JC Political Thread - For All Things Political Part 2

[Immortality]

Many years ago we had some unsavoury folks in a house up the street, it was a private house leased to the state and the people the government put in there were dealing. One day there was a big raid and that was that. Before that one of those folks was walking down past my place flashing a pistola, I had the cops pick up his ass, lots of cops and guns. I hope they scared the **** out of him.

There was another house up the road that I'm told gang members lived and dealt from. Eventually the cops got rid of them too.

Unfortunately that **** is everywhere.

 

[keith reed]

Yea I will.
He's in favour of wealth RE-distribution, that's pretty much a Carl Marx thing if I'm not mistaken.

You are mistaken. Under communism there is no private ownership. Everything is owned by the state and I don't recall anyone from the Labor party or Government expousing such policy. That system of government might not catch on here. In fact while there are communist parties in most countries there are no communist countries.. All have private ownership of some form.

Donald Trump might talk about the extreme left while referring to the Democrat Party but that is just nonsense. Pretty much tweedle dum and tweedle dee in other words the Republians and the Democrats are much of a muchness

 

[J_D 2.0]

You said you have 1 million worth of stock, we probably had about that much, we used to get a pallet in each two weeks to 1 month from the Keysbrough wearhouse.
We used to turn over about 2 million a year and we had two stores each doing 2 mil.
Well actually we had 4 stores in suspension, then 2 in automotive, now that company has 3 suspension shops, 4 automotive shops and 4 tyre shops. Plus the owner had multiple smash shops.

The point of the discussion was that if I wanted to “strike out on my own” I would need at least a million dollars just for the stock holding, whereas you could probably strike out on your own for about $100k at worst for a van and tools.

Aside from that someone where you previously worked wasn’t doing the stock control properly. Having a heap of stock isn’t something to be proud of, it’s something that costs you money the longer you sit on it.

I have about a million dollars worth of stock and my division turns over around six million dollars a year (so an inventory to sales ratio of about six to one). Oh and I also have to order everything 5 months in advance, and quite a lot of it still doesn’t turn up on time because supply chains are still shite post COVID.

 

[J_D 2.0]

Now a carpenter working on a construction site is paid about $30 an hour.

Operative words, construction site. My point is that tradies have more bargaining power than most employees as they can (and do) decide to pick up the tools independently and go into business themselves (and thus keep all the profits, not just the crumbs the business owner wants to throw down).

 

[J_D 2.0]

Yea I will.
He's in favour of wealth RE-distribution, that's pretty much a Carl Marx thing if I'm not mistaken.

So you’re worried Chalmers is going to take all your wealth away from you? I’ll never understand people who will never be rich defending what is in the best interests of the rich.

 

[keith reed]

Operative words, construction site. My point is that tradies have more bargaining power than most employees as they can (and do) decide to pick up the tools independently and go into business themselves (and thus keep all the profits, not just the crumbs the business owner wants to throw down).

Just because someone knows how to hit in a nail it doesn't mean he or she knows how to run a business. So when they finally learn they will be competing against someone who doesn't. Then there is the matter of getting paid and how little chance you have recovery if you don't. Some succeed but a lot don't in other words it's not all peaches and cream.

Many years ago I spoke to a boss who wanted to put his workers on a flat hourly rate or in effect pay them less. The hourly rate for a carpenter was around $12 and he was wanting to pay them $15 an hour flat rate. Sounded better until you did the sums. He was trying to compete against labour only people who were working for $4 an hour and he was struggling. Sure they wouldn't last long but there was always another idiot who would take their place.

 

[MasterOfReality]

Correct, running a business is totally different. I thought I had a handle on it, but it was still a massive learning curve. You can't be afraid to spend a lot of money on legal and finance to get set up, and this is what gets most people. On top of that there is either hardware, tools or software that can run into pretty large numbers. In my instance I estimate I spent over $100k in engineering software so far, my laptop alone was $10k. And that is just for myself. If I had say 10 employees then it can easily run to a million just on this stuff.

Even at my end of the scale, there are people willing to undercut my hourly rate by $100/hr to win work. I charge a flat rate, don't discount, don't play games. Its swings and roundabouts. I'll lose grunt work to a cheaper less experienced competitor but gain in other areas where specialist technical expertise is required. The guys charging a lot less usually crash and burn as they get overloaded with work, resort to filling seats with rubbish engineers to keep up and suffer a massive reputational hit.

 

[Immortality]

Unions work on medium to larger sites because there is a group of people to organise. It's very hard to group bargain on a work site where there are only a couple of employees where as on a large site and you dozens or hundreds of people it's a different story. On a large site it is also easier for the boss to fire one guy and find a replacement with a "take it or leave it" offer because loosing one guy out of a hundred does not bring the site to a stop where as in a small garage loosing on mechanic is going to put a serious dent in the business operations.

There are wildly different employer/employee dynamics between small and large work sites.

At least in Aussie you have your Awards that sets minimum standards for wages and other things by industry, here in NZ we only have the minimum wage and holidays acts and some other basic law standards but other then that it is up to the employer to decide what they want or don't want to offer a potential employee.

There was something our Labour government brought in years ago where multiple small businesses in the same industry could band together and collectively bargain a contract for staff but I don't remember the specifics and would need to do some more research to find the ins and outs about it.

 

[shane_3800]

You are mistaken. Under communism there is no private ownership. Everything is owned by the state and I don't recall anyone from the Labor party or Government expousing such policy. That system of government might not catch on here. In fact while there are communist parties in most countries there are no communist countries.. All have private ownership of some form.

Donald Trump might talk about the extreme left while referring to the Democrat Party but that is just nonsense. Pretty much tweedle dum and tweedle dee in other words the Republians and the Democrats are much of a muchness

Ok, I said communism, I'll take that point and change that from communism to socialism.

 

[J_D 2.0]

Just because someone knows how to hit in a nail it doesn't mean he or she knows how to run a business. So when they finally learn they will be competing against someone who doesn't. Then there is the matter of getting paid and how little chance you have recovery if you don't. Some succeed but a lot don't in other words it's not all peaches and cream.

I never said it was peaches and cream to start a business but the option is there for tradies a lot more than it is for other employees, which in aggregate gives that sector a lot better bargaining power on wages.