Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

Which reminded me, decades ago, when I first got out of college, I worked in a consumer products plant in Wisconsin. The company had 40 plants all over the country.

The company had 2 measures of quality.

The first was an independent lab that was hired to do objective measures of quality on randomly purchased bags of product.
The second was customer complaints per million bags of product.

Curiously,
The independent lab rated the product produced in the Wisconsin plant the best out of all 40 plants consistently.
Yet, the customer complaints were the highest out of all the plants.

What I learned from that was that you can't satisfy people in Wisconsin.

The folks from south of the Wisconsin border in the Chicago metro area call the border the "Cheddar Curtain".

So I asked my sister about this. She said she can send 200 parts out to Wisconsin for a dime each and if one of the 200 is bent she'll hear about it. She said in no other part of the world would anyone mention it. Only in Wisconsin.

[Higgenbotham]

Or, to put it another way, they've been lying so long, they've come to
believe their own lies.

Surely they do (and did).

It took me awhile to realize how truly deluded they are (and were).

And based on that, I'm positive Bernanke is a certifiable nut case.

[Higgenbotham]

Wisconsin and Illinois Among the Worst States For Binge Drinkers
By Scot Bertram December 15, 2014 11:21 AM

Winter is upon us. It (soon) will be cold. It will be windy. And it will be full of snow.
What to do? Unfortunately, a new report says too many Midwesterners decide drinking could be the answer:
More than one out of every four Wisconsin adults binge drinks, placing the state second to last in the nation, according to a new report assessing the health of Americans. The report from America’s Health Rankings, which has been tracking health in the the U.S. for 25 years, found that 22.5 percent of Wisconsin’s adult population — that’s nearly 1 million people — are binge drinkers, a percentage exceeded only by North Dakota.

http://1440wrok.com/wisconsin-and-illin ... -drinkers/

5 Worst States for Black Americans
by Essence Gant Posted: December 28, 2014

1. Wisconsin

Based on MSN’s index, Wisconsin is the worst state for black Americans.

http://www.blackenterprise.com/money/5- ... ericans/6/

Wisconsin is basically a state full of miserable drunken inbred Nazis who hate everyone, including themselves.

But areas of the world like Wisconsin are just leading the pack because their manufacturing economies collapsed a long time ago.

[Higgenbotham]

I guess good schools makes sense. Moving is such a nightmare it would
have to be something like that.

I think the whole obsession with schools is another sign things aren't quite right. Realistically, if things were on a sound footing people wouldn't worry so much about being in this or that school district.

Likewise, the obsession over SAT prep. Money spent on SAT prep can probably be correlated roughly inversely to the decline in the economy, or more specifically the decline in average real wages and/or the decline in workforce participation.

Still, the prices are clear indicators that students and families are engaged in a college admissions “arms race,” said Robert A. Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, a nonprofit that advocates against the “overuse and misuse” of standardized tests.

“They think they’re competing for slots at these elite universities and they’re arming themselves with the most sophisticated weaponry,” Mr. Schaeffer said. “They believe if the other guy is doing it, you need to do it, too.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/your- ... .html?_r=0

[John]

Another example of why people move to Texas.

My sister has an Internet business that does about 15,000 orders per year all over the world. She has close interaction with customers. Most of her day is spent interacting with customers.

So my question to her this Christmas was - What are the best states and the best countries in the world? And what are the worst states in terms of having customers who are unpleasant to deal with?

Best states: Texas, Georgia

Worst states: Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin

Best countries: Italy, Spain, France

She and her husband want to move to Texas.

Higgie, your remarks have stirred some memories from college days,
where we discussed the differences between people from different parts
of the country. I can just barely remember those discussions now, but
I believe it was agreed that people from the Midwest are more
circumspect, while people from the east are more direct, and people
from California are more flaky. Also, as I recall, it was felt that
people in NY City were the most direct and the most hostile of all.

It would seem possible that these differences have disappeared.
Things like national TV networks, followed by internet communications,
should have the effect of making everyone pretty much the same. I
know that the heavy Boston accent has all but disappeared, and I
believe that the same is true of the heavy Southern accent.

The two states you describe as "best" are southern states. The
"worst" are northern states. The "best" countries are (mostly)
southern countries. The stereotype is that southerners are more laid
back, since the climate is more pleasant, while northerners are
nastier because of the harsh winters.

So it's possible that there's no core difference between the two
groups of people you describe, except that they express themselves
differently.

[jcsok]

The issue of school is important to my family. As very old parents of a daughter, we send her to a private Catholic school which is 50 miles away. My wife also got 2 other families with girls to send them to the school; its not too bad transportation wise since all three mothers work in that town and can work around the school schedule somewhat. This particular school has a 98 percent rate of college enrollees, and require each student to apply to a minimum of 5 out of state colleges.

When my daughter visits with her friends that now attend the local high schools, she is appalled at the stories of public education, the lack of teacher motivation etc. Although I see extremely high parental involvement by most families, there are a few students each year that are kicked out because of drug use, but it is much lower than in the public schools. (There is random drug testing, something not permitted in the public schools). Overall, the three girls traveling 100 miles each day for high school are happy to be there and do not want to go back to the local schools.

BTW, we moved from Texas to avoid the metro lifestyle, part of the Red River Rivalry.

[Higgenbotham]

John, I think the differences among the states are due to these factors:

Genetic differences in the populations
Lack of sunlight in the northern states which induces Seasonal Affective Disorder and alcoholism
Differences in economies due to the fact that the Northern states' manufacturing economies peaked first and fell first (economic difficulties also induce alcoholism - witness what happened when the USSR collapsed)
Differences in population movement where the winnners tend to move where other winners are moving

Two of the smartest people I knew from my high school class in Rochester, New York now live within 5 miles of me in Austin, Texas. I don't think that's entirely a coincidence.

One point I think about is that while I do believe that Texas (for example) is materially different and better than Wisconsin (for example) due to my experience in living in both places, the bloom could come off the rose real quick once Texas begins to experience the same economic difficulties (if the fracking bubble bursts for example).

I really only believed there was a difference after I had been in Texas for some years. Day to day interactions with people are much more positive overall. That may be exaggerated due to the particular areas in the two states that I experienced. For example, I was not living in Madison, Wisconsin but recall the Madison area as being better than Wisconsin generally.

[John]

> John, I think the differences among the states are due to these
> factors:

> Genetic differences in the populations

> Lack of sunlight in the northern states which induces Seasonal
> Affective Disorder and alcoholism

> Differences in economies due to the fact that the Northern states'
> manufacturing economies peaked first and fell first (economic
> difficulties also induce alcoholism - witness what happened when
> the USSR collapsed)

> Differences in population movement where the winnners tend to move
> where other winners are moving

> Two of the smartest people I knew from my high school class in
> Rochester, New York now live within 5 miles of me in Austin,
> Texas. I don't think that's entirely a coincidence.

> One point I think about is that while I do believe that Texas (for
> example) is materially different and better than Wisconsin (for
> example) due to my experience in living in both places, the bloom
> could come off the rose real quick once Texas begins to experience
> the same economic difficulties (if the fracking bubble burst for
> good for example).

> I really only believed there was a difference after I had been in
> Texas for some years. Day to day interactions with people are
> much more positive overall. That may also be due to the
> particular areas in the two states that I experienced. For
> example, I was not living in Madison, Wisconsin but recall the
> Madison area as being better than Wisconsin generally.

With regard to your suggestion that a change in Texas's economy would
change its people and make them similar to people in Wisconsin, that
could be tested today by some researcher by looking at Greece. Have
the people of Greece become more like the Germans, because of the
economic crisis? An interesting question.

[Higgenbotham]

With regard to your suggestion that a change in Texas's economy would
change its people and make them similar to people in Wisconsin, that
could be tested today by some researcher by looking at Greece. Have
the people of Greece become more like the Germans, because of the
economic crisis? An interesting question.

I asked my sister and brother-in-law a question along those lines - So, OK, given that Greece is in close proximity to those other 3 countries, what are your experiences in dealing with your Greek customers? They said that while they couldn't put Greece in the same category as Italy, Spain, and France, dealing with the Greeks is better than the average state or country.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get a feel for how that has changed over time because their business wasn't going great guns before the Greek collapse.

[John]

With regard to your suggestion that a change in Texas's economy would
change its people and make them similar to people in Wisconsin, that
could be tested today by some researcher by looking at Greece. Have
the people of Greece become more like the Germans, because of the
economic crisis? An interesting question.

I asked my sister and brother-in-law a question along those lines - So, OK, given that Greece is in close proximity to those other 3 countires, what are your experiences in dealing with your Greek customers? They said that while they couldn't put Greece in the same category as Italy, Spain, and France, dealing with the Greeks is better than the average state or country.

It's those Mediterranean breezes. They'll do it every time.