One anecdote
to post relevant to this thread. My son is an architect for an Atlanta firm that was, prior to Oct. 08, a group of 98 people, some designers, some architects, some administrator types, etc. After the stock market crash in Nov., and with no new jobs on the horizon, the firm cut down to approx. 75 people. The week before Christmas they cut again down to only 42 people. The only reason my son has survived is because he is the "go-to IT guy", i.e. the only one who understands and can fix the computer system that the firm uses. (He's only 26 years old). The remaining 42 people at the firm all agreed to take a 20% pay cut across the board, including the principals.
However, they are beginning to see signs of life in the pre-construction industry and think they are going to survive. My son says that architects are the first ones to see a dive-bomb in growth arenas but also the first to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Just one anecdotal observation . . . .
Either way...
$800 billion which translates to over $3.25 trillion over time which will save the average middle class family a whopping $13 a week in taxes. I'm excited about bankrolling my children's future for a couple of happy meals a week. Just to give some perspective to the numbers... Three trillion seconds translates to nearly one hundred thousand years. I'ma enjoy the trips to McDonald's.
I am looking for a way to...
I am looking for a way to tie all of this to design. If design is just one of the many ways to improve people?s lives I guess we can discuss this on a design forum.
Having lived through the abolishing of the six days work week, I was expecting that a president that ran a campaign on "change" would take this overproduction problem...because that?s what it really is...and turn it into a win/win situation where we would all go to a four days work week, enjoy three days of rest, family life, or whatever our heart desires, combine it with a well deserved softening of the environmental footprint we so heavily put down on our planet, and share. Share the reduction of work, share the increase of free time, share the amount of time we can spend with family and friends...you name it...and not this lottery of who is affected who is not.
I do not think that improving on infrastructure is a bad thing, especially not if it is not done in a hurry, but it will not put to work the architects that Riki?s son used to work for and with. To build roads and sewers is not part of the high qualified jobs that requires the education that Obama wants to encourage.
We are looking for a reduction of roughly 20% of our production and consumption and polution. That?s about what a 4 day work week instead of five represents. 60 or so years ago we loved the idea that we did not have to go to school on a Saturday and if I remember well nobody complained very loudly. It is strange that what dear prof. Huizinga predicted in 1938 in his book ?Homo Ludens? ?the playing human?is still a concept that is so difficult to grasp, simply because we a stuck in this biblical concept that you can only survive by working and sweat. How long can we robotize and apply other technical improvements that increase production dramatically before we realize that the mixing bowl that used to require two hours of work by a skilled potter, now rolls out of an injection moulding machine at 140 bowls an hour. (I take a simple example just to keep it clear in my own mind) and that at some point we have to settle for just enjoying the 279 hours that were saved. Yes we can use them to produce other things, we can also use them to produce very costly weaponry that will either be destroyed or destroy itself like a bomb, but at one point we exceed what can be sensibly consumed. We have reached that point long since, and those who have pushed consumers that far should not be bailed out, regardless if they were the president of a bank or small investors like myself looking for a place to put aside an income for retirement. We have been warned 70 years ago!
...and yes
in things that are dear to our hearts, we could actually make a step back and choose to buy a piece of furniture or other that is still made slowly, with care and craftmanship. It will indeed cost you an arm and a leg, but who cares...few people are realy bading is sweat when they are working. Most of us pay to get a good work-out!
LRF, I don't think anyone...
LRF, I don't think anyone is really blaming Oil for all our problems. However, Oil does have a massive PR problem. People want low cost, environmentally responsible/safe even healthy energy. Ask anyone on the street, they'll say "no more oil". The technology is there whether Hybrid, Hydrogen or even compressed air (google it). The demand for this is beyond anything I can remember...and we want it NOW. So much so, my enthusiasm and optimism for the future is bolder than ever. Phasing out Oil is the best thing for everyone...yes, even for Oil businessman if they allow themselves to transition into a new era. We all appreciate you LRF!
The design market is beyond...
The design market is beyond bizzarre for me. I don't understand how price increase for new or vintage pieces when more and more can't afford them or withholding from buying.
Price increases seem counterintuitive to say the least. I see price increases all over....even thrift stores in my area have doubled their prices...DOUBLED! How can this work? Hedging against lost? Inflation in times of depression is very confusing and not reassuring.
WoofWoof,
It's simple business, and you said it yourself, it's not just design. The thrifts are raising prices, everyone has to raise prices. If sales are down and you are not doing the same volume, you have to increase the margin. Despite the misconceptions around here sometimes, you'd be surprised at the thin profit margins people are operating at. It makes me a bit nuts every time folks act as if the Knolls, Herman Millers, Fritz Hansens (and even vintage dealers on 1st Dibs) are all robber barons gouging people and raking in huge profits.
Try it sometime. Create a unique product, pay for its creation (and all the associated costs) and the marketing of that product, build a retail network and then try to sell it wholesale at a price that gives the retailer room to offer a discount and still make something on it for their work.
I have. We self published a book, paid all the up-front production costs including design, photography, printing, shipping and storage. Then all the advertising and marketing finding retailers and creating our own wholesale accounts before thankfully being picked up by a distributor and getting the thing on Amazon.com. Even then the profit per unit made the entire project a labor of love. If we'd been depending on it for a livelihood, we'd have been eating a lot of ramen noodles. Or more realistically, not eating.
As others have pointed out many times before, the current cost of the things everyone here loves is not really any greater than they were originally in the 1950s and 60s after you adjust for inflation.
my family has been in...
my family has been in the oil and gas business since 1945. we have seen the good times and bad times , My brother and i took the family oil business over in 1975 and saw a change in the price of oil every 5 years up for 2 years down for 3 to 5 hell of way to run your forecast budget.
when the price is cheap , we get that great big SUV s and fill er up. when the price gets to high we say Hybrid the car of the future,
Chrysler developed the hybrid technology in 1973 the company felt it was not in there best interest and they sold that technology to a small Japanese company called Toyota, and the rest is history,
We the people dictate what we want, we tell them what we want, we tell congress what we want, we tell everyone in the world what we want we are Americans!!!,
True we are called the home of the brave and land of the free, but we are the biggest cry babies when we can not get our own way,
The will of the people has been denied a long time for us. Our country for the last 40 years should have developed clean energy to run our cars, and keep our environment clean, but NO!!! price cheap, not broke do not fix!!
one thing i know is Oil will always be around, so i will not be on the bread line ,
we also produce natural gas, a clean energy but this country has a surplus and the US could care less about running our cars on this clean burning fuel,.
We are as big here in America with Natural Gas, as Saudi Arabia is with oil and it is $4.56 a mcf dirt cheap~
These problems contributed to the downfall a little bit this go around, not much thank goodness and yes we do need some good public relations people running our industry,
When I was invited to lunch in the 90s at the Clinton white House. I had lunch with Bill and Hillary and Al Gore, Al sat at my table we talked back then how are industry was hurting cause of cheap forign oil and how it was flooding the market, and we should develop a oil and gas policy , i will never forget Al Gore looking me in the eye over a bread roll, in 1993 saying you have no friends up here in the oil and gas business,
cause all of the east runs on fuel oil, and we want it cheap.
What this has to do with design is everything, what it has to do with the way we live everything, we want to be green, we want a nice environment, these are cool words for people to say and cool things for movie stars to get on the band wagon as a cause celebrity, but it cost money, and we are starting 30 years to late. and it is our fault.
Lunchbox,
The big government = bad government notion does not fly with me. I'm one of those people who thinks the government is US, it's our people running our country and looking out for our interests and for one another. Just consider the poisoned peanuts we are dealing with and think, if that is what a large company will do WITH regulation, what would they do without any? Folks need to worry less about profit taking in the sofa business, and look at the companies that are exploiting their workers, the environment, and the public to rake in more profits.
You will likely not meet a greater deficit hawk than me, but to criticize the stimulus package as a "spending bill" misses the point entirely. That's the idea. To inject a bunch of money into the economy and jump start spending since nobody else is spending money and can't get the credit to spend money they don't have. Economists of every political stripe have all said we can't worry about the deficit right now, we need a stimulus package. Right now. And a BIG one! I only hope the bill that passes is big enough and has the intended effect. Do I like adding billions of dollars to the national debt? Hell no. I didn't like Bush pissing away the "surplus" either. He came into office with a projected surplus, waged a multi-billion dollar war (3 trillion is the projected total once it's all said and done) while cutting taxes for the wealthy and left a huge deficit in his wake. Now republicans want to bash democrats for spending money we don't have to fix the economy which is totally FUBAR thanks to the great de-regulators? That my friend seems like hypocrisy of the highest order. But what do I know?
LRF,
get what you are saying, and in some respects you are right. People are lemmings and they can be selfish and shortsighted. However, the consuming public is not entirely to blame.
GM built and began to market an electric car in the 1990s. The EV1. They brought it to market in California, and just as it was about to really take off, they scrapped the entire project. Literally. They would not even let the folks who had leased the cars buy them. And they wanted to! They took them back and CRUSHED them all. Seems there was more money to be made in big, gas guzzling SUVs. I wonder if they would be in dire straights right now and asking for government bailouts if they had been the first ones on the block with electric cars for sale when gas was over $4 a gallon?
Shockingly, a lot of the country did not even know about the EV1. I certainly did not at the time. There is a good documentary on the entire affair called "Who Killed the Electric Car".
these are classic ...
these are classic examples
who are these people who killed these projects?
if they could not see the future they were stupid we had our first oil shock in 73 and the hand writing was on the wall from that year forward. once again the US was used and behind the 8 ball.
Pegboard...
Hypocrisy and politicians are synonymous. However, I vote and support my Republican representatives to oppose pork bills like this. The fact that they've come around in opposition now is better late than never. This 'stimulus' bill would be just that if we were actually investing in infrastructure instead of earmark nonsense such as ACORN and Census hijackery and general government expansion. The CEO of Caterpillar stated that this bill will do next to nothing for infrastructure and will lend little to no aid in their recalling jobs minutes after Obama proudly stated they'd be all but recalling all their laid off employees due to his bill and his bill alone. But the greatest tipoff to this socialist bill sold to the American people out of hysteria as stimulus is the fact that next to none of this money will even be allocated until 2012. An abomination. Nothing short. Why else would the Dems have been in such a hurry to vote on it today after releasing it at midnight after promising 48 hours for the American people to see what is being proposed in the name of Obama's supposed transparency? As the old saying goes... Republicans try to reveal their policies for the public to understand. Democrats try to conceal their policy because they don't want the public to understand.
Your joking, right?
"Republicans try to reveal their policies for the public to understand. Democrats try to conceal their policy because they don't want the public to understand."
C'mon! Quit being funny. You are cracking me up! I seem to recall as Bush and Cheny were entering office they held an energy "summit" (and this speaks to what LRF has been talking about). They refused not only to reveal what they discussed during these closed door meetings, but even who attended. Even when people filed under the freedom of information act, even when they were sued they refused to give any information. Don't you think that the citizens are entitled to know who is making policy for our country and what that policy would be?
The Obama administration is not transparent enough for you? After less than a month in office? Gee, I thought they had been posing this bill on line.
Obama was repeating what Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens had previously said. The CEO then amended that after Obama spoke, PARTLY contradicting him.
"In a statement Friday, Owens said he and the president "fundamentally agree" that the U.S. stimulus package will benefit the U.S. economy and should spur demand for the types of products made by Caterpillar."
Please don't hear only what you want.
Here is the full story:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D96ATHTG0.htm
Before I head off to...
Before I head off to bed...here's a interesting read (link) on the EV1.
http://blogs.motortrend.com/6247007/editorial/no-one-killed-the-electric...
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