[TheForge] OT: several questions and thoughts

[Demon Buddha]

Marc Godbout wrote:

>>A person who can barely read is 
>>not worth $60 per hour in toto to put square pegs into rounds holes all 
>>day.  They are worth minimum wage, if that.  
>>
> I'm guessing that the $60/hr is a "loaded" rate.

As labor goes, you have direct- and indirect labor.  Direct labor is 
anything that can be directly traced to the manufacture of a given unit 
or batch.  Indirect labor would be things such as janitorial wages. 
This is part of "manufacturing overhead" and is applied to the cost of 
manufacture.

A $27/hr wage isn't going to have an actual cost of $60/hr.  I was just 
tossing numbers out.  It will be closer to $45, which is still 
idiotically high for someone who drives screws all day long.

 >
  Manufacturing
> operations, and actually anyone who has employees, use a loaded salary
> to figure their costs. This includes actual pay to the employee,
> benefits, heat, lights, furniture, ...  All the stuff you need to pay
> that supports the worker. Even the burger-assembler costs Micky D's
> probably $30 - $40 / hour, when you look at their balance sheets.

	That sounds a mite high for a worker making $7.25/hour, but it may be 
right.  Even so, the company is making a lot more than that.
> 
> But is that $27/hr base pay really earned, just because it's something
> you or I wouldn't want to do, as was mentioned in a different post?

	Nobody will readily convince me that someone turning screws all day in 
an unskilled position is worth that much money.  if the position 
involves serious craft, then I may feel very differently about it. 
Regardless, anyone trying to twist my arm to force more money out of me 
(such as a union) is going to be eating a brick for lunch.  Stunts like 
that really piss me off, especially when the numbers demanded are pulled 
out of the asshole of some schmuck who wouldn't know cost analysis if it 
bit him in the nuts.

> There are lots of job that fit that description and they make minimum
> wage. Anybody here care to clean sewage plants? For any $$? 

	Ah, but here you raise a different point.  One pays what the market 
will bear.  If nobody will clean sewage for $5/hr, you will have to 
offer more.  That's the FREE in freemarket.  But if there is a union 
that prevents people on the street who are willing to do that work for 
that money from taking the position, that is obstruction of free trade 
and anyone engaging in it should get his ass beat real fine.  I will bow 
to the will of the market in such cases, but I'll do anything to defeat 
a scumbag union from messing with my business.  Nobody has a right to 
work at a given company, and nobody has a right to extort wages.  In any 
other circumstance, people would be going to prison for doing the same.
> 
> If the auto manufacturers were allowed to pay $10/hr, I'd bet we'd still
> find people to put our precious cars together just as well.

	Precisely so!  But looking at it from the line worker's point of view, 
why would he do that if he can join a mob and force the company to pay 
more?  I'd kick the lot of them out, move to Mexico, and tell them to 
pound salt.  OK... now I need a beer, dammit.
>