Is the Tacoma union made?

I guess I didn't explain it very well, but my point was that pensions really aren't anything remotely close to what they used to be. Now it's a lump sum that's part of a compensation package similar to an employer match on a 401k. That 500k I would possibly get is paid into an account I can't touch on a monthly basis. Then when I retire the account is released to me, the company isn't still on the hook for paying me. That's a lot different than what pensions were to older generations where they just kept receiving a check as if they never left. The only similarity is I don't contribute to the pension. If they did it the way they used to and I was retired for 30 years, the company would be paying several times what it is.

That practice has become pretty standard across the board for retirement packages where it's a tiny pension and a 401k with a match.

And think of it like this, those people were told their retirements would be taken care of. There's no reason they would have believed they'd need to save a huge amount of money for retirement and as such none did. Suddenly now you're trying to take away all of that. All they're going to have to draw on is social security. That's condemning them to extreme poverty when no reasonable person would have foreseen them losing their retirement.

 

Agreed Torque. My company (non union, healthcare) has done away with pensions. Existing employees are grandfathered. We do have a great 401k which I aggressively contribute to also.

Another part of what you mentioned is many of those folks also lost their health insurance. Whole nother issue but it compounds the problem of losing money.

 

lol. love how this place sticks the last pic into the thread description pic.

 

Holy chit man. Unless you were building in a high cost area (certain large or coastal cities in the US) that would be a VERY expensive build here. In my area you can build all day for $85 a foot and still have decent finishes.

 

Gotcha so it's like our NYC or SFO.

Just out of interest, what's a normal square foot cost in Canada?

 

My hard cost to build a home starts at $100 per sq ft.
But this is Florida and we are highly regulated.
Hell, class A office build outs in existing shell buildings is 55-60 per ft.
Retail is 100 all day in existing dark shell.
Resturaunt is 200.
Stand alone "jewel box" building is 200+ for a shell. 300-500 if tenant interior build included.

 

A craft bar I just finished

 

$85 a foot!

Vancouver and the surrounding area is absolutely insane when it comes to housing and property values in general. Around here if you build for around $200 a foot you're lucky and the finishings will probably be pretty basic.

Normal for the rest of Canada is tough to determine, we get the vast majority of our materials from the US and the exchange is killing us right now. So my guess is even in other areas you'd be looking at $150ish or more a foot.

 

Love my union (NEA/MEA). 20 years as a teacher and have survived 3 spiteful, vindictive, incompetent administrators, all of whom were failures as teachers, so they apparently felt the need to take it out on those of us who are successful and have the data to prove it. For the record, I have worked with some pretty poor teachers, and though they eventually were terminated, the union was there just to insure due process was followed. With our Right-To-Work (for less) state now, we are quickly returning to the times of capricious terminations by divisive administrators.

 

I'll throw cents into this. A couple years ago Ford Motor Company opened one of the largest auto mfg. plants in North America in Mexico. The negotiated average Union wage was $1.75 per hour, to be raised to $2.05 per hour after seven years. There's your third world Union for you.

 

And if beaurcratic regulations and excessive Union labor demands were not part of reality...
FoMoCo may have made that investment in the US and those jobs would be going to Americans.

 

That's amazing for an average. Don't really know what it is across the US. My area is for sure on the very, very low end when it comes to cost of living.

 

Strong $ does nothing good for exports or keeping manufacturing in this country either...

 

I think you've got to build'em where you sell them too...at least when it comes to countries with vastly lower cost.

 

Yes
It's not all black and white.

 

Things change.

 

@dutchjim

Hey Jim I see you're a new guy. Welcome to TW.

If we post anything political, the mods will lock the thread...