What is Labor Day?
Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United States. The three-day weekend it falls on is called Labor Day Weekend.
Beginning in the late 19th century, as the trade union and labor movements grew, trade unionists proposed that a day be set aside to celebrate labor. “Labor Day” was promoted by the Central Labor Union and the Knights of Labor, which organized the first parade in New York City. In 1887, Oregon was the first state of the United States to make it an official public holiday. By the time it became an official federal holiday in 1894, thirty states in the U.S. officially celebrated Labor Day.
It’s also the first week of school in many places, and also the opening of dove season in a lot of southern states… 🙂
However…
Despite the economy adding 187,000 jobs — slightly more than estimated — BLS said the number of unemployed Americans increased by 514,000 in August to a total of 6.4 million.
By those numbers, Americans and the workforce are worse off now than they were one year ago when the unemployment rate was 3.7 percent and there were 400,000 fewer unemployed Americans.
In more bad news, the August jobs report saw BLS revise its data from June and July, saying there were actually 110,000 fewer jobs added than were reported in those months over the summer. Bold is mine…
Full article, HERE.
And prices/inflation are going up MUCH faster than paychecks. Gas is over $4/gal in a lot of places, it’s hard to get out of the grocery store for less than $100 now, and ‘events’ of whatever type are quickly being priced out of the range of the average household.
Home prices are skyrocketing and the interest rates are now up around 7%, meaning many folks can’t afford to buy a house, especially people starting out, when the basic house average is now approaching $200,000!
Those of us that live on ‘fixed incomes’ are having to look at ways to tighten our belts, and vacations are pretty much right out the window now, and figuring out a way to keep the old car/truck going. New cars/trucks are priced out of range, and I don’t know of anyone in our group that has ANY interest in an EV, much less spending $1000 to have their houses rewired to be able to charge them effectively.
And I’m not even going to comment on the political BS going on… sigh…
Enjoy the weekend, if you can afford it, and let your friends/family know you care, even if you can’t go see them right now. A phone call never hurts, and many times it is appreciated!!!
All I can ask is, “Were you better under Trump than you are under Biden?”
Let’s see, what else can I stop doing?
%@$!#@@
I’m still going to wear white…….
Remember during the NObama years, every glowing monthly report was quietly revised DOWNWARD. They always lie about everything
Inflation….Here in Canada the Trudeau gov’t tells us it is just over 3% which is BS of the first order. As part of his job as Dictator (oops, meant Prime Minister), he gets his groceries paid for by Cdn taxpayers, drives a $2 million Mercedes – yep, This guy certainly has his finger on the pulse of the cost of living increase the average Cdn faces. Oh, and he has decided his A310 is not up to the job anymore so he’s buying with taxpayer $$ a couple new A330 from a Saudi billionaire. I sent an email to a Liberal MP asking if they came with the gold plated crapper – no response.
As to EV. There’s no way I’d ever touch a pure electric vehicle but recently I had to replace my 4 year old Honda Passport as I was having nothing but non-stop electrical issues, I did look into a plug in EV as I thought having access to 2 fuel sources should gasoline distribution become an issue might be a good thing. A friend who’s an electrician said he could do me a level2 charger for $900 Cdn. That said there were simply no Toyota/Lexus PHEV available. Anyway I re-evaluated what I needed and managed to find a baby lexus, UX250h hybrid, not a plugin, at a very good price. Seems the smallest Lexus hybrid is not exactly flying of the shelf so to speak. Runs on regular gas. It was cheaper than a well equipped Rav4. Just the wife and me now and she has her own car so I bought it and based of 4 months am happy with it.
I would suggest if anyone is considering going down the route I did they educate themselves on the various hybrid drive trains as they are very different. For me after a lot of research I went with a toyota/lexus product based on their 20+ year experience building these things. The honda hybrid drive train is much more complicated and doesn’t get the mileage the toyota does. The CV transmission, something I generally do not like, is well designed in this application, reliable and even comes with a transmission cooler something not usually seen in a CV transmission. My fuel economy exceeds EPA ratings which surprised the manure out of me. Everyone’s needs are different but I would suggest not writing off a hybrid or a plug in hybrid (not a pure EV – wouldn’t touch one). They have evolved into something interesting. I’m a retired pilot and picky about the tech side of my vehicles and for my needs this passed my inspection.
Interestingly to 2024 Toyota Land Cruiser is coming with a hybrid setup, got a manure load of torque, decent mileage (and thus decent range) and reviews are interesting. If I had a need* for one of these beasts I’d have a close look at it.
*And the wallet to buy it – being retired not any more, lol.
Back in 2020 Mom and DadRed got a hybrid RAV4. They love it. It hasn’t had any problems yet, gets good gas mileage, and isn’t electric. As you say, Toyota seems to have the most experience and most solid hybrids on the market. Acceleration is quite good. I’ve driven it a few times. I’m not thrilled with all the bells and whistles, but it’s almost impossible to find a car that doesn’t have all the froo-froo these days.
I’m on my 4th Ford hybrid in 17 years and have had pretty good luck. The Escape and Fusion had CV transmissions and once you got used to the engine sounds of no shifting they were fine. Upgraded to an Explorer that was totaled when my wife got rear-ended by a speeding Jeep. Car gone but she was not injured at all. Now we have an F150 hybrid w the off-road 4×4 package etc.
The name of the game for hybrids is hypermiling: driving conservatively enough to maximize range. I could get more than 30MPG for a tank on the Escape (when my lead-foot wife would get in the 20s) and have seen 800 mile total range (on a 30 gal tank) with the F150. Drive them like a little old lady and you will be surprised how little gas they take.
EVs are a “shiny object” for suckers and the gullible. Folks with them in California were SOL during the days-long forest fire season “public safety” blackouts.
If you have the budget however, plug-in hybrids work well. 500+ mile (battery + gas) range and currently (pardon the pun) 48¢ here for a “gallon” of electrons. Mine came with a 110v “extension cord” charger for overnight charging. We seldom exceed 25mi/day, so months-old gas in the tank can be an issue.
Looking for a spot in south Texas to relo to. Most lots in the one horse town I’m looking around go for 50% over tax appraisal. I don’t know what is happening here that would cause that. Real estate is a madhouse.
New cars are designed to be nearly irreparable. Coupled with supply chain issues, a new car is an albatross. I’m running 25 – 30 year old equipment, and it’s stuff I can still fix myself.
Gas mileage isn’t the best, but I don’t have a car payment. That’s an extra $X I can put towards gas if needed… YMMV! pun intended.
Crazy times…. Interesting times…..
Don’t even get me started on how much trouble it was to replace the battery on my PT Cruiser. About 25% of the engine compartment was empty by the time I removed everything that was in the way.
Down here in Seguin- the 18 acre Rancho Snakebite in the last three or four years has almost tripled in appraised value because of all the subdivisions popping up like Herpes sores.
John- Exactly…
Ritchie- We all are, dammit.
Matt- Yep!
David- Thank you! I always appreciate your input from ‘north of the border’. We often forget y’all are seeing the same issues we are, but with different ‘responses’ from your government.
TG- Thanks, I wasn’t aware of ‘that’ option.
STx- Sigh, yeah, same up here. Replacing headlights requires removing the ENTIRE front clip these days…
In High School we had a Brazilian exchange student, who didn’t understand why the USA doesn’t recognize May Day as a holiday for workers.
We told him that May Day is a commie holiday. He didn’t seem to get it.
EVs… Aside from “where does the electricity for plug-in hybrids come from?”, aside from the fact that batteries with that much storage capacity are significant fire (and explosion!) hazards…
…now commiefornia is planning on sucking your battery dry to power the grid!
Slightly related info:
Two people I know (here in CA) have added solar panels to their homes. The first one done has discovered that the company had installed panels that were not rated as good as the contract specified. That company will be replacing them this coming week. He mentioned this to the second homeowner, who climbed onto his roof and verified that the same thing had been done to him.
I suspect this may be a common scam, as it is not easily discovered due to the location of those panels. I’m unsure if this can be found by measuring the output from the system at ground level.
The inflation is biting all of us.
I had my most valuable harvest ever, last summer, in dollar terms. Yields were good, without being spectacular. Grain market ditto. (It was during the Black Sea grain deal, so the traders were a little less anxious about supply) . Yet by the time I’d paid the harvest bills and the costs for putting this season’s crop in, there was still 3/16ths of bugger-all in the bank account. It gets even more “interesting” when all the long-range forecasts are banging the drought-drum for this spring, summer and autumn. We’ve had enough rain over the winter to be ok so-far. Crops are sufficiently advanced to almost guarantee a modest yield, but I may have to keep most of it to feed to stock in 12mo time.
It’s my life. I chose it and I wouldn’t be anywhere else, but some times are not quite as good as others. Some of you will know.
Those of you who think will understand that profit is how the self-employed and business owners get paid. We can’t work for nothing, any more than wage-earners do. So if we aren’t making money, we aren’t employing people, it’s as simple as that.
Pardon me for preaching to the choir, but I get a little tired of telling this kind of simple truth to feel-good Socialists on social media. I feel your pain, and I’ll continue to drive the 25-35yo Toyotas in my garage because the most economical thing I can do is keep buying the diesel to do so. Power bills went up by 30% this year as the politicians keep telling us that the answer to high-power prices is more of what made it expensive in the first place. 😡 At least I have firewood as a heating option. Don’t think I’ll be running the aircon much this summer. The house will not get painted. Older machinery will not get replaced. Older fences will not be replaced. … All of which would have been my contribution to the employment sector.
Sorry ‘bout that.
Drang- As the folks in Florida are finding out… again…
Will- Not just in California… sigh
Peter- Thanks, and yes, you folks are lucky to turn a profit at all, for all the reasons you listed.
Home prices are dropping here. Well over 90% of the homes sold sell for less than the listing price, and for many, that’s even after 5%~10% reductions from the starting listed price.
While I was labouring all those years the one thing that always happened was labor worked on Labor Day and management had the day off.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/09/evs-burst-into-flames-after-contact-with-saltwater-during-hurricane-idalia/