Re: Drill Now for oil

On Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:50:09 -0400, Spehro Pefhany
<speffSNIP@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:48:06 -0700 (PDT), James Arthur
<dagmargoodboat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jun 25, 8:06 am, Spehro Pefhany wrote:
On Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:54:22 GMT, James Arthur wrote:
MooseFET wrote:
On Jun 24, 5:24 pm, James Arthur wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
Manufacturing has been steadily leaving the USA for decades now.
That's why we have a rust belt.

Actually, AIUI we produce more manufactured goods than ever.
It's the jobs we've been paring.

Small wonder, really: burden employers and they cut
employees. Build robots. Or leave.

Labor is cheaper in China. They will send the jobs to the most cost
effective market. We need to also drop the floor out from under the
US's standard of living if we want to keep the jobs here by cutting
the costs to the manufactures.

We can't win on labor. But making it harder and more
expensive to employ people still doesn't help us.

There are lots of people who'd prefer to make stuff here,
at home. Like me.

Ever looked at the paperwork, mechanisms, and reporting
needed to employ someone?

It's horrendous.


If you 'hire' someone through an agency, they'll take care of all that
for you, and you just pay one B2B bill.

That's a useful idea for that aspect of the thing: payroll, worker's
comp, state and federal withholding, unemployment. A service would
cut down on my time and expertise needed to handle those, though the
service would still need time card data once a week, etc.

It doesn't avoid the expense, since then the service too needs to be
paid, so I'd have to float that.

Sure, but at least you can concentrate on what you do best.

It's too bad the regulations are so complex that ordinary guys can't
comply--you have to hire an army (or mercenaries).

It's also just a fraction the the total overhead imposed: there are
city inspectors from at least two agencies, OSHA, the AQMD (air-
pollution people), state requirements, ... just to get started.

Although unless you're doing something high risk to the public (eg.
food preparation) or employees (eg. construction) IME those guys are
busy enough they mostly just leave you alone if things are reasonable
(no obvious hazards). Electronics and light assembly, and mechanical
assembly are pretty 'clean' and safe processes compared to many out
there. Most places have their inspectors spread pretty thin.

Oh, and there's a minimum corporate tax, payable 2 years in advance--
if you die, they want to make sure they have their money. More if you
make a profit, of course.

The two sure things in life..

The challenge is coming up
with high-value work for people to do (and make a profit on).

Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

The work is no problem. Over the past several years I've developed a
number of products, all oriented toward keeping the planet nicer by
saving energy and resources.

"High-value," though, is a relative proposition. To me, these things
are of high value, but only if they're accessible to many people. I
want to make things that are good, and sell them for less. For as
little as possible, actually. $3-to-$10, for some items.

The cost of the product isn't the critical point- you need to allow
$30-$150 per hour overheaded cost for labor. If you can hire a
relatively unskilled and uneducated employee and they can make 100 of
your product an hour, it could sell for a fairly low price. There are
still companies in the US (and other countries with similar costs)
making things like industrial brushes that sell for a buck or
whatever. A combination of automation, low pay for the grunts, and of
course they don't generally have a lot of money left over at the end
of the day to improve facilities and do R&D (but what R&D do you need
to do on a wood-handled brush?).

The barriers to entry are substantial. Mine is the ideal situation
for getting things made in China--just send the design files via e-
mail, get product in the mail. But I don't want to do that.

Percent costs over raw labor are probably as high or higher in China
(hey, at least we don't have to provide housing or food for assembly
line workers) , but the base is so much lower that you won't be able
to compete if your competitors can do that. Maybe in 50 years things
will be different.

I could hand some of them off to established companies, who in turn
will likely just do the China thing. Or move someplace with less
overhead and try myself. Or just smile, shelve them, and have more
fun inventing new ones.

Given your constraints (local manufacturing) you might be better to
concentrate on niche products with inherently small markets and
relatively large markups over materials cost. Markets with a lot of
regulation (military, nuclear, aerospace) are also good for keeping
markups high and shutting out low-cost producers. Or maybe stuff
that's too big and cheap to be shipped economically.

We'll see.

Cheers,
James Arthur

If you do market-gap analysis and apply your constraints (even severe
ones) to the results, you can still probably come up with more ideas
than can be developed in a lifetime.
Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

The aftermath of the 2008 Olympics, coming in August, will be the
beginning of China getting a clock cleaning about internal pollution.

.

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