[OT] Computer fatalities (was: Linux Made Easy: Linspire 5.0)

[Derek Martin]

On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 11:47:35AM -0400, Bill McGonigle wrote:
> On Apr 26, 2005, at 11:14, Derek Martin wrote:
> 
> >That
> >must be it.  or maybe we as a society just enjoy being economically
> >raped...
> 
> I'm guessing that new appliance is shipped in from overseas.  There the 
> "American" company who makes it doesn't have to pay significant taxes 
> or follow labor regulations.  

Often that's true, but it's largely irrelevant.  My dad runs his own
repair business, and he's his only employee.  He doesn't have to
follow labor regulations...  He makes little enough that after
expenses and retirement account deductions, he isn't paying any income
tax either.

Actually the point I should have made is that if you ordered all of
the parts it requires to build a given appliance, and paid DEALER
prices for them (not retail, and not wholesale), it would cost
typically something like 5x the cost of the entire built appliance
bought from a store.  No labor, no taxes (he's reselling the parts, so
he doesn't pay sales tax), just HIS cost of the parts.  

In fact I asked, and he said that 5x would be a very conservative
estimate...  It's probably more like 6-10x depending on how
complicated the device is.  A typical example: for him to order a
replacement control board (i.e. the main circuit board) for a
microwave oven typically costs about as much, or even more, than the
entire microwave oven would cost at Best Buy.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
-=-=-=-=-
This message is posted from an invalid address.  Replying to it will result in
undeliverable mail.  Sorry for the inconvenience.  Thank the spammers.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20050426/f9aa0f22/attachment.bin