stimulus money

Does anyone think more of the stimulus money coming will affect machine shops and manufacturing?

What "stimuls money" are you talking about ?
Don't hold your breath.

SM

You talking about all that money they're stealing from us to give to the rich people?

Why can't the feds take a pay cut to make ends meet?

Define "affect", please. If you mean will it raise taxes, of course it will. Raising taxes takes private money out of circulation and parks it places that does our customers, and us, no good whatsoever. So prepare to be "affected".......Joe

I haven't heard much about defense spending, but if they increase that it might help.
I believe there is a lot of equipment that needs repaired or replaced due to the constant state of war that we've been in for the past several years. Still, if you don't have the contacts, you won't see the work.

Other than that, I don't see much money flowing into manufacturing. Building roads and bridges isn't going to make many machine shops busy.

If you are manufacturing 3 piece suits or golf balls it should help.
Confidence is at all time lows. If they want to turn that around we need to start seeing Suits going to jail, starting with congress!
Our economy is backing off and shutting down more everyday and none of them have a clue what to do about it.

I think the last guy out of congress locking the door would still not "get it"....too far gone at this point.....

Ever notice when they start cutting 'stuff' the make sure it hits Joe Schmo taxpayer where it hurts most?

NYS gov Patterson wants to put an "obesity tax" on non-diet soda. And they raised all the DMV fees...who knows how much. And state park admission fees, hunting/fishing licence fees, etc.

Of course, someone found out they still have the money to buy a $25K oriental rug (10ft square) for the gov.'s mansion entrance way....
A friend works in IT networking services at the county level. His stories of wasted money are sickening.....

Anybody working with a company doing renewable energy type projects? That might be a place where some stimulus money is encountered?

You might want to check your math.............

I believe that is 3,950 per person...............

The "stimulus" package isnt law yet, but the proposal I have seen most recently is-
$825 Billion.

Right off the top, $275 Billion of it is tax cuts, not spending, which takes us down to $550 Billion.
Of that, a big chunk is going straight to the 50 states, to help em pay for unfunded mandates like Medicaid, Schools, and Health care.

The actual amounts for infrastructure are really not that big-
Around $9 Billion for Transit (thats one month of the war in Iraq)
$30 or so Billion for Highways, and another $30 Billion for government buildings.

No actual spending, so far, on renewable energy- instead, tax credits to companies that spend money on it.

Compared to the Trillion or so we have given to the Banks and Wall Street, the $50 Billion that all the infrastructure adds up to is not a huge amount, and probably wont filter down much to machine shops- it will mostly go to ordinary construction work- concrete, electrical, road grading, and so on.
Caterpillar, Deere, and other equipment manufacturers should sell a few more units, and if you fix cement plants, you will probably be working more.

ME thinks the UK must do math differently thatn the US.
Don't you have 3 extra zero's on the end of all your figures? Last I checked a billion was 1,000,000,000 which would then drop you answer to a more reasonable 3,950 pounds per person rather than the millions you talk about.

Maybe your abacus got dropped...

I used my slide rule, and I'm forced to run the decimals in my head.

Stu

Ries said:

.........

Right off the top, $275 Billion of it is tax cuts, not spending, which takes us down to $550 Billion..........

Click to expand...

Ries,

These so called tax cuts, are they to people who don't pay taxes?

If so, sounds like spending to me. Is this a payback to Acorn, or who?

I don't expect a dime in tax cuts with a trillion in new spending each year.

Kap

You can bet it won't be tax cuts for those who DO pay taxes. That would be counter -productive. One RAISES taxes on those who pay them in order to CUT taxes on those who don't. We used to call it welfare, but that's so YESTERDAY, and the new America believes in CHANGE! ....Joe

Joe D Grinder said:

You can bet it won't be tax cuts for those who DO pay taxes. That would be counter -productive. One RAISES taxes on those who pay them in order to CUT taxes on those who don't. We used to call it welfare, but that's so YESTERDAY, and the new America believes in CHANGE! ....Joe

Click to expand...

Hit the nail on the head right there.

Well, you guys can keep telling yourselves what you want to hear- or you could read what the actual PROPOSED tax cuts are.
(obviously, until the law is signed, anything could change)

http://www.cnbc.com/id/28799476

It says, pretty clearly, $1000 off the taxes of ANY, and EVERY family that has an income of less than $75,000.

Maybe you guys are all WAAY above that level, so you wont see tax cuts. Me, I will.

and $2500 deduction on college expenses. I got a kid in college, that will affect me.

then, it also says, a continuing $250,000 a year section 170 deduction for businesses buying equipment.
While I dont buy any quarter million a year, I have used the section 170 writeoff to deduct equipment plenty in the past, instead of depreciating over 15 or 20 years.

I kinda doubt a lot of "Acorn" people, whoever the heck you think they are, are buying new CNC mills, and need to deduct em, but hey, whatever conspiracy theories you want to believe in, its okay with me.

I just know that, as proposed, the tax cuts will make a real cut in my taxes, by a significant amount of money. And I DO pay taxes, income, real estate, SS, Medicare, along with state Business and Occupation, and state and federal employer taxes on my employees- I aint no Cadillac driving welfare queen..

As for the actual impact of the stimulus- personally, I would like to see a WHOLE LOT MORE spent on infrastructure than a measly $30 to $50 Billion. We could spend that much in any one state, and still not make much of a dent in the failing infrastructure out there.

Studies show that for every dollar spent on infrastructure by the feds, over a buck and a half of spending occurs, while for every buck spent on tax cuts, a big .30 to 1.00 hits the country, depending on the tax cut.
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20081022/

I am the first to admit, I am biased- I often get work on federally funded infrastructure projects.

When I got my big $500 Bush stimulus check this summer, it did diddly squat for me, or my community.

When I get a job on a public project, I pay my employees, I pay a load of local taxes, I buy materials from Skagit River Steel and Alaskan Copper and Brass, I pay my electropolisher, Railmakers, in Everett WA, I buy hardware from my hometown boys, Hardware Sales, I hire my local crane guy, and then, with the little bit I keep, I buy locally made bread, cheese, beer, milk, eggs, veggies, locally grown meat, and I go see a local band.

All that money gets spent again and again in my community.

Yeah, I know, Ries, we have all that disintegrating and failing public artwork in our infrastructure that is pleading for federal dollars.

Kinda gives me the creeps that the government is claiming it's broke, but still hands out millions of dollars for decorating buildings that are supposed to be functional. Another example of government being able to afford a lot more than the taxpayers can.

Whether we pay taxes on 75k or not is not the point. The point is that a lot of our CUSTOMERS and their customers pay taxes on more than 75K. Since your customer is frequently the government and the government spends money if they have it and if they don't have it, I can see where you would feel this way. A legitimate outlook, from your point of view, would be for the government to have, and spend, ALL the money.

Just what percentage of all the money for government buildings is required to be spent on artwork these days? Seems like it used to be 10%, but maybe I'm wrong on that. I know you do good work with truly artfull designs, but I wonder how many people would consider it a good value to the taxpayers, most of whom will never see it. I'd smile a lot wider seeing the government employees driving s-10's and and working in metal buildings like the rest of us do. I know we are supposed to take pride in "our" government's beautiful. infrastructure, but they have made it pretty clear that it is not "ours" any more....Joe

Public art is a whole nother argument, and one I am well versed in...

The facts are, its either 1%, or 1/2%, depending on the law- but in many cases, there is no requirement for "art" and it is entirely a voluntary decision to spend some money, many times as little as .01 %.

And public art budgets are always figured before change orders. I worked on one project where the general contractor managed to bill for an additional $1 Billion in Change Orders- and, of course, the art budget did NOT get adjusted upwards to reflect 1% of that.

The other thing is, very rarely do I get hired to make a "sculpture". Occassionally, but in the majority of my jobs, what I am doing is high end ornamental ironwork, signage, lighting, and so on.
This is stuff that must be put in the building anyway- every stair must have a railing, fences are still needed, signs and lighting will be bought anyway.

As an "artist", I will stand behind my ability to deliver, to a government building, a higher quality, better looking, railing or fence, usually CHEAPER than the standard subs do it.

So I sure dont feel a whole lot of guilt for taking taxpayer dollars. I have seen the stuff they normally get, and what they pay for it, and how bad most of it is built because nobody cares about it. When I build a gate for a Youth Center, or a bench for a library, or a fence for a light rail station, I know they would spend around the same amount they pay me, and get a quick and dirty alternative, usually with unground welds, crummy paint, and no design or craftsmanship to speak of.

When you think of the government buildings that we feel proud of, they are the ones where they spent the money when building them to hire real craftspeople to make quality doors, windows, floors, trim, and so on.
The ones that are built with the maximum desire to save taxpayer dollars, at the absolute cheapest cost, are the ones that fall apart, get torn down in a few years, and require, again and again, costly rebuilds.

In my government work, (which is far from all I do- I just finished a job yesterday for a private developer, and I do the same quality work, at the same prices, for private clients)
I feel proud that I am making the parts that make people love a building, and that will outlast most other parts of the building. Public buildings get use levels that are unbelievable, and when ordinary, "commercial grade" benches, or fence, or lighting, is specced, lifespans are amazingly short. I have things I have done that are ten years old, still look new, and have seen the contractor built stuff around them replaced twice in that span.

Don't argue with Joe, Ries....remember, the 'arts' (dancing, sculpture, etc) are just useless endeavours anyways, don't produce anything, and the people who are artists (dancers, performers, etc) are just wasting their lives anyways.....they should be doing something 'productive'....right, Joe?

Ries hit on one of my pet peeves that's prevalent in all types of construction work. Namely, railings fabricated from straight sections of pipe and weld fittings, glommed together in a condition of half-assed fit, welded by someone who appears to have taken up the trade about an hour ago, and glopped with paint on poorly prepped surfaces.

The city built a couple parking decks here during the last half of the 80's. All the handrails were done with stainless tubing. The returns and other bends were formed on tube benders to pleasing radii instead of the pipefitting standard radius of 1.5x tube dia to centerline. Minimum welds, all tigged and properly finished.

There was a surprising amount of public displeasure over this "waste of money", even to the point of letters to the editor of the local paper. Same song and dance every time... public structures don't need all this fancy crap when plain old pipe railings woulda done the job just as well.

Today, those rails all look just like they did 20 years ago, and they'll likely look the same throughout the useful life of the decks. Zero maintenance. No rust stains running down the walls or ramps. No full time crew of city workers chipping and painting. By my guess, the city has likely saved not only the incremental additional cost of the SS rails, but the entire cost of the rails, in saved maintenance costs alone.

OTOH, a block away from one of those decks, there's a new federal office building whose exterior "artwork" looks like a reject from the museum of metalworking nightmares. Building cost about $20 million, with a 1% budget for exterior art. The provider of the winning proposal must've had some damn fine political connections, because his artistic ability and practicality were both somewhere between slim and none.

For $185,000 the taxpayers got a big slab of steel plate, something on the order of 6" thick, standing vertically about 20ft high, with a sort of random series of peaks and valleys burned from the profile. Somewhat reminiscent of flames on the paint of a motorcycle or hot rot, if said flames had been drawn by a 2 yr old first experiencing the wonders of a magic marker.

In the 12 years or so since the builidng was completed, taxpayers have likely spent another $100K in labor and supplies for regular scrubbing of the sidewalks in the area as every rainfall spreads more rust stains up to 100 ft away from the eyesore. The plate was supposed to have been Cor-ten, but seems it wasn't. If it had been, it could've just stood there and looked ugly within its own space. Instead, it spreads its ugliness over the surrounding area according to natural flow of rainwater on a continuous basis.

At the time this thing was birthed, A36 plate was going in the neighborhood of 20 cents/pound. The 8' x 20' plate weighed about 40K prior to the burning work, so it cost about $8K. Figure a day's time and supplies on a big burning table at another $2K max, and a generous allowance of another $10K for transportation and on-site erection. All the prep work was handled by the GC outside the art budget. We furnished the crane and riggers to unload it and stand it in place for about $3K, so the $10K is a generous estimate of costs since the job was done when the beast was vertical. All told, $20K to $25K in direct costs, sold to the public for $185K. I've always suspected the "artist" likely was a graduate of the Haliburton School of Art and Imaginative Billing, because his true talent is surely in the realm of major profit for minimum effort. At the time, the use of Cor-ten would've added 50%. or another $4K, to material costs. Past that, it would've had no effect on other costs. But, when you're only grossing $160K on a $185K job, you surely can't afford to provide the material you agreed to if its gonna cut another $4K out of your gross.

Recently, when scrap prices were thru the roof, one local citizen wrote to the newspaper with a suggestion that if the police happened to see a crew of meth-heads or other scrap thieves torching this thing into movable chunks in the middle of night, they proceed to the nearest eatery and gorge on donuts for the next few hours.

While I am not a huge fan of the sculpture you are talking about, which is called Passages, by the New York artist Albert Paley, your price estimates are a long way from reality. A lot more steel went into it, a lot more expenses you arent accounting for- for instance, any project like that must be engineered, and the engineering comes out of the art budget, along with all those pesky overhead items like taxes, labor, utilities, rent, equipment maintenence, insurance, and on and on.
Paley runs his own shop, usually a crew of ten or more, and does fabrication in house- and no doubt his monthly nut is more like $20k, and he probably spent a month or two fabricating that.

Paley is actually pretty well known, and believe it or not, it may well be worth more than what the feds paid for it on the open market. Not right now, of course, with the economy in the dumper, but long term, that huge of jagged steel is probably a good investment.

http://www.albertpaley.com/portfolio.asp?category=4&title=sitespecific


And it IS made from CorTen, which is notorious for dripping rust all over whatever it sits on. Which is why, in most engineering applications, Corten is painted.

But I didnt make that piece, so you cant pin THAT one on me. You are welcome to criticize what I actually do make, if you want. I am used to it, I been called all kinds of names.

The fact remains- of infrastructure spending, well under 1% of the money is spent on ART.
Much, much more is spent on union electricians, or on gravel, or on engineers and architects- in fact, 10% on engineering and architecture is not uncommon- so why dont those clowns get as much grief as us starving artists?
Every engineer I have ever met gets paid a SALARY, with benefits and medical. And they end up causing no end of expensive re-do's with their meager experience in the real world.
But artists, who usually make about half of diddly squat, are much easier targets.

Like I said, I stand behind my work giving the taxpayers a better quality product, for the same or less, as off the shelf, numb and boring crap.