The calculations show, accurately enough, that for every hour a unionized worker puts in, one of the Big Three really does spend about $73 on compensation. So the number isn’t made up. But it is the combination of three very different categories.

The first category is simply cash payments, which is what many people imagine when they hear the word “compensation.” It includes wages, overtime and vacation pay, and comes to about $40 an hour. (The numbers vary a bit by company and year. That’s why $73 is sometimes $70 or $77.)

The second category is fringe benefits, like health insurance and pensions. These benefits have real value, even if they don’t show up on a weekly paycheck. At the Big Three, the benefits amount to $15 an hour or so.

Add the two together, and you get the true hourly compensation of Detroit’s unionized work force: roughly $55 an hour. It’s a little more than twice as much as the typical American worker makes, benefits included. The more relevant comparison, though, is probably to Honda’s or Toyota’s (nonunionized) workers. They make in the neighborhood of $45 an hour, and most of the gap stems from their less generous benefits.

The third category is the cost of benefits for retirees. These are essentially fixed costs that have no relation to how many vehicles the companies make. But they are a real cost, so the companies add them into the mix — dividing those costs by the total hours of the current work force, to get a figure of $15 or so — and end up at roughly $70 an hour.

A little background on those hourly wage figures for UAW members. The article goes on to say that if the bailout paid for $10/hr of these retiree costs, Detroit only saves $800 per car. Not enough to diminish their overriding aversion to quality, innovation, and safety.

-janelane, opposed to rewarding incompetence

Economic Scene - Figure Skews Debate of a Bailout for Detroit - NYTimes.com

CNN, the Cable News Network, announced yesterday that it will cut its entire science, technology, and environment news staff, including Miles O’Brien, its chief technology and environment correspondent, as well as six executive producers. Mediabistro’s TVNewser broke the story.

They should be cutting their entertainment staff. It is infuriating watching CNN Headline News at the airport, and there's a story on Britney-fucking-Spears every 10 minutes. And watching Anderson 360 is like an hour-long personal interest story, not to mention the time he spends talking about pop culture.

This is just another reason not to get my news from CNN. I haven't in a while and instead rely on NYT, the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and science journals almost exclusively.

Maybe they are the new Fox News...turn all the smart people off from watching and you're half-way there.

-janelane

CNN Cuts Entire Science, Tech Team : CJR:

Read this. Start at page 11.

Some excerpts:

NOURIEL ROUBINI: ...essentially, regulators were asleep at the wheel. You know, the ideology in Washington for the last few years has been one of self-regulation of financial market, it means no regulation, of relying on market discipline, but when there is euphoria, mania, and irrational exuberance, there is really no market discipline, overreliance on these internal risk management models, but as the previous CEO of Citigroup, Chuck Prince, said, “When the music is playing you’ve got to dance,” and nobody is listening to the internal risk managers and everybody is taking too much risk and then reliance on rating agencies that had major conflicts of interests because they were being paid by those people they were supposed to be rating.

India, China, Brazil, Russia, emerging markets, not just those, those in Asia, in Latin America, in Africa, in emerging Europe. And the trouble is when there is a severe recession in the United States, it’s painful in U.S., people lose jobs, but you have unemployment benefit, you have a welfare net, but if there is a severe recession in Africa, that’s a difference between being able to live and starve...

JEFFREY SACHS: But we had general view, leave things alone, we don’t have to pay taxes, we don’t have to look after our infrastructure, we don’t have to look after our poor, we don’t have to look after our health system, so it’s not completely a coincidence that we face big problems in so many areas, not only the financial markets.

All of this pessimism is building my optimism, I have to say. I think that two things are important to emphasize. One is we remain, by far, the most productive and flexible and technologically advanced economy in the world. This housing bubble didn’t end that. The mismanagement of this miserable administration didn’t end that. The lack of focus of what we ought to be doing on climate change and all the rest. We invented hybrid technology; Japan capitalized on it. We invented so many of the technologies that will be needed for the future that we’re not deploying right now because we have no strategy.

And I think it’s important for also of us to understand, this city there’s no doubt about it, but in our country there is a lot of mistake—we’ve been told such nonsense for so long in this country about what happens if you charge taxes or if you have public health care or if you do other things…the terrible truth is that, because of this slide, the U.S. now ranks twenty-fifth in the world in life expectancy and infant mortality rates. Can you imagine what we have allowed to happen here, this kind of slide, whereas countries like Sweden or Norway or Denmark…have vibrant market economies, but they take care of their babies so they don’t die. And that’s very straightforward to do, because the technologies are quite wonderful if people are protected and have a way to do that.

I think the issue for the extreme poor is really when we’re going to realize that their fate and our fate are intertwined, not through a financial crisis but through our common security and this is going to require a different vision of how the world fits together that I think can come soon and quickly and is absolutely vital.

It's an exciting and terrifying time to be alive.

-janelane

Can The Economy Be Saved?

SAY NO! to a bailout of the automakers.

Here, here! Online petitions are getting a slow start, so email your reps directly.

Senator Chambliss contact form
Senator Isakson contact form
District 6 Representative Tom Price contact form

Granted, these guys are all Republicans from GA, so accordingly they only sponsor bullshit legislation, but its worth emailing them anyway. My email text is below.

Dear So-and-so,

Please vote against the bailout of the US automakers. They have been operating inefficiently for 30 years and are finally being brought to bear. They need to file for bankruptcy, purge their management pool, eradicate the bloated unions, and streamline their operations, all of which they can do probably quite successfully without my tax money. They need bankruptcy to encourage them to finally innovate and quit lobbying against every major safety and fuel efficiency advance in this country. They’re already making efficient cars, they’re just not selling them here!

This is capitalism, and this is what companies do in this country, they don't fly to DC and beg for alms. It’s a waste of money in an already wasteful government and will only prolong the inevitable since the companies will have absolutely no impetus to avoid future bailouts. Also, I reject the notion that Detroit workers are worth more than other workers at other companies. This will only snowball into a feeding frenzy among failing companies. In this economy, we need to encourage strong, viable companies, not propped up puppet-companies.

Regards, your-name-here.

-janelane

Update: Chambliss speaks!

Dear Mrs. Hoffman :

Thank you for contacting me regarding a financial rescue of the automakers. It is good to hear from you.

The automobile industry has deep seated problems that cannot only be solved by more money. Instead, a restructuring of the industry is needed. I am not in favor of using taxpayer funds to bailout the industry.

Obama asks Bush to provide help for automakers - International Herald Tribune

Click daily to give free food.

-janelane

Click to Give @ The Hunger Site

Too bad they're $160 each. The search for a cheap knockoff starts now.

-janelane, energy conservation guru

I want these all over my house

Michael Crichton, whose technological thrillers like “The Andromeda Strain” and “Jurassic Park” dominated best-seller lists for decades and were translated into Hollywood megahits, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 66 and lived in Santa Monica, Calif.

R.I.P.

-janelane

Michael Crichton Dies at 66

Take a sip of your red drink if:

- Someone refers to Barack Obama as a socialist.

- Anyone says anything nice about George Bush.

Take a sip of your blue drink if:

- Obama wins a state. - Anyone utters the word "historic" in reference to Obama's campaign.

- Hillary Clinton makes an appearance. (double points if Bill shows up too)

Election night drinking game going down in Roswell. I also like this simple one:

1. Make two batches of jello shots: red and blue.

2. Watch the live election coverage and take a red jello shot for each state that is called for John McCain and Sarah Palin and a blue jello shot for each state that is called for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

With any luck, all the blue shots will be gone before you pass out or go to bed.

Variation: Multiply step two by the number of Joes attending your Election Night Party.

-janelane

Election Night Drinking Game

Grammar Quiz #7: Judge Kearse, in the decision, cited the payments to the detectives as one factor that supported the prosecution’s view that the conspiracy spanned the entire period of the indictment, from 1979 to 2005.

She said that the jury had been told the principle purpose of the enterprise, as the indictment charged, was to generate money for the detectives, through legal and illegal activities.

Answer: Aaarrgh. Make it “principal,” not “principle.” (It would also be smoother to move the “that” in this sentence, so it reads, “She said the jury had been told that the principal purpose …”)

I love spotting grammatical and spelling errors in published documents. The NYT has added a third category..."style" errors. I'm on the look out!

-janelane, "also, change 'had been told' to 'was told'"

Quiz Answers - Times Topics Blog - NYTimes.com

i love this photo

I want this picture to be on the front page of memestreams always. It's so nice to scroll past bad news and see that little guy at the end.

-janelane

In pictures: Wildlife photographer of the year | Environment | guardian.co.uk