Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Not such a good deal

The Audi TT is a cute sportster.  When I saw this craigslist ad  I was interested.  Then...  Read the description:

> Selling a 2002 Audi roadster convertible 1.8 liter TT S, AWD turbo. Has 225 hp and is very quick.

 So far so good.

> Vehicle is not registered and has engine light on due to after market intake.

 Ooops.  Engine light AND will never pass emissions.  Thousands to fix. 

> Goes through a lot of coolant because of the turbo but you can just add water to compensate.

Ummm....  OMFG.  Cracked block and water fixes it?  

> Has a salvage title. Drives perfect and minor exterior damages.

Not even good for body parts.  

> Got new tires and breaks about 8 months ago.

 Hey.  I want to buy from a guy who thinks brakes are breaks. 

> Uses 91 octane fuel and gets around 30mpg

 At this point I'm surprised it drives far enough to measure fuel economy. 

> Selling because I have a large dog that can't fit in the car so I can't take her anywhere ;( $3,900 obo.

Yeah.  Right.  

Strange times. 

15 comments:

sm_landlord said...

I dread trying to sell my hot rod Lincolns.

Rob Dawg said...

Lol.

Lawyerliz said...

Bet they don't have cracked engine blocks.

LBD said...

Good Morning!

Price fixes everything, well maybe not this time.

Time for a load to the dump before it snows, 3-6" predicted.

Rob Dawg said...

An informal survey has a third of tech workers saying they are going to delete their Facebook accounts. What would be scarier is if the discover they cannot. Hooked.

Lawyerliz said...

What's to say others aren't doing it.

Firemane said...

To respond to the question of why I believe full employment can trigger a recession, (beyond the historical data that suggests it does).

When the available labor pool gets small, businesses that are wanting to expand (to make more profits) are *ALL* looking for quality employees. If they are not available in the 'unemployed' pool, there are only two options. Give up on hiring anyone - or poach from other companies. At the same time, employees seeing the low U-3, realize they can get raises by moving to a new company.

So - what happens economically? If person "A" moves their skills from company A to company B -- they are still producing the same output ... but they are doing it at a higher price. And, of course, their output is lost from their previous company.

So, you get ZERO net gain in productivity, and at a higher cost. This eventually shows up as inflation AND as a slip in productivity per man-hour.

Eventually, enough companies getting poached of quality personnel are hit hard enough where they are forced to react, (which leads to layoffs).

The only historical time I can find when full employment did not 'quickly' (about 9 months) lead to a recession was the unique point in time when the leading edge of the baby boomers were entering the work force *AND* the migration of women out of the home into the workforce were occurring simultaneously. The key here is that even though the BLS 'unemployed' pool was small, the number if new entrants on a monthly basis was exceptionally large, (relative to the size of the total labor force at the time), which mitigated the impacts I mentioned above regarding wages and job migration pressures.

In the wake of the 2008 crash, Americans on the whole got a LOT more skittish about changing jobs than they had been, so during The Slog, people who would have previously been much more mobile job-wise, CHOSE to stay put, (mitigating the job migration effects), and holding off the wage growth and inflation. At full employment, the market changes - and as people see their neighbors jumping into higher paying jobs, it creates the same lemming effect that fueled the housing madness.

If our current expansion goes on another 2-3 years, then my theory is busted, and it's back to the drawing board. But, even if a recession hits in the next 9 months or so, it doesn't necessarily prove my theory, but it certainly lends credence to it.

Firemane said...

Among my friends, the true paranoids never bothered getting on, and the ones that have social network accounts all assumed none of the data was safe from the get-go.

I'm sure there will be a spate of FB drops from the subset of people who didn't already think everything on the web is not private ... but I would guess that FOMO kicks in and the bulk of them return within 6 months.


Rob Dawg said...

Count me as a true paranoid then. Thing is I just never agreed with the terms of service. No one forced me to join. This blog is hosted by the more evil blogspot which is google. My google searches are while signed in. I just use a different browser and duckduckgo for those searches I don't want tracked.

Firemane said...

I always have counted you as a true paranoid, Dawg. :)

Though I also believe in the observation that you aren't paranoid if they really are out to get you.

Lawyerliz said...

I guess I am paranoid, because I never went on any social media, I never thought they were safe. Posting and texting take too much of my time already

Lawyerliz said...

Absolutely.

Rob Dawg said...

New post. Housing lesson not learnt.

Lawyerliz said...

Businesses who can't hire as they'd like, may find some people who despaired but are now more hopeful and teachable and the businesses might spend some money training them and paying high enough wages that they stay. They will have to pay others that work there some more, whicn may reduce profits.

Rob Dawg said...

If they are worth keeping, profits should increase.