Hobby has been officially ripped from my hands, might have to take a leave of absense for a whileo No: Loss of one income, added another mouth to feed,took a pay cut, 2006 wasn't too kind to the Miller household. I don't know how it is for the rest of you out there, but my line of work is hurting, BAD! Firebird is more than likely going to HAVE to be sold, and that will leave me with 2 lump Buicks, neither of which are useable this year:ball: Rant over, carry on with your happy, wealthy lives:3gears:
I know how you feel. I hope and PRAY that I don't have to resort to selling the Biscayne. That would be a travesty around here. I keep running into dead ends for a "real" job, so we've had to rely on the work that I get coming thru the garage and Cindy's modest income. Jenny has really "f'd" us up around these parts as we sit, able to do nothing, while our jobs soar out of the state, overseas. :rant:
I told a friend the other day that I was sick of eating Ketchup&Cracker sandwiches. He said, at least you have Ketchup:shock: :ball: Well Case, we could always enter a demo-derby, or start a clapped out old Dodge truck club or something?
Sorry to hear that, Tom. Lots of people at this end of the state really hurting, too. And the big layoffs continue. Big contract year for the Big 3 (or really big 1 and a coupla has-beens). Not too swift here, either. Already sold our dream house in Northville due to property taxes when I retired (over $10k a year). Kinda hurt since I designed it myself, my wife built it as general contractor, and our daughter grew up in it. New place is much better suited for what I do. Same market value, taxes are less than half. Michigan revenue sharing is a one way street to the sewer called Detroit. No hope in sight with Jen-Jen and her magic show in Lansing. Nice kick in the ass with Ford cancelling all health care coverage for salaried retirees as soon as you hit 65 also. One major problem away from welfare and Medicaid. Don't know what more Ford can take away from us, as all that's left is our pension itself......... and most of that is just getting back what we put in over all those years. I'll probably put the 66 up for sale after we finish it and get all the bugs out of it at Pure Stock this summer. Then a couple years down the road probably the red W30 car will have to go, too. Hang in there. You still have many years to recover.
Is it really getting that bad in MI(job wise).... I've heard stories, even considered moving back up there. I grew up west of Lansing, moved out in 99. Maybe comming back isn't such a good idea. My mom and dad just bought a place up there... but they plan on retireing there, so they should be OK. I think I'll stay put for a bit.
Unless your profession is flippin' burgers at fast food chain of choice, or your good at being a stock boy for Walmart, there is absolutely NO reason to even consider moving to Michigan:Smarty: Time to dust off the old Billboards....."Will the last person leaving Michigan please remember to shut the lights off!" Stick a fork in this State, it's a sinking ship,and we're all going down with it. What we need to do is...we HAFTA get rid of NAFTA!
Finally, some refreshing news - other people in this state that can see we are on Jenny's road to welfare-ville. My horsey "friends" are screaming lefties and "Jen's just trying to help". :af: BUT, she just promised free training to underemployed people - if you want to be a nurse or auto mechanic ou: Yeah, right. There will be lots of people left getting cars fixed so they can drive their starving butts to the hospitals. I'm out of a job since the end of December (Delphi buyout). The buyout wasn't a bad deal - but I am now paying $450 a month in medical insurance, have no retirement, and despite being told by Delphi that they wouldn't fight unemployment for the people who took the buyout - I STILL have not been able to get my $362/week (before taxes). The Unemployment Agency is giving me the runaround, and every time I call to inquire - I get some Indian person telling me it is "under review". :rant: This keeps up, I may have to get an engineering job :ball: Just a hint - Dow Corning's Hemlock Semiconductor and the Midland plant are hiring like crazy for manufacturing/process engineers. Hurry, all the Delphi Chassis Saginaw engineers will be out of a job by the end of the year and have probably already signed up. UGH. Jen-Jen needs to go.
Thnigs are better on the west side of the state than the east, but we're hurtin' here, too. LOTS of plant closings. Lots of white-collar jobs leaving, too. It's going to take a few years until the fat cats at the top of the food chain figure out that outsourcing doesn't save you money unless you know how to do it right. Unfortunately, a lot of companies are going to go broke figuring that out -- and a lot more jobs will be lost because of that. If Jenny doesn't cut government expenses somehow, I don't know how the remainder of those of us who still have jobs will be able to fund Lansing (or should I say, Detroit). Taxes are going to have to go up, if expenses don't go down. Same for the cities; they're cutting fire and police right and left, but they've still got buildings full of bureauocrats. Hang in there, Tom.
Lemme tell ya, it's been REAL tough down here too, single family construction STOPPED dead last year, highrises continue but are largely unsold inventory.. i've lived here over 51 years, and i've NEVER seen so much construction equipment parked... 3 of the 6 BIG sugar mills closed up at the big lake last year and sold over 800 pieces of equipment, and one more mill is suspect with about 450 pieces of rolling stock, and it's been around for 49 years... fortunately, our marine sector and export market is still strong, and i've been in business 25+ years, or we'd be in big trouble... we're still getting property taxed to death, and affordable insurance just does NOT exist. I paid $23k in property taxes recently, up 55% from a year earlier, property insurance doubled even after I dropped windstorm coverage when the minimum deductible went to 40k on my house from 1k and 80k on my office from 1k, group health went up 36% to about 70k a year... I have a new rental lakefront townhouse investment that the monthly payment just went up $600 monthly, just from property insurance increases, the monthly insurance portion is now more than the principal portion, my second daughter's college tuition is now $2200 a month up from $1100 monthly last year... my boat insurance went from $2100 to $5800 yearly for noooo damm reason... my company truck insurance went from $2.5k per truck to 4k per truck... We're hanging in there, but i'm scared to death of a democratic election on the horizon, this town is very strong republican and we will literally stop dead. Thank God my house and TN vacation lakehouse are paid for. My sis-in-law has a waterfront house in Key Largo and her insurance went from $8k a year last year to $38k a year this year, with 100k deductible, no misprint there.. I may need to semi-retire, change careers, and find another place to live. This is supposed to be paradise.... paradise lost maybe... JH
Not much better North of the Border...Chrysler set to cut 2,000 jobs. Rents are $800-$1,000 for an apartment. Property taxes on the average home $3,000. There will be a distinct shortage of medical care due to increasing demand by baby boom generation. Interesting that politicians just voted themselves a 150% wage increase. The government is the single largest employer in the country. As you can see if the price of crap ever goes up we'll have the market cornered.
If we're so good at outsourcing everything in the U.S.A. that cost's too much, maybe we should outsource our GOVERNMENT!!!!!:af: With as crappy of a job as they do, what the HELL could they possibly justify giving themselves a raise for?????????:blast: In most lines of work, you get fired for doing crap work, not a raise!!!! Time for our elected officials to start doing the damn job they were hired(elected) to do, and that is to represent the people. Funny that somehow,somewhere along the way that very important little part of their job description has gone by the wayside. Every person in this county better start adopting an "all for one,and one for all" type of mentality, and get rid of the "all for self gain" thinking, or we're all going to be screwed. This country can't survive as a service industry.
The problem is Tom, that that is exactly what they have been doing. And the people want everything free from the goverment. They want the Goverment to pay for their medical from cradle to grave, to ensure that they have a job and to pay them when they don't have a job, and to retrain them when they lose their job, to protect the workers from the their bigbad employers, to pay them a salary when they are retired, to make sure that the spotted owl and the snail darter are never harmed in any way, to make sure that there are fish in the lakes and ducks in the ponds, and they want goverment employees to count every fish and every duck in every pond to make sure that one of them isn't missing, and to make sure that no one builds a house to close to a lake, and to pay govement employees to make sure that no factorys or cars make any pollution, and to study why grinding wheels wear out and to predict the weather and to make sure that we have airports and mass transit and subsidized chopstick factories, subsidized farming, subsudized ethanol plants, goverment subsidies for every enterprise, study, or giveaway program for every socially disadvantaged group (which means everyone who is not a white male) and to play policeman to the whole world and to prop up every crooked regime in every third world country, and to make sure that every unskilled guy leaning on a shovel along the road makes at least $50k per year, and to pay for the education (or indoctrination?) of every kid from the womb till college and beyond regardless of their parents contribution to the country, and to make sure that multi-millionaire ball players and team owners have free stadiums to do their business in, and to provide subsidised housing and child care for everyone who drinks to much or takes too much dope to hold a job and they want to spend billions on an impossible to win drug war, and to have a TV with cable in every prison cell, to provide computers with high speed internet in prison so the child molesters can have their porn, and to make sure that we can buy all the junk from Communist China that we want and about a few trillion other things. That is what the people want, that is what the politicians are giving them, and that is what the working class and the businesses of this country are going broke trying to provide. :ball: The part of the politicians jobs that they have truly ignored is their Oath to uphold the Constitution.
I feel for you guys..I lived in central Michigan- Gladwin, for 14 years. I had 6 jobs from the time I was 18 to 20- kept getting laid off because I was low man on the totem pole. I slept in my car for 2 winters. I joined the military late winter of 1990, and I've only been back once to bury my father. My sister tells me about all the unemployment, and one of my nephews is on the same road right now that I was 20 years ago. I guess by reading some of the threads its a combination of NAFTA & The State Government? Sorry to hear it. Relocation for any reason after about the age of 25 is a pain in the butt...good luck to all of you...I know that doesn't help...but good luck anyway...
Tom - I am sorry to hear that. I am not familiar with your personal situation - but - any chance you could supplement your income restoring cars for pay? The pictures I saw it looks like you do some really outstanding work!:TU:
I feel for ya, Tom...if there's any way us Hillbillys can help, just ask... As for the situation in the manufacturing sector, as best I can tell the folks at the top of the company ladder are all about, as we say it around here, "making a killing, instead of just making a living". How often is it we hear a press release of some executive somewhere increasing his portfolio while in the same breath his company is laying off the poor folks on the bottom rung? The world already makes it hard for the U.S. companies to compete because they hold us to a higher standard in regards to pollution/working conditions/tariffs, but when you throw in the pork at the top, you might as well stick a fork in us...they *have* to head to Mexico, or China, or Shangri-la, or where ever to stay in the game. And Joel, this will be no surprise, but more and more folks expect the government to support them *literally* from cradle to grave. Regularly, we meet with families who've been living on government support (often for generations) their entire lives, and they just assume the government is gonna pay for their funeral...it's always the folks that *never* ask about prices that we worry about getting paid.
What was the old saying?....."when 51% realize the other 49% can support them....." I shudder to think how close that is to being true today. Especially with the borders (and all our citizens benefits) wide open to anyone who wants in (except for those who follow the procedures and law........and learn to be Americans and speak the language of the country they're in). Those numbers are growing about as fast as the older tax paying people are losing their jobs sooner and sooner and have less ability to pay to support tose at the bottom middle, and the protected ones all through the system. I think what's different today, maybe more acutely up here in the rust belt and especially anything even remotely connected to the US auto industry.It's not only affecting the people at the bottom of the ladder..it's through the middle ranks and way, way up that ladder almost to the top. The execs at the top are stepping off onto other ladders, and the ones really at the bottom are being taken care of through the welfare systems. That now seems to be open to anyone who can get in here by any means. It's all the people between those extremities that have had their lives changed and their futures thrown into uncertainty. The needle is much higher in the chain. It's really evident when you look at the type of taxes and regulations(another form of tax) are being raised. Not necessarily just income. The monster must be fed so it can grow bigger. To keep subsidizing that through preoperty taxes with more government spending in giveaways is even more maddening as it now is our friends that don't want to give up their standard of life, that feel entitled to it, no matter who it hurts to pay for it. I didn't, but have had to. I sure never thought I'd be worried about next year or after that when i retired. I was more worried about what to do with my time. Sure never worried about having my medical insurance taken away. Especially at this point in life. Even some of my UAW friends are making more money than ever with O.T. and paid bennies as the work is being compressed into fewer people and fewer facilities. Government funded jobs (care to guess what percent that really is?) including anything paid for by public funds are really sheltered via their contracts and unions even more so. There's no more security today than that. No wonder as many people have flocked to that in recent years. Bad outlook, about all you can do is take care of #1 and your own world and the ones that depend upon you directly. If we were still able to do that without the constantly increasing drains on our resources, at least it would be a better outlook. Not even sure who the good guys in government are anymore. I'm an old Southern Conservative Democrat that hasn't voted for that party since the 70's. Jimmy Carter was my last Democratic vote. I guess it's voting to supporting the worst of two evils: Publicly owned big business (through stock) or government owned everything. I know which one I'll choose every time. It's about all we can do.
