone down. AT&T was making money for providing very little. In a sense, even though they were government regulated (of necessity given they were granted the right of way for the infrastructure at the expense of the public) they certainly were charging outlandish prices. Once the infrastructure was paid for, the cost of making a long distance call was no more than a local call — the “theft” of the public funds ($4.00 a minute for a call!) certainly demonstrates that even though regulated, they were too greedy.
I worked for Cable & Wireless USA for almost 10 years, our cost for transport of a phone call was something less than a penny a minute. If we had direct T1 terminations at both ends, putting a “voice connection” across the intervening space was near without cost. If we had to terminate to a LEC, the single largest cost was what the LEC charged us for the termination. That now is starting to come down from what I understand, as the LECs are now starting to face competition with VOIP and Cable companys doing voice (and number transportability).
Competition was good for the market. AT&T was no longer able to pillage customers. AT&T would never have allowed other carriers to terminate calls to their network without prejudice left on their own. The bar to entry had to be lowered in order to stop a tyrant (monopoly) from stealing from the fiefdom he ruled. Now we have reasonable telephone rates (and data rates that are so far below what they were at the time it is crazy — a single 64kbps data line to the internet was hundreds a month. Now you complain about T1 spend internet and voice costing less than 64k line did without voice.
Sanity:
The “ignorance” in particular is “their” vs. “they’re” (though I’ll grant there is political bigotry, which is ignorance as well, in there).
There! I hope they’re response to their post there will not give additional flame to the discussion.
I’m going to have to post something about a free market, and coerced market one of these days….
The IP in VOIP is “Internet Protocol.” Verizon may be using IP, but I seriously doubt it. IP does not guarantee that packets (generally either UDP or TCP, but you could roll your own) are received in the order in which they are sent. Thus, in VOIP, the receiving end will wait for missing packets or just drop a packet if it comes in too late.
I also have Verizon FIOS, and I do not believe they are using VOIP. I suspect they are using a slice of the FIOS bandwidth for plain old G.711 ulaw.
VOIP uses UDP, typically RTP on top of UDP. Even though TCP is a reliable protocol, TCP is impractical for realtime traffic. Implementations are aware that UDP can drop or disorder packets, but the signal processing algos normally care of that. Assume a sent sequence of n, n+1, n+2, and the network drops packet n+1, a replacement can be made based upon information found in packets n and n+2. VOIP is an amazing and flexible technology, with bandwidth requirements being as low as 8k, and up to ~96k for services such as Vonage.
I read sometime back that Verizon had converted all of their all of their circuit switching gear with a packet switched IP infrastructure. What this means is that existing analog copper circuits are converted to digital, and back if the far end is also analog.
It is true you can get VOIP to run your voice over the FIOS IP. Verizon has battery backup on the telephone, but not the data. You would either have to provide your own standby power, or forget about the phone during a power outage. I also believe that the 911 issue may still be there with VOIP also.
Sorry if I wandered too far off-topic, George Mason is getting their butts kicked by the F***ing Irish, and I am depressed..
All the long distance carriers went to packet switched a few years ago. It just didn’t make sense to use a full 64kb channel to carry what generally fits in a much smaller footprint. With pauses in speech, less than full dynamic range, and a lot of redundancy in signal the wasting of space is huge. (Think of what you can compress an audio CD down to with MP3 with no loss of ability to hear what is said.)
Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before the LECs did also. They don’t need (and don’t want) to send signals any distance they don’t have to at full bandwidth. While GPON (G.984) allows for encapsulation of data, there is nothing I saw in the standard that required G.711 ulaw. I’d be surprised if they did in fact use all that bandwidth. And dismayed … that would take a lot of potential bandwidth from other uses, especially given it would be required for every subscriber line continuously, if for nothing else than signaling (if memory serves me, the full 64kb includes the A and B signaling bits …)
I run the whole show off my own backup system, so battery to the system should not be an issue.