Rod Speed

js <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] link.net...
    > The Reids <[email protected]> wrote
    >> Rod Speed wrote

    >>> Much of that is due to smoking.

    >>> Japan has in fact a significantly lower heart disease rate than
    >>> many modern first world countrys, and they tend to spend more
    >>> time at work than in most other modern first world countrys too.

    >> The most likely reason is that they don't eat dairy products.
    >> When they move to Europe they develop "our" heart disease
    >> rates after a couple of generations. So unless working less
    >> gives you heart problems that is likely to be the reason.

    > While smoking is certainly bad for health, causes
    > lung cancer and contributes to heart disease, it is by no
    > means the sole (or even primary) cause of heart disease.

Never said it was. I used the word MUCH for a reason.

    > If you thought Japanese smoked like chimneys, just look at the French!

Who both have a lung cancer rate to match.

    > Nor do you see them keeling over from
    > those creamy sauces full of saturated fat.
    > No, it's the McDonald's culture.

Have fun explaining high heart disease rates
in countrys that have little McD culture at all.

    > Well, to be fair it's not so much the culture itself but the delivery
    > mechanism.
    > Convenience foods are typically loaded with partially-hydrogenated oils,
    > which are essentially toxic substances which will and do kill over time.

Have fun explaining high heart disease rates in countrys
that dont have that type of convenience food culture.

    > It's only been over the past decade or so that awareness has been growing
    > and goverments are slowly starting to move the food industry away from them.

Rod Speed

Deep Frayed Morgues <deepfreudmoors@eITmISaACTUALLYiREAL!l.nu>
wrote in message news:[email protected]...
    > Rod Speed <[email protected]> wrote
    >> Deep Frayed Morgues <deepfreudmoors@eITmISaACTUALLYiREAL!l.nu> wrote
    >>> yes <[email protected]> wrote

    >>>>> I don't like to travel. Sometimes I'll take a day or two or five to work
    >>>>> on my house or garden. At Christmas I usually take off the week
    >>>>> between Christmas and New Year's and hang around the house with
    >>>>> my husband. Once in a great while, I'll take off a day and read or
    >>>>> something (especially if there's a new Terry Pratchett novel out).

    >>>>> There's nothing stopping me from taking my vacation days, except
    >>>>> I don't want to. I have plenty of time to do everything I want. I
    >>>>> don't have any children, so my time is pretty much my own.

    >>>> Hopefully some day you will realize there is much more to live and
    >>>> experience than you currently seem to think there is. And then
    >>>> you will want those vacation days. I hope that day comes soon.

    >>> It sounds like her expectations for life have been nicely
    >>> lowered to the point where vacations are a bit of a nuisance.

    >> Or she prefers what she does for work to what is available on vacation.

    > I suspect she is having trouble knowing what to do on her vacation.

Or what is available doesnt appeal to her. Her choice.

One fellow I know doesnt like vacations at all, basically finds them
dead boring, even tho his wife works for one of the major international
airlines and gets them dirt cheap. They dont have any kids and its
basically his choice if that sort of thing doesnt appeal to him.

    >>> This is not uncommon from what I have seen in the US.

    >> Just as true right throughout the first world too.

    > No,

Yep. There's plenty that dont find vacations
appeal right thruout the entire world.

    > the view is very different once you leave the US.
    > Holidays are revered, and seen in a positive sense.

Not universally. There are some that dont see
any real value in them, find them dead boring.

Their choice.

    >>> I don't know why, but they seem to feel guilty (or something)
    >>> if they are not either working or spending money.

    >> Corse that never happens anywhere else, eh ?

    > I have never found another place where
    > not working is considered a bad thing.

You really need to get out more.

    >>> **** that, I would rather be on a beach, walking the mountains,
    >>> boozing with someone in Swahililand, eating food that I can't
    >>> pronounce or just wasting an indefinite amount of time in some
    >>> paradisical tourist void somewhere in the developing world!

    >> Just another useless parasite.

    > As I can support myself, where is the problem?

Never said that there is a problem.

Service Tech

"Mxsmanic" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > ServiceTech writes:
    > > Some of
    > > those people tend to spell a word as it sounds. It gets the point
    > > across. Hell!! *I* can't speak a second language. They do just fine.
    > > Typo / Spelling / Grammer flames are LAME, & show a person desperate
    > > to be witty.
    > That isn't quite true. Every error impairs comprehension. The greater
    > the number of errors, the less effectively the "point is gotten across."
    > The efficiency and utility of a language depend upon the extent to which
    > precise standards of that language are respected by its users, and so
    > every error reduces efficiency and utility.
    > --
    > Transpose hotmail and mxsmanic in my e-mail address to reach me directly.

As far as I'm concerned, everyone gets the point across, and *I* have not
had any problems understanding the posts.

Miguel Cruz

Rod Speed <[email protected]> wrote:
    > Miguel Cruz <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> Rod Speed <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>> Just which 'world' do you claim a country like Argentina belongs in ?
    >> Argentina was a member of the Non-Aligned Movememnt until 1991, and hence
    >> a textbook third-world nation.
    > Have fun explaining http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=third%20world

While the meaning of "second world" never changed, the meaning of "third
world" really started evolving around the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the associated political fracture lines, which as you may recall, was pretty
close to 1991.

    >> These days they don't fit cleanly into the 1/2/3 world scheme at all.
    > How convenient.

Huh? Is there some rule that exactly one member of any given set of labels
has to apply to every single object in the universe?

Anyway, I jumped into this whole subthread to correct your mistaken use of
the term "second world". Judging by your shift in topics it's clear to me
that:

A) My work on that front is done; and
B) You just like prolonging arguments as a vehicle for contumely.

I only like debating with people who are fun or interesting about it, not
just mindlessly abusive. So I'm out.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 32 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu

Service Tech

"devil" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]. ..
    > On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:59:09 +0000, ServiceTech wrote:
    > > Good point. I'd like to add something here. This is a discussion
    > > forum. People make typos, & grammer mistakes all the time. For a
    > > good number of people, English is their second language. Some of
    > > those people tend to spell a word as it sounds. It gets the point
    > > across. Hell!! *I* can't speak a second language. They do just fine.
    > > Typo / Spelling / Grammer flames are LAME, & show a person desperate
    > > to be witty.
    > Grammar.
I know that reply was for the sake of a bit of humor but it just proved one
of my points. You know what the word was, so you understood my message.
Some people spend their time on this petty crap. It's just senseless to me.

Mika

x-posting zapped

The Reids <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>. ..
    > Following up to Mxsmanic
    >
    > >Credit is not as readily available in Europe,
    >
    > not true for UK, others can comment for other countries.

It's just another Mixi-ism, along the lines of the cost of TVs and
Europe in general being 'behind by centuries.'

Mika, Munich
--
Mixi for President

Rod Speed

js <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected] link.net...

    >>> 3. People are falling further and further behind economically here.

    >> I think the statistics belie that. Home ownership in the U.S.
    >> is at an all time high, especially with minorities and middle
    >> class people. And home ownership in the U.S. generally
    >> means single family detatched houses (except in some
    >> major northeastern cities where townhouses/condominiums
    >> are the norm), which means that they are generally larger
    >> and nicer than in most European cities.

    > Actually, the statics reinforce that claim.

Nope.

    > Home ownership in the U.S. is at an all-time high
    > for several reasons - until the past six months or
    > so, interest rates have been at historic lows.

Yes, but that is just the REASON the
claim right at the top is just plain wrong.

    > Since rates can realistically only rise, there has been
    > the perception that people need to buy or pay more later.

Nope, the very low interest rates just mean that house
buyers can pay for more house, because the low interest
rates mean that the payments are still affordable and those
doing the lending are prepared to lend that higher amount.

    > Secondly, the availability of homes has also been
    > low, due in part to limited construction of new homes

Oh bullshit.

    > and less suburban zoning areas to build on. Third
    > is the continued influx of immigrants. Legal, illegal
    > or visa-holders... they're all vying for a place to live.

Irrelevant to the original claim right at the top.

    > Of course there's always the standard argument for owning
    > a home in the ability to build equity, versus having only rent
    > receipts. Still, it's undeniable that a greater and greater
    > percentage of a family's salary is going to pay the mortgage.

No big deal when that is effectively a forced form
of saving. Those repayments are locked in and
cant be wasted on frivolous consumer spending.

    > A quarter of a person's salary used to be the standard
    > used for mortgage affordability, but in many metropolitan
    > areas of the U.S., you'll find people are spending in excess
    > of half their earnings just to hold down their mortgage!

Not that many.

And plenty more have benefitted from the big boom in house
prices that the historically low interest rates have produced
and now have very substantial equity in the house they live in.

    > Woe to them if their job is outsourced.

The worst they have to do is sell the house. Thats no worse
than having rented instead. In fact its likely to be quite a bit
better, because of the big hikes seen in house prices due
to the historically low interest rates. If they cant manage
the payments, they can sell the house, pocket the sustantial
increase in price over what they paid for the house, and
just go back to renting again until they get another job.

And lets not forget that the US has one of the
lowest unemployment rates in the entire first world.

    >>> More and more people will have to get second and third jobs in fact.

    >> Again, the work ethic.

    > Rubbish. Work ethic doesn't play any role here
    > at all. Most people working two or three jobs do
    > it for their own or their family's sheer survival.

Bullshit, its mostly for what they want to buy, particularly
with new immigrants who choose to work hard to pay for
stuff like houses etc. Nothing to do with survival.

Lennart Petersen

"Al" <[email protected]> skrev i meddelandet
news:[email protected] om...
    > [email protected] (Miguel Cruz) wrote in message
    > news:<[email protected]>...
    >> Al <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> > The Reids <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> >> Following up to Rod Speed
    >> >>>> it's actually very common for people with less than 2-5 years at a
    >> >>>> company to
    >> >>>> only get 1 week's vacation, and that isn't necessarily paid
    >> >>>> vacation.
    >> >>>
    >> >>> Small subset of 'people in the US'
    >> >>
    >> >> Is it a small subset? Ive been given the impression US workforce
    >> >> is very mobile and change jobs and location much more than
    >> >> Europeans?
    >> >
    >> > I think this is true, but people don't change jobs for worse
    >> > benefits/pay.
    >> Not until the Bush administration anyway.
    > Let's look at this:
    > http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost
    > AVERAGE HOURLY EARNINGS OF PRODUCTION WORKERS
    > The average hourly wage was $14.27 when he took office. Now it's $15.78.
$14.27 was equal to about SEK140 at that time, $15.78 is equal to SEK110
only today, inflation not counted. Euro and $ was on par just a few y ago,
now the rate is about 1.27
Good news for those travelling and paid outside U.S but can't be fun for
people with $ salaries?

Barbara Bomberger

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 18:07:19 GMT, john
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:19:51 +0200, Barbara Bomberger
    ><[email protected]> wrote:
    >>On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 15:43:03 GMT, john
    >><[email protected]> wrote:
    >>>On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 03:09:38 -0500, [email protected] (Miguel Cruz)
    >>>wrote:
    >>>>john <[email protected]> wrote:
    >>>>> Leave it to public employees to get 4 weeks vacation after only
    >>>>> working 3 years.
    >>>>> there are thousands of people employed by public agencies.
    >>>>> This includes federal, state, county and city jobs.
    >>>>> they are all feeding at the public trough.
    >>>>> They add NOTHING to the GNP of the country.
    >>>>> They are leeches on the backs of the tax payers working for private
    >>>>> industry.
    >>>>There's more to life than adding to the GNP.
    >>>Yeah, so what?
    >>>What are you saying?
    >>>There are too many people working for government agencies.
    >>Then perhaps you wont mind the next time you have to stand inline for
    >>six hours instead of two to renew your driver's license??
    >>>>miguel
    >The government should be supporting those agencies that directly
    >support the public.
    >There are thousands of government workers at every level--federal,
    >state, county,city whose jobs should be eliminated.

And so all the agencies that indirectly support the public should also
be eliminated?? What you really mean is that if the job doesnt
benefit you, personally, directly, you want it eliminated.

Most government job support the public directly or indirectly. For
every in your face customer service job, there are about ten support
positions behind it.

Miguel Cruz

Dennis G. Rears <[email protected]> wrote:
    > "john" <[email protected]> wrote:
    >> Government agencies aren't in the business of making money.
    >> The government gets its money from the private sector.
    >> The less government employees the less taxes we have to pay.
    > This is not true. It completely neglects contracting out. The organization
    > I work for , an Army Weapons Research and Development Center, has less
    > government employees than we did 10 years. Our costs adjusted for inflation
    > has not changed. Why? We have contracted out many of our functions. My
    > Army Reserve unit even has contractors.
    > The real issue is "government functions" not "government employees". As
    > long the citizenry demands the government do these functions, there will be
    > a cost associated with it. Most of the growth in government is being done
    > by higher cost contractors not new federal employees.

This was Al Gore's enduring mark on the federal government, and I can't see
that it's been a good thing.

In my experience, while there are many good contractors and contractor
staff, quite often they tend to be less committed to the job and the agency.
Often they'd disappear on short notice, replaced with "equivalent" personnel
by the contracting outfit. Of course, even if the new person were nominally
trained in the work they were to be doing, they still didn't know anything
about our specific processes and ideosyncrasies, so this was a big
time-waster. And from what I could tell the cost per head often exceeded
equivalent FTEs when all was said and done. About the only benefit was that
they were easy to get rid of if they sucked.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos from 32 countries on 5 continents: http://travel.u.nu

Barbara Bomberger

On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 17:55:58 GMT, john
<[email protected]> wrote:

    >On Fri, 29 Oct 2004 17:34:28 +0100, The Reids
    ><[email protected]> wrote:
    >>Following up to john
    >>>there are thousands of people employed by public agencies.
    >>>This includes federal, state, county and city jobs.
    >>>they are all feeding at the public trough.
    >>>They add NOTHING to the GNP of the country.
    >>>They are leeches on the backs of the tax payers working for private
    >>>industry.
    >>Its foolish to think people working in the public sector do not
    >>contribute. If you think a privately employed bus driver
    >>contributes but a publicly employed one does not, you have a
    >>warped understanding.(as many do)
    >Government agencies aren't in the business of making money.
    >The government gets its money from the private sector.
    >The less government employees the less taxes we have to pay.

So then we can fire the people who fix the roads, for example. What
specific jobs would you eliminate.

Oh, and by the way, much of the government is in fact self supportion.
As in non=appropriated funds???

Mika

"Frank F. Matthews" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
    > Jeff Hacker wrote:
    >
    > > "The Reids" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    > > news:[email protected]...
    > >
    > >>Following up to Jeff Hacker
    >
    > >>>And home
    > >>>ownership in the U.S. generally means single family detatched houses
    > >>>(except
    > >>>in some major northeastern cities where townhouses/condominiums are the
    > >>>norm), which means that they are generally larger and nicer than in most
    > >>>European cities.
    > >>
    > >>depends what you value. If being in walking distance of the
    > >>social centre of the city is important, suburban sprawls of
    > >>detached houses do not make you happy.
    >
    > > True, but for cultural reasons since WW II in the United States, people tend
    > > to want suburban single families. . . .
    > > Jeff
    >
    > Not quite as valid a generalization these days. Sociology reports
    > indicate that values are shifting.
    >
I've worked with cow-orkers in the US that told me straight faced that
after taking off a week each year, they didn't know what else to with
the rest of their vacation (holidays for the English speaking part of
the world).

That said, at the US division of my company, 4 weeks paid vacation was
standard after 10 years with the company. Plus 'sick days' and
'personal days', which are an unknown concept in Germany, except for
special days such as getting married. But Merkins get these on a
yearly basis.

While I worked in the US the last time around, all the extra days were
converted to so-called life-time days. It basically meant an extra 10
days off for which you did not have to give a reason. So if you never
called in sick, these days could be used for travel, or whatever.

Now we are already dangerously approaching European off-days. Plus, as
an ex-pat in the US, I got another 5 days. So I was actually doing
better in Florida than in Germany. Then again, Florida had no catholic
holidays. But since I planned all my business trips myself, I made
sure my weeks in Munich always contained one. While I never traveled
when there was a US holiday. But hey, don't tell anyone.

M, Munich

Maren Purves

Magda wrote:
    > On 27 Oct 2004 15:38:25 -0700, in rec.travel.europe, [email protected] (zach)
    > arranged some electrons, so they looked like this :
    >
    > ... "Informer" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
    > ... > "Jane Sitton" <[email protected]> wrote
    > ... >
    > ... >
    > ... > > There are no set laws that I know of regarding how much vacation a
    > ... > > company offers. Nowadays, many companies get around offering vacation
    > ... > > altogether by hiring only part-time employees.
    > ... > >
    > ... > > --Jane
    > ... >
    > ... > In the UK the absolote minimum the law allows is 4 weeks plus public
    > ... > holidays. I would not work for a company that offered less than 5 weeks.
    > ...
    > ... So are you proud to admit to being lazy in front of thousands of
    > ... people? Interesting...
    >
    > Life is too short to work so much. You have to enjoy it once in a while.

umm, I enjoy my work. At least most of the time.

Barbara Bomberger

    >"john" <[email protected]> wrote in message
    >news:[email protected].. .
    >>>> I think the two weeks thing is the standard, with a couple of
    >>>> exceptions, the major one obviously being the federal government I
    >>>> earn a certain amount of hours per pay period, and that increases
    >>>> incrementally with time in service. I have only worked for the
    >>>> government three years, and I get one hundred and sixty hours of leave
    >>>> a year, or basically three weeks.
    >>>Taking 40 hours as the standard work week, 160 hours is 4 weeks, not 3.
    >> Leave it to public employees to get 4 weeks vacation after only
    >> working 3 years.

However, the difference is that for the same position, you probably
would make at least a third more than I do.

Contrary to popular belief, the advantage of government work is often
not "longevity" because in this day and age, job loss can happen to
anyone.

But having an good guareanteed health insurance, paid vacations and
holidays and a good insurance and 401K program make s up for the
pittance I make. Here I am making minimim government scale, and i
think its a fair trade off.

Barb

Mika

The Reids <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>. ..
    > Following up to Mxsmanic
    >
    > >> If employers seem less
    > >> loyal and supportive to employees as they go through normal life
    > >> events, such as becoming a parent, employees are less likely to be
    > >> loyal and supportive to the employer, IME.
    > >
    > >Parents have less time to devote to an employer than people without
    > >children.
    >
    > so do you believe employers should choose staff without children
    > over those without and ask at interviews if women plan to have a
    > family?

Don't think that Mixi works in some personnel department - they
usually pay ok - but he has a point here. Women are suspect because
they may become pregnant and require child care leave.

East Germans have few kids now, because most of the benefits for
reproducing have disappeared.

M, MUC