Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote:
In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

(Bill Sohl wrote):

But in today's world, even telecom has cut back on training
expenses.

That is because they intend to get rid of every possible employee
whenever possible. Why would you train people that aren't going to be
working for you in a few years?


The military does it all the time!

Ad they aren't so worried about bottom line profit.

Or the stock price, or bond ratings...

Side note: These good folk could probably save money if they were to
get a bill passed requiring all Americans to learn Indian language in
school. That way they wouldn't have to train their new help to speak
English.

Which language of India?

English is probably the most-spoken language there.

Companies can not afford to support products for long terms
and they MUST keep coming out with the latest products
because if they don't, the consumer will pass them by.
The irony of non-support for older products is that in
some cases, cottage or niche companies are created
to fill the void if there is sufficient consumer interest.

This isn;t a new game. Back in the late 1950s, US automakers "redesigned"
their cars every year. Most of the "redesign" was cosmetic, not functional.
Their goal wasn't to make cars that would last - they wanted those who

were the

new-car buyers to come back into the dealerships every year. They almost
succeeded - at one point, the average new-car buyer was back every two
years, and it was very rare for a car to last 100,000 miles even with the

best of

care.

Yet today the average car hit 200K miles or more.

And the new car is so expensive that it darn well *better* make 200 K
miles. They have become waay too expensive. Did you know that they are
offering 7 year auto loans now? All the "innovative" techniques that the
companies had to do over the years to sell cars as the price went up is
reaching an end-game for them. Most people do not want to pay $500-$600
or more a month for a vehicle.


Are cars *really* more expensive, adjusted for inflation?

Back in 2001, my Honda Odyssey minivan cost about $26,000 new. How much did,
say, the classic Ford Country Squire station wagon with the woodlike sides cost
in 1964? How much has typical income increased in that time period?

I don't have statistics in front of me, but I do know that when I
started buying cars, a typical loan was 2 years. now they are doing 6
and seven year loans.

Apples and oranges. The imporatan factoid is whether the prices have
lagged or led inflation and real income. If the Squire was $2,600 in
1961 and a good middle-class income was $5K/yr, then today the Odyssey
and a $50K income are sorta comparable. I say "sorta" because the
percentage of income you actually get to take home today is less.

OTOH, if you can keep a car 10 years today, compared to, say, 4 years
back then, that has to be factored in. How long before that Squire was
worth, say, 25% of its sticker price, compared to an Odyssey today?

(btw, it's a 2001 Odyssey. One guess what it's called....)

I just paid it off, and it's got a lot more usable life in it. So the total
lifetime cost may be less in inflation-adjusted dollars.

That's good to pay off a car in two years. Hopefully you got a good
trade in, or your payments were pretty steep. A 0 percent loan with no
down payment would be almost $1100 per month.

??

I had a good down and 3 year loan, and the payments were a little over
$300/mo.

Leasing looked good for a while, but of course you have no trade-in, and
the lease company doesn't really want you to trade the thing in, they
want you to buy-out. But oh those car payments!

All depends on a whole bunch of unknowns like residual value, interest rate,
repair cost, etc.

I've leased two cars now, and did okay by both of them. For this go
round, I wanted to buy, and to do that, I spent 10K less for the new
vehicle than I did 5 years ago for my last one to keep the payments
reasonable.

What did you buy that was $10K *less*?

Look at the
ever newer, faster and more memory for PCs.

Not just memory but every part of the machine - processor, drives, etc.
However, these improvements are often done at the price of quality.

Huh? Based on what information do you make that statement?

Open up an old IBM PC, then open up a clone box built for cheap
performance. I can send you pix of some I have in my garage.

Agreed. But that's in large part because they are not meant to last that long.
And because enough people buy on price alone.

The old IBM's were meant to last. One of these days maybe we'll
concentrate on writing good functional software and operatin systems
that actually work, and then we won't have to get new computers every
two years.

Yep. That's exactly the point.

Meanwhile, folks like me cherrypick the trailing edge for pennies. This Amidon
350MHz box cost me a lot less than $100, and most of that was for the CD-ROM
burner and the modem.

I do both. I have the latest and greatest for some of my uses, and I'm
using an old P166 Thinkpad running Win95 for my rig computer.

All depends on the job to be done.

"Use it up
Wear it out
Make it do
Or do without".

The old PC
laptops had very nice sound output, and were built well.

Agreed.


btw, on the issue of exporting jobs and inflation, check out:


http://management.itmanagersjournal....&tid=85&tid=86


73 de Jim, N2EY