As if Bank of America charging another $5 per month to cover the "loss" of not being able to charge retailers $0.45 for a $1.25 debit card transaction is somehow "news."
It's not.
News is an interesting word, developed from the four cardinal points North, East, West, and South (NEWS). This ain't news. B of A indeed does encompass the entire U.S., from Seattle to Miami to San Diego to Portland.
B of A has no choice but to keep revenues flowing in...to keep their ivory towers in lower Manhattan (and elsewhere) filled with $425,000 vice presidents, et al. A vice president of operations. A nice fucking title, eh? Worthy of more than a half mil per year ad infinitum, making sure the flow of money from you to them keeps "operating." Year after year.
As our manufacturing base will continue to erode due to the lifting of the bamboo curtain that used to shield all us 467,600,350 North American/European workers from the 1,460,300,600 strong labor pool in China/Indonesia/Vietnam/Pakistan, we have no choice but to align out economy on services -- and particularly financial services. Talk about grift. Think of how profitable it is to vacuum up just a nickel each month from each of these 1,460,300,600 workers, along with the other 467,600,350 OECD workers, to provide them access to their own money. This is the base for why Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, AIG, etc. exist in the first place -- to suck off a share of the world's productive output as a form of "service."
And $5 per month. Of course, as long term (beyond 45 days) thinking is absent in our nation, we never think that this is $60 per year, just for the right to access your money, alongside the $110+ you'll lose due to their myriad ways to fuck you over with excess charges, etc., like processing large debits first and not in the order they were charged, to drain your account faster so you'll overdraft on multiple items instead of just one.
As a debit card user, do you not think I should have the option to have my charges processed in the same fucking order that I charged them? Wells Fargo has been, unsurprisingly, deluging me with requests to "modify" my debit account so that I no longer simply get "denied" at the local King Soopers for a half pound of salami and instead I'm allowed to overdraft, take my purchases, and pay $35 in overdraft fees for $3.75 worth of meat.
But think. If 7 years ago I were to have used...gasp!...food stamps at the grocery, the shame and humiliation from the other customers waiting behind me would have been unbearable while the clerk spends all that time pulling them from the coupon book, processing each one, etc. Unbearable...but [clearly] tolerable. Now, EBT cards prevent that public humiliation and shame -- they are innocuous, discrete; they make it look like I'm just any other patron paying with my own money. Imagine, then, a situation where...gasp!...your ETC/Debit card doesn't work. Oh, the public humiliation! The stares, the sighs, the foot-tapping of all all! those waiting in line behind you as you swipe that card for the ninth time through the scanner only to be denied again. One might, just might, be your neighbor! Horrors! The shame and humiliation would be so great that you'd gladly pay the $35 overdraft fee in secret just to avoid such shame. You'd only feel worse knowing it's your own money rather than funded from the government. Such shame!
Bank of America excels in this arena, knowing the psyche of the American debit card user, knowing that the avoidance of the shame of a debit denial is easily worth $35+ to most Americans. That's why they are the Bank for Americans and not just the Bank of America.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Early And Often
One fantastic benefit, at least to me anyway, to having designed and installed my rooftop PV array in 2007 was that I was able to buy solar panels built in Tennessee -- in the U.S. of A.
That I should have these things on my roof for the next 21 years means I should never have even considered Chinese manufactured panels...and indeed, the Chinese weren't major producers back then (like 2007 was last century or something).
Today, the Chinese have taken a significant share of the manufacturing away from the US, and for all you who only think price the sole fucking arbiter of value that should be welcomed news to you. Now you can enjoy solar for a third less than I paid (although the net price is the same, see below), even though you will blow that third on increased stealth taxation providing for jobless benefits and retraining programs to former solar panel manufacturers here in Tennessee and elsewhere...say, Freemont, Ca.
Now Solyndra -- I'm paying, along with you (if you live in California), unemployment benefits for 1,100 former workers for a single company that [presumably] couldn't compete against a flood tide of cheap Chinese panels from such stellar, reputable companies as:
Shanghai Woneng Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd.
Suzhou Shenglong PV Tech Co., Ltd.
Jinhua Dokio Technology Co., Ltd.
JM Solar Technology Co., Ltd. of Hangzhou
Nanjing Baoao S & T Co., Ltd.
Xuzhou Oumeide Energy Saving Technology Co., Ltd.
Shandong Astun Solar Electric Technology Co., Ltd.
Wenzhou Dingwen New Energy S & T Co., Ltd.
Zhongshan City Zhengxin Lamp Decorating Co., Ltd.
and the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
Someday soon the cylindrical panels that Solyndra developed and designed will also find their manufacturing performed in Hangzhou, too, as this concept is probably too good to die alongside our $535,000,000 taxpayer loss on our ongoing losing effort to shore up American manufacturing against $3.50 an hour Chinese labor and 9% annual domestic health care premium increases.
I wonder when our government and its constituents will, once and for all, cave in and accept that our 11% manufacturing sector is destined to become 10% by 2014, 9% by 2016, 8% by 2019, to bottom out at some floor (I'd wager) at about 3-4% -- will stop blowing money on propping up manufacturing, and accept that the U.S. position in the global economy is to consume stuff, not to produce it.
And while we're at it, pin the fact that our consumers only give a fuck about price rather than quality and craftsmanship, and that we cannot compete globally because of this on gasp! Obama. An impeachable act of treason! Fine. Future solar will only be more expensive as this single event (representing one half of one percent of the DOE renewable-energy budget) threatens to kill off all government incentives championed by the Obama administration to build a renewable energy industry in the U.S.
Well, we were never going to get such an industry, my friend. You won't have the luxury of a $26/hour PV manufacturing job and instead will smile as you take in the dry cleaning for other dry cleaners on their days off for $13 an hour. No need to wonder why wages have remained flat for the past decade and will remain flat for the next -- Chinese laborers will likely see a 30-40% increase in that same time frame and they'll be even more grateful that you continue to fucker away domestic manufacturing to save a few more bucks on a plastic salad shooter.
Of course, as PV prices drop due to the continued torrent of Chinese imported shit, the federal and local subsidies will dry up, too, which is exactly how subsidies are designed to work. The net cost of solar is still where it was in 2007, yet I'd argue that with a few hundred thousand rooftops enhanced by Chinese panels the actual cost will be much higher in the long run -- decreased production, piss-poor mounting systems, cracking/shorting MC connections, panel/frame/lamination separations -- you know, the things cheap imported shit always does after a few months/years -- it fails early and often.
Solyndra will fall off the Republican radars in a month or so, some other Obama "scandal" will take center stage, and 1,100 more manufacturing jobs will have found their way over to Hangzhou by that time.
That I should have these things on my roof for the next 21 years means I should never have even considered Chinese manufactured panels...and indeed, the Chinese weren't major producers back then (like 2007 was last century or something).
Today, the Chinese have taken a significant share of the manufacturing away from the US, and for all you who only think price the sole fucking arbiter of value that should be welcomed news to you. Now you can enjoy solar for a third less than I paid (although the net price is the same, see below), even though you will blow that third on increased stealth taxation providing for jobless benefits and retraining programs to former solar panel manufacturers here in Tennessee and elsewhere...say, Freemont, Ca.
Now Solyndra -- I'm paying, along with you (if you live in California), unemployment benefits for 1,100 former workers for a single company that [presumably] couldn't compete against a flood tide of cheap Chinese panels from such stellar, reputable companies as:
Shanghai Woneng Solar Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd.
Suzhou Shenglong PV Tech Co., Ltd.
Jinhua Dokio Technology Co., Ltd.
JM Solar Technology Co., Ltd. of Hangzhou
Nanjing Baoao S & T Co., Ltd.
Xuzhou Oumeide Energy Saving Technology Co., Ltd.
Shandong Astun Solar Electric Technology Co., Ltd.
Wenzhou Dingwen New Energy S & T Co., Ltd.
Zhongshan City Zhengxin Lamp Decorating Co., Ltd.
and the list goes on and on and on and on and on.
Someday soon the cylindrical panels that Solyndra developed and designed will also find their manufacturing performed in Hangzhou, too, as this concept is probably too good to die alongside our $535,000,000 taxpayer loss on our ongoing losing effort to shore up American manufacturing against $3.50 an hour Chinese labor and 9% annual domestic health care premium increases.
I wonder when our government and its constituents will, once and for all, cave in and accept that our 11% manufacturing sector is destined to become 10% by 2014, 9% by 2016, 8% by 2019, to bottom out at some floor (I'd wager) at about 3-4% -- will stop blowing money on propping up manufacturing, and accept that the U.S. position in the global economy is to consume stuff, not to produce it.
And while we're at it, pin the fact that our consumers only give a fuck about price rather than quality and craftsmanship, and that we cannot compete globally because of this on gasp! Obama. An impeachable act of treason! Fine. Future solar will only be more expensive as this single event (representing one half of one percent of the DOE renewable-energy budget) threatens to kill off all government incentives championed by the Obama administration to build a renewable energy industry in the U.S.
Well, we were never going to get such an industry, my friend. You won't have the luxury of a $26/hour PV manufacturing job and instead will smile as you take in the dry cleaning for other dry cleaners on their days off for $13 an hour. No need to wonder why wages have remained flat for the past decade and will remain flat for the next -- Chinese laborers will likely see a 30-40% increase in that same time frame and they'll be even more grateful that you continue to fucker away domestic manufacturing to save a few more bucks on a plastic salad shooter.
Of course, as PV prices drop due to the continued torrent of Chinese imported shit, the federal and local subsidies will dry up, too, which is exactly how subsidies are designed to work. The net cost of solar is still where it was in 2007, yet I'd argue that with a few hundred thousand rooftops enhanced by Chinese panels the actual cost will be much higher in the long run -- decreased production, piss-poor mounting systems, cracking/shorting MC connections, panel/frame/lamination separations -- you know, the things cheap imported shit always does after a few months/years -- it fails early and often.
Solyndra will fall off the Republican radars in a month or so, some other Obama "scandal" will take center stage, and 1,100 more manufacturing jobs will have found their way over to Hangzhou by that time.
Swords and Tequila
I wonder when Greece will default.
When they do, they will submerge many French banks into a black hole, which will also submerge many U.S. banks into the same black hole particularly if the contagion spreads to other European nations. Unless, of course, German electrical engineers are willing to pay more taxes to bail out Greece which seems likely in the short term regardless. Along with the rest of Germanic output bailing out these failed institutions we'll see Grecian citizens pay through the nose with more property taxes, etc., in both the short and long term.
The wonderful life we all had between 2001 and 2006! When will we return to such prosperity and wealth?
It's all crystal clear to me how much influence the financial industry in every corner of the globe has over the political system, how much they can influence governments to force their losses onto citizenry. Austerity measures are heaped upon the working class in Athens, while 0.2% annual interest is unloaded on those of us Americans who save while still paying 14+% for credit. It is indeed a form of theft, but we handily accept this because we ourselves have never had any problem thieving from the future -- the many banks that hold stupendous amounts of Italian/Spanish/Grecian debt will simply recapitalize via 2 billion euro worth of "leverage" and we get to continue our charade for a few months/years longer, while these debts will still have to be paid by future production if they don't blow up the financial system before that.
It'd be a good thing for you yourself to limit your exposure to debt, IMO. I've worked for 25 straight years to do just that. I last Friday paid off another small debt, leaving me with just two other minor debts until I'm 100% free. Carrying no debt in a deflationary environment is king, as it is my expectation that deflation is the likely pressure we will face over the coming term.
And what of your equities when Greece defaults, huh? Do you think the markets will respond favorably when this happens, if it tilts us towards a double dip recession, if Morgan Stanley stock falls 22% in response to their exposure to French banks holding defaulted Greek bonds? As difficult as it may be at first, it's liberating to not ride the shock waves of the stock market when such events loom on the horizon. Sure, it's possible Athenians will be happy to pay another 1,300 euro in annual VAT and property taxes while engineers in Dusseldorf will equally be happy to pay another 1,450 euro to keep the system from falling apart.
Saving money is, in my mind, a double edged sword -- the more you save, the more likely you'll be legislated out of any future entitlements you've paid into during your working life. I think you'd be better off buying tequila to carry you through the fight.
When they do, they will submerge many French banks into a black hole, which will also submerge many U.S. banks into the same black hole particularly if the contagion spreads to other European nations. Unless, of course, German electrical engineers are willing to pay more taxes to bail out Greece which seems likely in the short term regardless. Along with the rest of Germanic output bailing out these failed institutions we'll see Grecian citizens pay through the nose with more property taxes, etc., in both the short and long term.
The wonderful life we all had between 2001 and 2006! When will we return to such prosperity and wealth?
It's all crystal clear to me how much influence the financial industry in every corner of the globe has over the political system, how much they can influence governments to force their losses onto citizenry. Austerity measures are heaped upon the working class in Athens, while 0.2% annual interest is unloaded on those of us Americans who save while still paying 14+% for credit. It is indeed a form of theft, but we handily accept this because we ourselves have never had any problem thieving from the future -- the many banks that hold stupendous amounts of Italian/Spanish/Grecian debt will simply recapitalize via 2 billion euro worth of "leverage" and we get to continue our charade for a few months/years longer, while these debts will still have to be paid by future production if they don't blow up the financial system before that.
It'd be a good thing for you yourself to limit your exposure to debt, IMO. I've worked for 25 straight years to do just that. I last Friday paid off another small debt, leaving me with just two other minor debts until I'm 100% free. Carrying no debt in a deflationary environment is king, as it is my expectation that deflation is the likely pressure we will face over the coming term.
And what of your equities when Greece defaults, huh? Do you think the markets will respond favorably when this happens, if it tilts us towards a double dip recession, if Morgan Stanley stock falls 22% in response to their exposure to French banks holding defaulted Greek bonds? As difficult as it may be at first, it's liberating to not ride the shock waves of the stock market when such events loom on the horizon. Sure, it's possible Athenians will be happy to pay another 1,300 euro in annual VAT and property taxes while engineers in Dusseldorf will equally be happy to pay another 1,450 euro to keep the system from falling apart.
Saving money is, in my mind, a double edged sword -- the more you save, the more likely you'll be legislated out of any future entitlements you've paid into during your working life. I think you'd be better off buying tequila to carry you through the fight.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
The Lost Decade
I am truly fascinated by the San Diego power outage of last week -- fascinated, because it is my little belief that the root cause will not be addressed, will never be addressed, because to do so would ignite a political shitstorm that cannot be allowed to occur.
I am led to speculate here, as is everyone not involved in the outage, because the details of such an outage can never be released in today's electric environment. Too many lawyers and litigators are involved these days to allow for the release of detailed information that might help prevent another blackout. Data is now no longer made available for public engineering consumption (it's sensitive and confidential these days), so we will have to take the forthcoming watered-down FERC and NERC reports as our only source of information on such events -- reports that are not technically but politically developed. To prevent embarrassment to certain individuals or parties or organizations. To be careful about assigning blame. That sorta thing.
I can speculate, can't I? Here on a blog? I have no more information than anyone else, or so I think. One man's opinion. I can find scads of detailed data on the 1964 Northwest blackout, but I'd bet I will never be able to find one fucking thing about last week's outage, the largest in California history.
I believe that a single contingency occurred, perhaps the loss of the North Gila - Imperial Valley 500kV transmission line, that ultimately caused voltage collapse. I believe that the Southern California Import Nomogram (SCIT) either 1) wasn't followed, or 2) engineering analysis did not correctly evaluate this single contingency as capable of resulting in a voltage collapse under the operating conditions of last Thursday. It is my belief that if either were the case, they will not be made public. Imagine the bad press the ISO would receive if it was revealed that they failed to operate within established limits, or that they failed to correctly establish said limits! Post engineering analysis will be developed that will support pre-determined conclusions about the cause of this event. Oh, yeah, your ratepaying dollars at work!
We operate the electric system, universally I might add, such that all single contingencies and credible double contingencies do not result in voltage collapse, in instability, or result in widespread, uncontrolled outages. This is the work of transmission planning engineers and operations engineers. They develop the limits of operations, etc., such that we can withstand the loss of a single element anywhere, where the result does not cause uncontrolled outages. That is, if studies show that the loss of a single generator, or station, or transformer results in system instability during a hot summer day, we adjust the transmission/generation network at that point to not operate in such a condition.
Today, there are more transmission planning engineers and operations engineers than ever before, thanks to the duplicative nature of the California ISO which employs dozens and dozens and whose member utilities also have to employ dozens and dozens.
I believe that a single contingency caused the additional events, including the loss of San Onofre nuclear generation units. I do not believe that they occurred simultaneously -- that is, I do not believe that this was a multiple contingency condition that caused voltage collapse. It matters not how or why the original transmission line was lost (which according to news reports was some single guy in a substation who inadvertently tripped the 500kV line), only that the system should have been operated in such a manner as to be able to withstand its loss...which in my little opinion, it didn't.
And here comes my lynchpin opinion -- in much the same way credit default swaps and complex financial engineering led to more instability in Wall Street, the introduction of the CAISO and ever more complicated market schemes and mechanisms (including the smart grid) will only lead to more physical blackouts and system instabilities.
The loss of quality CAISO personnel may have been (and most certainly will be in the future) a contributing factor. Engineers who didn't correctly evaluate this single contingency, perhaps, or operators who failed to operate within procedures, perhaps. Just speculation, yes. But having worked at that fucking place for what I call my "lost decade" and knowing the low staff morale the day I left, and seeing my own utility bring in dozens of dozens of former ISO staff (including myself) and seeing other local utilities bring in dozens and dozens of former ISO staff, and the industry hiring generation dispatchers and transmission dispatchers who have never stepped foot into a power plant before becoming a grid operator, and developing market mechanisms for transmission congestion instead of developing personnel with hands-on transmission experience -- these simple things are lacking in today's dispatching practice, and in my little opinion, time will reveal how treating the electric grid like a casino (pull a lever, get a pellet) will ultimately result in more widespread outages.
We saw this in 2000, 2001, with the Enronization of the California electric grid. You can be assured that these same people are still out there, now a decade wiser, still trying to fuck you out of a little more of your ratepaying dollar, by creating complex virtual bidding schemes in forward markets, by endlessly vacuuming up all those loose electric nickels you left floating around thanks to all those NERC and FERC policies. The hiring of legions of lawyers to manage the litigation caused by these market policies is a "soft" cost, too. And if the end result is a grid operated under a patchwork quilt of myriad regulations that leads to widespread outages, well, those "costs" are also "soft," and unaccounted for by marketeers. Not to mention, I'd bet my next paycheck that the CAISO market was "suspended" during this calamitous event! See, even I'm getting into the casino-like spirit of electric marketing, by wagering my last two weeks' output!
I will never be made to believe that more complexity will lead to a safer, more reliable delivery of power. Never. It is an almost unimaginable stretch for me to make the claim here on my blog that complexity was a direct contributor to this particular San Diegan outage, considering I have no more information available to me that you do. But I do have a good sense of things, and I would most certainly welcome a counter viewpoint to argue that "firm transmission rights" and nodal pricing and market designers, and the hiring of thousands of IT personnel (not electrical engineers, mind you) to manage the nationwide smart grid will lead to the most efficient delivery of reliable power.
I close with a quote from the spokeslady from CAISO: "Someone who comes to conclusions quickly doesn’t know what he is talking about." That's me!
I am led to speculate here, as is everyone not involved in the outage, because the details of such an outage can never be released in today's electric environment. Too many lawyers and litigators are involved these days to allow for the release of detailed information that might help prevent another blackout. Data is now no longer made available for public engineering consumption (it's sensitive and confidential these days), so we will have to take the forthcoming watered-down FERC and NERC reports as our only source of information on such events -- reports that are not technically but politically developed. To prevent embarrassment to certain individuals or parties or organizations. To be careful about assigning blame. That sorta thing.
I can speculate, can't I? Here on a blog? I have no more information than anyone else, or so I think. One man's opinion. I can find scads of detailed data on the 1964 Northwest blackout, but I'd bet I will never be able to find one fucking thing about last week's outage, the largest in California history.
I believe that a single contingency occurred, perhaps the loss of the North Gila - Imperial Valley 500kV transmission line, that ultimately caused voltage collapse. I believe that the Southern California Import Nomogram (SCIT) either 1) wasn't followed, or 2) engineering analysis did not correctly evaluate this single contingency as capable of resulting in a voltage collapse under the operating conditions of last Thursday. It is my belief that if either were the case, they will not be made public. Imagine the bad press the ISO would receive if it was revealed that they failed to operate within established limits, or that they failed to correctly establish said limits! Post engineering analysis will be developed that will support pre-determined conclusions about the cause of this event. Oh, yeah, your ratepaying dollars at work!
We operate the electric system, universally I might add, such that all single contingencies and credible double contingencies do not result in voltage collapse, in instability, or result in widespread, uncontrolled outages. This is the work of transmission planning engineers and operations engineers. They develop the limits of operations, etc., such that we can withstand the loss of a single element anywhere, where the result does not cause uncontrolled outages. That is, if studies show that the loss of a single generator, or station, or transformer results in system instability during a hot summer day, we adjust the transmission/generation network at that point to not operate in such a condition.
Today, there are more transmission planning engineers and operations engineers than ever before, thanks to the duplicative nature of the California ISO which employs dozens and dozens and whose member utilities also have to employ dozens and dozens.
I believe that a single contingency caused the additional events, including the loss of San Onofre nuclear generation units. I do not believe that they occurred simultaneously -- that is, I do not believe that this was a multiple contingency condition that caused voltage collapse. It matters not how or why the original transmission line was lost (which according to news reports was some single guy in a substation who inadvertently tripped the 500kV line), only that the system should have been operated in such a manner as to be able to withstand its loss...which in my little opinion, it didn't.
And here comes my lynchpin opinion -- in much the same way credit default swaps and complex financial engineering led to more instability in Wall Street, the introduction of the CAISO and ever more complicated market schemes and mechanisms (including the smart grid) will only lead to more physical blackouts and system instabilities.
The loss of quality CAISO personnel may have been (and most certainly will be in the future) a contributing factor. Engineers who didn't correctly evaluate this single contingency, perhaps, or operators who failed to operate within procedures, perhaps. Just speculation, yes. But having worked at that fucking place for what I call my "lost decade" and knowing the low staff morale the day I left, and seeing my own utility bring in dozens of dozens of former ISO staff (including myself) and seeing other local utilities bring in dozens and dozens of former ISO staff, and the industry hiring generation dispatchers and transmission dispatchers who have never stepped foot into a power plant before becoming a grid operator, and developing market mechanisms for transmission congestion instead of developing personnel with hands-on transmission experience -- these simple things are lacking in today's dispatching practice, and in my little opinion, time will reveal how treating the electric grid like a casino (pull a lever, get a pellet) will ultimately result in more widespread outages.
We saw this in 2000, 2001, with the Enronization of the California electric grid. You can be assured that these same people are still out there, now a decade wiser, still trying to fuck you out of a little more of your ratepaying dollar, by creating complex virtual bidding schemes in forward markets, by endlessly vacuuming up all those loose electric nickels you left floating around thanks to all those NERC and FERC policies. The hiring of legions of lawyers to manage the litigation caused by these market policies is a "soft" cost, too. And if the end result is a grid operated under a patchwork quilt of myriad regulations that leads to widespread outages, well, those "costs" are also "soft," and unaccounted for by marketeers. Not to mention, I'd bet my next paycheck that the CAISO market was "suspended" during this calamitous event! See, even I'm getting into the casino-like spirit of electric marketing, by wagering my last two weeks' output!
I will never be made to believe that more complexity will lead to a safer, more reliable delivery of power. Never. It is an almost unimaginable stretch for me to make the claim here on my blog that complexity was a direct contributor to this particular San Diegan outage, considering I have no more information available to me that you do. But I do have a good sense of things, and I would most certainly welcome a counter viewpoint to argue that "firm transmission rights" and nodal pricing and market designers, and the hiring of thousands of IT personnel (not electrical engineers, mind you) to manage the nationwide smart grid will lead to the most efficient delivery of reliable power.
I close with a quote from the spokeslady from CAISO: "Someone who comes to conclusions quickly doesn’t know what he is talking about." That's me!
Bridges or Roads
Apparently, we can't have both.
I am interested in language, and how we always say roads and bridges, when clearly from an alphabetical perspective we should be saying bridges and roads...and aren't bridges just another form of roads in the most fundamental sense? All bridges are roads, but not all roads are bridges. But I digress.
Carmageddon, the fake media-induced meltdown that was to turn LA commutes into 5-hour long slogs never materialized. Neither did the carmageddon here in Sacramento when I-5 was shut down for three week stretches. But now, carmageddon has spread to the Ohio River today as steel manufactured in the 1960s (horrors!) is showing cracks as used on the I-64 Sherman Minton Bridge.
I don't believe this to be a toll bridge road. Yet think about how expensive it would be to replace this bridge, assuming replacement is the alternative -- what with unionized workers, steel from Pennsylvania, safety devices, environmental assessments, environmental impact reviews, modern concrete construction with as much reinforcing steel as in the original bridge, water diversion management, pile driving equipment costs, removal costs of the old bridge to include asbestos management planning, steel recycling, concrete pulverization, and the fifty six other things that I failed to mention. We got this bridge built chiefly through federal tax subsidies in the 1940's and 50's, but now the only options are likely public-private partnerships, with the private parts most certainly looking to install toll booths to collect $8 a pop for the 80,000 cars that will use this bridge daily. That's one of the fifty six other things -- a toll plaza.
I am not arguing for or against these things...they are just a function of our mod-durun world, things that were not considered important in 1964. They are today, and today the cost is three quarters of a million dollars per day to operate a bridge.
I would argue that the best course of action, should a bridge replacement be required, would be to ship 635 experienced Chinese bridge laborers over (not in container ships, jeez...but rather first class tickets on Singapore and United airlines), house them in government facilities in floating barges, provide them cots, three squares, and a dental plan, and pay them double what they are making building bridges at home which would be approximately $24 a day for an eight hour day instead of thirteen. In container ships, we could import pre-fab steel, concrete products, and specialized machinery from China (everything except bolts...no one trusts a Chinese bolt). Without the threat of walkouts and the like, the bridge would be completed in 13 months instead of 39, and we'd be millions millions! ahead. We'd easily generate enough "commerce" across that bridge to offset the government subsidies needed to bring in the Chinese to build it.
The Chinese are already building major sections of the Bay Bridge here in San Francisco. We saved $400,000,000 to do so because we weren't willing to pay $17 tolls and having to pay bloated American wages to build them, and indeed, we saved probably a lot more than that because we no longer have any capacity to build such bridge sections, and we would have had to create the tooling and fabrication facilities for just for this one-off project. That's why the Chinese were enlisted...because they have the specialists and the expertise these days for building bridges as they are building so many of them for their own selves and their own new cars.
Granted. I'm not considering the "soft costs" of howling unionized American workers and the costs associated with picketing Louisville's city hall, or the unearned wages that won't be spent buying bourbon and Fords and the additional GDP generated by DUI accidents, or the cost of unemployment insurance as we re-re-re-re-re-extend unemployment benefits on borrowed dollars, or the costs of providing emergency dental care to workers who no longer have medical insurance, or the depression in the Kentucky housing market caused by unemployed steelworkers (who were unwilling to work for $24 a day polishing steel) who are foreclosing on their homes and the cost of further Washington bailout programs used to shore up the housing sector, or the cost to savers now making 0.2% return on their savings, or the costs associated with the downward pressure on all wages by the importation of cheaper labor...
These soft costs might, just might, be a tad more than the savings by Chinese workers, making my plan truly untenable, but because soft costs are never calculated in the engineering economics of bridge building or in the economics engineering of Washington, my plan is fucking sterling.
I am interested in language, and how we always say roads and bridges, when clearly from an alphabetical perspective we should be saying bridges and roads...and aren't bridges just another form of roads in the most fundamental sense? All bridges are roads, but not all roads are bridges. But I digress.
Carmageddon, the fake media-induced meltdown that was to turn LA commutes into 5-hour long slogs never materialized. Neither did the carmageddon here in Sacramento when I-5 was shut down for three week stretches. But now, carmageddon has spread to the Ohio River today as steel manufactured in the 1960s (horrors!) is showing cracks as used on the I-64 Sherman Minton Bridge.
I don't believe this to be a toll bridge road. Yet think about how expensive it would be to replace this bridge, assuming replacement is the alternative -- what with unionized workers, steel from Pennsylvania, safety devices, environmental assessments, environmental impact reviews, modern concrete construction with as much reinforcing steel as in the original bridge, water diversion management, pile driving equipment costs, removal costs of the old bridge to include asbestos management planning, steel recycling, concrete pulverization, and the fifty six other things that I failed to mention. We got this bridge built chiefly through federal tax subsidies in the 1940's and 50's, but now the only options are likely public-private partnerships, with the private parts most certainly looking to install toll booths to collect $8 a pop for the 80,000 cars that will use this bridge daily. That's one of the fifty six other things -- a toll plaza.
I am not arguing for or against these things...they are just a function of our mod-durun world, things that were not considered important in 1964. They are today, and today the cost is three quarters of a million dollars per day to operate a bridge.
I would argue that the best course of action, should a bridge replacement be required, would be to ship 635 experienced Chinese bridge laborers over (not in container ships, jeez...but rather first class tickets on Singapore and United airlines), house them in government facilities in floating barges, provide them cots, three squares, and a dental plan, and pay them double what they are making building bridges at home which would be approximately $24 a day for an eight hour day instead of thirteen. In container ships, we could import pre-fab steel, concrete products, and specialized machinery from China (everything except bolts...no one trusts a Chinese bolt). Without the threat of walkouts and the like, the bridge would be completed in 13 months instead of 39, and we'd be millions millions! ahead. We'd easily generate enough "commerce" across that bridge to offset the government subsidies needed to bring in the Chinese to build it.
The Chinese are already building major sections of the Bay Bridge here in San Francisco. We saved $400,000,000 to do so because we weren't willing to pay $17 tolls and having to pay bloated American wages to build them, and indeed, we saved probably a lot more than that because we no longer have any capacity to build such bridge sections, and we would have had to create the tooling and fabrication facilities for just for this one-off project. That's why the Chinese were enlisted...because they have the specialists and the expertise these days for building bridges as they are building so many of them for their own selves and their own new cars.
Granted. I'm not considering the "soft costs" of howling unionized American workers and the costs associated with picketing Louisville's city hall, or the unearned wages that won't be spent buying bourbon and Fords and the additional GDP generated by DUI accidents, or the cost of unemployment insurance as we re-re-re-re-re-extend unemployment benefits on borrowed dollars, or the costs of providing emergency dental care to workers who no longer have medical insurance, or the depression in the Kentucky housing market caused by unemployed steelworkers (who were unwilling to work for $24 a day polishing steel) who are foreclosing on their homes and the cost of further Washington bailout programs used to shore up the housing sector, or the cost to savers now making 0.2% return on their savings, or the costs associated with the downward pressure on all wages by the importation of cheaper labor...
These soft costs might, just might, be a tad more than the savings by Chinese workers, making my plan truly untenable, but because soft costs are never calculated in the engineering economics of bridge building or in the economics engineering of Washington, my plan is fucking sterling.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Ninety Years
My Franklin Blvd. is falling apart between Florin Rd. south and "A" Parkway north. The roadbed is separating over the tire ruts and good-sized chunks are being slowly scattered to the right, towards the edges of the road...right where bicyclists ride.
Chunks of asphalt aren't bothersome to a truck or even a Mini-Cooper but to a bicyclist it's bad news. I tend to ride in the lane these days to avoid these obstacles while motorists tend to skirt the nominal tire ruts and ride either with their driver's side wheel on the median or their passenger's side wheel on the bicycle lane marker. When they do the latter, there's no room at all for bikes.
I suppose this sorta think will become more commonplace over the next few years as Congress and the President fail to do anything meaningful to fix our "crumbling infrastructure" -- and remember, infrastructure means one thing and one thing only to Americans -- Roads. They will continue to deteriorate, methinks.
I got all around Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg a few weeks ago and noticed how it looks just like Greeley, Colorado, but with more humidity. A set of cities completely and totally dependent on imported petroleum and the motorized private vehicle. I didn't see one fucking person walk the entire week I was there, and indeed, neither did I walk. We spend how much to build handicap accessible ramps, push buttons for crossings, digital illuminated red-hands and a simulacrum of a white man walking, and thermo-plastic painted pedestrian lanes? Seems to me that Florida should just simply pass laws that forbid walking in the public realm and by doing so should save a few tens of millions annually by not having to install and maintain such public infrastructure sinkholes. No one walks in August in Tampa -- everything is done indoors under air conditioning, powered by coal or natural gas or nuclear.
I spent Hurricane Irene underneath the foot of the Verrazano Narrows bridge at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island:
Interesting to see it shut down, silent, and interesting to have had the opportunity 12 hours before the storm to drive across it without having to pay the $13 toll. This bridge was finished in 1964 and cost $366,000,000.00. I just can't possibly imagine what it would cost to rebuild this bridge, with labor unions scrambling and negotiating for time and a half and night premiums, with whole sections being fabricated in China and shipped through the Panama Canal, with safety measures, with political infighting between the two boroughs causing untold delays -- it's a good thing we knew how to build good shit forty years ago, and we knew how to build them without $3,545,600,000.00 cost overruns. If the toll is $13 today for a bridge built 40 years ago, it'd cost $42 tomorrow if a new one had to be built.
I would suspect that the Narrows bridge will likely never see any major replacement in my lifetime. I'd bet that we'll get a good 90 years of service from this beast if we don't neglect its maintenance. That, however, might prove to be difficult, as maintenance is increasingly difficult to come by these days and I suspect will be even more difficult going forward.
Ninety years. It's just a guess, but try to think of anything around you that was built on or before 1919...there are still some levees that were built by farmers that are still holding up, yes, but I really can't think of much else around here. Most of our big ticket infrastructure was really built up in the 50's, 60's, and 70's...or before. Replacing that work will be ugly and decidedly unsexy to the new crop of Americans who think that five bars on the smart phone represents the ultimate in advancement: New water mains. New underground 230kV electric cables. Flood control measures and new dams. Electrified trains.
It's just that we have no money to build shit like this anymore, nor do we have suitable fabrication facilities in this nation anymore to build bridge sections (why we are outsourcing them -- not only is China cheaper, they are among the few nations with the capacity to build such big items these days). Imagine having had to build a set of facilites just to build the bay bridge sections without any expectation that there would be future work available. Imagine the cost of the bridge, then.
Chunks of asphalt aren't bothersome to a truck or even a Mini-Cooper but to a bicyclist it's bad news. I tend to ride in the lane these days to avoid these obstacles while motorists tend to skirt the nominal tire ruts and ride either with their driver's side wheel on the median or their passenger's side wheel on the bicycle lane marker. When they do the latter, there's no room at all for bikes.
I suppose this sorta think will become more commonplace over the next few years as Congress and the President fail to do anything meaningful to fix our "crumbling infrastructure" -- and remember, infrastructure means one thing and one thing only to Americans -- Roads. They will continue to deteriorate, methinks.
I got all around Tampa Bay and St. Petersburg a few weeks ago and noticed how it looks just like Greeley, Colorado, but with more humidity. A set of cities completely and totally dependent on imported petroleum and the motorized private vehicle. I didn't see one fucking person walk the entire week I was there, and indeed, neither did I walk. We spend how much to build handicap accessible ramps, push buttons for crossings, digital illuminated red-hands and a simulacrum of a white man walking, and thermo-plastic painted pedestrian lanes? Seems to me that Florida should just simply pass laws that forbid walking in the public realm and by doing so should save a few tens of millions annually by not having to install and maintain such public infrastructure sinkholes. No one walks in August in Tampa -- everything is done indoors under air conditioning, powered by coal or natural gas or nuclear.
I spent Hurricane Irene underneath the foot of the Verrazano Narrows bridge at Ft. Wadsworth on Staten Island:
Interesting to see it shut down, silent, and interesting to have had the opportunity 12 hours before the storm to drive across it without having to pay the $13 toll. This bridge was finished in 1964 and cost $366,000,000.00. I just can't possibly imagine what it would cost to rebuild this bridge, with labor unions scrambling and negotiating for time and a half and night premiums, with whole sections being fabricated in China and shipped through the Panama Canal, with safety measures, with political infighting between the two boroughs causing untold delays -- it's a good thing we knew how to build good shit forty years ago, and we knew how to build them without $3,545,600,000.00 cost overruns. If the toll is $13 today for a bridge built 40 years ago, it'd cost $42 tomorrow if a new one had to be built.
I would suspect that the Narrows bridge will likely never see any major replacement in my lifetime. I'd bet that we'll get a good 90 years of service from this beast if we don't neglect its maintenance. That, however, might prove to be difficult, as maintenance is increasingly difficult to come by these days and I suspect will be even more difficult going forward.
Ninety years. It's just a guess, but try to think of anything around you that was built on or before 1919...there are still some levees that were built by farmers that are still holding up, yes, but I really can't think of much else around here. Most of our big ticket infrastructure was really built up in the 50's, 60's, and 70's...or before. Replacing that work will be ugly and decidedly unsexy to the new crop of Americans who think that five bars on the smart phone represents the ultimate in advancement: New water mains. New underground 230kV electric cables. Flood control measures and new dams. Electrified trains.
It's just that we have no money to build shit like this anymore, nor do we have suitable fabrication facilities in this nation anymore to build bridge sections (why we are outsourcing them -- not only is China cheaper, they are among the few nations with the capacity to build such big items these days). Imagine having had to build a set of facilites just to build the bay bridge sections without any expectation that there would be future work available. Imagine the cost of the bridge, then.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Debt Horizon
A Jobs speech is coming. No, not from the company with the largest market capitalization, Apple, no -- Steve Jobs is gone. No, a speech from Obama on jobs.
What, do you suppose, a government can do to spur job creation? I am hardly one to know...but I do know that the postal service is set to shave several tens of thousands of people here by 2012. Apple created jobs for the same reason the postal service is hemorrhaging -- a change to a digital economy where no one has to work anymore, where pixels on computers represent the only wealth many of us make claims to...and in my little opinion, pixelized wealth that many of us are making the same claims to.
That a company that produces toys is the largest, most valuable company in the U.S. is telling. Admit it -- iPhones and hot-shit apps are nothing but electronic adult toys (not electric adult toys, he-he). I traveled the East Coast for 2.5 weeks and Lake Comanche for Labor Day weekend without one of these toys while I absolutely required a company like Exxon-Mobil, the company who recently lost the top spot to Apple.
No, we can't find jobs here because we intentionally fuckered them away over the past thirty years, as we migrated from citizen to consumer; as we accepted warehouse mass-merchants at the edges of our towns over myriad local in-town businesses; as we gained an excess 35# on average through the consumption of factory-scaled subsidized dairy and soybeans while requiring 1,500 more calories a day just to get the base level of nutrients we needed in 1975 due to over-fertilization and can't afford double digit health care increases; as we gamble away our wealth today and future tomorrow by building casinos and family entertainment destinations instead of investing it into our own communities.
What, do you suppose, a government can do to spur job creation? I am hardly one to know...but I do know that the postal service is set to shave several tens of thousands of people here by 2012. Apple created jobs for the same reason the postal service is hemorrhaging -- a change to a digital economy where no one has to work anymore, where pixels on computers represent the only wealth many of us make claims to...and in my little opinion, pixelized wealth that many of us are making the same claims to.
That a company that produces toys is the largest, most valuable company in the U.S. is telling. Admit it -- iPhones and hot-shit apps are nothing but electronic adult toys (not electric adult toys, he-he). I traveled the East Coast for 2.5 weeks and Lake Comanche for Labor Day weekend without one of these toys while I absolutely required a company like Exxon-Mobil, the company who recently lost the top spot to Apple.
No, we can't find jobs here because we intentionally fuckered them away over the past thirty years, as we migrated from citizen to consumer; as we accepted warehouse mass-merchants at the edges of our towns over myriad local in-town businesses; as we gained an excess 35# on average through the consumption of factory-scaled subsidized dairy and soybeans while requiring 1,500 more calories a day just to get the base level of nutrients we needed in 1975 due to over-fertilization and can't afford double digit health care increases; as we gamble away our wealth today and future tomorrow by building casinos and family entertainment destinations instead of investing it into our own communities.
We've not only a whole generation, but multiple generations, who are now adorned with random tattoos (as some odd display of status? of prestige?) along with attire resembling either the nursery or prison. Whole generations who have lost the capacity for meaningful work. Most jobs are no longer craft in this nation -- all that's available are those that support the ongoing consumption of toys, recreational drugs, or jobs that support the directing of said consumption into landfills -- forklift operators at K-Mart or chip-sealers for the acres of unused WalMart parking lots.
As if Obama wanted to spend $1.6 trillion more every year than the government takes in, but he has to to keep the system from falling apart, while the consumer continues to be funneled towards that debt horizon, the end game of an economy based on ever expanding credit. It's neither Obama's fault nor is it Bush -- it's the American consumer, who cheerfully lost his own job building quality toaster ovens at $16 an hour to a Chinese factory worker making total pieces of shit for a tenth of that. The 600,000,000 of us who were sheltered from limitless cheap labor behind the bamboo and iron curtains have now refused to accept that there are another 5.9 billion who strive for a lifestyle with indoor plumbing, cooking fuel and basic transportation. The American consumer, who refuses to pay $55 for a good domestic toaster oven at a local merchant that would last two decades, and instead climbs into his foreign made SUV and drives on subsidized roads to the WalMart to buy a $19.98 imported piece of shit every three years.
The jobs speech will come and go, with no meaningful results.
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