[thechat] A balance of opinion. - Iran

[Luther, Ron]

Deke note:

>>According to the BLS, the average miner in the US makes $49,000 per year in 
>>salary, not including overtime, bonuses and benefits. I can hire web developers
>>for $8 an hour here in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where unemployment is running 
>>fairly low. 

Hi Deke,

Sorry - I got busy yesterday ... where were we?  Ah, okay ... you were 
making a good point that I had missed your US focus and was speaking 
from a global perspective in bringing up crap like South African gold 
mine workers and Asian shoe factory workers ... point taken - I musta 
missed the "US" part of it. <shrug />

On the other hand, comparing US figures to anecdotal Lancaster, PA info 
is the same mistake -- comparisons from non-congruent geographies - so 
we're gonna have to toss that out too.  Bummer about the web guys in 
Lancaster, they could make more coming here and working in an Eckerds or 
CVS. [Or even working in the mines around Lancaster - Careerbuilder.com 
didn't have figures for 'regular miners', but they do show mine inspectors 
in Lancaster, PA making an average of $43,350 - with a low (17th percentile) 
of $27,636 and a high (67th percentile) of $67,387.  Gee - I hope the 
inspectors don't get pissed - what with the regular miners making more than 
them and all ... but Lancaster is a depressed area ... so it might be ok.]

>>I don't know of any stockbrokers who are paid a wage. If they don't make any 
>>sales, they get *zilch*. 

Ah! Thats anecdotal.  I can counter in kind.  I do.  I've had friends with 
their Series 7 license who were on full salary.  

OTOH, we could take this the other way and I could note that many unskilled 
laborers in (for example) construction or lawn care work under a 
"no work-ee, no pay-ee" system.  If it rains too hard they can't work ... 
and they don't get paid.

>>And I don't know of any running shoe factories in the US, 

I think there still is one - (Doesn't New Balance or someone still have 
a factory in New England?) - but yeah, I was thinking Asia.

> Where firemen make more than pro golfers? Masterlink club services 
>says $29,381 for the average golf pro. Latest figures I can find for 
>firefighters from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is 1995, which showed 
>a mean of $677/week, which amounts to $35,204. 

Masterlink club services is a golf course management company - I couldn't 
find the numbers you noted but I'm wondering if that is the average of 
what -they- pay for a golf pro, or the average salary for all golf pros.  
[When I wrote I was thinking of Gary Player (a noted pro golfer who, I 
suspect, did rather better than $29,381 a year over his career), and his 
father - who, I understand, was a rather poor worker in the SA gold mines.] 

Sorry - my "evidence" here is also anecdotal.  The 3 or 4 club pros I've 
met, (not touring pros), all wore the kinds of clothes and jewelry, drove 
the kinds of new luxury cars, and lived in large homes in nice neighborhoods 
that you don't get on $29k a year.  But hey - I don't know their personal 
circumstances ... they could well have inherited the money from parent who 
got rich working in high paying jobs digging ditches and mowing lawns!  ;-P

{Side Note - Summary statistics are a funny thing.  Without a full and 
complete knowledge of the underlying methodology it's hard to be sure that 
they actually mean what they purport to mean. [e.g. Would a government 
figure for 'web workers' actually cover people with job titles like 
"Administrative Assistant", "Business Analyst", or "IT - Project Lead" 
who may actually spend 100% of their time dealing with web content and 
construction? It may or may not - without understanding the construction 
of the numbers you can't really know what they mean.]}


Overall -- I have to say my initial reaction to the 'blue collar folks 
are better off than white collar folks in the US' was rather negative.  
(Which may well be sour grapes - me being a white collar worker and all 
... actually more of a 'Royal Stewart' collar than white today ... but 
you know what I mean.)

>From a historical perspective, my view is justified ... and parents were 
'right' in pushing their kids to go to college to get a 'better life'. 

The concept being that sure, fresh out of high school, you'll make more 
working in the mill (or the mines), than going to college ... but fifteen 
year down the road the investment in time would pay off - financially.


But times change.  Maybe that ain't true anymore.  I'm thinking that to 
make a 'determination' once way or the other for this point, (the 'blue 
collar is better' thing), you'd have to be able to demonstrate that the 
accelerating turbulence of down-sizing, right-sizing, outsource-sizing, 
and fall-down-go-boom-sizing of companies in today's economy is at a high 
enough pace that we actually have a case of the blue collar tortoise 
financially outperforming the white collar rabbit:

e.g.

White collar earning by year -- 60k, 0k, 45k, 50k, 55k, 60k, 0k, 45k, ...

Blue collar earning by year -- 49k, 49k, 49k, 49k, 49k, 50k, 50k, 50k, ...


At _some_ rate of churn steady *is* better.  Are we there yet?


RonL.