The Off Topic Topic

[Ideologue]

I thought they'd just be a little firm.  It was awful.

[PDH]

The starches haven't broken down into simple sugars yet.  You could heat them, like plantains, in a pan with a bit of butter and cinnamon.

[Admiral Yi]

Fried green bananas is good eating.  I prefer a dab of sour cream on the side.

[The Brain]

Chick flick.

[garbon]

http://www.theonion.com/articles/woman-takes-short-halfhour-break-from-being-femini,35026/?ref=auto

Woman Takes Short Half-Hour Break From Being Feminist To Enjoy TV Show

[Eddie Teach]

As of press time, Jenkins' sense of relaxation and contentment had been entirely undone by the first 30 seconds of 2 Broke Girls.

Can't really blame her for that.

[Zanza]

In an article in the NYT on "the myth of America's manufacturing resurgence," Steven Rattner (Obama's Car Tsar) claims that German autoworkers make $67 an hour.

Surely that can't be right, can it?

That would be 48 Euro per hour. A normal assembly line worker here will work between 35 and 40 hours and 220 days a year. So that's between 74.000 Euro and 85.000 Euro per year.

As far as I know, assembly line workers will make between 40.000 Euro and 65.000 Euro gross, so maybe the quoted figure is gross-gross, i.e. cost to the employer.

[Ideologue]

It includes benefits.

[Zanza]

Not sure what "benefits" includes. This being socialist Germany, the gross figure includes the employee's contribution towards social security (health insurance, unemployment insurance, pensions etc.), the gross-gross figure would include the employer's contributions to these.

And "auto worker" is not very specific. If you include administrative positions and management, then $67 sounds correct.

[Ideologue]

I dunno what it would include in Germany.

***

I wish I'd been able to sleep.  I'm sick from a cold and can't, and I've got work in the morning.

And we all know what happens when I call in, don't we?   Is that allowed in Germany?

[Zanza]

Your employer has to pay your salary for six weeks when you are sick.

Afterwards the health insurance will pay you 70% of your gross salary.

[Admiral Yi]

And "auto worker" is not very specific. If you include administrative positions and management, then $67 sounds correct.

Auto worker typically has a connotation of the dudes working the line.  But God knows what this Rattner fellow means by it.

[Zanza]

The map in the article gives a figure of $59 for Germany, but that's still higher than the other countries. I wonder if the calculation methods are really comparable. I would expect that our wage costs are closer to what the other big Western countries have, maybe around $45-50 per hour, when you use the same method.

[garbon]

On Girls this week, Dunham's character talked about the importance of Jezebel for feminists and its why she has so many e-friends. I was feeling judgmental till I thought about my e-friends.

[Ed Anger]

I assume the manatee was naked. Blech.