Disqus - Latest Comments for UOJim

Re: Week 59 - Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) by The... | Ruth and Martin's Album Club

Jim Henley — Sun, 06 Mar 2016 21:32:28 -0000

Another bright spot for 1993: Aimee Mann's Whatever came out that year.

Re: Week 22 - Selling England by the Pound by Genesis | Ruth and Martin's Album Club

Jim Henley — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 22:23:41 -0000

My epiphany from the video: live versions may be the saving grace of early Genesis songs because there's a limit to how much Tony Banks can take over the mix on stage.

Re: Libertarianism and the Politics of Everything

Jim Henley — Sat, 16 May 2015 10:54:02 -0000

Will, I think all the questions in your last paragraph cash out as, "Do you think the Koch brothers and Grover Norquist are libertarians, as they claim? If the answer is yes, you have a very clear picture of what libertarians who take politics seriously look like. If you say no, you have to explain why they aren't true Scotsmen.

Re: The Big Flash Twist and an Extended Look at the Rest of the Season Have Us Running Wild

Jim Henley — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 19:38:12 -0000

You guise! No one's talking about the Best Thing Of All:

Detective West-Captain Lance Team-Up!

I am so there for that.

Re: ‘Ambiguity proposes, preference disposes’: We have to choose

Jim Henley — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 00:05:16 -0000

Or say...

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Re: POLL: Tea Party Members Really, Really Don't Trust Scientists

Jim Henley — Mon, 26 May 2014 16:25:05 -0000

What is your field? Are your degrees in science, or engineering? Where do you teach and/or research? Have you published papers in the field of climate science?

Re: Lane Kenworthy on Consumption Inequality

Jim Henley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:51 -0000

Was in reply to Eric H. ;)

Re: Lane Kenworthy on Consumption Inequality

Jim Henley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:00:25 -0000

B - b - but sir. This is the internet!

Re: Lane Kenworthy on Consumption Inequality

Jim Henley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:39:16 -0000

Forgive me, but I'm genuinely amazed that you seem to have this so exactly backwards. If you believe, as is reasonable, that "all income is used for consumption," then your beef is with Will, not Kenworthy. Kenworthy is not using Austrian vocabulary, but he's the one saying that the income not going toward *measured* consumption is nevertheless "buying" some array of goods, goods that the present reckonings of "consumption" don't capture.

Re: Lane Kenworthy on Consumption Inequality

Jim Henley — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:49:39 -0000

I think you're restating Kenworthy's point, but in even stronger form.

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 10:46:11 -0000

All that said, there should be NO legacy costs in a per-hour comp metric. They should be loaded into per-unit or percent-of-revenue metrics. If you load legacy costs into per-hour comp, then your unit metric and your totals move in opposite directions when you do things like expand or contract your workforce.

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:38:03 -0000

Emma, if I were to guess, the retiree health costs are probably what GM didn't fund in advance more than the pensions, though of course I could be wrong about that. Your point stands: bad accruals!

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:34:21 -0000

Withdrawn! Despite Glen's bad method (you need to add $9 to Toyota's estimated $53), he arrived at a roughly correct answer. So I'll not quibble.

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 08:24:35 -0000

Glen, you misread. $9/hour comes AFTER an earlier subtraction of part of retiree costs. I recommend you read the article itself.

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:04:04 -0000

Will, as I mentioned back "home," the 45-page document whose intro Perry excerpts makes clear that it includes cost for retirees in a number of areas. (See particularly from page 41 down.) That document is very selective in what expenses it does and doesn't detail: it tells you a fair amount about life and unemployment insurance but essentially nothing about health care costs and pension/retirement income. That in itself seems . . . funny.

What I can say is:

1) the doc Perry quotes conflates costs for retired and active-hourly workers in a number of areas.
2) other docs on that website do the same. See the health care chapter of the same presentation. There are pension outlays in the pensions/401K doc, though nowhere does GM explain how they integrate into the figures in the "Other Benefits" pdf that Perry considers so authoritative. Even though it's an HR document with unaudited numbers. Whatever.
3) Megan, who is a real reporter, seems to allow that the $70/hour figure includes costs per retirees. Felix Salmon makes the same assertion.

Your own suggestion that "pensions" might mean "for current workers" struck me as an important possibility to check out - were that the case, GM's number would be more defensible. With a little poking around, the balance of evidence seems to cut against this explanation.

Re: Yup: Over Seventy Buck per Hour

Jim Henley — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:09:36 -0000

Will, it's asinine to do what GM does here and put pension and retiree benefits in a numerator where the denominator is labor hours. It's a metric that has no business meaning. If you put them over number of cars produced or dollars of revenue earned, you'd have a meaningful benchmark. But it is stupid or worse than stupid to divide those dollars by current labor hours because the two numbers have no meaningful relation.

I have no business objection to including any actual current-workforce-related comp in a per-hour metric: insurance premiums for current workers? Payroll tax? Vision care? Hey, go for it. But it's just bullshit to include fixed costs for retirees in a current-labor-hour-cost figure. It's hard to find a good-faith explanation for why GM would put such a meaningless number out there.

Re: Clark on Polanyi (the Bad One)

Jim Henley — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:31:47 -0000

I think of it as adorable pedantry. Hm. Must rethink.

Re: Clark on Polanyi (the Bad One)

Jim Henley — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:29:55 -0000

My big concern is the redundancy of "from whence."

Re: Kerry Has a Blog

Jim Henley — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 12:03:29 -0000

I discovered this new "internet" "blog" of hers the other day. But I figured I'd wait for at least a third friggin' entry before talking it up.