Boeing workers vote to strike • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#501

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:00 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #483

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the dollar cost is real attrition too. Vietnam and Afghanistan were so wildly costly because we made the (political) choice to limit how we could engage the enemy, while our enemies were not limiting themselves Vietnam: limiting Cambodia ops, the DMZ, limiting bombing of N Vietnam Afghanistan: limiting Pakistan ops, focusing on creating a stable democracy rather than killing Taliban then leaving We made…

>then blamed the military for those poor choices. Also the military. A war effort involves the entire country: The entire economy beyond just the military industrial complex, all branches of politics, and the military including both officers and rank-and-file soldiers.

Look I agree with your war effort comment. That simply isn't what the GP is saying though, so my comments are addressing something else entirely.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#502

Post by wesselbindt » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:06 PM UTC

squigz wrote: post #433

danielodievich wrote: post #397

During national neighbor night out few weeks ago I met a couple who just moved to the neighborhood, wife is a doctor and husband is a Boeing engineer in the material science something rather. Me being a huge Boeing fan we've immediately connected on the topic of Boeing's issues. His view from inside echoed mine - too many MBAs, too much focus on financial engineering and stock buybacks and shareholder returns (he was…

Why would bailing out Boeing be a good idea?

That's just how the free market works wink wink nudge nudge

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#503

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:10 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #481

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm with you 100% on point #2. Disagree on point #1. We occupied Afghanistan for 20 years. We operated with nearly absolute impunity in all population centers, through all trade routes, and all agricultural areas. Our casualties were a minuscule amount our total forces. Our culture completely transformed theirs (in a way that old school hardliners lament publicly). We killed a huge number of Taliban (and foreign figh…

>Can you tell articulate what the political goal of the war was? The goal was to eradicate the Taliban, remove terroristic sentiments, rebuild Afghanistan, bring the country to 21st century democratic standards, and prevent future 9/11s. Did we achieve it? Hell no. Verdict: We lost. Over 20 years of bloodshed and misery on both sides for fucking nothing. We failed on every single fucking count. Every. Single. Count.

The discussion was more about if the military fumbled Afghanistan or if it was a political failure.

You haven't shown a military failure.

I also disagree with that list of objectives and their current status. Let's go through 1 by 1:

+Eradicate Taliban. Complete. This is a new gen of fighters and the movement shares very little outside the name. Nearly all the Taliban from 2001 are dead of violent causes.

+Remove terroristic sentiments. Not a goal, but also has Afghanistan committed many terror acts in the last 15 years? Current status is trending green.

+Rebuild Afghanistan. Not an original goal (ie in Oct-2001). Also not a DoD goal, this was a State Dept goal after the military victory was secured. Also I'd argue that Afghanistan today has better infra than it did in Aug-2001, so this is complete.

+Democratic standards. Not an original goal. Also not a DoD goal, this was a State Dept goal after the military victory was secured. Not met.

+Prevent future 9/11s. Current status is trending green.

So we met all but 1 goal. That's not bad as wars go.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#504

Post by squigz » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:11 PM UTC

danielodievich wrote: post #473

squigz wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would bailing out Boeing be a good idea?

Um, they are one half of duopoly of widebody aircraft makers, they are a huge portion of high technology export from USA, they are in every state (for better or worse), they are a defense provider of insane importance with planes, rockets and satellites. Yeah, they're strategically essential to this country's abilities in airspace. I have no doubt they'd get bailed out. With a huge stink but they will.

These might be why they likely will be bailed out, but I'm not sure those are good reasons.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#505

Post by Dalewyn » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:20 PM UTC

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #503

Dalewyn wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you tell articulate what the political goal of the war was? The goal was to eradicate the Taliban, remove terroristic sentiments, rebuild Afghanistan, bring the country to 21st century democratic standards, and prevent future 9/11s. Did we achieve it? Hell no. Verdict: We lost. Over 20 years of bloodshed and misery on both sides for fucking nothing. We failed on every single fucking count. Every. Single. Count.

The discussion was more about if the military fumbled Afghanistan or if it was a political failure. You haven't shown a military failure. I also disagree with that list of objectives and their current status. Let's go through 1 by 1: +Eradicate Taliban. Complete. This is a new gen of fighters and the movement shares very little outside the name. Nearly all the Taliban from 2001 are dead of violent causes. +Remove ter…

>The discussion was more about if the military fumbled Afghanistan or if it was a political failure.

While I started off with the former, overall it is both.

>You haven't shown a military failure.

It has been demonstrated by Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and others that the best way to defeat America is to engage in low tech guerilla warfare. We have lost every single one of them.

Even more embarrasing is that the Houthi are demonstrating that the age old adage of "Don't touch America's ships!" also isn't true anymore. Our Navy hasn't adequately responded to some deranged goat herders lobbing missiles into one of the world's biggest sea lanes.

>Eradicate Taliban. Complete.

Are you drunk? The Taliban is literally back in power ruling over Afghanistan with an iron fist.

>Remove terroristic sentiments. Not a goal,

Lest we forget, we waged "The War On Terror".

>Rebuild Afghanistan. Not an original goal

You can not remove hate until the people thereof can live comfortable lives, which is still not the case.

>Democratic standards. Not an original goal.

See above.

>Prevent future 9/11s. Current status is trending green.

I've lost count on the acts of terror we've seen across the west, America and otherwise.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#506

Post by MereInterest » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:20 PM UTC

bombcar wrote: post #315

MereInterest wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren’t they taxed differently, though? To my knowledge, dividends are taxed as ordinary income, whereas sales following a stock buyback may be taxed as capital gains (if they were held long enough before that point).

The real problem with dividends is they're taxed at the corporate level (corporate income tax) and then taxed when distributed to the shareholders (the shareholders pay income tax on the dividend). Eliminating the double taxation of dividends would likely solve most of the buyback problems.

That sounds like a non sequitur. The same would be true of money spent on stock buybacks.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#507

Post by holoduke » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:26 PM UTC

smallnamespace wrote: post #313

mricordeau wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but Toulouse is way cheaper than any Tier 1 city in the US and you have to include insurance/health, school cost in the US (I'm from Toulouse and living in the US for more than 10 years). If you make 250k/year in Tier 1 city in the US it's probably as good as making 80k/year in Toulouse.

But if I save money in the US I can decide to spend it anywhere else in the world later, including places that are much cheaper than Toulouse. If I make money in Toulouse then I had better really love Europe, since I will have limited resources to relocate elsewhere if I ever change my mind. Tl;dr one advantage of getting paid in money over services is that money is much more portable.

You can buy houses outside of Toulouse for 300k with swimmingpool and 4000 square meter land. 20 min drive from Airbus. Winter time you can ski in the mountains, summers are nice and cities like Barcelona can be reached in 4,5 hours. 80k is more than enough to have a super comfortable life.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#508

Post by fransje26 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:30 PM UTC

myrandomcomment wrote: post #386

GuB-42 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Boom is not any aerospace company, they want to make supersonic planes. Supersonic travel is expensive and environmentally unfriendly, and it will probably always be, because it requires more energy, because physics. All that for the minor advantage of saving a couple of hours on select flights. What it means is that it is a privilege for the wealthy (because it is expensive for what you get), at the expense of…

As I am currently sitting on a flight from Tokyo to SFO I would greatly appreciate the flight taking half the time. Boom should be as efficient current aircraft. They will operate at 60K feet where the drag is much less and fly for less time. Their engines are being designed to run on 80% biofuels. But let's see how it turns out in the end.

> Boom should be as efficient [as] current aircraft.

Don't know where this so-called efficiency should come from, but this is a statement that doesn't seem to be based in reality.

Except for the techno-bro startup take that the incumbents are so imbued with themselves that they dropped the ball, which rational explanations are put forward to explain how the current manufacturers are doing a bad job?

To fly at Mach 2 (or 1.8 as boom now seems to be targeting once they realised the difficulty of the task ahead) you still have immutable laws of physics you need to overcome, and that's going to cost an unreasonable amount of fuel.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#509

Post by misiek08 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:32 PM UTC

infamouscow wrote: post #461

jandrese wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand I can't blame any engineer that wants to flee, but on the other Boeing really can't afford any more brain drain. We are already seeing the results of years of forcing experienced but well paid engineers out and outsourcing their jobs. Planes literally falling out of the sky, but some nice fat executive bonuses.

There is literally nothing actually preventing Boeing from: 1. Firing 100% of management between CEO and lowest level supervisors that make things happen. All of middle management should go. 2. Promote supervisors into middle management. 3. Promote ground level employees into supervisor roles. 4. When human problems happen (and they will), spare no expense with resources and training. Remember, the reason for firing…

3. Never do this! Good engineer should get paid better over time and do good engineering. Being for a long time in a role doesn’t make you better at different ones like supervising from engineering. Few bigger companies in EU wasted a lot of tech talents this way and people most often leave job after being leaders for a moment.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#510

Post by ahmeneeroe-v2 » Fri, Sep 13, 2024, 9:36 PM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #505

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The discussion was more about if the military fumbled Afghanistan or if it was a political failure. You haven't shown a military failure. I also disagree with that list of objectives and their current status. Let's go through 1 by 1: +Eradicate Taliban. Complete. This is a new gen of fighters and the movement shares very little outside the name. Nearly all the Taliban from 2001 are dead of violent causes. +Remove ter…

>The discussion was more about if the military fumbled Afghanistan or if it was a political failure. While I started off with the former, overall it is both. >You haven't shown a military failure. It has been demonstrated by Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and others that the best way to defeat America is to engage in low tech guerilla warfare. We have lost every single one of them. Even more embarrasing is that the Houth…

You've moved the goal posts of this discussion. We've been talking about military success or failure.

Democracy (and "comfortable lives") was not a military objective. The military provided security for the State Dept and NGOs to pursue those goals.

Since 9/11, Afghanistan has not prosecuted any terrorist acts on the West in my recent memory.

The Taliban of 2001 was largely killed off. Yes, there are people in charge of Afghanistan today who call themselves Taliban, have some limited pre-9/11 leadership, but are largely a completely different set of people than existed back then and this occurred because of military action, not old age.