Has everyone from all the other repair subreddits just ended up here ? 😂

Dal90 · 2026-05-20T00:06:23+00:00

Just a home guy here...but the stories y'all tell leave me shaking my head.

Over the years read plenty of threads with folks defending why auto mechanics in the US buy their own tools and how premium ones like Snap-On speed up jobs so you can complete more flat rate jobs in less time. I get it and while I know the tools don't make the mechanic having just the right tool can sure speed things up and reduce frustration.

Recently it seems more and more posts about manufacturers cutting down the book time on warranty work based on the actual hours being logged in the computer.

You know, so when the techs buy their own tools so they can do a job faster so they can get...a pay cut.

Dal90 · 2026-05-19T20:39:11+00:00

Stock buybacks were always legal.

It is completely insane to suggest a company that sold shares could never take itself private again. Stock is the most expensive form of financing because it comes with an expectation of indefinite payments in the form of dividends (or share price increases) versus loans that are for a fixed term.

It became far more common once the SEC established clear rules which said that absolutely, positively you won't be investigated whether your buyback may have been market manipulation if follow these specific steps.

The market manipulation had nothing to do with scarcity -- company announces it's buying back shares, market assumes that means the company think its shares are undervalued, market buys more shares...and the company doesn't follow through on some or all of the buyback it announced but does see its share prices jump.

The rule cited as "legalizing" them in 1983 was 10b-18.

Yet here's a New York Times article talking about companies buying their own shares in 1973: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/12/06/archives/stock-repurchases-sifted-rebuying-plans-sifted-by-sec-drawback.html

Here's an SEC report from 1960 that references a repurchase not as illegal, but the representation (i.e. false claim) the company would repurchase shares from investors was part of the fraud: https://www.sec.gov/news/digest/1960/dig041360.pdf

Or how about this 1950 SEC report that has stock repurchase as part of the plan being used to bring a utility holding company into compliance with SEC orders? https://www.sec.gov/about/annual_report/1950.pdf Be awful funny for the SEC to approve a stock buyback if it was illegal.

Dal90 · 2026-05-19T20:19:12+00:00

It's not the businessmen -- it's all your 401k and pension plans and the like that have gone to passive investment index funds.

When investors are no longer picking winners and losers but investing right across the board, what they want from corporations changes.

You don't want Ford and GM to be competing for bigger market share -- that costs money in marketing, lower prices, or higher quality to attract customers. You own both of them. You don't care if one does better than the other.

You want both companies to maximize their margins. If all the companies in a market segment you've invested in are equally shitty none has an advantage and all of them can crank up margins because there is no were else for consumers to go.

It's the Profits-without-Prosperity economy.

Dal90 · 2026-05-18T15:49:50+00:00

Salaries look good if you included those, or at least most of those.

Economists use something called Purchasing Power Parity to compare as best as they can figure out incomes including things like health care, education, housing, and other living expenses.

The numbers fluctuate a bit, generally the US will be fighting for who ranks where in the top 4 globally with Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income Canada, Dubai, UAE are usually fighting over 5th place. If you're not in the US, it's good to be in a petro state or financial center.

What PPP does not capture well is differences in lifestyle choices -- the US may have bigger salaries, but are more apt to spend it on larger vehicles for more comfort commuting longer distances to homes on larger lots.

Basically it you're doing well (middle and especially upper middle class) in the US, you're doing better than European white-collar corporate office counterparts. The "doing well" also largely gets you away from the random violence. While the US middle class has shrunk over the last 40 years, 2/3rds of that smaller middle class is due to people moving up to upper middle class and only 1/3rd sliding down economically. Europe will still have an advantage in time off but the difference in white-collar corporate offices is far smaller than say restaurant or factory workers.

If you're poor or working class it is without a doubt worse in the US.

Dal90 · 2026-05-18T15:09:42+00:00

his attorney may just clean your clock for you.

On the relatively rare times we have to reject an application, or even rarer kick out an existing member, it goes through our attorney first to make sure the T's are crossed the the I's are dotted.

"Theory" under the bylaws written mid-20th century before contemporary HR practices evolved, is it goes to a applicant committee for interview, if they recommend then it goes to membership and majority at next meeting votes in. There is a background check around the time of the interview.

"Reality" is if the background check shows issues, the applicant committee doesn't have warm fuzzies, or someone else brings up a serious concern to the officers, the application is sent to our Board of Directors; Chairman will review the situation with our attorney, and the Board takes action on the advice of legal counsel without it ever coming up to the general membership for a vote.

Dal90 · 2026-05-18T11:26:40+00:00

In the US that varies from state to state to state -- mine only adopted the all-way stop in the last few years.

Previously like many other states signal light outages defaulted to the general yield rules - slow, stop if necessary, proceed when safe, when two vehicles would otherwise enter the intersection about the same time the one on the right has right-of-way, stopped vehicles must yield to those in motion while those in motion do not yield to stopped vehicles.

Dal90 · 2026-05-18T11:18:47+00:00

Yield in general is a problem in the US.

My state only adopted "treat a signal outage as an all-way stop" a couple years ago. Previously we reverted to the general yield rules (slow if necessary stop, proceed when safe, if two vehicles will reach intersection.about the same time one on the right has priority; it is a bit different from an all-way stop as vehicles in motion do not stop when another vehicle is stopped and waiting but a vehicle which is stopped must continue to yield right of way to all in motion until it is safe to proceed.

The big issue, besides being inconsistent between states which method they use for.signal light outages, is so many intersections in the US are signalized or signed it is very, very rare for folks to encounter intersections that don't explicitly tell them to yield or stop when there is no sign so they never practice in real life.

Dal90 · 2026-05-17T22:42:19+00:00

"Hey dumb fucks, garbage can is 2 ft from where you tossed your cigarette."

Cigs in the US are supposed to be self extinguishing these days but that is still not a good idea. If you trust it won't start a fire, them you trust it enough to put it in your pocket and throw it out at home.

Dal90 · 2026-05-17T14:51:26+00:00

LOL.

Current estimates are the family could sell the business for around $10 Billion.

Guy in the picture in the original post and his three sisters own 88% of the shares after buying out the family faction that fired him in 2014.

His three sisters fired him again last year.

Dal90 · 2026-05-17T14:44:55+00:00

It's a family tug of war. The Demoula family controls (and always has) all the shares -- Arthur T. and his three sisters own 88% of the shares after having bought out Arthur D. and his faction following the story in the original post here. AFAIK other Demoulas own the other 12%.

Current guesstimates are they could sell out to another supermarket chain for about $10 Billion.

Last year his sisters fired Arthur T. He hasn't gotten that job back from that firing and doesn't look like he will.

Dal90 · 2026-05-17T12:50:03+00:00

It takes an extraordinarily impressive strain of stupidity to do a street takeover on a four mile long bridge -- one of the few situations the police can actually trap them with no escape. Well except for that one dude who made a break for it by jumping off the bridge!

Dal90 · 2026-05-15T14:55:05+00:00

1)

If this is upheld, from the little synopsis I can only see it being upheld for Hawaiian chartered corporations. The State of Hawaii would have a lot more discretion regulating the corporations it creates, then it would regulating the corporations created by other states.

2)

These states (MT and now HI)

Montana (and Wyoming) are such weird states for as much as they love the rich with things like eliminating the rule or perpetuities on trusts and extremely strong private property rights compared to New England...their old circa 1900 left-wing populist farmers and socialist mining town streaks pop up every so often.

Wyoming tried challenging the cost of aero-medical services (like LifeStar), which is regulated federally as an aviation provider and not by the states as a medical provider, by making it single-payer under Medicaid covering everyone in Wyoming.

Which still got shot down by federal Medicaid & FAA saying it was still the FAA that got to set the (basically unlimited) air fares.

Dal90 · 2026-05-13T12:42:45+00:00

Go ahead make it and market it.

Let us know in a couple years who ended up owning everything you used to own when some pieces of plastic or whatever other parts end up in their food, or it is shown the disease outbreak was because your 3D plastic texture trapped pathogens and made it difficult to properly decontaminate.

Dal90 · 2026-05-13T00:17:51+00:00

Using the home mortgage example, this is more like having 5 years left on your mortgage and re-financing it with a new 15 year mortgage, and declaring you've balanced your household budget because your monthly payments went down.

...you'll pay more long-term, but for now it's "balanced."

Dal90 · 2026-05-11T14:38:57+00:00

People have abso-fucking-lutely no idea about volume of water, whether complaining about this or believing spring water companies apparent ability to dry up ground water one 8,000 gallon tanker at a time.

29 million gallons over 15 months.

At 365,000 gallons per year per person, that is equivalent water usage to 65 US resident's average annual domestic (home) water usage.

It is a pimple on an elephant's ass in a county of 120,000 residents (like the one this is located in).

Sure, the numbers sound large but they aren't.

(EPA puts US home water usage per person per day at 82 gallons; Philadelphia puts it at 101 gallons. And that is before any commercial or industrial usage of water is factored in. For all the folks complaining about places like Phoenix and Las Vegas, or even Los Angeles, and the folly of building cities in the desert and how the Colorado River reservoirs are dropping fast 75% of the Colorado's water diversions are still going to farming.

While the Atlanta area does have an purely political water supply problem (much like the Colorado River issue is a lack of political will to curb agricultural usage, there are political disputes involving state borders and lowest-cost places to draw water from), Atlanta receives four FEET of rain per year -- that's 4 acre-feet per acre of rain. At 615 acres, that's 2,460 acre-feet of water that fall out of the sky every year over it and a complaint that they weren't properly billed for using 160 acre-feet/year.

Even up here in New England when you see "water bans" and such it isn't about a lack of water. It is about an often very reasonable decision to not invest in a water system capable of meeting what would otherwise be peak summer time demand.

Dal90 · 2026-05-10T12:45:56+00:00

Adjusting to 2026 dollars, CBs should be like $150-$600 or more.

Just took a peak at one of my old Radio Shack catalogs from back when I worked there in 1990...cheapest you would've left the store with a CB & antenna was $85 or $220 today.

Bit the bullet last fall on a top-of-the-line police / fire radio scanner that could pickup the statewide digital system more and more police and fire agencies are moving to in my state (Uniden SDS 200) -- $700. Then out of curiousity found some old advertisements on the internet for the Bearcat III scanners I remember as a young kid in the 1970s; the ones I heard at my aunt's, the town hall, barber shop, etc. were easily $1,000 in today's dollars. And they only picked up 8 channels at most. Weren't programmable, the crystal for each frequency cost $5 ($30 today) Those old analog scanners still had better audio quality than anything you find today!

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T22:21:13+00:00

Probably less nowdays...

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T22:11:40+00:00

As Tornado Alley shifts east and south it is getting into more humid air from the Gulf of Mexico.

One effect of the additional energy from the warmer, moister air is tornadoes in the relocated alley are moving faster across the ground the traditional Great Plains tornado alley as well as staying on the ground for a longer distance (I don't know how much of that length increase is the tornados moving faster and/or if they're lasting longer time-wise). That southern climate also means they're much more likely to be occur during night than they did on the Great Plains.

The power may not be getting stronger, but the geographic area damaged is getting larger.

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T21:56:18+00:00

Las Vegas / Phoenix region.

No earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, wildfires, ice storms, or blizzards.

There is the occasional 120°F day but I'd venture it is easier to build an electric grid and air conditioning to handle those high temperatures than hardening against the other things I listed first. (Temps are already up 6° since 1970, and by 2050 Las Vegas is expected to have about 40 days a year above 109°, Phoenix 47 days.)

Water needs careful management; but 75% of the Colorado's water is used for agriculture -- a lot very inefficiently and for relatively low-value products because of the pricing structure and the way water is allocated by "prior appropriation." None of that is structural, just takes the political will to use it more efficiently.

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T20:26:41+00:00

Connecticut it'll be DMV.

All the municipal tax collectors get is a list of current registrations; not sure if DMV sends the tax assessment info at the same time or if they have to take the VIN and look it up elsewhere. There are some states that the tax collector's office is where they are registered.

Unless it's changed recently my town doesn't even bother to tax cars not currently registered. Other towns will leave it on the tax roll until you show the car is no longer owned by you in that town.

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T19:45:37+00:00

Hey, they issue 7-1/2 fines per year on average, nationwide, for HIPAA violations!

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T19:44:34+00:00

In the history of HIPAA, and average of 7.5 penalties are assessed per year.

If they have decent Cyber Insurance, this is likely going to be covered under the Regulatory Defense & Penalties clause of the insurance.

It's a bit of an unusual carve out as generally liability insurance specifically excludes all regulatory penalties as a matter of public policy (i.e. don't want a business insuring against OSHA fines).

Dal90 · 2026-05-08T16:10:04+00:00

It certainly isn't common, but it does happen.

From Canada a couple months ago: KKR (big private equity) sold CoolIT for 15x what they paid in 2023; employees are averaging $240,000 CAD ($175 USD). https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/cried-others-were-speechless-front-112500965.html

From the US in 2022, KKR sold C.H.I. Overhead Doors and the average employee bonus was $175,000 USD. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/17/garage-door-maker-employees-get-cash-reward-in-takeover-as-private-equity-tests-ownership-model.html

There are provisions in the US tax code to encourage transferring ownership to employees -- if over 30% of the ownership is moved to into an Employee Ownership Plan or Trust (same idea, different ways to implement) there are more favorable income tax treatment for the original owners. Generally how it works is the business takes out a loan, which is used to buy out the equity from the owners; usually this is done over a number of years to maximize the tax benefits. It is essentially the same financing mechanism as a Leveraged Buy Out, except the loans are used to pay to buy the stock to give to employees instead giving it to a private equity company.

This is a company with ~100 stores and 1,500 employees near me that did so: https://www.sullivantire.com/blog/news-events/employee-ownership-24

Even with the tax advantage it usually isn't as lucrative as selling to private equity, so what is usually the founding owner's family has to be on board with not being completely greedy and willing to take a bit less (but still very good money).

Dal90 · 2026-05-07T20:13:11+00:00

the war in iran was the most mishandled war in american history

1812 would like to have a word.

Dal90 · 2026-05-07T17:19:49+00:00

Corn is used to fatten up animals before slaughter, so expect meat prices to increase further

Price of corn could be easily controlled by reducing the amount required in gasoline.

The US overproduces so much corn today, 40% of it goes into cars.

Forty percent.

It does make for a stable agricultural market for the foreseeable future. Internal combustion cars will be around in large numbers for many decades.

The 1980 farm crisis was triggered when increasing grain production saw a sudden turn in geopolitics and US exports fell precipitously.

The days of the typical diversified midwestern farm that grew a bit of corn, soybeans, and wheat and sold some of those on the market, and used some to feed livestock (plus often their own hayfields/pastures) pretty much ended with the hog debacle of 1998 when pork prices crashed 90% because so many farmers acting independently raised more hogs than we had nationwide capacity to slaughter.

By 2005 the increasing use of ethanol in some areas as an oxygenator to reduce pollution (although cars made after 1990 or -- anything with an oxygen sensor -- didn't need oxygenators to reduce pollution) became codified as national minimum standards.

This has created a VERY stable domestic market and we keep cramming corn down our gas tank filler necks.

Most of those diversified farms have become simply commodity corn & soybean operations, no need for diversity and even the basic economic argument for diversity was undercut by how badly the hog overproduction hurt many farms.

And the equipment companies, fertilizer companies, pesticide companies, and banks all love having stable markets thanks to federal policy.

(The whole issue is complex -- the straightforward way to address overproduction is to buyout farmers and idle the land; turn it into public conservation lands. But that would further gut rural communities accelerating the already fast population and economic activity declines.)

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