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Private equity bought America's essential services

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Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#551

Post by protonbob »

piva00 wrote: post #549
protonbob wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. They are great for immunocompromised people. Much less so for healthy people. Which is why it should have been an option and not mandatory.

Herd immunity depends on the most amount of people being vaccinated, it's a numbers game, lowered chances of contracting the disease among the vaccinated translates into dwindling chances for spread. Just look at measles, to stop spreading it to children who cannot take the vaccine due to other health issues you need almost every children that can be vaccinated to be vaccinated, otherwise the disease spreads. It's no…

A measles vaccine is actually effective at containing the spread. People with natural immunity should not have been required to get a vaccine for something they were already inoculated for and had immunity that was greater than what you could get from the vaccines

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#552

Post by jjfoooo4 »

simonsarris wrote: post #423
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government jobs, yes. Of which there are more and more every year. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USGOVT

true but be sure to see `All Employees, Government/Population` https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1WF5r

Down from 10 years ago, down quite a bit from 20 years ago

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#553

Post by Ntrails »

MisterTea wrote: post #305
yardie wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the tools we use was bought by PE last summer. When it was time to renew our support contract had tripled in price. I use it across 10 projects so our costs went from $200k to $500k. I let our account manager know this was unacceptable but even his hands were tied. Cancelled those contracts and let them know we were retooling with a competing tool and opensource to fill those gaps. The impression I got was we…

> When it was time to renew our support contract had tripled in price. Currently in PE hell myself. Company I work for was bought out few years ago when the owner cashed out. Right out of the gate it was a numbers go up game. New sales person was hired and their first order of business was - drum roll please - triple prices! Customers balked. Some walked. In addition, some employee benefits evaporated, vacation time…

PE remains a source of complete fascination for me. The game is clearly rigged to produce bad outcomes at a societal level (eg no company loaded up with debt to finance buybacks/dividends and just eps ended up in a better long term financial position) - but we're completely incapable of doing anyhting about it.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#554

Post by anon291 »

spyckie2 wrote: post #118

The irony is that PEs exist largely because of pension funds. So to sum it up (not so nicely) we are transferring value from our current standard of living to pay for retirement checks for our old folks. Pensions fund a significant part of PE and they do so because they need around a 7% return in order to look solvent. If they do not have the higher PE returns, they basically go out if cash in 10 years and everyone w…

The only person other than me that I've ever seen point this out. The reason PE exists in America is because of pension funds, including government pension funds. This deserves to be called out, because we cannot expect an entity reliant on PE in order to not go broke (the government) to properly regulate PE. The incentives are all wrong.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#555

Post by piva00 »

protonbob wrote: post #551
piva00 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Herd immunity depends on the most amount of people being vaccinated, it's a numbers game, lowered chances of contracting the disease among the vaccinated translates into dwindling chances for spread. Just look at measles, to stop spreading it to children who cannot take the vaccine due to other health issues you need almost every children that can be vaccinated to be vaccinated, otherwise the disease spreads. It's no…

A measles vaccine is actually effective at containing the spread. People with natural immunity should not have been required to get a vaccine for something they were already inoculated for and had immunity that was greater than what you could get from the vaccines

There was no way to trust someone saying "I have natural immunity, I had COVID" when the crisis was happening, even more given how it was used politically to fan the flames for political gain.

Stop thinking about individuals, think about systems, and societies.

Given that people were refusing basic instructions (keeping distance, for example); that people dying of COVID in a hospital didn't believe the disease was real due to political influences; how do you think governments and their healthcare systems would be able to track if someone had natural immunity or not? There's no way, the only answer is: vaccinate as many people as possible to cover for uncertainties.

Again, it's a numbers game, in a fast moving crisis there's no opening for individualised actions, you are part of a larger whole and the larger whole required for people to get vaccinate to stamp off the crisis.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#556

Post by FireBeyond »

The fire apparatus examples are no exaggeration, either.

2017 my city bought a Pierce ladder truck for $1.1M. The same-specced model that we ordered at the start of 2025 was $2M.

Our ambulance costs have gone from $250K to $250K. Engines from $400K to $800K.

And everything takes years - we're having to order multiple years ahead of time. Even a "simple" brush truck we waited for 30 months for delivery (and that's counting day 1 being "the day the Ford chassis was delivered to the factory for the brush truck build").

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#557

Post by FireBeyond »

throwforfeds wrote: post #388
iboisvert wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bloated pensions I find this characterization offensive. Who is to judge if the defined benefit pension if a primary school teacher or fireman, for example, is bloated? It's part of the negotiated pay package, nothing more or less.

At least here in NYC, a large part of a NYPD officer's pension is calculated based on a 3-year look back from their retirement date, so there is a huge incentive to work as much overtime as possible in order to bump that number in your last few years of service. There are lots of stories of NYPD handing out easy overtime in massive numbers for each other, particularly when they are about to retire. Teachers are the e…

> We certainly can be mad at NYPD scamming the system to get $100-200k/year for life.

A Phoenix police sergeant who was recently in the news for other reasons was listed as having a total salary in 2025 of $430,000.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#558

Post by Laurel1234 »

NooneAtAll3 wrote: post #363
Balgair wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Carrhae For the curious, above is how Crassus died. TLDR: Got over his skis and mad with power and money. Decides to invade Parthia. Gets wrecked by horse archers. That ends up being typical for Romans, but this was the first-ish time that happened. Some of those captured legionaries may have ended up in China, though it is unlikely. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liqian#Lost_Ro…

so instead of simply financing military operation and staying home, he went in himself? in some sense I even respect that decision

The point was to win military glory since he resented being outdone in that respect by his fellow triumvirs.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#559

Post by FireBeyond »

cyberax wrote: post #396
alexpotato wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By year 3 they start the squeeze, layoffs, asset selloffs (stripping), and lowering quality, raising prices. That is where the real teeth of wolf are shown. To play devil's advocate: Doesn't this also open the market to new entrants? e.g. young person looking to start a HVAC company in the old days couldn't compete with the established firm that already had contracts and the local market wasn't big enough for two p…

A lot of markets can't support more than a couple of competitors. And in many cases, you can't easily open a new company because of upfront expenses. E.g.: an emergency room.

> And in many cases, you can't easily open a new company because of upfront expenses. E.g.: an emergency room.

Let me introduce you to the Certificate of Need.

If you want to open a new hospital or facility like this in a town, you need a Certificate of Need from the Department of Health in your state. This ostensibly shows that there is a need for your facility because it is underserved. In actuality, it asks your competitors to say whether they'd reduce services or close beds if you opened your facility. While there is some community research etc., a lot of it comes down to "do your competitors think they can stay profitable enough if you open up shop?", and if they don't, no CoN for you.

Re: Private equity bought America's essential services

#560

Post by pizzafeelsright »

AuthAuth wrote: post #526
pizzafeelsright wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're 55, making $400k a year as a HVAC Repair Company, and while you love the business and your kids are in expensive colleges (not taking over the business) you are offered $8MM to sell. Instant retirement. A buy out isn't the same as selling out because people live off of cash and not principal.

It should be illegal to sell your business. You grow it and when you die its goes with you. You can sell off the assets if there are any.

What is business? Assets? Relationships? Contracts? Market share?

The entire stock market is selling floating points of imaginary numbers.

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