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Re: Kuwaitis claim world oil production to peak in 4 years
Author: OldPoleBurner
Date: 03-13-2010 - 15:09
>> The hesitation about taxes for transit is "waste".
The hesitation about taxes is not about gov't waste. It is about the taxes themselves!
There ain't no more to be taken in taxes, without further down spiraling the already diminishing private sector spending. Which of course, leads to even smaller tax collections, which then leads to even more demands for even more taxes, and so on, and so on. . . . As the famous iconoclast, John Kneiling, kept saying; we will eventually run out of taxpayers - run out of wealth to be taxed.
>> If you can't keep the compensation packages within reason you'll still be asking
>> for more tax increases, fare hikes and service cuts down the road. Regrettably
>> it may take a few strikes to establish what constitutes a fair and affordable
>> wage for both operators and riders.
What makes you think transit workers compensation packages are not already within reason. Unless you are putting stock into a lot of recent plain old yellow journalism. Naturally, your own compensation package is within reason - Right!
But these yellow journalists never ever provide us with actual private sector salaries with which to honestly compare - Not even once! But even if they did, just how would John Q. Public then ever find out which jobs are actually comparable in scope. Even college graduate human resource specialists struggle to do that.
Leading the public to false judgment while leaving out most of the the pertinent facts; is the epitomy of plain old yellow journalism. Don't buy into it!
And what makes you think that strikes or lock-outs have ever settled anything; let alone ever settled what was fair or affordable. So what is fair and reasonable? - for any job or profession? Consider these two things:
1) No one is going to want to sell anything to anyone, for less than they could sell it to someone else. That especially applies to the sale of skills, labor and time, to an employer - any employer, public or private. Now don't kid yourselves; many public transit agencies in California, even your hated BART, have had a lot of trouble attracting and keeping good skilled talent - for most of their existence.
Of course, there are other considerations besides money when selling one's skills, that affect the price you are willing to settle for; various human factors such as working conditions and employer reliability, etc. And contrary to popular (media led) urban myth, public agencies in California have been notoriously unreliable employers, often very unpleasant, and almost always deceitful in employee relations.
2) The selling of time, skills, talents, and labor, is a business activity, no different than any other business. But the plain hard reality of life, for laborer, capitalist, and communist alike; is that no business, public or private, can long continue to provide goods or services, without somehow re-cooping absolutely all the costs of providing those goods or services or labor. No transit worker, or any other worker, can continue to provide his labor and talents, without continuing to live, and live fully.
Therefore, any employer that fails to pay the full costs of such living (absolutely all of the costs) will not have those employees for long. They either must go elsewhere or die! Or maybe they could go on welfare, and then be able to continue providing labor for less than the cost of providing it (actual cost of living). Yep - welfare only succeeds in subsidizing the sale of labor to cheapskate employers - and worse, it then fails to humanely help those who actually cannot work - but I digress. . . . .
Skilled transit and railroad work is often difficult, and with adverse working conditions, requires a special breed of person to perform it. Such talent is in very short supply (has been since the 80's), so going elsewhere has proven very easy over the years (I should know). Transit workers are in the "catbird seat"; not because of unions, but because of chronic skilled labor shortages. The union's only real role in this, is in a socialistic fashion getting low or no-skill jobs to to be able to ride the coat tails of the skilled.
>> The NWP will still burn oil. The question is there enough traffic to at least pay
>> for MOW. I doubt it, but let's get it up and running and find out if there are any
>> shippers.
But the NWP, same as any other railroad, will burn a hell of lot less of it per ton-mile than the current method. Rubber tires on concrete expend about 13 to 15 times as much fuel per ton-mile as does steel wheel on steel rail. It's simply the laws of physics. It's God's own done deal! And not even the Most Eminent Marinite, "Most powerful woman in the world" (her own words), Nancy Pelosi, will ever manage to repeal it or even amend it.
>> If not, convert to dedicated transit use so we can go to light equipment and get around the FRA.
Why on Earth would you even consider not complying with all those "horrible no-good very bad" FRA safety regulations. Have you not seen the recent carnage brought about by transit and commuter agencies using cars that do not really comply with the FRA. Even a non-compliant WMATA train hitting another non-compliant train, resulted in much death; as did several Metrolink crashes, with their pretended compliant cars.
Yes, almost no cars built by the French-Canadien company Bombardier since they took over Budd, are truly compliant; except for those supplied to Amtrak, who caugt 'em at it and forced compliance even at the cost of seriously delaying the Acela trains.
Transit cars should have been compliant all along, but because of a technical loophole in the law, public transit agencies skated by. The result has been much death that would have otherwise been avoided, had they not been so dishonest as to not voluntarily comply anyway, with the best safety standards available anywhere in the world.
Pretending to the public that any of these cars were ever safe enough, is just another example of the deceitfulness and unreliability that I spoke of earlier, that is common to most all public employers.
Now I already know that private corporations don't often perform any better without independent oversight - so don't flame me. My point is that gov't agencies are not better, and may be worse. They ARE in fact - worse!
No private company could long stay in business while spending on non-renumerative things such as passenger safety, while competitors are neglecting to spend. Thus they cannot provide it, even if they wanted to. Enforceable Independent oversight mandating it is therefore the only way it could be done in a private enterprise setting.
But, one would think that public safety would be paramount to public transit agency. And since such agencies by definition, cannot be constrained by the lack of comparable spending of a competitor; they are and always were free to provide for the best safety standards mankind could invent. But they choose not to, only because they could legally get away with it. Obviously then, public agencies also need to be forced into compliance. Enforceable, independent oversight is required for public agencies just the same as private.
I have found throughout my career as a signal engineer, that most F.R.A. safety regulations are very well developed and seasoned by experience. Even so, they remain quite reasonable, and flexible enough in their application, so as to be very adaptable to all rail applications. They just need to be applied; if not voluntarily by public agencies, then by force of law. Congress needs to get busy closing this loophole. But alas, the ideologues running congress are too busy with much weightier matters. . . . .
OPB
The hesitation about taxes is not about gov't waste. It is about the taxes themselves!
There ain't no more to be taken in taxes, without further down spiraling the already diminishing private sector spending. Which of course, leads to even smaller tax collections, which then leads to even more demands for even more taxes, and so on, and so on. . . . As the famous iconoclast, John Kneiling, kept saying; we will eventually run out of taxpayers - run out of wealth to be taxed.
>> If you can't keep the compensation packages within reason you'll still be asking
>> for more tax increases, fare hikes and service cuts down the road. Regrettably
>> it may take a few strikes to establish what constitutes a fair and affordable
>> wage for both operators and riders.
What makes you think transit workers compensation packages are not already within reason. Unless you are putting stock into a lot of recent plain old yellow journalism. Naturally, your own compensation package is within reason - Right!
But these yellow journalists never ever provide us with actual private sector salaries with which to honestly compare - Not even once! But even if they did, just how would John Q. Public then ever find out which jobs are actually comparable in scope. Even college graduate human resource specialists struggle to do that.
Leading the public to false judgment while leaving out most of the the pertinent facts; is the epitomy of plain old yellow journalism. Don't buy into it!
And what makes you think that strikes or lock-outs have ever settled anything; let alone ever settled what was fair or affordable. So what is fair and reasonable? - for any job or profession? Consider these two things:
1) No one is going to want to sell anything to anyone, for less than they could sell it to someone else. That especially applies to the sale of skills, labor and time, to an employer - any employer, public or private. Now don't kid yourselves; many public transit agencies in California, even your hated BART, have had a lot of trouble attracting and keeping good skilled talent - for most of their existence.
Of course, there are other considerations besides money when selling one's skills, that affect the price you are willing to settle for; various human factors such as working conditions and employer reliability, etc. And contrary to popular (media led) urban myth, public agencies in California have been notoriously unreliable employers, often very unpleasant, and almost always deceitful in employee relations.
2) The selling of time, skills, talents, and labor, is a business activity, no different than any other business. But the plain hard reality of life, for laborer, capitalist, and communist alike; is that no business, public or private, can long continue to provide goods or services, without somehow re-cooping absolutely all the costs of providing those goods or services or labor. No transit worker, or any other worker, can continue to provide his labor and talents, without continuing to live, and live fully.
Therefore, any employer that fails to pay the full costs of such living (absolutely all of the costs) will not have those employees for long. They either must go elsewhere or die! Or maybe they could go on welfare, and then be able to continue providing labor for less than the cost of providing it (actual cost of living). Yep - welfare only succeeds in subsidizing the sale of labor to cheapskate employers - and worse, it then fails to humanely help those who actually cannot work - but I digress. . . . .
Skilled transit and railroad work is often difficult, and with adverse working conditions, requires a special breed of person to perform it. Such talent is in very short supply (has been since the 80's), so going elsewhere has proven very easy over the years (I should know). Transit workers are in the "catbird seat"; not because of unions, but because of chronic skilled labor shortages. The union's only real role in this, is in a socialistic fashion getting low or no-skill jobs to to be able to ride the coat tails of the skilled.
>> The NWP will still burn oil. The question is there enough traffic to at least pay
>> for MOW. I doubt it, but let's get it up and running and find out if there are any
>> shippers.
But the NWP, same as any other railroad, will burn a hell of lot less of it per ton-mile than the current method. Rubber tires on concrete expend about 13 to 15 times as much fuel per ton-mile as does steel wheel on steel rail. It's simply the laws of physics. It's God's own done deal! And not even the Most Eminent Marinite, "Most powerful woman in the world" (her own words), Nancy Pelosi, will ever manage to repeal it or even amend it.
>> If not, convert to dedicated transit use so we can go to light equipment and get around the FRA.
Why on Earth would you even consider not complying with all those "horrible no-good very bad" FRA safety regulations. Have you not seen the recent carnage brought about by transit and commuter agencies using cars that do not really comply with the FRA. Even a non-compliant WMATA train hitting another non-compliant train, resulted in much death; as did several Metrolink crashes, with their pretended compliant cars.
Yes, almost no cars built by the French-Canadien company Bombardier since they took over Budd, are truly compliant; except for those supplied to Amtrak, who caugt 'em at it and forced compliance even at the cost of seriously delaying the Acela trains.
Transit cars should have been compliant all along, but because of a technical loophole in the law, public transit agencies skated by. The result has been much death that would have otherwise been avoided, had they not been so dishonest as to not voluntarily comply anyway, with the best safety standards available anywhere in the world.
Pretending to the public that any of these cars were ever safe enough, is just another example of the deceitfulness and unreliability that I spoke of earlier, that is common to most all public employers.
Now I already know that private corporations don't often perform any better without independent oversight - so don't flame me. My point is that gov't agencies are not better, and may be worse. They ARE in fact - worse!
No private company could long stay in business while spending on non-renumerative things such as passenger safety, while competitors are neglecting to spend. Thus they cannot provide it, even if they wanted to. Enforceable Independent oversight mandating it is therefore the only way it could be done in a private enterprise setting.
But, one would think that public safety would be paramount to public transit agency. And since such agencies by definition, cannot be constrained by the lack of comparable spending of a competitor; they are and always were free to provide for the best safety standards mankind could invent. But they choose not to, only because they could legally get away with it. Obviously then, public agencies also need to be forced into compliance. Enforceable, independent oversight is required for public agencies just the same as private.
I have found throughout my career as a signal engineer, that most F.R.A. safety regulations are very well developed and seasoned by experience. Even so, they remain quite reasonable, and flexible enough in their application, so as to be very adaptable to all rail applications. They just need to be applied; if not voluntarily by public agencies, then by force of law. Congress needs to get busy closing this loophole. But alas, the ideologues running congress are too busy with much weightier matters. . . . .
OPB
