Is everyone going up the creek???

[drfrightner]

One thing to mention which someone else touched on is this... and it is a fact. At the end of Clintons run we had an economic problem, end of the first Bush, end of Carters, and well now the end of the new Bushs. It could be all fixed once the new President takes office and people settle back in.

I think a big thing that disrupted the markets was Obama talking about all these taxes raises he was going to dole out... now he's back tracking all of that which is a good thing.

Larry

[screamline studios]

When the hell did this become a what kind of car do i drive post ?????

Jason Blaszczak

[drfrightner]

I don't know I didn't ask you...

But people should buy American Cars always that is my view!

I'm so freakin happy that the Senate squashed the auto bail out... due to the union refusal to lower their wages down to the level of Japan. Larry

[screamline studios]

Are you talking some kind of bullshit to me larry???

Jason

[screamline studios]

And its good to see you changed my post heading, thanks larry good job!!!

Jason

[xxxdirk]

Hey Jason, is your site down? Tried going there but came back as I cant....

[screamline studios]

I do not have a clue what is up with the site XXX??? but i already called steve to look into it( he handles that end and much more) and to be honest its a slap in my face when we spend money on a site that is down! for what ever the reason is ????

Jason Blaszczak

[JamBam]

Economy

This has been a wide discussion, so here goes.

Larry, most of what you have written I agree with. However, the 2001 season was a disaster unlike any we have seen in all my years of haunting. (22yrs) Nearly every haunt reported being down 50% in all areas of the country. Ours was right in line with that. It took until 2003 to recover for most haunts. Your case in St Louis may have defied the trend with your haunts emerging in the market at that time. Why was 2001 down? Because the mood of the country was down and no one was interested in entertainment, they were still in shock of the attack on America. Larry, Thanks for buying American, also.

For the people that have attitudes about buying Japanese only, you need to think about your own market. Do you support the idea of your customers going to the next town for their haunt entertainment, or do you want their dollars spent at your haunt and your city? Call you local chamber of commerce and tourism office and find out their stats on this. Everyone should try to buy local (national) if they can. Now before you get in to the outdated thinking about poor quality, models, and warranty, you need to go to Consumer Reports and JD Power to find that the big three ARE making decent vehicles that are competitive with the foreign makers these days. And the fuel economy is up there as well.

The big three have been working on other models, but the market demanded big SUV's and there was big profit in it. So, do you try to down sell YOUR customers??? Toyota has a new truck just as big as the Dodge, Ford, or GM's. The MPG on the new Toyota is 2 miles per gallon less than Chevy Silverado and it costs $ 3000 more. They have an SUV just as big as the big three's. Why, because that is where the profits were.

The bridge loans the big three need are to get through until the customers can get loans again and their confidence returns back to the eceonomy. Hopefully that will start soon.

The industry was selling 17 million vehicles (all brands) per year for about the last ten years. When the banking fiasco hit, and they stopped, yes stopped, loaning money for cars and houses, virtually stopping the economy, auto sales stopped. $ 4 per gallon gas caused by speculators hurt, too. The last two months , the auto industry trend shows about 10.5 million vehicles per year outlook. What would happen to your business if it suddenly took a 40 % hit on income??

Until that happened, GM had already stockpiled about 25 billion dollars to get through 2009. That is when the effects of the new UAW contract would help their bottom line. The new contract will reduce that $ 71 per hour cost down to $ 53 per hour. The transplant (Toyota, Honda, Nissan) costs are at $ 49 per hour. So the "LAZY, FAT, OVERPAID" autoworker that makes up a lot of the middle class has already taken a hit with this last contract. The Senators from the "right to work for LESS" states put their ideals against reality with the auto company bridge loans. They didn't badger the bankers for the free money they gave them. By the way, those Senators' states worker income is about $ 100 per week less than the rest. That is money that could bring those rtw workers into the middle class, the group of people with disposable income to come to your haunt!!!!

The abrupt stopping of the market put them into a cash burning mode that has endangered the companies.

They have been under budget cutting mode for the last couple of years. I know, my income at GM was down 40 % this year. I am in maintenence and all our overtime was stopped. That saved money for now, but the maintenence is NOT getting done since weekends and offshift are the only time to work on lines. As the Fram Oil Filter commercial guy always said, "you can pay me now or pay me later" referring to changing oil or an engine. It will hurt our output over time when maintenence and preventive maintnence is ignored.

My plant builds Chevy and GMC pickups. In November and December, production worked 9.5 hours per shift (2 shifts) and two Saturdays per month building trucks. Why? One: we were building ordered trucks that would put cash into the company accounts and not add inventory to the lots. Two: our plant is the most efficient truck plant GM has. All the other plants have reduced shifts or slowed output. How effiicent is our plant? We build trucks in about 20.3 hours. Not bad for lazy UAW workers. The TOYOTA plant in the Princeon, Indiana at the other end of our state were making Tundras in 29.5 hours per truck.

Do the math. I don't agree with the $ 71 per hour but I will use that number anyway. Our plant cost is 20.3 hours times $ 71 equals $ 1441.30. Toyota Princeton cost is 29.5 hours times $ 49 hour equals $ 1445.50. Even at the higher hourly cost, we do it better at our plant.

WHAT ? The non-union Prinecton workers weren't better? You @*&#^$&*@* right they weren't! They also made nearly the same wages as well. The difference in cost per hour is in the "legacy" costs, which the big three are shedding by paying the union to take them and manage them. So much for the media induced bias on the workers, huh? The media also has put a bias in many of your minds on quality and models of vehicles.

The problem with GM, and probably Chrysler and Ford, is MANAGEMENT. GM has one manager for every two workers. In 1994 they had one to five workers. The workers have become more efficient while management has gone the other way. GM has 13 levels of management, yes 13. I have researched this. (Boni, I am sure I know the managers that have told their side of the story, and when we get together soon, I could probably shed some light as to why they left GM. And give you a different perspective on those stories you heard, because I am sure they are talking about my plant.) Toyota has one manager to sixteen workers from what I have been able to find out. The highest paid Toyota manager made $ 700,000 last year. The big three have many managers making that. The CEO's all have made multi millions of dollars for many years. Almost all of them drive company cars. Ross Perot was dead on years ago, but they paid him 800 million to go away. We need new streamlined management to get in line with how the transplants are managing their companies.

What will happen to the haunts in 2009? My opinion is it will be better than 2008. Consumer confidence in big ticket items and travel will still lag behind local events. People stuck close to home this year. That was great for us in the local haunting business. I read many items on IAAPA's daily news line this year about the big parks cutting prices and giving deals all summer long as gas was at $ 4 per gallon. They were hurt in 2008 but will rebound because gas is low and people will day trip it.

Happy New Year!!

[Greg Chrise]

I'll go away for 800 million.

[drfrightner]

The problem with the car industry is management, and part of that was letting these unions run costs up on the operation. Unions in my opinion where good when management ran all over workers and made them work for nothing while they become richer than anyone could imagine but now Unions are BAD NEWS!

Unions have run more business out of country than anything... in the 50's or 20's or whatever it wasn't an option to ship all of your manufactoring overseas to nations we where at war with or not kind to such as China, Korea, all through the asian areas. Things are different now, owners of industriest can just close shop and ship jobs elsewhere, while Unions all through the 80's and 90's balked for more money, more benefits, more more more...and we watched more and more jobs go overseas.

Too bad huh... I blame unions for this and well our whole government. On one hand you want things like free trade, but that also means shipping jobs to countries where workers make $1.00 per day. Sad really.

USA has NO textile industry anymore. If workers would accept that some jobs will simply pay $8.00 or $12.00 and thats it then we would have a textile industry. I also blame WALMART because they demand supplies deliver products so cheap companies are forced to lower costs...the biggest cost? LABOR!

When labor won't work cheaper the jobs go away.

We now import almost everything, and our nations number one employer is WALMART. See people swapped one job that had better benefits for one that doesn't working at a register at walmart.

Walmart also doesn't play fair... grocery stores around here have Unions and they strike the stores if they don't renew contracts, while walmart opens up grocery stores everywhere and not one store has the same pay scales, insurance nothing. Unions punish one group of stores and do nothing about the other.

Two sets of rules but still selling the same products...this is why one will go under and the other will thrive.

As for the AUTO industry... I know people who work there and some come in sweep a floor go home and come back 6 hours later and finish but still get paid. Workers laid off get 95% of their pay... I wonder how long it will be before every single auto industry job is moved out of this nation.

Unions better get a reality check and make things fair with the Japanees or face the reality that one day all the jobs will be gone! That is reality.

No different than one day this Earth will have no atmophere if you keep ruining it... at those auto plants they need to change everything top to bottom and the workers must agree to cut back, management must cut back, and you need to make cars that people want to buy!

Otherwise every care in this nation will be built by people outside of this country...then where will you be?

Larry

[JamBam]

Unions and cutting YOUR salary Larry

Larry,


Without collective bargaining, the workers would ALL be in the walmart way. Becoming complacent was bad on BOTH sides of the fence during the era of prosperity. If unions would go away as many SHORT sighted people advocate, everyone would be in the walmart mode, without benefits, decent pay, and DISPOSABLE income to come to your event.

Now, in 2007, the UAW agreed to entry level pay cut of 50 % with benefit cuts as well including no company paid retirement health benefit and no retirement at all for those workers.

The unions are what keep many companies paying decent wages to others. Again, the "right to work for LESS" states workers with less unions also have an average of $ 100 per week LESS income.

The competition playing field is not level. The Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act of 1973 and the Safety regulations American companies have to contend with have made America uncompetitive. Americans could work for free and still not be "competitive". If the "world" wants to trade with us the rules should be universal. You posted about vendors needing safety added to their props. You are advocating ADDITIONAL COST!!!!!

Now, let's suppose you get your wish and unions are gone. Are YOU ready for a 50 % cut in pay!!!! Without disposable income of the middle class, the workers that are left are using every penny they earn to feed, clothe, and shelter their families! No money left for haunts, 3d Golf, amusement parks, or anything you make or sell. Get ready to take orders for a living.

I don't condone the sweeper who is skipping out of work, but our company outsourced them at 1/3 the pay (without benefits) on July 1. None of your employees have ever scammed you, huh? last night I wacthed a news show that talked of the bad governors, bankers, and public officials. They showed the head of the West Virginia Supreme court in the Mediteranian on a luxury boat with a coal company CEO whose court case regarding a multi million dollar appeal, partying it up with their girlfriends. That crap happens at all levels in all companies.

The 95 % pay is a negotiated benefit instead of other pay. Also, the jobs banks that has come under fire with GM alone having 3500 people collecting pay from a closed plant was a program management wanted in the mid 80's so they could call trained workers back but the downslide has continued since then. By the way, Toyota recently was paying 4000 workers not to build vehicles, but the media never mentioned it.

If walmart succeeds in taking over more business, your taxes will continue to subsidise them through helath benefits. In many states, the workers and their families are using state underinsurance plans that cost each state millions of dollars. If America doesn't want universal health care, than they need to make companies pay for their own employees!

DON'T advocate the downward spiral of people, it will cost us all in the end. America needs the middle class to make this economy as we know it.

[Barry]

I have one question. If speculators are to blame for $4 per gallon gas, can I also blame them for $1.60 gas now? Speculators play the market both ways... LOL

[Greg Chrise]

Some how over the last 30 years steel went to Japan, the coal mining for that comes from Austrailia, supposedly the last strong holds of our economomy are what inventions are coming from Silicon valley and even those are expected to flat line due to technology limits over the next several years.

I'm sorry but the Union arguement has been way over. It is obvious when a spokesman gets on the TV and says they won't make concessions And the other 95% of te population is already working for $10 per hour. No one thinks anyone else should be more special somehow.

Companies moved South because of the Union dealings and that it is simply less expensive to air condition a factory than it is to heat one. Sorry, this all began before many of you were born. All the southern towns are 75% former Northerners and we have towns with 6 lane wide loops and no ghettos even though there is a high population of minorities. Thhe buildings are large and are not 250 years old. There is no State Income tax so, you an work far less hours because you don't have to make another $15,000 per year on a midle income simply to pay your income tax, occupation tax, higher unemployment compensation rates and so on.

Instead of looking for a job at Walmart, people open their own small sevice businesses and develop specialized skills, get equipment to charge $30 and up instead of worrying about what minimum wage is. You can live like a king on what is thought to be below the poverty level as determined by high populations and higher costs of Northern economies.

This is just one more adjustment and if you even compare how we live and get opportunities to what must be sacrificed in europe, you have no idea. The way we volunteer for years to learn about having a successful hauntedhouse is how you must approach even feeding your family as opposed to a luxury second endevour. Yes, the vehicles coming from foreign countries had so many years o totally volunteer labor and that's why they were and are a major market share in the world. They were not slaves, they built an economy and mlitary forces to protect their investments. All these other countres earned our second rate technologies and now we have to come up with new ones.

Americans brains have to be better than being able to install four rivets per minute like a robot and making sure you packed a lunch. People that do for themselves and help others to progress ar not likely to be placed in the siituation of having to take orders from anyone. Or if they do need to transitionally get a job it won't be for long before the next vision is realized.

The world still needs so many things like proper medical advancements, increased use of what is now waste and I'm not even a tree hugger but, this has become reality. Nope the poor CEOs are never going to make that much money again. Venture capitalists are going to have to spend smaller sums in so many more places instead of one big crude system. What a shame that everyone is going to have to be devoted and intellegent and actually work like everyone else.

The American way has been a little nuts. People spend thousands of dollars on having fancy living room furniture and nick nacks for a front room that they will ever use. Even the marketing of how things are sold has been catered to what little luxury do the people need to fill up their little barbie house in their pink gated community. The decisions have been what color should the tile be on the swimming pool, the automatic garage door is acting up and the guy never showed me how to operate and program the sprinkler system.

And, these swimming pools are actually back yard hippo pools, people have gotten fatter and fatter and can't even go outside unless there is a provided habitat.

I'm finding young people on the internet that have figured out the difference in lifestyles of the globe and the exchange rates. They will take the crap that is considered industrial waste in Chicago and drop it off in Africa and winter on the beaches of Australia which means their money has multiplied due to the exchange rate. If you are living in the town you grew up in, this is all a humongous mystery.

Unfortunately the new inventors can only come up with 4,000 new inventions to make getting your toilet paper fun. People are going to have to get smarter, faster with a bigger field of intrest that really benefits the world.

All that happened is the stuff created after World War 2 by that generation has been pocketed and turned into self serving pleasure by the following generations and their party is over. Big deal. Some of us never got any favor or the fat off the land or the deeds from past generations. That's who your competitors are and they have had a head start.

And now minorities who have never had anything are getting inspired to get off the front porch too. Everyone is going to have to come up with scenarios that really benefit huge numbers of people.

Haunted houses as an industry is one of those things that can. Already things are being fashioned for other countries and people are making their independent wage by going to other countries. Everyone is going to have to pick a speciality and get real good at something to become a resource that is available. And here as a community we have been talking to each other volunteering ourselves for more than a decade. Just like they do for food in Norway. So we are competitive.

Things like vendors getting behind or becomeing insolvent are just growing pains of not enough money floating around yet. Products have not evolved yet into something that is a must have as the market isn't big enough yet. There has been no quick buck and there may never be. It all has to be stable and ever developing.

If you develop a community that really has an end purpose and that purpose comes to be a reality, then things happen.

As far as the economy goes, everyone has been floating on credit for the past 20 years and the balloon payments just came up to show there is really nothing here. Still a whole lot of people got living room nicknacks of of other peoples money. Those nich nacks really aren't helping the world.

When I was a kid, my mother would try to get me to eat brussel sprouts and that's all there was to eat. It was something to gag over and my mother would tell me there were little kids in India that didn't even have that. I told her I wasn't going to eat at all then and she could put that crap in a box and mail it to India.

What happens when people stand enmass and say we aren't doing something unless they continue to get $71 is someone else will do it. That's the market. It has always been the market. Middle managers are going to totally hide the fact that the workers are anything but the best in the world until the jig is up. They did the jobs they were told to do very well. Only ow with the Internet, the whole world talks about how it could be.

[JamBam]

Wow

Barry,
Yes, the speculators abandoned their oil hopes and the price crashed, Then the economy nearly stopped and lack of demand kicked in to bring the prices down the rest of the way. We need to free ourselves of the oil dependence. If you give a drunk more booze, you still have a drunk. Solar and wind power is what we need. Warfield will describe this as hot air ( like many of these threads), but it needs to be kept seperate. lol

Greg,
Wow, I didn't realize Heavan was just on the southern edge of this great country. And many think you only need a fence on the southern Texas border. lol

[MDKing]

Brett,

Keep making those great American cars, they are all I have ever bought!
Good luck as well,
Allan