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volvoclearinghouse
volvoclearinghouse PowerDork
8/1/19 2:04 p.m.
1988RedT2 said:

 

Bring the jobs back, re-open Sparrows Point making American steel and ships like back in the heyday!  That'd fix it up.

You must be deluded.  Those jobs are never coming back.  Manufacturing?  Making E36 M3?  That'll never make any cities great again.  What we need is more vape shops, Amazon fulfillment centers, and craft breweries!

/snark

captdownshift
captdownshift GRM+ Memberand PowerDork
8/1/19 5:07 p.m.

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Hey at least Sparrows Point is now a functional port again, and it avoids the 25th tunnel so railcars coming from it can be double stacked. 

Though it's really just importing UA gear and Amazon wears, and occasionally ginat stashes of coke and people. 333lb of coke and my delorean parts held at Port

dropstep
dropstep UltraDork
8/1/19 5:17 p.m.

When we moved to hagerstown I missed Baltimore and the housing project I grew up in, then when I left Hagerstown as a teen I missed that place too. Going back to visit as an adult made me happy as hell my parents finally managed to get out of those E36 M3holes before I got shot. I would never move my children to either one of those city's no matter how much a job paid me. They need too flatten most of the city and start over. Building newer section 8 housing isn't the answer either.

z31maniac
z31maniac MegaDork
8/2/19 6:50 a.m.
dropstep said:

When we moved to hagerstown I missed Baltimore and the housing project I grew up in, then when I left Hagerstown as a teen I missed that place too. Going back to visit as an adult made me happy as hell my parents finally managed to get out of those E36 M3holes before I got shot. I would never move my children to either one of those city's no matter how much a job paid me. They need too flatten most of the city and start over. Building newer section 8 housing isn't the answer either.

What would flattening parts of the city accomplish? Take a bunch of people with no ability to relocate and make them homeless? Or just ship them off to another city to make that city rundown?

Gimp
Gimp GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
8/2/19 7:51 a.m.

I love Baltimore.  That said, I do live out in the county now (we were under contract on a place in the city that fell through - garage and a yard were two of the reasons we wound up just over the line).

The problem with Baltimore is the willingness of leadership (and recently this also applies to the state level) to make a buck and sacrafice those in the city that actually need the help.

Shady E36 M3 like this is why I wouldn't use Under Armor stuff as toilet paper: https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-one-trump-tax-cut-meant-to-help-the-poor-a-billionaire-ended-up-winning-big#

volvoclearinghouse
volvoclearinghouse PowerDork
8/2/19 8:08 a.m.
z31maniac said:
dropstep said:

When we moved to hagerstown I missed Baltimore and the housing project I grew up in, then when I left Hagerstown as a teen I missed that place too. Going back to visit as an adult made me happy as hell my parents finally managed to get out of those E36 M3holes before I got shot. I would never move my children to either one of those city's no matter how much a job paid me. They need too flatten most of the city and start over. Building newer section 8 housing isn't the answer either.

What would flattening parts of the city accomplish? Take a bunch of people with no ability to relocate and make them homeless? Or just ship them off to another city to make that city rundown?

In fairness, they could flatten probably 1/4 to 1/3 of the city and not displace a single soul.  

We, too, live outside the city.  I commute an hour each way to work there.  No way would I want to live in Baltimore, not with 2 kids.  

Fueled by Caffeine
Fueled by Caffeine MegaDork
8/2/19 9:07 a.m.

I wish manufacturing would return to the US in greater force.. but it looks like were producing more with less people and that trend won’t end soon.  Hell were chasing the lowest dollar engineer now.  I can get degreeed engineers in India fully burdens for $18 an hour.  The Philippines says hold my beer we will do it for $5.  

FuzzWuzzy
FuzzWuzzy Reader
8/2/19 9:34 a.m.

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I tend to wonder how much time and money is spent correcting their mistakes and if it's actually worth it in the end.

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/2/19 9:36 a.m.
Fueled by Caffeine said:

I wish manufacturing would return to the US in greater force.. but it looks like were producing more with less people and that trend won’t end soon.  Hell were chasing the lowest dollar engineer now.  I can get degreeed engineers in India fully burdens for $18 an hour.  The Philippines says hold my beer we will do it for $5.  

By me we've started hiring managers and executives from Vanuatu and the Philippines now. Even though companies are saving money by doing this, they're still turning these people into economic royalty by local standards - or what in the US would be called upper-middle class money.

Fueled by Caffeine
Fueled by Caffeine MegaDork
8/2/19 9:46 a.m.

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

The mistakes stem from poor instructions or bad source data. Not from the erorrs of the engineers about 95% of the time. 

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/2/19 9:55 a.m.
FuzzWuzzy said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I tend to wonder how much time and money is spent correcting their mistakes and if it's actually worth it in the end.

Wasn't worth it for Boeing:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

mtn
mtn MegaDork
8/2/19 9:58 a.m.
Fueled by Caffeine said:

I wish manufacturing would return to the US in greater force.. but it looks like were producing more with less people and that trend won’t end soon.  Hell were chasing the lowest dollar engineer now.  I can get degreeed engineers in India fully burdens for $18 an hour.  The Philippines says hold my beer we will do it for $5.  

Reminds me of an "argument" I got in in college with one of my gf's (now wife) roommates. She said something about minimum wage being too high. I had even less social skills than I do now, and said something to the effect of "well, based on the amount of Chinese made goods you have, you apparently think it is too high". 

 

That didn't go over well. 

 

I do try to buy US/Canada made goods (or any goods made from a country with similar or better labor laws than ours) and am happy paying more because of it. It is just difficult finding any us made goods anymore.

AngryCorvair
AngryCorvair GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
8/2/19 9:58 a.m.
Fueled by Caffeine said:

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

The mistakes stem from poor instructions or bad source data. Not from the erorrs of the engineers about 95% of the time. 

Sounds like you're admitting that 5% of the time, offshore engineers are responsible for berkeleying E36 M3 up 

Fueled by Caffeine
Fueled by Caffeine MegaDork
8/2/19 10:02 a.m.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Based on my experience from a former employer. Yes. But I was having them run complex models thermal FEA.  easy to make corrections.  Errors usually happened with the new employees. We’ve all never had the experience where a new employee messed up. 

 

Edit.  It was a project I did for turbine housing cracking. The root of the radius of the inlet to a turbine housing was developing cracks at the point at transitioned to the main chamber. Interesting application on a fire truck.   They wanted the housing spun a certain way. I think turned around. Never could get that thing through the “turbine cracker” test at the Jamestown engine plant.    Man this was a while ago. 

z31maniac
z31maniac MegaDork
8/2/19 10:39 a.m.
Fueled by Caffeine said:

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

The mistakes stem from poor instructions or bad source data. Not from the erorrs of the engineers about 95% of the time. 

When I worked for TWG (Dover Corp) we started using one of our divisions in India. Their "engineers" consistently couldn't handle making small drawing changes. Add in the time zone difference and it was bizarre the "real cost." 

Let the Tech Writer with a Journalism degree, down the hall handle it in 15 minutes (how it was the first 3 years I was there), or spend 1.5-2 days getting a few dimensions changed. Mind boggling, but the controllers said that it was "cheaper."

infinitenexus
infinitenexus Reader
8/2/19 11:00 a.m.
mtn said:
 

Reminds me of an "argument" I got in in college with one of my gf's (now wife) roommates. She said something about minimum wage being too high. I had even less social skills than I do now, and said something to the effect of "well, based on the amount of Chinese made goods you have, you apparently think it is too high". 

 

That didn't go over well. 

 

I do try to buy US/Canada made goods (or any goods made from a country with similar or better labor laws than ours) and am happy paying more because of it. It is just difficult finding any us made goods anymore.

I think if everyone had a bit more of your mindset and was willing (or able) to spend more for made in America goods, then American manufacturing jobs would increase a lot and we'd see more made in USA stuff.  I remember reading a while ago that spending something like $20 extra per month on made in USA items would create tens of thousands of new jobs in the US if everyone did it.  But we Americans like our cheap crap so many people sadly won't do that, even if it's only $240 for a whole year.

N Sperlo
N Sperlo MegaDork
8/2/19 11:09 a.m.

Have some faith. We've had riots, gang wars, random shootings, a crime rate that only seems to accelerate, but people still make it into the city. Fill the ball stadium up. People lined into both the hockey arena and stadium for a watch party even though the team was out of town. They're building a aquarium in an old mall. On top of that, you can buy some killer bread on the south side because people have the faith it takes to keep a city going in the right direction.

volvoclearinghouse
volvoclearinghouse PowerDork
8/2/19 11:26 a.m.
infinitenexus said:
mtn said:
 

Reminds me of an "argument" I got in in college with one of my gf's (now wife) roommates. She said something about minimum wage being too high. I had even less social skills than I do now, and said something to the effect of "well, based on the amount of Chinese made goods you have, you apparently think it is too high". 

 

That didn't go over well. 

 

I do try to buy US/Canada made goods (or any goods made from a country with similar or better labor laws than ours) and am happy paying more because of it. It is just difficult finding any us made goods anymore.

I think if everyone had a bit more of your mindset and was willing (or able) to spend more for made in America goods, then American manufacturing jobs would increase a lot and we'd see more made in USA stuff.  I remember reading a while ago that spending something like $20 extra per month on made in USA items would create tens of thousands of new jobs in the US if everyone did it.  But we Americans like our cheap crap so many people sadly won't do that, even if it's only $240 for a whole year.

Part of the flaw in that argument is finding actual American-made products to buy.  We've seen something of a resurgence in American manufacturing, but a lot of it seems to be in more "high-end" goods, even Veblen goods (E36 M3 for which demand increases as price increases, hell of a racket if you can get into it).  But no one's making the low-end stuff in America anymore because it is SO price competitive at that point, that it just doesn't make sense.

Example:  I was rooting through my toolbox the other day for a screwdriver and the first one I pulled out was a black-handled Stanley flat-bladed one I bought back when I was 15 years old.  It said "MADE IN AMERICA" on the screwdriver.  Held the screwdriver for a second, remembering how I had ridden my bicycle down to the Ames and bought that screwdriver set.  It was around $15 for 6 or 7 screwdrivers- this was 27 years ago now.  Inflation-adjusted, that would be about $35 for that same set today.  Nowadays, that would be about twice what a set would go for at Home Depot (made in China) but much much less than a set of Snap-Ons (made in America).  

I am finding this more and more in my purchasing options- you either get cheap, offshored crap, or you can have nice, American made stuff that you'll pay dearly for.  There's very little in between. 

Perhaps there's a moral in here about the shrinking middle class, too....

 

mtn
mtn MegaDork
8/2/19 11:31 a.m.
z31maniac said:
Fueled by Caffeine said:

In reply to FuzzWuzzy :

The mistakes stem from poor instructions or bad source data. Not from the erorrs of the engineers about 95% of the time. 

When I worked for TWG (Dover Corp) we started using one of our divisions in India. Their "engineers" consistently couldn't handle making small drawing changes. Add in the time zone difference and it was bizarre the "real cost." 

Let the Tech Writer with a Journalism degree, down the hall handle it in 15 minutes (how it was the first 3 years I was there), or spend 1.5-2 days getting a few dimensions changed. Mind boggling, but the controllers said that it was "cheaper."

My dad, retired from Pfizer and Abbott, refuses to buy a Land Rover, Jaguar, or any Chinese made car because of his issues with QC for their Indian and Chinese plants. May or may not be fair, but he said that they had such bad production issues and challenges with the plants allowing the FDA in that at one point the only reason they were still using them was that the Chinese are the only pork producers large enough to support the Heparin production necessary for... well, for the world. 

jharry3
jharry3 GRM+ Memberand HalfDork
8/2/19 1:59 p.m.

I grew up the next parish over from New Orleans (we don't have counties in Louisiana, we call them parishes).

Anyway, New Orleans is another city in decline.   Taxes and crime started going up in the '60's so middle class people started moving out to safer areas with modern homes.  By the 90's the population was down over 200,000.   Big businesses like the oil companies moved their headquarters to Houston and the employees moved with them.    

Katrina hit in 2005 and the city had another 100,000 move away.   

The main source of jobs is the hospitality industry - hotels, restaurants and tourism, and those jobs are not high paying.    The city's infrastructure is falling apart, many of pumps that are needed to drain rainwater from the below sea level area and push the water outside the levee system are over 100 years old and that includes the electric motors that turn them.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_Screw_Pump

http://people.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1995-6/haydel.htm

So over 1/2 the city is below sea level, the levees are sinking into original soft clay/muck,  and you have a city that is one more Katrina away from becoming uninhabitable and you have a city that is not going to be around much longer.    A recent mild tropical storm tidal surge combined with the Mississippi River being at record flood stages very late in the year almost pushed river water over the levees.   

 

1988RedT2
1988RedT2 UltimaDork
8/2/19 2:12 p.m.
GameboyRMH said:
FuzzWuzzy said:

In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :

I tend to wonder how much time and money is spent correcting their mistakes and if it's actually worth it in the end.

Wasn't worth it for Boeing:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-28/boeing-s-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9-an-hour-engineers

This!  This information needs to be incorporated into business school textbooks (books, are books still a thing?).  This article needs to be CIRCULATED.  I usually find it very humorous when a business makes a stupid decision and it costs them big money.  Too bad in this case, it cost a bunch of human lives.  Nothing humorous about that.  People should hang.

MadScientistMatt
MadScientistMatt PowerDork
8/2/19 3:22 p.m.
captdownshift said:

 

Though it's really just importing UA gear and Amazon wears, and occasionally ginat stashes of coke and people. 333lb of coke and my delorean parts held at Port

OK, it wasn't clear from that link - did the smugglers actually hide the cocaine in a shipment of DeLorean parts? If so, you've got to give them points for audacity.

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