Are our trucks now Chinese?

GrimsterGMC said:

This is the same problem here in NZ, the cost of a roof over your head is so high that people are unable to live anywhere near there jobs and the rising cost of fuel has doubled the cost of traveling to work. We have has several minimum wage increases but this has just added to our in 7% inflation rate so it's like a dog chasing it's own tail.

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Pretty much how it goes, Minimum increases turn into a zero-sum game. It works for a little bit until the costs get passed on. How about the guy making just above minimum that's now back to the bottom along with everybody else up the money chain pay wise who's money doesn't go as far.

Never ending viscous cycle that rewards those that don't want to advance their skillsets.

Stumpy said:

Unfortunately the work load is inconsistent here. My wife and I work at the same place. I'm salary, she's hourly. She's been lucky to get 40 hours most of the time, but only got 28 last week. Some departments are only working 2 days a week. Other job oppurtunities are getting looked at, but we both have been here 20+ years. Never seen it like this.

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The economy has been relatively stable for the last 20 years, aside from the blip in 08, which was completely avoidable. Once again unfettered capitalism doing it's thang....

Stumpy said:

Our issue is two fold, I think. One, we lost the MLB license, because Fanatics paid them a large sum of money to go exclusive. This is the time of the year we'd be selling baseball stuff.

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Market based theory would argue that your company should have diversified a long time ago to meet anticipated market needs. The reality is that whoever owns the company you work at probably has more than enough wealth to continue their life, irrespective of what happens to you and your wife, so they don't really care....

Stumpy said:

The second problem, everybody is dealing with, and that's inflation. Everything cost more, and a lot of people probably don't have the extra funds to buy novelty sports crap. We do stuff other than sports too, which has actually grown, to at least match sports sales, if not better.
Most of our product line is BS, that you buy for fun, not because you need it. We've ventured into other aspects, like personalization, which has helped a lot, but business just isn't there like it used to be.

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You're right, when inflation hits fun stuff is often the first casualty.

Hipster said:

Pretty much how it goes, Minimum increases turn into a zero-sum game. It works for a little bit until the costs get passed on. How about the guy making just above minimum that's now back to the bottom along with everybody else up the money chain pay wise who's money doesn't go as far.

Never ending viscous cycle that rewards those that don't want to advance their skillsets.

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Only thing I'd add is that some people want to advance their skillsets but are not able to, often times for reasons outside their control.

618 Syndicate said:

The economy has been relatively stable for the last 20 years, aside from the blip in 08, which was completely avoidable. Once again unfettered capitalism doing it's thang....

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I'd argue we don't really have unfettered capitalism. We've got more of a protected crony capitalist system. Private profits, public losses.

0xDEADBEEF said:

I'd argue we don't really have unfettered capitalism. We've got more of a protected crony capitalist system. Private profits, public losses.

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I don't disagree, however it's nominally unfettered. If a person suggests putting limits on things they are derided as being a socialist (or whatever), and the end result is still that the public loses.

618 Syndicate said:

I don't disagree, however it's nominally unfettered. If a person suggests putting limits on things they are derided as being a socialist (or whatever), and the end result is still that the public loses.

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Sure, but you can also encourage risky behavior that might not happen otherwise because you've put alleged safeties in place. I see Laissez Faire Capitalism blamed for a lot of things when it doesn't truly exist here or anywhere.

0xDEADBEEF said:

Sure, but you can also encourage risky behavior that might not happen otherwise because you've put alleged safeties in place. I see Laissez Faire Capitalism blamed for a lot of things when it doesn't truly exist here or anywhere.

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If the safeties are in place, then the consequences of the risky behavior are mitigated. I don't mind public assumtion of risk if public benefit is the potential reward. I do not think a system which removes safeguards to benefit private individuals and shifts all the risk to taxpayers is fair, and that's what largely contributes to economic disaster.

The global economy that was sold to us as being this awesome future where robots would do all the work and we all hang out down at the beach and watch the sun go down while we ate grapes and played the ******* lute while pondering the universe.
Such utter ********.
The start of union busting begins in the 80s
And letting evangelists corrode that seperation between church and state.
Im will have to skim over a lot of history because of txt limitations but,
By the mid 90s, the story was that the japanese were outperforming us

This led to all kinds of crazy production management theories.
It was nuts.
Anyone who worked in fabrication or production back then might remember some new rule about doing excersizes in the morning.
This was a stuped little clown show designed to make you follow a rule and if you didnt,
That is when "HR" became a thing.
Human Resources fer **** sake.
HR is a system that sets and regulates little ******** traps so an employee is already "pre-loaded" for termination.
A little ****** ********* industry that never existed before union busting.
Ive been married to a couple of them.
Souless cringeworthy
And it was always "Thats my Job"
Get a different job and maybe a ******* heart.
The HR ******* were always the first wave of inpending fuckery.
They set up a series of rules and forms and other nonsense that chokes that business through that little narrow self serving funnel of information that they actually tell the owner about all while pumping the stock price by cutting expense and payroll.
The oldest ****** up business story ever told.

The actual owners are absentee.
So you end up with the least qualified shitbags stiffeling entire industries.
Job one for those little suckups is to make sure they have a way to fire you.
And that is why you need a union.
HR is not your freind.
They are paid to document every possible little mis-step that falls outside of whatever legalise document they pooped out at thier last corporate retreat while they decided to by themselves new office chairs.
Because they really deserve it.
Life is so hard.
They had to go to work today and short five thousand people on their pay check.
Waah, ****** Waah.
I was married to a couple of these people.
They took great joy in ******* somebody over.
It is still so beyond me and so bizzare that I really do not understand any of it.
The only way either of them could feel happy was by making someone else feel worse.
They consider denying your payroll claim or any injury claim as a great sucess.
And they both to this day do not understand why I have no respect at all for either of them.
They both spent at least a year writing up ******** safety and policy violations which were all fycking fabricated nonsense in order to find a way to fire these guys AFTER the injury.
On different jobs.
They both did the same ******* thing.
And that was pretty much it.
My ex had a pizza party after ******* over this guy and his wife and his kids.
To this day she does not understand why when she cslls up every couple of years I tell her to **** off.
In her mind, I betrayed her because I was not going to be a part of or participate in her back stabbing innocent people.
Which of course meant that I was hiding things from her and having an affair with him and his sister and his Mom.
And **** me I ordered a friggen pizza in the middle of this and I was doing pizza boy too.
A hell of a lot more credit than I deserve.
Even back then I didnt have that much in the tank.
I just wanted to sleep.
So I got back in the truck and went back to work at about 3 am and slept in my office again .
By the time I called her back at about 10 the next morning she had wrecked this guys life in order to teach me a lesson.
Thats what she said
"I did it to teach you a lesson"

It took me a bit to realize what she was taliking about and what she had done.
I didnt understand that there are monsters amongst us.
Yep, she sure as hell tought me a lesson.
Just not the lesson she had in mind.
This is the same woman who rescues cats and does home medical experiments on them and has them whacked when they get sick.
She also sits in front of a mirror and punches herself in the face before a funeral so her eyes will swell up.
Just to make it look like she has been crying.
And the most high level HR Corporate ladder climbing ankle biteing neck cutting pro out there.

And not unsual at all.
That is who you are up against.
Join the union. get a union job.
Work quetly to unionize your shop.
Dont let them know what you are up to untill you have strength in the shop.
Do not sign any damn thing that HR puts in front of you wothout a peer witness.
If they try to term you for not signing
sue them.
Always remember no matter what ******** and pressure they try to apply to you you can not sign away your constitutional rights.
You can not sign away your rights.
You dont have that authority.
Indentured Servitude is illegal.
All of the ******** they try to make you sign is almost always legally uninforceable.
It is all design to clog the courts and make you pay for an attorney in order to claim your rights.
Which they know you cant possibly afford.
In certain types of cases you as a private citizen can no longer "approach the bench" without a lawyer.
Yep.
Us peeons arent even allowed to speak to the exalted ones without a paid blood sucker bowing before them.
The only way out of all of this fuckery is to vote and unionize.
And stop buying cheap **** at walmart.
Every time you buy crap at walmart you might as well buy a crappy steak knife on the way out and stab yourself in the leg.
Keep doing that untill that cheap ass chinese tin foil knife snaps off in your leg.
Spend a few more bucks and get a knife made in Detroit.
It will do the job just fine and you can pass it down too!

Please, don't hold back.... lolololololol