Results tagged “economy” from York Common Cents

Want to save money? Try running your car on pure gas rather than fuel mixed with ethanol.

Last week, I took a road trip to Roanoke, Va.

Before I left York County, I filled up on gasoline that contains no ethanol. Only about three stations in the area sell pure gas. The rest peddle fuel that contains 10 percent ethanol.

I made the trip and still had a half tank left from my original fill-up some 300 miles back.

A week later, before I hit the road back to York, I filled up on gas that contained ethanol.

I took the same route and made the same one stop. When I arrived home, I had burned through three-quarters of a tank of gas.

Ethanol may have environmental benefits, but you're not saving any money behind the wheel.

Awhile ago I said I was watching a boat for sale along my route to work in West Manchester Township, simply to gauge whether the economy is making a turn for the better.

I saw two lookers so far, and a third appeared this morning, and got close enough to read the contact information. Maybe that boat will be purchased soon.

At the beginning of the recession, when it seemed Harley was the one struggling the most and others were barely feeling the pain in the Great Recession's headwaters, I saw something in a business article that has stuck with me.

It was an analyst saying that if you want to see where the economy is headed, watch the stock prices and sales of two companies: Harley-Davidson and Winnebago. Both make products that people buy when they are sure they can pay the rest of their bills.

As the recession rolled on, I added a third industry to motorcycles and RVs: boats. And not too long after, York County's own Mariner's Choice Marine in Springettsbury Township said it would go out of business.

So fast forward a couple of months, and a sharp-looking bass boat popped up along my route home from work with a "For Sale" sign on it. And it's been there for a pretty long time. After all, who has the money to even think about buying a boat?

Well, last week I saw not one but two people pulled over (one before and one after work) looking at the boat and the contact information listed on it. A nibble, but they didn't take the bait yet, as we anglers put it.

But still, I thought, "Maybe this economy might turn around soon after all."

What do you think? Do you see signs of the economy improving at all?

I came across this blog from Oregon this morning, expounding why Harley should come there. I couldn't decide if it was tongue-in-cheek or serious. Either way, the possible relocation is on the radar screens of people across the country.

Still no news as the situation develops. Workers I have talked to say they don't expect to hear any real news until fall, when Harley has already told workers and the public they expect to complete their studies of options.

The options pieced together so far have roughly boiled down to staying, and making changes with a factory operation Harley has said isn't cost-effective, or going somewhere where they can make a new, cost-effective operation.

I did a story the other day about a local company that has jobs available, but too few good candidates to fill them. Now, go back and read that sentence again, I know you think you read it wrong. Heck, I wrote it, and it still gave me pause.

Yes, Gichner Systems Group is hiring. The jobs aren't for paperwork pushers, they are for welders, painters and others who have strong experience in machine shops.

Maybe not something you would see on an episode of the popular "Dirty Jobs" show on the Discovery Channel, but I still think many of the positions Gichner is hiring for could be classified as "shower after."

And interestingly enough, the head of Gichner and "Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe think the same way about this gap between the unemployment rate in American and the jobs that are still out there for people: Too many Americans think they are entitled to do something better than hard, dirty work for whatever reason.

I've done very dirty work in my time, and admittedly, I've probably been guilty of having this "deserve better" perspective they talk about.

Take a look at this profile of Mike Rowe I found this morning on the Outside magazine Web site. He really manages to make some interesting points, and uses an even more interesting life than comes across in his television show to ground his perspective.

Also, please note the local ties Rowe has: He grew up in a rural area outside Baltimore, and the dirty job shown on page two of this profile is in Carlisle.

Now, all that being said, I can see where a lot of Americans are coming from: Our society would see someone who has an MBA going to shovel manure for a job as the ultimate failure in life.

And there are definitely downsides to doing dirty work. When I was a manure-shoveler, for example, my snot would turn some fun shades of green and yellow from the powdery poultry fodder that would get whipped up into the air.

What do you think? Is it time for the American attitude to change on hard work? Or do we owe it to our parents, and in many cases ourselves, who worked so hard to put us through college to keep the clean work dream alive?

I belong to a hunting and fishing camp in the Endless Mountains of Sullivan County, although lately I'd have to say it is a hunting and a putting-my-line-in-the-water camp. The fishing has been dismal, and everybody I talked to during my last trip in April said the same thing.

But I didn't come home this last time empty-handed.

Camp, so you know, doesn't have running water. It has a barrel, a big blue plastic monstrosity with Shanghai stamped on the bottom for some reason. And about a mile or so down the road is a spring to fill the barrel.

Needless to say, there's also no hot water heater ... other than the cook stove.

So for a weekend, I got into the habit of saving water and not wasting it throughout the day, something that is a better lesson than just trying to save a little water here and there throughout your house.

With modern amenities, and the way we whisk through our days as creatures of habit, the hot water at home runs longer than it needs to, and then we realize to turn it off.

At camp, you can't even turn the hot water on. You have to think ahead and boil just enough to get through dishes and cooking, but not too much that you have to trek all the way back to the spring at 1 a.m.

So I came home with an appreciation for how much water I use and a lesson in how much I really need to be using. Maybe all the Western world should have a hunting and (lousy) fishing camp.

The cold weather held on a lot longer than in other years, and it's been killing me.

Not necessarily because I wanted the muggy, sticky blah of summer to get here, but because I want to know what everyone is going to do for vacation in this, the first official vacation season of the great recession.

The speculation time over the winter is over. If you don't start planning now, you won't get it done. So what are you going to do?

1. Skip the vacation entirely.
2. Vacation closer to York. (something the locals are counting on)
3. Say the heck with the recession, and go to the Bahamas.

I'm thinking the second one. Used to be that the city redevelopment officials expounded York as two hours from everything, so you could live here and work anywhere in the Mid-Atlantic region.

Now, with the world made smaller by the recession, those places that are two hours away are now vacation spots at best. My wife and I recently spent our anniversary in Annapolis, for example. And it was nice.

Like many stories, all the information I collected for the Harley-Davidson story in this morning's edition wasn't able to fit.

So here are some tidbits that didn't make it in:

* Harley executives did have some good news to talk about in their earnings call with investors Thursday morning. At a 9.7 percent drop in overall sales for the first three months of this year, the company has brought its quarterly sales declines below 10 percent.

* Possibly more importantly, things could be a little worse for Harley, as executives also pointed out that they now sell more than half of all heavyweight motorcycles consumers sell in the United States. (Harley's market share went from about 49 percent in the beginning of 2008 to 57 percent in the beginning of 2009.) In other words, its heavyweight motorcycle sales are going down, but it seems others are dropping off far more rapidly.

* Early retirement was offered before the first round of job cuts in 2008 to workers, but only a few reportedly took the offer relative to the total number of cuts the company had planned to make. Now, with all the subsequently planned cuts, some are looking forward to retiring. Nettie Shirey, a 20-year veteran, told me that she had 64 days to go as of Thursday's job-cut announcement and that she feels lucky she has the option.

Keep checking back for more Harley-Davidson coverage.

The Japanese government has a quandary not dissimilar to ours in the United States: Young people out of work and a need for a better, stronger fresh-food farming industry.

So they've actually started sending young people out to help work the fields in rural areas as part of their stimulus plan.

Figuring out how to employ the unemployed instead of bailing out bankers? Now there's a novel idea.

But I digress.

What do you think about this idea? Should we think about it in the United States?

My phone rang late this morning, and on the other end was Laurie Anne Spagnola, the head of a local nonprofit who had read my story in Sunday's edition about Milwaukee-York ties.

Take a read of the story here. Or, for a short background, suffice it to say York and Milwaukee seem to both have locations of quite a few large companies (Harley, Johnson Controls, Bon-Ton) but no one could give us a smoking gun of a reason why this is the case.

Neither could Spagnola. But she totally agreed that there's something there.

"I've been thinking this forever," she told me.

Spagnola is president of the Children's Home of York and sits on the national board for the Alliance for Children and Families -- based in Milwaukee. Traveling there once per quarter, Spagnola said she could feel something familiar about the city.

It reminds her of York. And with the nonprofit tie, she pointed out something else about the connection.

"It's just not for-profit big guys" around York that end up connected to Milwaukee, she said.

This week's kinda weird, but kinda interesting, news release, is from some kind of travel venture encouraging people to use their furlough days to take vacations. My first reaction: Are they nuts?

Read the link provided in the release here.

In case you've missed out on learning this new "F" word (and I'm jealous if you have) furlough is the term companies are using when they lay off employees for a short amount of time. Employees are on "furlough." And just like being laid off, workers don't get paid while on furlough.

This will be a history class vocab word for our kids and grand kids, I'm sure.

So why in the world would someone go out and spend money on a vacation when they aren't making any money?

But there are a few suggestions among this marketing pitch that I thought deserved some praise: the idea of house-swapping with someone wanting to do their own "furcation" (their word, not mine) and visiting a city close to home.

So what do you think? Is it smart to use time laid off from work to travel? Or is it time to wake up and realize travel is a luxury you just can't afford?

I've thought for years that car companies should start selling those little gas-sippers they market in Europe here in the United States. Wow they would have made a lot of money when gas hit $4 per gallon last year, instead of now requiring billions of American taxpayer dollars just to stay in business.

But there is a difference between the Europeans and the United States: One side of the pond has an overbearing government that makes the rules for the marketplace, and it has a huge effect on fuel economy on that particular side of the Atlantic.

You might think I'm talking about higher European emissions standards, and that this is some message championing European socialism. Nope, at issue are American safety regulations.

Read this from The Wall Street Journal this morning:

"U.S. government crash standards, for example, require car makers to take into consideration the potential harm to passengers who aren't wearing seat belts when designing the crash-safety features of their cars. European governments assume that everyone riding in a car is wearing a belt -- a standard that's easier and less costly for car makers to meet."

What do you think? Should this rule be changed?

Everyone asks how the American government plans to pay for all of this "stimulus" going on. The answer is selling bonds to the Chinese, and we'll pay back those bonds later.

It's what we've always done. But now that the word depression is getting thrown around our country, China is worried we won't be able to pay it back.

Wonderful.

The government released its foreclosure prevention plan today, making it possible for people to refinance their mortgages so they can stay in their houses. The plan aims to make payments low enough so people who are stretched thin can keep paying.

Sounds like a good idea. I think it is. But then I saw how much a person could still have to pay after their mortgage is adjusted.

It's up to 31 percent of their gross income. That's before-taxes income. After taxes it could approach or exceed half what a person makes. And that's supposed to make their financial situations better?

I can't imagine paying that much. My wife and I recently purchased a home and we worry about paying a percentage of our income that is far, far below that amount. We were called "ultra-conservative" during the process - which I took as a compliment - and with the economy being what it is, I still worry about paying as much as we did.

And we'd probably drown, let alone ever be able to go to a movie or a restaurant or otherwise help the rest of the economy by spending, if we had to pay 31 percent.

What do you think? Does this plan have the teeth to actually help, or does it still leave room for too many people to be "under water?"

Time magazine put out a list of the 25 people who they say most caused the financial meltdown. A lot of them you've probably heard of, but quite a few you probably won't be able to remember the names of after you're done reading the list.

But what you will remember is what in hindsight looks like utter stupidity on all their parts: Everything from ignoring warning signs of the world's biggest Ponzi scheme to repealing the regulations put in place to make sure the Great Depression never happened again.

So take a look at the list and leave a comment below saying who you think is the biggest to blame.

No picking George W. Bush. He's too obvious, and my guess is that without disallowing his name, we'll get all Bush votes.

Go to it!

A New York Times story this morning listed a consequence of the recession you might not have thought of.

With construction and manufacturing jobs disappearing, and health care and education a little more recession-proof, women are set to pass the point where they represent more than half the American workforce.

Not because they are gaining jobs. But because men are losing them.

Before you get all angry about me gender stereotyping these professions, take a look at the job-loss stats, according to the Times. It's no secret construction, manufacturing and like businesses are taking a huge share of the job cuts.

And the result has been that 82 percent of the jobs cut in this recession have been jobs held by men.

The story goes on to talk about the consequences. I recommend it. Let us know here what you think.

I was in a conversation last night with an old friend, and it was about the same subject covered in this Wall Street Journal story from today: How American are American cars?

According to the story, nowadays it's hard to tell at first sight how American made a vehicle is. After all, my car is "American" but it looks almost exactly like a car made by a foreign automaker.

I tried to figure out separate story lines for my Chevy Tracker (my beloved little SUV) and the Suzuki Grand Vitara online while writing this post, and about all it cleared up was that there is little coincidence in their similarities. Just don't ask me what's made where, though.

But is this a new thing? Well, thanks go my old friend, apparently not. He was telling me - during a conversation about the 1954 movie that was his first date with his wife - that he had a car in 1965 in which he'd find Made in Italy stamped onto its parts.

So take heart, everyone who wants to find and only buy "American" - sounds like it hasn't been easy to do for a pretty long time.

If you need a really good example of how people think differently about their money nowadays, here's one for you. It used to be that when I'd get gift cards for Christmas, I thought of them as free money. It didn't count as cash in my pocket, so I could spend it however I darn well pleased.

Now, with gift cards at my disposal this post-Christmas, I'm thinking of them as part of the sheer number of dollars I have at my disposal for the purchases I need to make. Every "dollar" counts.

So instead of getting a new pair of pants at work cuz I haven't had a new pair in a while, I'm going to sew a rip in a pair hanging in the closet and keep that money (note: I'm not calling it a gift card) for when I positively need a pair of pants (think a hole I can't cover up no matter how hard a try).

So tell me, if you got a gift card for Christmas, how are you doing to spend it differently?

Prices consumers are charged for the stuff they buy fell by a record 1 percent in October. Then this morning, the news comes out that prices in November fell by 1.7 percent, eclipsing the old record.

The statistic makes sense. Retailers like Bon-Ton and Boscov's and everyone else are going gangbusters with sales -- sales lower prices -- and promotions to get people to buy. It's basic supply and demand, when consumers aren't demanding like they used to.

But then why are some people worried this is a bad thing?

Well, it is. I don't miss the penny or two on the dollar that I'm charged as much as a retailer or manufacturer misses a penny or two on the dollar when they are selling thousands upon thousands of products.

Then people lose their jobs, and don't have any pennies left.

Talking economics used to make you sound boring and stuffy. Now I bet you talk about economics every day with co-workers before work or family around the dinner table. And I bet most of the conversations are down-right depressing.

But while you are venting your fear for the next few years, you might as well sound smart, and Fortune as a compilation of eight opinions on the economic meltdown.

Check it out here.

Unfortunately, as you'll notice, even the people who sounded like they were reading the phone book just a few months ago - meaning they really know this economics stuff - are as doom and gloom as the rest of us.