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Boeing workers vote to strike

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#521

Post by myrandomcomment »

GuB-42 wrote: post #413
myrandomcomment wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you travelling first class? If you are not, then you are probably not making the right comparison. Supersonic travel will absolutely not be for those who are flying economy right now and complaining about reclining, legroom, and crying babies. The kind of things that make flights feel very long, and yet, that's how most people fly despite much superior alternatives, because it is cheaper. Judging by how much it c…

In this case, yes, upgraded with miles to first. I have made this fight ~500 times over the last 15 years, in coach, premium, business and first. While first is nice, the hours back are still worth more.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#522

Post by WalterBright »

bonzini wrote: post #517
WalterBright wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk has had 3 huge successes - Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX. Having one such success might be luck. But when it's 3 times, dismissing it as luck is not very credible. The same goes for Steve Jobs. 3 enormous successes. And Bill Gates: 1. dominate 8 bit microcomputer software 2. pivot to 16 bit DOS. 3. pivot to 32 bit Windows. 4. pivot to internet. If you don't think that was a big deal, none of the other microcomputer soft…

Pivoting to internet didn't work great for Bill Gates. Nobody really used MSN other than for chat and possibly hotmail, the browser wars were lost, and the bulk of the revenue was done on Windows at the time Nardella took the helm. However Microsoft was big enough to afford a failure.

Microsoft pivoted to the internet very successfully in the 90s under Gates, and the stock went up like a rocket.

Nadella didn't arrive until a full 10 years later.

I appreciate the value Nadella brought to the company (as I own some MSFT), but have pivoted away from Windows to Linux for development work. I remain with Windows 7 for other uses, so much so I bought a complete set of spare parts for my Win7 box for when it inevitably fails.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#523

Post by GuB-42 »

myrandomcomment wrote: post #521
GuB-42 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you travelling first class? If you are not, then you are probably not making the right comparison. Supersonic travel will absolutely not be for those who are flying economy right now and complaining about reclining, legroom, and crying babies. The kind of things that make flights feel very long, and yet, that's how most people fly despite much superior alternatives, because it is cheaper. Judging by how much it c…

In this case, yes, upgraded with miles to first. I have made this fight ~500 times over the last 15 years, in coach, premium, business and first. While first is nice, the hours back are still worth more.

Good point then.

I have always traveled coach, and should I fly first class, I would definitely want my flight to last as long as possible, for the experience, but I guess the novelty wears out.

But 500 flights is crazy, one flight every 10 days for 15 years... I certainly understand why you would want to fly supersonic. But now I am curious... why would someone fly that much with the remote communication abilities we have now? I heard that in order to do business in Japan, it is important to be there, so I guess that if you want to come back home sometimes, it is hard to avoid, but still, that's a lot of time flying.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#524

Post by refurb »

thrance wrote: post #403
refurb wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Stock buybacks used to be illegal in the States up until 1982. You can thank Raegan for that too This is not true, but seems to come up a lot. I guess it makes for one of those fun "internet facts" that people like to repeat without any investigation. Bonus points for blaming Reagan. Stock buybacks were not illegal before 1982. If you sit down even think through it, it doesn't even make sense they were illegal. Jus…

I mean, from what I can read online, it seemed the practice was generally regarded as market manipulation prior to 1982 and so was de facto illegal. So yeah, thanks Reagan indeed. There are good reasons to blame him for his part in the current state of affairs.

Not sure what you’re reading online, but it’s not correct.

Stock buybacks were legal and happened before 1982.

The “thanks Reagan indeed” is just your own internal biases. The President didn’t draft the law and the Democratic Congress passed it.

So quite odd to blame a single person.

It should be a warning against believing things on the internet because they conform to your biases. Check your sources.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#525

Post by salawat »

jmyeet wrote: post #133
toomuchtodo wrote: post #2

Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks between 2013 and 2019 while paying their CEO ~$30M/year. > To support its share price, the company under McNerney poured billions into stock buybacks instead of investing profits into the kind of research and development needed to stay competitive. McNerney decided not to spend billions of dollars building a new plane to replace the 737. Instead, Boeing tweaked and updated the exis…

> Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks I am very sympathetic to this line of criticism but I also find that "stock buybacks" are misunderstood and, as a result, overly demonized. So I just want to explain a few things for anyone who reads this. The question with a corporation is what to do with surplus profits. The first iteration of this was to pay dividends. These legally are paid equally among shareholders. If you…

>Enter share buybacks. This is where the company buys back its own stock on the open market. This reduces supply and hopefully raises the price for remaining shareholders.

Which if stocks come with voting rights means shedding influence of shareholders. You can't say that a buyback is equivalently classed to a dividend (by being a transfer of money to exiting shareholders), if you don't account for the second and higher order effects.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#526

Post by jmyeet »

salawat wrote: post #525
jmyeet wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Boeing spent $43B on stock buybacks I am very sympathetic to this line of criticism but I also find that "stock buybacks" are misunderstood and, as a result, overly demonized. So I just want to explain a few things for anyone who reads this. The question with a corporation is what to do with surplus profits. The first iteration of this was to pay dividends. These legally are paid equally among shareholders. If you…

>Enter share buybacks. This is where the company buys back its own stock on the open market. This reduces supply and hopefully raises the price for remaining shareholders. Which if stocks come with voting rights means shedding influence of shareholders. You can't say that a buyback is equivalently classed to a dividend (by being a transfer of money to exiting shareholders), if you don't account for the second and hig…

Doesn't it also increase the influence of existing shareholders? People have to decide to sell. It's really no different (to them) that they sell on the open market or to the company.

I'm not defending share buybacks, for the record. They're only one piece of the puzzle however. The real issue is what companies should do with profits and that includes share buybacks and dividends. You can't really be against share buybacks without being against dividends. And tit's fine to be against both. Being against one but not the other is kinda silly though.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#527

Post by triceratops »

lordfrito wrote: post #458
triceratops wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rich people borrow against appreciated assets. They don't sell and incur capital gains tax. That's why company leadership loves buybacks. Ordinary people have to sell assets to take advantage of appreciation. So unless they can time sales to optimize taxes - really only an option for retirees - they might as well get regular dividends.

> Ordinary people have to sell assets to take advantage of appreciation Not entirely true.. Ordinary people can take advantage of appreciation of their home value via a standard home equity loan.

No one's talking about houses here. I thought that was obvious.

Also rich people get way, way lower interest rates borrowing against their assets than us poors do on HELOCs.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#528

Post by HeavyStorm »

Am I the only one seeing a bit of naivette from the union? While I've been observing the whole Boeing debacle I don't know their financials, but I can only assume they are bad. Couldn't such a large strike take the company to the brink?

I know during turmoil you can usually negotiate better terms, but...

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#529

Post by deanishe »

asdf333 wrote: post #512
benced wrote: post #445

A lot of people here seem justifiably angry at Boeing management's total destruction of an engineering corporate culture. It's unclear to me if fixing that is what the machinists are demanding or if they just want normal union things like being paid more and working less. No hate if they are optimizing for that, unions don't exist to serve corporate culture. Just want to be clear-eyed about what the union is seeking…

unions are bad for our economy. they are monopolies in themselves

Ah yes, the economy.

Sod people. Won't somebody think of the LLCs!!!

The sheer impudence of workers demanding money for their work and whining about rent.

There are shareholders over here who don't even have a megayacht to sit around on all day.

Re: Boeing workers vote to strike

#530

Post by AndrewKemendo »

asats wrote: post #491
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they do. I’m employee #3 so…you know Probably not exactly what you expected

>Probably not exactly what you expected No, because calling for a communist revolution from your position is a suicide wish then, any entrepreneurs or owners of pretty much anything were considered a class enemy and you being in a leadership positions of any kind is a guaranteed ticket to a gulag.

Why is it so hard to imagine worlds other than the ones that you currently live in? as though there’s no possible way to resolve this concept, ergo something like syndicalist anarchism *gasp* who would’ve ever thought something so well understood long described could be implemented someplace imagine that. *faints*

As they say, it’s easier for most people to picture the end of the world than the end of capitalism

Maybe do more drugs or something

Read about Mondragon etc… and explore the idea of living completely differently

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