Kodak Comeback, Quick Read

Sirius Glass · Mar 26, 2012

Old-N-Feeble said:
There is no gray line. There is no wobbling to one side of the line or the other. When the line is so clearly drawn then anyone with the slightest bit of integrity and compassion must defend that line. So... you'd shaft all those people so you can have your Kodak film? My stance on this makes me a piggish bore? Wow... what has America come to?

Frankly, I'll keep my principles, thought of as a piggish bore or not.

You misread #145! I am agreeing with you!

Photo Engineer · Mar 26, 2012

wblynch said:
There are tens of millions of American seniors that have only Social Security for their income.

I think if anyone was able to measure it, there probably never were more than 10 or 20 percent of American workers that were ever covered by a 'pension'.

What to do about the other 80-90%?

Throw us to the wolves, I guess. Thank God (and FDR) for Social Security.

Do you have a reference for these figures?

Even the lowest worker at US Steel in Pittsburgh had a pension plan from the company. Westinghouse had one, Alcoa had one, and here in Rochester Xerox has one and Kodak has one. That covers every employee. All civil service employees of state and federal government have one, teachers have one, firemen have one, police have one, and the military has one.

That is a LOT of people in the US.

I know many small businesses and the owners buy one for themselves but often do not for the employees. That is a lot too, but to say that 90% do not have a plan is rather a surprise given my second paragraph.

PE

Sirius Glass · Mar 26, 2012

And a study published [source: MSNBC and News.Yahoo.com] this week states that 65% of the food stamps in the US are from retired people on Social Security. When retirements and Social Security are cut, the welfare goes up. Where is the savings in that?

Old-N-Feeble · Mar 26, 2012

It's called "bait-and-switch"... "smoke and mirrors"... "lies and BS"... "look at this shiny bobble while I...".

wblynch · Mar 26, 2012

I think pensions were killed off in the 1980s. Replaced by 401k's that not everyone can take advantage of.

And if it isn't lost to stock market, people lose their job and drain the 401k trying to save their house before they end up losing it too.

There are millions of service workers, farm workers, self employed, small business owners that have nothing. Think your barber has a pension? Or the coffee-shop waitress down the street?

The people that work for large employers like mentioned rarely can stay long enough to qualify for those pensions. They are right-sized, outsourced and off-shored years before they make their retirement year.

Teachers are under attack and "everyone" wants to fire government workers and take their pensions away. By the way, I think people don't know that most government jobs have been replaced by contract firms so the workers aren't civil service or government workers at all. Those contract workers do not have pensions.

I don't have definitive sources for the number, but I personally know very few people, actually none, under 65 that get a real pension anymore.

The days of going to work for a career at the same place are long gone. The people that started their careers in the late 1940's to early 1960's don't have a clue what's really happened out here.

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Oh yeah, and I did not mean that no pension means no retirement plan. I just mean the traditional pension.

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sorry my post is not about film or Kodak's comeback.

Ken Nadvornick · Mar 26, 2012

US Steel? Westinghouse? Alcoa? Xerox?

More like the waitress down at the local coffee shop. The mechanic who fixes your car. The fellow at the car wash. And that guy/gal behind the lawn mower.

Ken

Sirius Glass · Mar 26, 2012

Old-N-Feeble said:
It's called "bait-and-switch"... "smoke and mirrors"... "lies and BS"... "look at this shiny bobble while I...".

Exactly!

"We will destroy Social Security [which did not cause the problem] to save money, so that we will end up spending more money helping the disenfranchised retired people!"

President Johnson changed Social Security into a cash cow for Congress even though Social Security's money were never to be used for anything other than Social Security. Since then Congress has drained Social Security and cause the today's problems.

clayne · Mar 26, 2012

Hmmmm, seems like all the money has gone somewhere? Duh.

Old-N-Feeble · Mar 26, 2012

Big Business = Big Government. Big Business controls Big Government. They OFFER us payment into Big Business Pensions or PROMISE pensions as an incentive to work for smaller salaries and FORCE us to pay into Social Security... then plunder it all and leave us with nothing.

I HOPE Kodak doesn't rob their employees' pensions.

Photo Engineer · Mar 26, 2012

Ken Nadvornick said:
US Steel? Westinghouse? Alcoa? Xerox?

More like the waitress down at the local coffee shop. The mechanic who fixes your car. The fellow at the car wash. And that guy/gal behind the lawn mower.

Ken

Yes Ken, I did use those examples but I also included small businesses in my post which you ignored. Druggists, Waitresses, Clerks and others can buy into retirement plans if their company has no plan. They do not for the most part.

But, what I cannot believe based on my post and some comments above, is that 90% have no pensions. Maybe the 60% or so is more reasonable? IDK. My mother was a sales clerk in a small store but managed a retirement savings plan and my father worked for a small steel company and did the same. We called my dad's place, the junkyard with affection as it was a junkyard for high end metals (Zirconium, Hafnium, etc) and when they went belly up with the closing of many plants in western PA, he moved on and still kept his pension. They were fully funded.

My grandfather owned his own business with his sons as sole employees. They all had retirement pensions!

It takes a person willing to forgo luxuries today for stability later I think. Most people do not want to plan ahead, they want someone else to do it for them.

PE

Poisson Du Jour · Mar 26, 2012

Come and live in the Promised Land. Australia, oi!

Tim Gray · Mar 26, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
It takes a person willing to forgo luxuries today for stability later I think. Most people do not want to plan ahead, they want someone else to do it for them.

Maybe in the past. A lot of people working minimum wage type jobs nowadays don't make enough money to plan ahead or have any real luxuries to speak of that they can forgo.

kb3lms · Mar 26, 2012

Here is a link to an interesting article about the movie industry switch to digbibal. Maybe it's not all about convenience or inconvenience and cost of the medium, there's also an element of union contracts and labor issues to deal with that a digbibal workflow might avoid.

Dead Link Removed

The part I found especially interesting was in the section "DIGITAL: AN "OVERNIGHT SUCCESS" and "THREE STRIKES AND YOU'RE OUT." Moving to digbible eliminated issues with the SAG and AMPTP because if it wasn't film the SAG contracts didn't apply according to this article.

Ain't much Kodak can do about that.

Photo Engineer · Mar 26, 2012

Tim Gray said:
Maybe in the past. A lot of people working minimum wage type jobs nowadays don't make enough money to plan ahead or have any real luxuries to speak of that they can forgo.

Maybe so, maybe not. My mother got $0.25 over minimum and still managed a savings plan for herself.

PE

Tim Gray · Mar 26, 2012

Photo Engineer said:
Maybe so, maybe not. My mother got $0.25 over minimum and still managed a savings plan for herself.

PE

Times are different now. I'm shocked I have to even say that.

If I made minimum wage, my gas bill for my car each month would take up a third of my wages - pre tax. I know, I drive a gas guzzler (a Mini) Never mind rent in some places... $1200/month isn't that much, particularly if you have dependents.

keithwms · Mar 26, 2012

Right about now is when I usually mention The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen.

Steve Smith · Mar 27, 2012

wblynch said:
people lose their job and drain the 401k trying to save their house before they end up losing it too.

That shouldn't be allowed. Over here, I can't touch the savings in my pension plan until I am 60.

wblynch said:
The days of going to work for a career at the same place are long gone.

Whilst that is generally true, I am currently in year 24 with the same employer. I have an uncle who has the family record though. He left school at 16 and retired at 65 recently from a career designing satellites at Marconi.

I don't think that is going to be very common now.

Steve.

Roger Cole · Mar 27, 2012

Steve Smith said:
That shouldn't be allowed. Over here, I can't touch the savings in my pension plan until I am 60.

Steve.

Well you can't here as long as you're with the company, with a few exceptions that mostly amount to borrowing from yourself and paying yourself back with interest. But when you leave, either voluntarily or otherwise, you can leave the money alone and when you get another job roll the old funds into the new account, convert the funds into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account basically a non-employer version of a 401(k) ) or take all the money and pay a 20% tax penalty. Previous poster is right - all too often people either take the money to live on while unemployed or mean well and leave it alone a while but end up taking it anyway to keep their house when they don't get another job in time. Quite often it's about their only choice and may really be better than losing a house. Tough choices.

Steve Smith · Mar 27, 2012

Roger Cole said:
But when you leave, either voluntarily or otherwise, you can leave the money alone and when you get another job roll the old funds into the new account, convert the funds into an IRA (Individual Retirement Account basically a non-employer version of a 401(k) ) or take all the money and pay a 20% tax penalty.

Over here you can't take the funds if you leave the job (unless you have been paying in for less than two years I think).
Moving the funds to another account is common but I wouldn't do it as a percentage fee is always charged for administering it. It's easier just to leave it where it is and claim it when the time comes.

Steve.

Roger Cole · Mar 27, 2012

Humm never encountered a fee for what's called a "roll over" (to a new company account) but then again I've only done it once.

CGW · Mar 27, 2012

keithwms said:
Right about now is when I usually mention The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen.

Or how 'bout outing him as a Koch stooge? Oh, and don't forget to tell the sheep about ALEC, too.

CGW · Mar 27, 2012

keithwms said:
???

Please...George Mason U is heavily funded by the Koch bros. ALEC? C'mon.

CGW · Mar 27, 2012

keithwms said:
Right about now is when I usually mention The Great Stagnation by Tyler Cowen.

He teaches at George Mason U which is heavily funded by the Koch brothers--'nuff said. Sometimes it's good to know who's waving a flag before you salute it, OK? Ignore away.

Photo Engineer · Mar 27, 2012

Tim Gray said:
Times are different now. I'm shocked I have to even say that.

If I made minimum wage, my gas bill for my car each month would take up a third of my wages - pre tax. I know, I drive a gas guzzler (a Mini) Never mind rent in some places... $1200/month isn't that much, particularly if you have dependents.

I hear you, but we were talking about people now collecting their pensions. They were saving back in the good old days. The statement was that about 90% of them were not collecting a pension.

However, back in those days, even though gasoline was $0.15 / gallon and the same for a loaf of bread, these were a substantial portion of the average wage. Minimum wage back then was $0.50 / hour. It rose to $0.75 in the mid to late 50s.

At $0.50 / hour and $0.15 / gallon my 20 gallon tank took $3.00 to fill. That was 6 hours of work. My car got 8.5 miles to the gallon. (Don't argue on this, I had it checked when I bought it new and that was the going value!) It was 11 miles to school. So, I used about 3 gallons per day commuting. Rent was $40 / month unfurnished for most apartments. That was about 2 weeks pay before taxes.

Doesn't look all that different!

PE

keithwms · Mar 27, 2012

That's true Ron. What has changed the most over the past few decades in the area of personal finance is that the concept of building up a savings has steadily eroded. Until the credit crunch of '08/09, a lot of people were living on plastic and assuming they would always be able to do so. Almost everybody could afford anything.... or so they thought. The '08 crash taught a lot of hard lessons. If one good thing came out of it, it is that people are saving a bit more.

I worry a lot about the amount of money people spend on self-obsoleting electronica... all the iPads and iPods and dSLRs etc. These are all objects that cost us at the sales counter and also cost jobs at home. Rather than spending several $k per year on the latest imported gadgets, how about putting a few $k away into a 401k or such... where it'll make a huge difference over 20 years.

When I went through high school, there was a "civics" course that we all had to take. It might be time to replace that with a course in personal finance and economics. There won't be any civics left if young people don't learn the perils of plastic.

And just to complete my rant, the student loan debt now exceeds that on credit cards, so... another big problem of finance is looming.

End of rant

Kodak Comeback, Quick Read

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