Good WSJ Article

Don't be mad at WebMD...

This is for all the medical school students I know. KU, UMKC...

Yes, you're the ones who have done 6 or 8 years of studying, but, when a layman goes to WebMD to get some background, and talks to you about it, it's a good thing. Him knowing something, doesn't take anything away from you.

And Secondly, If you're a med student, and don't know what Genentech does... it's time to rethink what you really want to do. I know you're in it to help people, but lets not make fun of those that create things, just because creating something isn't your cup of tea.

I know most of you have distinctions on your MCAT scores, which I couldn't even dream of, along with hours of studying, that I probably can't match with my Electrical Engineering degree. This is just some perspective from a fellow Indian.

To steal some webspace for my profile picture, this is what I've resorted to... The black and white with the light source on the right and shadow on the left is artistic, no?

While I'm wasting time, I shall further waste time on blogger blogging about whatever comes to my mind... should be recent events most of the time, and relating them to crap I might have read god knows when. Being a leading indicator of things in the stock market maybe. ha.. right.

Note to self: short posts are always good... and don't be so boring.

UAWhat?

Disclaimer by which you can judge my bias (DBWJB, it's a shame it isn't more catchy, i might still trademark it...): Apart from my profile... My father is an engineer for General Motors. I follow the car industry closely in a lot of countries. And last but not least, this will sound more pro-UAW than I really am, at least at the start.

Background: Delphi filed for bankruptcy recently, and the linked article says a lot of what I want to say, so I shall try not to repeat myself. Only for tree-huggers: GM is a world class car manufacturer, as good as Toyota, BMW, and VW among others. It does just as much research, if not more than Toyota on everything you'd like (cleaner environment) and more. i.e. it sells hybrid buses to cities and actually makes money on it, as opposed to Toyota losing around $1500/Prius. The Prius is more marketing for Toyota than an actual product, and the sooner people snap out of Toyota marketing BS the better.

The most important thing to remember when it comes to the wages in the auto industry is that Henry Ford paid his workers $5/day because he wanted the workers to be able to buy the cars made by Ford. He was able to sell mass produced, cheaper cars to newly created consumers who could afford cars, his employees. Ford employees unionized after GM and Chrysler.

That is a noble goal for a car company, The founder of Maruti, before it became Maruti Suzuki and now Maruti Udyog, in India had just as noble a goal, as do most car companies today, especially the Korean ones. Thanks to globalization, a flood of new cars, but not enough new markets to sell them in (relatively speaking to GM's past), along with some of GM's own bad designs gives GM a 30% chance of bankruptcy in 5 years, and a 58% in 10 years. The probability of bankruptcy actually increasing over time instead of decreasing, can't be good.

The mistakes GM has made, has a lot to do with it's market share going from 35% to 26% in the last 15 years or so. Bigger cars are actually forgivable in my book, since building them is cheaper, they're sold cheaply, and almost every would actually rather have a bigger car (think of places other than the US, Europe). A lot of time/money/effort is saved by building a big car rather than two little ones (generally speaking, kind of like McDonald's, until recently, selling bigger hamburgers). Consuming more gas is a natural consequence, not controlled by GM. Now, Re-badging one minivan to four divisions, which can't compete in the first version, is not a good way to get a good return on investment. Improving the initial design year after year is. GM also invested in Daewoo, and Fiat, Fuji, where it lost loads of money.

That $5 in 1914 would be around $100/day in 2005, which, for an 8 hr work day = $12.5/hr. Which is around what the market wage is for manufacturing work today in the US. UAW employees get at least twice that in salary, and around four times that including health care compensation. During holidays and overtime, if they can work, they get 2-3x the $25/hr base pay. This is for repetitive assembly line work, which is safer than it should be, because the engineers that design the manufacturing process get blamed for a worker's incompetence and have to account for it, among other things. This is a safe job, made safe by the engineers who design the car and the accompanying manufacturing process. VW assembly line workers in Germany go though at least 2 years of specialized automotive classes before they are hired. While UAW workers receive minimal training, and a guarantee by the union steward that as long as they show up on time, they won't get fired. Lets not even get into productivity.

Until new markets are created, GM is stuck between a rock and a hard place, since thanks to the labor contracts with the UAW they can't close any plants, or pay the workers any less. They're stuck with overcapacity because they can't sell all the cars they make.

So, through the downturn, There have been no cuts in either Health care or salary benefits for UAW workers. All the while, the health care for GM's white collar workforce has actually gotten noticeably worse. This is the main reason, I am completely against Unions, especially the UAW.

While I'm on the subject, from America: The Book, A citizens guide to democracy Inaction:
Hello my name is: The Labor lobby (AFL-CIO, et al)
Money Given in 2000: $90,152,281, more than half in the form of goods that "fell off the back of a truck."
Represents: The working man and woman (Monday-Friday 8-4, off weekends and holidays)
Recipients of their largesse: Rust Belt Democrats who enjoy posing on forklifts.
Stated Agenda: To keep the working man from getting screwed.
Hidden Agenda: To keep the working man from working.

Which is true, like everything else in the book. The unionized people want to get paid more, not create more jobs. Simple micro economics says more people will be employed in a company if individuals in the same company get paid less. I'm not talking about the extreme cases.

And the UAW agrees to concessions...

This is all way too simplified and summarized, Thank you for reading.

The New Healthcare

The recent IBM announcement, about them not using genetic test information to hire/fire/unfairly treat their employees, is really nothing to worry about, because those "genetic defects" could and will possibly be cured using the same genetic technology. This is only a part of the debate...

Dr. James Watson, the discoverer of DNA, stands out alone when it comes to who has done the most good for society using DNA. What I mean by that is, he went before congress to get money so the human genome project could be completed, and the knowledge gathered by that project is now in the public domain. What should we actually do, now that we know that the building block of life is DNA? he has a better established track record than anyone else in answering that question. And here's what he's suggesting, and has been for a while about what should happen next:

"...Watson argues for a new kind of eugenics -- where parents are allowed to choose the DNA of their children -- to make them healthier, more intelligent, even better looking. His vision may be disagreeable, yet it's a natural consequence of the decades of scientific exploration launched by his and Francis Crick's discovery of the double helix. It's worth considering what effect the advancements in genetic science may have on our future..."

He goes on to say, there will always be new genetic diversity, we're only getting rid of the extremely useless diversity that exists now. The counter to this argument is made by a woman who has manic depressive disorder (which runs in families), which also has the effect of making those people more creative than the average. Before anyone starts doubting Dr. Watson's intentions, he himself has a child who suffers from a genetic disorder.

Whether we choose to find and correct our genetic disorders or not, will be what determines what side we're on when it comes to 'genetic racism'. For example: If I have no genetic defects to getting the flu, and therefore won't call in sick as much, and someone else will... I want that to count for me, and against the other person. It will be hard for some companies to institute the same policy that IBM has.

This debate is probably a long way off... I agree with what Dr. watson says, but don't yet understand how there will be new genetic diversity when we're getting rid of the useless diversity, because that is what seems important to me... maintaining genetic diversity. That is what lets us evolve, survive and differentiate ourselves from each other.