Disqus - Latest Comments for UOJim

Re: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/10/14/3821/

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

Was in reply to Eric H. ;)

Re: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/10/14/3821/

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

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

Re: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/10/14/3821/

UOJim — 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: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/10/14/3821/

UOJim — 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

UOJim — 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

UOJim — 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

UOJim — 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Withdrawn!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

UOJim — 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

UOJim — 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

UOJim — 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)

UOJim — 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)

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

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

Re: Kerry Has a Blog

UOJim — 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.