Election Road Trip, Day 2: Rowing and Shooting

$10.50 a bit low? After pay roll taxes? When you say full health benefits, does that mean no employee contribution? $21,840 annually is below the poverty level for a family of 4 Joe.
Joe, you try living on that amount, particularly if you have a family. And, you do know that without the influence of unions, that company would probably not offer health insurance.
This is what is sad. The disparity between the rich and poor is now considered ok.

Joe, you must have a computer with you. May I suggest you do your own fact checking before posting.

Joe, despite my opening salvo yesterday, this is a really fantastic idea for a journalist.

I understand that like most of us you’re going to find people and anecdotes that validate your existing beliefs. That’s natural, as much as your misinformed and petty insults to teachers, public employees and unions in general make me want to track down your Flex and cut you off. My being in Asia makes this rather challenging.

But, could you step away from your centrist perch long enough to recognize that you just went into this factory and interviewed the f@cking CEO but not a single worker. It’s a vivid encapsulation of team Obama, more interested in the views of the employer class than their wage earners.

What’s breathtaking is how detached you must be from folks making 20 gs a year. If you talk to them and they’re unable to fully articulate their lives of quiet desperation, will you mock them or strive to interpret their suffering in a way they deserve. You know, Steinbeck vs. Mencken.

Cuz I gotta tell you, they need a f@cking champion, you know. The CEOs don’t–they have an entire legislature to do their bidding. If the unions are dead in the H20, as seems your preference, who the hell do you think is going to go to bat for the little guy that the Boss is singing about on your radio.

It’s never too late to fight the right battle. I imagine that 40 years ago you were on the right side of this fight. Well, that side lost 30 years ago. They’ve been taking an epic beatdown ever since.

I must respectfully disagree, apr2563.
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It seems perfectly appropriate for a blogger to request crowd-sourced fact-checking, especially whilst on the road.

I wish that levelheaded people stopped using “obamacare.” It’s a pejorative that was invented by the Frank Lutz crowd and I hate to keep seeing them win on things like this.

Otherwise, great post.

The workers were stone silent.
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I’ll bet they were.
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The plant manager had several questions about taxes: he wanted them lowered.
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I’ll bet he did.
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The workers are terrified, management is clueless, and you, Joe Klein, are just having a great time, aren’t you, with your little road trip through the Potemkin villages.
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I don’t know you well enough to call you an idiot but, by thunder, you certainly write some idiotic stuff.

just pointing this out. Joe is tagging along with a political candidate, I wouldn’t really expect Upton Sinclair type muckraking.

Joe Klein:

“There would be all these problems with having workers cross-trained to perform various operations. The union would insist on classifying them, which would limit our flexibility.” I must admit I’m not sure that this is true and would welcome comments from union organizers with a different point of view.)

This is from the “Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Strategies Toolkit,” which is

“A resource for unions, their signatory employers and partners in the workforce, education and economic development communities”

, put out by

“The principal authors of the tool kit were Teri Bergman (Director for Public Economic and Workforce Development Strategies), Tom Gannon (Manufacturing Field Specialist) and Jeffrey Soth (Program and Economic Analyst). They were aided by extensive contributions from other Institute staff: Tom Burress, Beatrice Edwards, and Shea Shackelford. Also assisting on the production of case studies and development of the resources guide were our AFL-CIO colleagues Matthew Bates and Joel Yudken.
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The relevant passage from this literature meant to help unionized workers and unions become higher-productivity, more valuable employees is here:

“Supplier Excellence Alliance/Labor Education and Training Center (LETC) California Training Partnership
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The Supplier Excellence Alliance (SEA) Lean Enterprise System (LES) is a unified, industry-wide approach that avoids duplication of efforts and provides a set process for achieving operational excellence. The LES approach emphasizes leadership and culture, workforce development and operational excellence improvements in its supplier firms.
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A key component of this model is to ensure that workers have the technical and participatory skills necessary to identify and implement activities to achieve the desired operational excellence improvements. The goal of the workforce development component is to prepare the supplier to plan and implement job skills training with the involvement of their employees that will result in improved processes, cross-training and job skills certification.
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Workforce Challenge
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Responding to small and medium size firms’ and/or facilities’ (those with less than 500 employees) recruitment and training needs: In recent years, large, formerly vertically integrated firms have aggressively embraced the outsourcing and subcontracting of many of their component parts. In the process, they have made their own operations leaner and meaner, while pushing significant parts of the production process to firms that are typically smaller.
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These smaller firms generally have fewer resources to commit to training and education programs and/or new employee recruitment. Many small and mid-sized firms have no full-time human resources managers, and their education and training programs often consist of tuition reimbursement policies, where individual workers must take the initiative to obtain additional education and training on their own.
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To promote cost-effective new worker recruitment and incumbent worker training within these smaller firms, initiatives that facilitate common training, assessment, screening, etc. for jobs at small and medium size manufacturers are especially important. Cross-employer skills training – while always desirable – can help ensure, in a cost-effective way, that workers in smaller firms get the skills they need to compete in the global economy. Training and education programs should link to economic development policies that respond to the needs of sectors, industries and local or regional economies. ”

That’s basically the AFL-CIO trying to encourage the very flexibility this CEO claims they oppose.
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Here’s a non-union point of view from “bnet: The CBS Interactive Business Network”

“Expose the union’s underbelly – includes related article on preventing union organization
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Knowing when and how to respond to organizing activity can save you from a union election.
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When faced with incipient union activity, some employers ignore it and hope it will go away. Responding to a union, they believe, will only give it credibility.
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While this response is understandable, it is usually wrong. If an employer does not respond to prounion statements, employees may perceive them to be true and completely accurate, which often is not the case.
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Consider the following examples:
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* If we had a union, we wouldn’t have to work so much overtime. And, we would have greater certainty in our weekly schedules.
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* We’re being asked to do more and more in terms of cross-training, but we aren’t receiving any additional money. If we had a union, our pay would increase as our skills increase.
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The danger for employers is that if 30 percent or more of your workforce in an appropriate bargaining unit is persuaded to sign union cards, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) will require you to hold a union election. Even if your company ultimately wins the election, the victory is usually Pyrrhic. Campaigns leading up to elections are almost always expensive, adversarial and dangerously distracting from an employer’s business purpose.
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So, the primary goal for employers is not to win elections but to avoid them altogether. If employers wish to avoid elections, they must respond rapidly to incipient union activity by exposing the union’s underbelly…
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The risks to employees in collective bargaining need to be communicated. If employees see no risk, then they have no reason to refrain from signing a union card. However, employers need to be careful not to state or suggest that employees definitely will lose existing pay, benefits or the like. To avoid actual or implied threats, employers should describe wage and benefit losses as a possibility, not an inevitable outcome.
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This could be interpreted as unlawfully suggesting that the employer won’t bargain in good faith.
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Here is an example of what to say…

Is the CEO speaking from experience, or from widely-distributed, union-busting talking points?
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Is union resistance to multi-skilled workforces a relic of the Eisenhower-era past, or are they funding “Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Strategies Toolkit” projects to discourage cross-training while pretending to promote it?
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You be the judge, Joe Klein.

…And, by the way, I’m not a union organizer nor member (except for musicians’ in the 1990′s), I’m just responding to your request for crowd-sourced fact-checking, Joe Klein.
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Link to “Advanced Manufacturing Workforce Strategies Toolkit”
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http://www.workingforamerica.org/toolkit/case_study2a.asp

Here’s the link to “Expose the union’s underbelly – includes related article on preventing union organization”
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http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3495/is_6_44/ai_54994219/pg_2/?tag=content;col1
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The comment moderation system has ceased allowing commenters to post multiple links in the same comment, unfortunately.

Thank you, stuart.

Joe you are a WRITER for heavens sake. It is COXSWAIN not COCKSWAIN. Perhaps taking a dictionary wouldn’t have been a bad idea. Or how about spell check? Now…you are asking us…your SORDID IDIOT posse to fact check for you. How about sending us part of your GROSSLY INFLATED paycheck…or….how about donating part of it to charity. Well, you liberals are a bit tight with that personal charity thing.

Well, you liberals are a bit tight with that personal charity thing.
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Look up the meaning of the word “liberal,” sport. Make a donation to something yourself and prove me wrong. Better yet, deliver something useful in person to somebody who needs it. Talk is cheap.

The unions are hogging money that could otherwise go into murdering more brown skinned people or pumping up the bank accounts of poor bankers.

Are you there yet? Are you there yet?

I don’t know how many more inane posts like these I can endure sifting through. Props to your normal editor, whom presumably kept you from making asinine remarks like yesterday’s “public employees (e.g. social workers) are against economic recovery because there will be less poor people to help” and today’s “$10.50/hour seems a bit low.”

If we round up to $22,000 per year and assume that no one should be spending more than 30% of their pay for housing, that leaves them with looking for $550/month, what, apartments? Living with their parents? That doesn’t seem low, Joe, that is low. It’s barely a living wage for a single person, let alone anyone with a family. But I’m sure they’re happy to have any job at all.

That’s certainly the ticket to recovery. $10.50/hour.

Joe Klein:

Lentz, who is a member of the state legislature, didn’t commit to that–and was forthright in favor of resuming the Clinton tax rates on those earning more than $250,000. “80% of those people are millionaires,” he said, a statistic I’ve heard several Democrats use this year.
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(Fact check request here–I’m on the road and will depend on you, dear readers, to interact in situations like this, as well as magisterial trip wrangler, Katy Steinmetz.),
then he backtracked a bit in response to the plant manager’s frown: “I know some families with dual incomes may reach above $250,000 and I’d be open to seeing if we could raise that number a bit, or phase the tax in.”

According to the 2008 US census, only 2.476 million U.S. households (both earners), the top 2.1 percent, had yearly income greater than $250,000 in that year.
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http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/cpstables/032009/hhinc/new06_000.htm
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(I’ll bet he knows “some families” whose incomes “may reach above” $250k. They’re called “donors.”)
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OK, getting to the real meat of the claim, that “80% of those earning more than $250,000 are millionaires,” I believe that can be found in the Federal Reserve’s “Recent Changes in U.S. Family Finances: Evidence from the 2001 and 2004 Survey of Consumer Finances”
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in the section:
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“Family net worth, by selected characteristics of families, 1995–2004 surveys Thousands of 2004 dollars”
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If you look carefully at that table, you’ll see a column on the left, entitled “Family characteristic.” The first characteristic displayed directly beneath is called “Percentile of income,” and it shows these broken down by tens of percents, from the bottom (“Less than 20″) to the top (“90–100″).
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As you can see, if you look at the rightmost columns (where it says “2004 Median”), it looks like the median net worth of the top 10 percent of American households is $924,100, which is certainly close to being a millionaire.
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So, what I think is going on is that this top ten percent is being evaluated by those making the “80%” claim, so that they’re extrapolating that, if the median is nearly a million dollars, the higher values of the median’s range are probably over a million.
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Since we know from that 2008 census data I provided that only the top 2 percent or so of households earn over $250k, and they would necessarily fall into the higher range values in that 10 percent of top households, it follows that they probably have more than a million dollars in net worth.
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If my reading of this is accurate, and if they don’t actually have any real data that shows this to be the case, then they are probably relying upon this sort of extrapolation, which is relatively close to the truth.
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So, it’s very probable, according to this analysis of the data, that this candidate (and “several Democrats”) are not wrong to make this claim.
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If anybody else can do better, or find fault with my methods, please chime in.

Here’s the link to the Fed’s 2004 Family Net Worth data from which I quoted above: http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/bulletin/2006/financesurvey.pdf
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Warning! PDF!

Thanks for this commentary, Oregon JC.

When stuartzechman wrote:

That’s basically the AFL-CIO trying to encourage the very flexibility this CEO claims they oppose.

I think he had misread Joe’s report of what the CEO said, which was

“There would be all these problems with having workers cross-trained to perform various operations. The union would insist on classifying them, which would limit our flexibility.”

In light of Joe’s report that the company had

70-employees . . . cross-trained to perform various skills

I read the CEO’s quote as saying that she feared that union rules would limit the benefits of cross-training by limiting the number of different types of tasks that a given employee would be allowed to perform.
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Joe seemed to question that take and asked for reader help for clarity. Stuart’s posted excerpts from the AMWST provided that clarity
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To add my personal experience to that subject, when I was a Journeyman Retail Clerk, I was periodically chastised by the union rep for pitching in to help employees in other departments at times when they were temporarily swamped and I was caught up. I was told I was “taking away someone else’s job”, and “making it so the employer did not have to hire another person.” Huh?, I would say. Are you telling me that my employer should hire another person per every hour of the day, in every department, just to stand around waiting for those short bursts when that department is swamped? “That’s the employer’s problem, not yours” I was told. I found that to be idiotic. My preference would have been for my employer to be able to pay me a higher wage to compensate me for being such a responsible and effective employee. But, union rules prevented that without paying every employer in the region paying all the other Journeyman Retail Clerks in the same wage as I. And I would have not felt good about that, because I can tell you for sure that a lot of them were slugs that just punched the clock and tried not to get three write-ups per year for violating policies, so that they could not be fired.
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FAIR WARNING: If any of you “union workers are all lazy leeches” preachers try to use the story that I just told to substantiate that criticism of yours, prepare for some vitriol from me, right along with the rest of the story. It ain’t what I wrote, it ain’t what I meant, it ain’t the truth, and I do not take being misused lightly, and I ain’t so illiterate not to know that ain’t ain’t correct English.

thanks, FT
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Saved me from saying it differently
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Leaving only this part to have to say:
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I’m not a modern “Conservative”, and I give to individuals, not to charity organizations that skim 50-80% off the top for administrative “costs”.
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In other words, I am motivated to help unfortunates, instead of motivated to lower my taxable income.

mycophile:
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Don’t get me wrong, I know exactly the situation you’re talking about.
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The question is really about the inevitability of such an issue for productivity in a union shop, and whether unions by definition promote that behavior, or whether they recognize it as a problem.

What hit me was that the workers were stone silent. Of course they were, given the anti-union atmosphere and the talk of raising taxes for more or less $250,000, a sum not even near the realm of their $10.50/hr. surf wages. Really sad.

stuart 10.1

Does that report discussing the Net Worth include the estimated billions of bucks that the folks have stashed in tax shelter accounts in the Cayman Islands, Cook Islands, Panama, Nauru, Liechtenstein, etc.?

That’s Federal Reserve data, so probably not.

A way to look at this intuitively is that a million dollars of net worth is not that much wealth. A millionaire cannot retire and live comfortably off her investments. Even so, it is (as Stuart documents) was pretty much the cut point for the 95th percentile in 2004. (The median of the top decile is the 95th percentile.)

OTOH, $250,000 is well above the 95th percentile of household income (again as Stuart documents). That is a very big salary, especially outside the Beltway, Hollywood or Wall Street. Most people who are earning such a salary have been accumulating wealth for quite some time, in the form of retirement funds, pensions, and real estate.

80% is likely to be a low value in this instance. BUT, do keep in mind (as written up in the book “The Millionaire Next Door”) part of what is going on here is that a millionaire is not nearly as wealthy as ordinary parlance would have you believe, while someone make a quarter of that amount every year is very well off indeed.

I really appreciate an actual economist coming in to check my work, thanks so much, Jay!

OF course, what I am really looking forward to is Joe fact checking all the claims about the insolvency of social security…..

That doesn’t matter. If the top tenth of one percent is understated, the median doesn’t move.

apr: True, that an individual earning $10.50 an hour makes about $21K a year. But, a *dual* income household can make $42K a year which may “reach above $250,000″…(I guess there are a few more spouses to consider.)
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(apr: I realize I may have upset you the other day by knocking the UAW and Construction Unions. Please understand that I am not anti-union. I would, however, like to see them become more effective in providing labor solutions to America’s manufacturing and service sectors. Michigan has lost too many jobs already!)

Just a minute:
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(A) “Our biggest customer right now is the military,” James explained.
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(B) The CEO asked Lentz, with a certain edge to her voice, if he thought “the government can make jobs.”
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Hellooooooooooooooooooooo? Is Ms James for real?
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What alternate reality does she live in where she cannot see that the money ($$$) she gets from the military (==the government) goes to help her pay her employees (==jobs).
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Joe. Please tell us that you pointed this out to her.

I had noticed that, myself…

Is “CoxBox” a real thingy? Or is it Ana Marie’s nickname for her cooter? (h/t sacred)

You know, this struck me as interesting:

“We were met at the door by the company’s young CEO Alix James, who explained that the company had been started 32 years ago by two partners–including her step-father–who were dedicated rowers and who had invented an electronic system…”

So she basically inherited a company that she gets to run?
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Is that how that sounds?
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Meritocracy in action?

Uncertainty over HCR, was one of the reasons she gave for NOT hiring more workers and you can multiply this one CEO by thousands. I brought up this fact before and was shouted down and accused of conservative bias, but as you read, this IS a major factor in why so few new jobs are being created. This panacea of false benevolence is hurting the American economy and if implemented, will do irreparable damage to our health delivery system. If Joe were to ask, I think he will get an earful from the American public about the wisdom of this ill conceived bill.

stuart, jay: Thanks for this information. I shouldn’t type and watch the evening news at the same time…

Given the generally flaming nature of the above, I suspect that attempting to add facts to the discussion will only fan the fire, but I’ll give it a try.

1) It’s coxswain – derived from English naval history – and Cox Box. The coxswain steers the rowing shell and provides guidance and strategy calls to the crew.

2) I did not inherit job in any way shape or form. I went to school, practiced law, and chose to come work for this business because I believed that MAKING things and helping an American company grow was more valuable than litigation. I’ve worked for the company for 19 years, and have been promoted to CEO based on performance. I’m 49, although I apparently looked younger to Joe.

3) Our average salaries are higher than the $10.50 an hour referenced here, particularly for employees that have been here for as long as most of our employees. Despite the apparent view that ours is a horrendous, evil place to work where the employees desperately need a union to protect them, our turnover is extremely low and most employees stay on for years. In addition to salary, we provide fully paid health insurance, dental, vision, a very generous 401k, paid time off, free lunches, employee outings, and an unwaivering commitment to continue to improve and grow the business so we can continue to raise our wages and maintain our benefits. Note also that many of our employees have brought in spouses, siblings and children to work here – further evidence of how much they dislike the place.

4) By “getting to run” a company – do you mean staying up late at night trying to figure out how to minimize layoffs during the worst recession in 30 years? Knowing every day that I have 70 families, new kids, new mortgages and new car payments relying on our ability to keep this company succeeding? Yup, I sure “inherited” an easy road. Thanks.

5) The military is only one of our customers, but is actually not our largest customer. Fire fighters, first responders, researchers, teachers, athletes, outdoorspeople and farmers are also on the list. Yes, government spending supports many of our sales, but we also export over 33% of what we make. My question was directed at the effectiveness of pumping additional deficit-creating stimulus dollars into programs specifically to create jobs. I don’t have the answer to whether it’s working or not – I just wanted to hear Brian’s answer to the question.

6) You may be able to find AFL-CIO handbook passages that support cross-training, but please ask someone who actually works as part of or manages a union-based work force how easy it is to move a union employee across job classifications and then comment further. I work actively in support of the development of our manufacturing base and am friends with operational managers of many unionized companies. Many union leaders are seeing what it takes to survive, but many aren’t and managing a unionized work force adds challenges and requires constant dialog and negotiation. It also adds a cost to the organization that has to come from somewhere.

Thanks for the healthy interest. If anyone wants to know more about the company and our efforts to meet our customers’ needs and keep jobs here in the US for over 30 years, our website is http://www.nkhome.com. Now excuse me while I’ll get back to relaxing at my easy inherited job…

Alix James, CEO
Nielsen-Kellerman

I noticed that as well. The big gov tit is ok, when we are sucking on it, but don’t tax us for it. And the surfs remain stone silent. Right. Sniper scopes. God bless America.

Welcome to the fray, Ms. James. Thanks for contributing.
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Please allow me to respond to your post, in part.
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3. The (strawman) issue isn’t whether your company is a “horrendous, evil place to work”. It is whether America is a horrendous place to live when you are trying to raise a family on $10.50/hr. or less.
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5. You failed to clarify what portion of your sales are to the public sector. And when you stated that “export over 33% of what we make” you appeared to distinguish those sales from “government” sales. But are all of your exports to the private sector?
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But regardless of the exact percentages, it remains shocking to read a quote from the CEO of a company that sells a significant portion of its products to the government asking whether “the government can make jobs.”
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BTW, the answer is a resounding “yes”. The government can directly create jobs by hiring people. The federal government employs about 2 million civilans. The government directly created those jobs.
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The government can indirectly (but measurably) create jobs by (1) directly providing loans to businesses, (2) lowering the interest rates that private banks charge businesses, (3) paying private contractors to perform services for the government, (4) purchasing goods from private-sector companies — like Nielsen Kellerman!, and (5) create tax incentives for employing workers.
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6. Your employees are capitalists. They are selling you their labor. And like every other vendor that you must deal with in manufacturing your product, your employees want the best deal that they can get. And you, presumably, want the best deal for the company’s bottom line.
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I certainly don’t begrudge your efforts to preserve your profit margins, but you have to admit that your interests are not aligned with those of your employees.
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While running a business requires a solid understanding of microeconomics, macroeconomics is often counterintuitive. For example, as a business owner you may be better off if your individual business is not unionized. But as a society, we are all better off with strong unions.

stuart~
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Don’t get me wrong — I got you right.

Stuart’s posted excerpts from the AMWST provided that clarity

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I conceptualized that what you were leading to was something like what you summated @6.5
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I wanted to help us be fair to Joe that he had sought what you provided.
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I found the information you excerpted to be educational.

regarding my

FAIR WARNING:

@ 6.4
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too much of a drawing-lines-in-the-sand voice. Must have been something I ate. Better said would have been that I hope no one tries to use my story that way, because it would be an unfortunate misuse of it, given the rest of the story which I did not tell.

kbang: You didn’t upset me about unions. I agree with you. They have missed so many opportunities to organize private service workers. I think they have been too narrow in their recruiting.
Although they have spoken out about outsourcing, they have not reached the right people with their messages. Competing with big business for the largest megaphone is pretty daunting.
They also should increase their apprentice programs and reach out to young workers. Not everyone is going to college. They could work more closely with schools to offer skills training. Lots of things they could do better.
Also, they need to look at their own management and cut out the chafe.

I applaud you, Ms. James, for posting. Journalist’s paraphrasings and easily-not-quite-accurately-worded quotes can fail to convey facts thoroughly or accurately enough, and, then the further interpretations of that by readers can do that some more, and what it triggers in their own minds on top of that, leading to comments afield from the source of the originating information.
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However, while, then, concepts thus discussed may or may not fit the exact circumstances of, say, in this case, your company, the concepts can still be legitimate debatable issues.
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I hope you will not take any of it too personally, and I hope that commenter’s here will not take you too personally to task.
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Our nation is in trouble. We are all at risk (although the more wealthy among us have a longer shelf-life) I am fairly confident that we all here (but I can only speak surely for myself) greatly appreciate that you are willing to engage us and thereby risk, as you say, fanning the flames. Hopefully it will be much more useful than that. I encourage you to stay tuned and possibly post again.

stuart: I am asking for him to fact check before posting. If he has given his readers misinformation, will it be corrected and will it be read?
Crowd sourcing is out sourcing for knowledge. This is what the pundits do every Sunday. Then they accept the “facts” they are given with no more research. I expect more from a journalist.

micophyle: Many years ago I worked sorting cranberries from a moving belt. It was seasonal work. As you can imagine, it was horribly tedious. I asked one of the ladies making boxes if I could take over her job for a while. She allowed me to but the union forman chased me away. A box maker made 10cents more an hour than the sorter. Of course, this was stupid.
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Also, because I was a woman I was not allowed to run a fork lift. It also paid more. That was an employer rule. Also, stupid.
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I do know that the unions demanded ventilation. We worked night shifts and one night they shut the loading dock doors and many workers became ill from the porpane fumes in the plant. The union forman protested and we were allowed to breathe fresh air.
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Although unions can be counter productive, I would think an employee has more influence with the union than employers in influencing procedures.
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Luckily, to make our job more interesting, more than cranberries came down those belts.

stuart: Thank you for your contributions. Now I would like Joe to acknowledge he actually read them and appreciated their value.

I appreciate Mr. James response to this post. Square1 thank you for your rebuttal.

apr2563 –
Joe is asking us to check candidates’ facts, not his own.

Thanks so very much for taking the time to respond to Swampland commentary, Ms. James, it is greatly appreciated.

“Sport”…..really, thats the best you could do . Excuse this post…I’m using only one hand this morning…the other serving breakfast at the food bank

Well, Friar or whatever, take a look at the data. Arthur Brooks from Syracuse University studied the charitable history/habits of both liberals and conservatives. He found that even though liberal family income was 6% higher than conservatives, conservatives give 30% more to charity. They also donate more time, and gave more blood to blood banks. States where John Kerry won gave significantly less than States that Bush won.

Sadly , talk is indeed cheap. I think you would feel better about yourself ,though, if you loosened your grip on that nickel.

Hello Alix,
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Thank you for taking the time last night to comment on this article and provide greater context to your business and the challenges you and your employees face.
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I do, however, echo the comments of square1 @18, in that your question to congressional candidate Lenz (“can the government make jobs?”) left me puzzled.
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I hope that you find the mix of govt/private, domestic/export customers that you need to sustain and grow your business.

How much better than “Letters to the Editor” is this?
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This is an excellent commentary section.
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It’s pretty amazing that more publications don’t feature this sort of thing, given the realities of the industry.

@square1 – Thanks for a thoughtful and well-expressed reply. Your policy points regarding how the government can stimulate employment were exactly what I was hoping to hear from the candidate, hence my question. Believe me, I am well aware of the extent to which government spending underlies a great deal of our business. It’s even more intertwined than outlined here – our rowing products are sold to colleges funded in part by government and many of our Kestrel Weather Instrument sales relate to complying with government regulation, for example. However, most of these sales channels predated, and were unaffected by, the targeted stimulus spending of the last two years. As you have outlined, there are many approaches to further stimulus and I was just curious to hear which approaches Lentz favored. It makes for more interesting journalism the way Joe Klein wrote it, however.

For what it’s worth, because we DO expect employees to stay with us for years, and invest in training and development to help them gain the skills to become indispensable, a short-term tax incentive would not make much difference to our hiring decisions. We also invest heavily in R&D (very heavily by small company standards), so an effective R&D tax credit that helped us to invest further and add new products more quickly would generate hiring at all pay scales in our company. Because of the Alternative Minimum Tax, we receive no benefit from the current R&D credit – another unintended consequence of the outdated AMT.

Excellent job of summarizing your earlier GG post in 3 sentences, stuart!

BTW, have you noticed the Time/video of the PA visit that’s been posted, as well as the “Where the f*ck is Joe?” google map?
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The high sheriffs have been unable to get us line breaks, highlighted hyperlinks, and a a decent preview for over 2 years – but they’ve turbocharged the intertubes for Joe’s Excellent Adventure. I’m delighted and puzzled…

Thank you, yes! When I read Obamacare, I thought that was a dreadful word for a journalist to use.

or, sordid person, you could check to find (as I did, to my surprise) that “cockswain” is a pre-existing alternate spelling. Which doesn’t make it good, but does show Joe didn’t make it up. OTOH, this spelling does have, um, unfortunate folkloric connotations.

Ms. James, I’m entering this as a reply to square1 in order to try to address you more directly. Thank you so much for your comments and your elaboration of various points made. I live in Plymouth Meeting and of course am very familiar with the scullers on the river, but had no idea of your company and its products. Thank you again.

Interestingly in the debate over Unions, the correct anwer is “You’re both right” Organizing campaigns are a pain in the a$$ and they create a hostile environment that needn’t exist between worjers and employers. But the best way to avoid unionization is to threat your employess fairly in the first place.
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Without the potential for an organization drive, the incentives might not be as strong.

worjers=workers
Threat = treat
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I can spell, I just can’t type!

“Sport”…..really, thats the best you could do
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Well, it seems to have had the intended effect.

Do you mean this “Arther Brooks from Syracuse University?”
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http://www.arthurbrooks.net/
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Are you referring to the president of the rightist think tank “American Enterprise Institute?”
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Are you saying that’s where you obtained credible information on “liberals’” and “conservatives’” giving?

A millionaire cannot retire and live comfortably off her investments.

That is completely dependent on chosen lifestyle. Mine would be amply supported by such a figure. Anytime anyone has such a drop to drip into my bucket, please ask me for my address.\.
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I do, like stuartzechman, appreciate having the perspective of an economist here, jay..

Sorry, to disagree. When he posts candidates facts, they become his own. Without his own facts at hand, he shouldn’t post those he can’t confirm.
If I am a student and hand in a term paper, I don’t expect someone else to check the facts about those I may be quoting in the paper.
After Joe has done his research is the time for other perspectives.

Nice try Stuart….but there is a fair amount of data out there on this very point. Nicholas Kristof in a 2008 op-ed piece in the New York Times quotes the same reference as I (in addition to several others) in an appeal to liberals to give more. Sorry.

“ Nicholas Kristof in a 2008 op-ed piece in the New York Times quotes the same reference as I (in addition to several others) in an appeal to liberals to give more.”
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And this makes it somehow more credible?
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Please provide a link to said piece, so that we may evaluate these arguments ourselves.
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By the way, you don’t have to apologize.

Stuart…the reason no one else does it is that no one has the time and energy to read your posts. One has to be either retired, independently wealthy, on the dole, or work for the Federal Government to have the time

How clever of you.

Stuart…don’t take it the wrong way. You are obviously a smart guy with a lot to say. I admit I’m not. I am pretty much tapped out with a sentence or two. But you need an editor. Like Bill O’reilly says “keep it pithy.”

Anyway, keep your input up. I enjoy your posts , and learn something with each. Best wishes.

Thanks for clarifying, I won’t take it the wrong way.
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Post stuff yourself! I’ll read it!