Half Past Noon

Yitta Schwartz died last month aged 93. It’s estimated she may have had over 2000 living descendants, including more than 200 grandchildren.

Link to the Obituary

People who didn’t live pre-Internet can’t grasp how devoid of ideas life in my hometown was. The only bookstores sold Bibles the size of coffee tables and dashboard Virgin Marys that glowed in the dark. I stopped in the middle of the SAT to memorize a poem, because I thought, This is a great work of art and I’ll never see it again.

Mary Karr – best interview ever

I read this somewheres and it resonates with my limited personal experience.

When we tell stories, we start at the chronological beginning and move to the chronological end. The most important part is the *plot*.

When the poor tell stories, they start at the chronological *end* or the part with the greatest emotional intensity. They tell the story in vignettes with audience interaction in between. It ends with a comment about the character’s values. The most important part is the *characterization*.

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that different classes have different bodies of common / assumed knowledge, and to change classes or work to interact well with a different class might necessarily involve a sacrifice of ease in ones current relationships.

“I think one of the under-recognized strengths of Lost is how the structure of the storytelling reflects what the show is about. Long before the characters started traveling through time, we were traveling through time, via flashbacks and flash-forwards. And now it seems that this season—in which the story is split between two realities—is going to be devoted to alternate realities within the two realities. Choosing a side in the coming island conflict isn’t just a matter of allying with friends against enemies. It’s also about subscribing to a worldview. It’s about picking a reality to live in.” Noel Murray

Nothing terribly new, but Patrick Deneen has some good stuff on the decline of small businesses: Finger on the Scale. The piece seems to imply (rightfully, I think) that we can’t ever escape the formative effect that the imagination and goals of society have on economic exchange. The real issue is how we can re-center that influence toward its proper aim. Not to turn all Aristotelian or anything…

This is an open question; no need to agree with Deneen one-hundred percent. But I think we’ve got to wrestle with this.

…perhaps it would not be too difficult to begin looking at systematic ways in which current policy supports concentrated economic power, and to begin its dismantling. It may also be that Government needs to be more active in enforcing anti-trust measures. The Republican orthodoxy will scream that such activity is an intrusion of “Gummint,” but it’s clear that Gummint has already intruded in this area, and is doing tremendous damage to the fabric of the nation (the Republican orthodoxy’s ecstasy in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision that ensures unlimited corporate participation in our electoral process does not inspire confidence about their motives). Perhaps some log-rolling is in order: in exchange for a serious consideration about the disproportionate impact of regulation on differently scaled businesses, a sustained look at anti-trust enforcement could be considered…. We will differ even here on how much of a role the Gummint should have in tipping the scales, but it’s quite clear that the scales have already been considerably tipped, and that American towns, citizenship, and virtue have all suffered as a result – and that finally cheap prices are too high a price to pay.

< A Story of Three Builders (Taken from "Running a Successful Construction Company," by David Gerstel, Taunton Press 2002)

Three Builders put up identical small additions. Each of them worked 125 hours at project management and carpentry. After paying for labor, materials, and subcontractors, each had $5,000 remaining, but they viewed their $5,000 very differently.
The least experienced divided his 5k by 125 hours, came up with $40/hr and concluded he had made a "good profit" on the job.
The midlevel builder looked at the $40/hr and concluded "at least I broke even." He figured that, though he had made no profit, at least he had $40/hr to show for his work on the project.
The veteran builder looked at the 5k and concluded, "I lost my butt on this one." He realized that he had lost money three ways:
#1 The $40/hr was $20 less than he would have had to pay (in wages and labor burden) to a good lead to work in his place on the job. Therefore, he had lost about $20 of the value of the labor for every hour he had worked.
#2 He had incurred $1,000 in overhead, none of which he had recovered.
#3 He had no profit to show for the job. He had taken on all the risks and responsibilities of building the addition without any compensating profit at all.
Though only the veteran builder recognized it, all three builders had lost money three ways. They had lost part of the value of their labor, their overhead costs, and a fair profit.>

The first time I read this, I got hung up on the “least experienced” builder scenario. The guy made $40/hr, what’s so bad about that? I finally figured it out and moved on. I was knee-deep in business management, and Gerstel made sense. It still makes sense, but only if you assume this “profit” idea.
Let’s do the math a different way. 5k minus 1k for overhead (cell phone, office, truck, license, etc) = 4k. I will grant Gerstel the overhead point, you need to charge for that. So, let’s add the 1k in overhead and say he charged 6k for the project. 6k minus 1k= 5k/125 = $40/hr. That covers all the expenses that the builder had, and means he took $40/hr home (before his taxes). If he made that wage 40 hrs/week for 50 weeks out of the year, he’d take 80k home for the year. Almost no matter where you live, 80k is nothing to sneer at. It is a very, very nice income.
And here’s another thing, there was a directly proportional relationship between what was done and the money that it cost the homeowner to have it done.
Let’s do the math again, Gerstel’s way. If the guy charged the $60/hr for the wages + labor burden he would have had to pay a good lead, he would be at 7.5k. Then he would need to tack on overhead, 7.5k+1k=8.5k. Then he would need to figure in his profit. Gerstel offers a range of percentages for different types of construction, but 10% is on the low end of his recommendations for the sort of work this project entails. 8.5kx1.1=9.35k.That means that this project, if the veteran had charged what he ought to have charged, he would have taken home $66.8/hr. Do the yearly math again, and you get 133,500k/year.
And the other thing; there is an indirect relationship between what was done and the money that it cost the homeowner to have it done.

The reasons for charging profit, Gerstel says, are:
1 Estimating errors
2 Project delays and disruption due to:
A Extreme weather
B Man-made and natural disasters
C Loss of key employees
D Subcontractor failure
3 Equipment failure and loss
4 Uncharged or unchargeable change order
5 Callbacks and warranty work
6 Difficult and labor-consuming clients
7 Litigation
8 Management errors
9 Recession

When I read this list, several thoughts come to mind. I am a contractor and I know the risks we take first-hand and they are real. But honestly, I just can’t get the risks to justify the profit numbers. #’s 1,5 and 8 are mistakes the builder made, not the homeowner, as is #2D. #’s 4 and 6 are risks that the contractor can either mitigate or simply charge to the client if and when they occur. #’s 2B (the first part), 2C, 2D (Whatever isn’t covered by the above mentioned 2D) and 7 are almost entirely avoidable by certain business practices. That leaves us with #’s 2A, the latter half of 2B, and 3, acts of God and broken tools. In an alternate setup, those could be charged to a customer if and when they are realized. But let’s not think about that yet.
So let’s figure those in. The guy that made 80k could lose 10% of that/year and still make 72k/year. In reality, the guy that made 133,500k/year is going to either: lose 50k of that in the risks Gerstel mentions and still clear 80k or get smart, minimize his losses, and take home 120k (after he loses 10% due to the acts of God and broken tools).
Hot Damn, I want to be a builder! Really though, how can we justify this idea of profit-beyond-wages if we can’t justify it with risks? Why am I entitled to more money than my wages? What is this idea of profit? Where did it come from and why is it built-in, assumed?
This arrangement looks a lot like an insurance policy that the homeowner is paying for. The money all goes into the builder’s pocket until something happens, then it goes to any number of other parties listed in Gerstel’s risk lineup. Let’s say it’s a given that something does happen and the builder loses all that insurance money every year. That’s 50+k every year going to something that has nothing to do with the homeowner’s addition. In this scenario the cost of doing business far exceeds the cost of building. It just seems downright wasteful.
Gerstel’s other point that I get stuck on is #1 in his story. The fact that it would have cost you $60/hr if you hired someone else (I desperately need to figure out how to do italics in this posting setup) = you should charge $60/hr for yourself, even though it does not cost $60/hr for you to do the work. YOU are doing the work, so charge what it costs YOU. Unless this whole thing is based on you not wanting to actually do the work, but to sub it out. If so, then we create a beast where the best-paid guy is the one who figures out how to get other people to do work he could do himself. That beast devalues the worth of the guy who actually does the work. Hmm, this sounds way too familiar. What’s more, in this scenario a sizable chunk (30-50%) of the $60/hr goes to parties that have nothing to do with building (insurance, taxes, workman’s comp, payroll, etc).

Someone will no doubt object to my saying that the builder pockets 70k or 120k. He won’t pocket it because he will take his wages out of that amount and then put the rest back in to the company. That sounds right, but the company is him and he is the company. Otherwise there is this entity out there that Chris described as “pathological,” it has no one’s interests in mind and does no one’s bidding. It’s just out there, making money for itself. This just isn’t the case. Companies make money for people.

So, how about this for a setup: I work for a homeowner, building him an addition. I arrange with him to build it for 10k. I came up with 10k by figuring out how long it will take me to build it at a wage that will support my family, and the materials/subs it will take to complete the project. I also arrange with the owner that he cannot take over my project, and I will charge more if he does. If acts of God slow us down, he pays for it. I also stick to my bid, if he changes anything, I charge for it. But, if I screw something up, I eat it. This means that if I’m good at what I do, I will bring more money home at the end of the job. In a scenario like this, the homeowner doesn’t pay for something he doesn’t get. If it doesn’t snow and take me longer, he doesn’t pay for it. If it does snow and I take a day longer because of it, he pays for it. This setup still gives me incentive to work hard and get better at what I do. The faster I complete the job (due to skill and hard work), the more I make per hour.
I only bring this scenario up to provide an alternative. Maybe it’s not a good one, but I’m sure there are others.The main question I have is the notion of deserving profit-beyond-wages.

This film looks fascinating. A documentary about our food system with no commentary, no talking heads, no talking at all.

Our Daily Bread

“wise man leaves an inheritance” and such. I have a few to kick it off. Help me add to the list:

Your office job.
Anything you bought from Walmart.
Your iPhone, TV, etc.

“a mission that rejects violence as a way to ground peaceful community and instead witnesses to the Lord’s life of rejection and crucifixion by living it in publicly perceivable communities derisively called Christian.”

Great First Things article.

The Sasquatch! lineup was announced today, but this is only important because it is prerequisite to the unannounced awesomeness that seems to happen every year: hail, spontaneous dance parties, and other happenstances of epically Beowulfian proportions.

Not that I’ll necessarily go, but I thought Davey would appreciate the trip down memory lane. Man, that hail hurt.