Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are undocumented workers also tallied?
If they were there would be documentation, right?
I have no idea when and how worker injuries are reported, which is why I asked.
The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
331–340 of 426 posts
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
People refer to other people who break the law by the law they broke all the time. Thieves, murders, fraudsters, etc Illegal immigrant doesn't seem especially derogatory for someone who illegally immigrated. I think it would be better to focus on the fact their felony crime rate is far below the native population than arguing over a pretty tame word used to describe them.
It's interesting to see how the language changed over time from "foreign born" to illegal immigrant depending on who was doing the immigrating: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=illegal+immigr... Look at the amount of legal immigration: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/ann... There have been plenty of people who have been in this country without appropriate paperwork historically -…
> It's interesting to see how the language changed over time from "foreign born" to illegal immigrant depending on who was doing the immigrating:
1. you seem to be implying that during periods of "white" immigration, americans were fine but the public changed their tune when it became south american/asian. However, irish/italian immigrants also received pushback. Specifically, irish were hated because they were catholic, and itlians weren't considered white back then.
2. You can also flip this around to say that as a society, we've gotten more accurate with our wording. Rather than lumping all immigrants (legal and illegal) into one bucket, we take care to point out that we're only against the illegal type of immigration. That seems like a win to me.
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#333Earlier quoted context omitted.
It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).
All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Either way its a pay drop.
> All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation
Source? Even the famously wrong[1] productivity/wage gap graph from epi.org admits that wage has at least been growing in real terms.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/produc...
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. This is how immigration has totally screwed family formation and depressed birth rates for Americans. Young couples cant afford to buy or rent a home in their own city and have to either delay marriage to live with their parents or abandon their families and lifelong friends to move somewhere with lower cost of living. All so employers can go 40 years with giving workers a raise.
I had to read these comments twice, because I had assumed the "families" were the immigrants and the "four working adults" were yuppies, both in line with my own experience. It's not immigration that has screwed over family formation - it's the housing racket itself, backed up by oppressive monetary policy that sucks real wealth into the financial industry. Making home ownership into a (guaranteed) investment combine…
It's both, at different market segments. Four yuppies (who are sometimes skilled visa-holders) sharing a higher end place, or four less well-off sharers (who are sometimes illegal migrants).
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#335Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've got a significant leak in a supply pipe, there should be a valve on the branch that will allow you to shut off just that branch rather than the whole house. You might need to shut off the whole house first while you figure out where that valve is, but you probably won't have to do ad-hoc plumbing to get most of the house back on. But yes, in general I'm always for people becoming familiar with tools and DIY…
My place has no master valves in the bathroom branch for the cold water feed. I can shut off the hot water though since that comes from an on demand unit that I installed. I have to shut off the entire condo building (14 units) to do any work in there. You can be sure that I'm going to add a master valve to that branch...
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Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#336They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. Also, does this paper take into account increased regulations? Both the time spent complying with new building codes…
>They're measuring square feet completed per employee. Houses are twice as big now as they were 50 years ago. Anyone who's every done a remodel or new construction knows that 80% of the time is spent on the last 20% of finishing work, and with twice the square feet, that's twice as much finishing work. I don't see the point you're making. Houses are twice as big, so they require twice the amount of finishing work. If…
The finishing work takes longer now because of the complexity.
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#337Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you've got a significant leak in a supply pipe, there should be a valve on the branch that will allow you to shut off just that branch rather than the whole house. You might need to shut off the whole house first while you figure out where that valve is, but you probably won't have to do ad-hoc plumbing to get most of the house back on. But yes, in general I'm always for people becoming familiar with tools and DIY…
Owned a half-dozen US houses built between 1907 and 2015 and have never actually seen such a thing. If you're lucky someone's done some work on a branch at some point and was courteous enough to install a shut-off, though usually off somewhere weird where there was already damage or whatever, not where you'd normally look for it. [EDIT] Actually, my parents' very-new house has that... but because it's all-PEX, so it'…
Hah. I hadn't realized I was taking that for granted (over multiple houses myself), and just figured they were required by code (even though it makes the chrome sink shutoffs kind of redundant). Score 1 for DIYers doing more maintainable work than professionals.
FWIW a SharkBite valve or NPT adapter into a valve would seem to be a handier thing to have around than a pure cap. For example, you can attach a valve without shutting the water off.
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
Upping the codes to require new construction to have those things, while not razing your parents' house, shows it's all about the pyramid scheme and not about actual safety. If it were about actual safety and such things are considered unsafe then unsafe houses like your parents home should be bulldozed for the good of the people.
By your logic every single house in Florida (and those along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts that are in the path of possible hurricanes) that was built prior to 2002 (the year the building codes were changed in direct response to Hurricane Andrew in 1992) needs to be razed. I'm not sure that's really politically feasible...
State Farm won’t insure any Florida residential property built earlier than 2002, and directs you to the state’s high risk pool (Citizen’s). So while bulldozers aren’t running around yet, the insurance market clearly has priced in older code structure costs.
What happens when insurers won’t insure older properties? Those without insurance will make due until a catastrophic event or sell to someone for cash, and those with a mortgage will suffer exceedingly high premiums until the mortgage is paid off and they can go without insurance (or they’re of sufficient means they can afford the premiums, currently running roughly $4k-$12k/annually).
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#339Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those glue on walls seemed to be priced at “we know how much tiling costs”. £36m2 (cheapest I could find on a site similar to Home Depot) for some composite plastic seems crazy. They have some double that price too.
Yes, they know the value and have priced accordingly. ~$800usd vs. tile+labor. Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers.
> Definitely a product that is ripe for disruption. There aren't even many manufacturers.
These two statements may be related. It’s not worth deploying capital to compete if the additional competition drives profits margins to zero. Better to deploy that capital somewhere it gets better expected returns.
This anti-competitive logic seems very widespread these days with such centralized global supply chains and consolidated retail chains.
Not a lot of room for me to deploy a small amount of capital to create a small-medium sized manufacturing facility of this stuff to chip away at 10-50% of the demand around the edges of the marginal profits. Mainly because it would be difficult to get my products into Home Depot and Lowe’s if I can’t supply their whole national chain.
And that’s assuming Home Depot and Lowe’s haven’t agreed to any exclusivity with the current manufacturers which I’d need private equity money to beat.
Re: The strange and awful path of productivity in the US construction sector
#340Wonder how much of it is related to contractors underbidding to win a contract and then saying they need more money which slows everything down. Or just throwing a bid out without really doing the due diligence required to understand what needs to be done. For example the New York tunnel project that's billions over cost and years behind. I see this every time I hire a contractor to do work on my house, every experie…
Have you considered what you're asking for is not practical? Nobody is going to attempt to pour a slab under an existing structure through a hole behind a fireplace.
I have now after ensuring that he came back the second time and he said its not practical. I would have expected him to have told me the first time as that's his area of expertise. He only said its not practical after he came back out and I asked him to confirm that he was confident there would be no issue with the existed lifted floor. That's exactly what I mean, they say yes to anything to get the job and then only after the deposit is made do they start to hedge that there is a complication. We are now not going to fill the sunken living room but are going to attempt to seal the exterior of the house, add gutters and add a french drain system. Something completely different from what he originally pitched.
If I ask a contractor how to prevent water seeping into my sunken living room and surrounding areas, and he tells me filling it with concrete is the best approach and provides a quote to do so I expect that he has taken all existing facts into consideration.