Great Recession of 2020

[Lexicus]

It's funny that the US was a victim of greed (not stopping to plan and change workplaces, and start doing things with proper protection), but also of its own propaganda! "Failed" states, states victim of economic embargoes imposed by the US, were "out of toilet paper", that was the propaganda. So conditioned were americans by this that they ran into their supermakers to stock up on all the toilet paper they could... while not bothering to stock up on more important necessities!

Another propaganda point was that "failed countries" had empty shelves at supermarkers, so there was huge pressure to not stop the supply just-in-time chain to avoid, as far as possible, such sights in the US. Therefore these companies like the meatpackers got way with pressuring their employees to continue to work in unsafe conditions, thereby setting the stage for the inevitable epidemics in the plants...

Talk about blowback!

I saw a post on Facebook in a post-Keynesian group earlier today that basically said: you cannot finance your way out of a real crisis. The only way for society to weather a crisis like this is to produce a buffer stock of real resources...but of course that will never be done under business-as-usual capitalism because no one can make a profit from it.

This is shown quite clearly in the case of ventilators:

With only a couple of bids, BARDA settled on a small, privately held ventilator company in Costa Mesa, California, Newport Medical Instruments Inc. BARDA and Newport signed a $6.4 million contract in September 2010, specifying that the money would be doled out incrementally as the company met various milestones.

But in May 2012, Newport was purchased by a larger Irish medical device company, Covidien, for $108 million. Covidien quickly downsized and asked Rick Crawford, Newport’s former head of research and development and the lead designer of the BARDA ventilator, to finish up the project without any staff assigned to him. Crawford said he took a job with another company.

“I don’t know how you finish a project when nobody reports to you,” he recalled thinking.

A former BARDA official who worked on the project said that Covidien began raising issue after issue and demanded more money. BARDA agreed, eventually tacking on almost $2 million more to the price tag, records show. Even so, Covidien abandoned the project.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Part of the problem with the outbreaks in American meat packing plants is that they refused to slow production. Workers worked in close proximity and spread the virus. Zard mentioned how NZ slowed production 50% to avoid spread. Essentially remove every other worker on the line and slow the machinery 50%. If Trump were a semi responsible leader his order would have included social distancing guidelines in processing plants to avoid shutdowns. Instead it's more of a "poor meat packers must make sacrifices for American steaks, burgers and hot dogs" type order.

If there is a factory or a plant that works daytime Monday to Friday, it can treble its production,
or mantain existing production, with one third worker density merely by moving to 24/7 working.

However usually the accountants are obsessed with boosting throughput and minimising
the number of sites to maximise return on capital to benefit their directors and share holders.

Such optimisations to improve efficiency in normal times remove contingency capacity.

Government is often little bettter. In the UK we saw the PFI a big new hospital and close down
several little hospitals because bigger is better. The politicians saw the civil service as an
overhead and providing them with offices as an indulgence. So relocate them to someone
cheap, then downsize the workforce, then downsize the accommodation to increase density
by packing as many people as possible in an open plan office with only one entrance (for security).

 

[Socrates99]

I saw a post on Facebook in a post-Keynesian group earlier today that basically said: you cannot finance your way out of a real crisis. The only way for society to weather a crisis like this is to produce a buffer stock of real resources...but of course that will never be done under business-as-usual capitalism because no one can make a profit from it.

This is shown quite clearly in the case of ventilators:

I remember seeing a bit on the ventilator thing. It's one of those places where Trump could legitimately blame Obama for being halfassed on something. Of course while Obama was halfassed Trump was just negligent.

If there is a factory or a plant that works daytime Monday to Friday, it can treble its production,
or mantain existing production, with one third worker density merely by moving to 24/7 working.

However usually the accountants are obsessed with boosting throughput and minimising
the number of sites to maximise return on capital to benefit their directors and share holders.

Such optimisations to improve efficiency in normal times remove contingency capacity.

Government is often little bettter. In the UK we saw the PFI a big new hospital and close down
several little hospitals because bigger is better. The politicians saw the civil service as an
overhead and providing them with offices as an indulgence. So relocate them to someone
cheap, then downsize the workforce, then downsize the accommodation to increase density
by packing as many people as possible in an open plan office with only one entrance (for security).

I'd be surprised if these plants weren't 24hr in some capacity. Although I'd assume they'd need to shut down regularly to sanitize equipment.

 

[Zardnaar]

Unless things are drastically different in the USA there's often two shifts.

You can't really crank up production except by working over time.

You can turn the speed of the belts up in shirt bursts but the knife hands will struggle to keep up and/or injure themselves.

If they have a spare line I suppose they can throw more bodies at it. That just means the plant isn't running at full capacity to begin with though.

That's going to depend on the location.

I'm guessing working conditions are worse than NZ plants from the sounds of it. US plants might more efficient due to that.

Chokepoint is the knife hands and how fast you can train them and if the plants have spare capacity to man more lines. IDK how it works in the states but overtime rates used to be time and a half, double time for Saturday and triple time for Sunday's (circa 2000).

With perks you could break $75 an hour, I hit $67. Varies by role, length of service etc.

In the 80s you could do a year or two and buy a house freehold.

 

[Cutlass]

Unless things are drastically different in the USA there's often two shifts.

You can't really crank up production except by working over time.

You can turn the speed of the belts up in shirt bursts but the knife hands will struggle to keep up and/or injure themselves.

If they have a spare line I suppose they can throw more bodies at it. That just means the plant isn't running at full capacity to begin with though.

That's going to depend on the location.

I'm guessing working conditions are worse than NZ plants from the sounds of it. US plants might more efficient due to that.

Chokepoint is the knife hands and how fast you can train them and if the plants have spare capacity to man more lines. IDK how it works in the states but overtime rates used to be time and a half, double time for Saturday and triple time for Sunday's (circa 2000).

In the 80s you could do a year or two and buy a house freehold.

And, in the US, meat packing plants often employ immigrants. Particularly illegal ones. By cutting off immigration, Trump cut off the workforce he now needs.

 

[Zardnaar]

And, in the US, meat packing plants often employ immigrants. Particularly illegal ones. By cutting off immigration, Trump cut off the workforce he now needs.

They use cheap legal ones here. A lot more Polynesians in my hometown now. Wages are still good afaik. They pay you a years wage in 6-8 months.

 

[Farm Boy]

Last I checked it was somewhere around 25 grand a year to kill pigs all day. Wasn't tempting enough to move for. Could probably seasonally kill turkies for that. Bleh. Don't want to compete with the high schoolers. Let's hope that stays speculative. Maybe they pay more now. That'd probably be alright.

 

[cardgame]

There was a poultry processing plant, IIRC, near me a few years ago. They finally shut down permanently in 2017 after many years of illegal bullswitch involving passing along the title/ownership between several different family members and renaming the company to try and escape debts and/or lawsuits. They paid around minimum wage, certainly less than $10/hr, for horrible working conditions (see above disregard for the law) and 12-16 hour shifts. Around 100-130 employees. People be desperate.

 

[Zardnaar]

Last I checked it was somewhere around 25 grand a year to kill pigs all day. Wasn't tempting enough to move for. Could probably seasonally kill turkies for that. Bleh. Don't want to compete with the high schoolers. Let's hope that stays speculative. Maybe they pay more now. That'd probably be alright.

We got around double that 20 years ago and you only work 6-8 months of the year as it's seasonal. 800-1200 USD a week based on amount of hours worked.

Hard work though in the boning room. He did two seasons and had to leave.

 

[Farm Boy]

Yeah, I mean, you do it because it's better than being out of work, but that's a nasty step in the process to get plunked in assembly line culture. It's more acceptable mentally and physically if slaughter is a yearly, or sometimes event. All slaughter, all day, further narrowed by task is a hell created by industrialized society everyone would kind of like to pretend is ok, but probably isn't(it's not all so graphic as killing, but those situations are everywhere).

Butchers perform a greater variety of skilled and interpersonal tasks, so I don't think they're to be conflated too much. Thoughts? I haven't worked on of those personally.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah, I mean, you do it because it's better than being out of work, but that's a nasty step in the process to get plunked in assembly line culture. It's more acceptable mentally and physically if slaughter is a yearly, or sometimes event. All slaughter, all day, further narrowed by task is a hell created by industrialized society everyone would kind of like to pretend is ok, but probably isn't(it's not all so graphic as killing, but those situations are everywhere).

Butchers perform a greater variety of skilled and interpersonal tasks, so I don't think they're to be conflated too much. Thoughts? I haven't worked on of those personally.

Depends on where you work.

Working in the line is fine depending on how squeamish you are.

Most don't work on the killing part though.

Butchers here source their supplies from freezing works. They deliver a side of beef or whatever.

Each plant is usually a species or they have different sections. Beef plant, lamb plant etc.

Personally I would work on the line or somewhere else, I wouldn't work in the kill room.

My home town had a freezing works. Both neighbours worked there, mum's best friends family over the road, two families over the road.

12000 people town, 800-1000 were at the plant.

 

[Hygro]

Traitorfish is correct. A US equivalent would be telling the people of some old rustbelt city like Gary to move to a boom city like Austin (I think).
Only problem is for the last 40 years 1 region has been booming.

As far as I can tell the only reason the UK has a capitalism-measured standard of living in 2020 higher than Spain is
Collecting rents on currency exchange (London)
Laundering cocaine money (London)
Pop music (London)
Academia (London and some of Scotland)

Then a generous public commitment to spreading decent media and voices via the BBC to prevent too violent a backward slide.

Someone please correct me. Please.

 

[AmazonQueen]

As far as I can tell the only reason the UK has a capitalism-measured standard of living in 2020 higher than Spain is
Collecting rents on currency exchange (London)
Laundering cocaine money (London)
Pop music (London)
Academia (London and some of Scotland)

Then a generous public commitment to spreading decent media and voices via the BBC to prevent too violent a backward slide.

Someone please correct me. Please.

Academia is more widespread than London (Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and Durham are all highly rated for research) and I think the City has its fingers in a few other pies but we ain't the workshop of the world anymore. Nor is the US for that matter.

 

[Hygro]

I thought Oxford and Cambridge were in London. Carry on.

 

[Ajidica]

I thought Oxford and Cambridge were in London. Carry on.

I've heard of thinking all of the UK is England, but thinking Poxbridge was in London is a new one for me!

 

[Hygro]

I've heard of thinking all of the UK is England, but thinking Poxbridge was in London is a new one for me!

It's like 1000 cities rolled into one. Never had I reason to suspect, wonder, nor seek clarifying knowledge.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I've heard of thinking all of the UK is England, but thinking Poxbridge was in London is a new one for me!

England is just small. In the US the whole country would be considered as the "London metro area." I definitely know that my city is independently incorporated but is just a part of Los Angeles, and it is substantially further from downtown LA than Oxford is from London.

 

[Farm Boy]

I keep saying we should offer them 4 states if they ever want senators(it's a joke, but really). It would be amusing to watch England take the big chair away from CA. Given the differences in gdp per capita, the poor bootstrappers on the left coast would have more people to carry.

 

[AmazonQueen]

It's like 1000 cities rolled into one. Never had I reason to suspect, wonder, nor seek clarifying knowledge.

We don't have the big empty spaces like you do. Not that I know of any useful purpose served by Montana for example.

 

[Farm Boy]

Define useful.