Your accounting of the cost of manufacturing seems valid and most likely accurate enough for what we are talking about here. The $5.25 per bottle of product is reasonable based on the numbers you provide. The 7 (or 17) cents attributed to taxes is paid by you. The tax obligations thus are fulfilled and your expense is recovered when you sell that bottle of goods to the manufacturing representative. There is no further obligation on your part after the product is sold. The transaction is complete and ended.
Our difference in viewpoints has to do with your assertion that the taxation is carried forward up to the point where the product is consumed. This might involve several links in that supply chain, each of which have tax obligations and profits to be recovered. I contend that the rate of taxation is not compounded as the product is forwarded through each step of the supply chain. The tax you paid has been satisfied and does not carry forward when the next guy sells what he purchased from you. That supplier must pay his own taxes and passes on the costs of doing so to the next link in the chain. Your sale to the rep, and the rep's sale to the wholesaler are two separate and completed activities that have no tax link to each other.
To understand my perspective better, it might be helpful to look at the raw materials you purchase to manufacture your product. Are the payroll taxes and sales taxes paid by the supplier of the raw chemicals of any concern to you? Your only concern is the purchase price and not all the bookkeeping entries that were used to determine that price. Are you paying for the taxes your supplier must pay? No. You are paying for the chemicals you need. The company you buy those chemicals from is paying the taxes.
Yes, I agree that all the expenses associated with taxes paid along the path of manufacturing are in the final price paid by the consumer. That final price is also paying for wages, loan indebtedness, rent, utilities, and the Lords Of Manufacturing only know what. All those things are "hidden" because they are not itemized at the time of purchase. But none of those costs are compounded. Each transaction is separate and complete onto itself. I do often question if the "markup" to cover expenses is excessive. There are no laws or standards governing how much profit a company can make. In my opinion that is a good thing.
I can guarantee that the 17 cents per bottle in hidden taxes become 58 cents the end consumer is paying.
Uncle Sam still only gets his 17 cents from me, but it cost you 58 cents for that to happen.
And that Does Not include the taxes added by all the other companies in the chain.
The only way that about is less if is a distributor or wholesaler sells direct to an end consumer, which doesn't happen all that often, because they are not usually licensed for retail sales.
We are at a point where both of us look at the same thing and perceive something different. I like that. That's one reason this website has always been interesting and worth the effort maintaining. Over the years I've learned a lot about how other people think and feel like a better person for it. Discussing business and current events give me a better understanding of the world around me. Looking back in some ways I think I should have worked toward a business degree instead of going into electronics. I guess it was a matter of circumstances and I chose the easier path. In any case, I honestly appreciate your time and trouble explaining in great detail how you see things working. Most of the time you are even better than my friend Google.
Our family business was already 50 years old or older when I was born.
How things were done back then is a whole lot different than it is today of course.
But many things never change, such as you have to recoup your expenses and make a profit in order to grow.
I was only about 12 to 14 years old when my grandfather died, but still remember many of the stories about business he did take the time to teach me. And why it was important as I was growing up to work in every division and department of our business, so I knew what, why, and how each division or department operated.
Being in a business of all perishable items is considerably different than being in non-perishable businesses.
Timing is much more important, and if you don't get it just right, you fail and suffer great losses.
It's pretty hard to sell 30,000 poinsettias the day after Christmas, hi hi.
Or 50,000 Lilies the day after Easter. Getting things to bloom at the right time is a delicate balancing act.
That's the greenhouse end. In the cut flower shop, we have to turn over our cut flower inventory every three days or less on many items, in under five days on a select few items. So I had to learn one heck of a lot about using accurate time tables adjusted to the seasons and the day length for each day. Also what flowers could be held longer at lower cooler temperatures, and which ones would suffer if the temp was below a certain level. Also which flowers can be held in hyperbaric storage and which cannot. Although I don't remember much of it anymore, at the time I had it down pat.
As far as the financial end of the business, there are many things we had to know that most businesses don't even consider because it is not important to their type of business.
As an example: When I ran the Norge Village Laundromat, there were very little line items to be concerned about. Basically Rent, Insurance, Machine Lifespan, maintenance, and replacement costs, utility costs, etc.
We had a few product dispensing vending machines for soap, softener, bleach packets, which were handled in a separate ledger, and only the total expenses were transferred to the main ledger books. Basically they were handled like a separate division of the same company. We also had a service counter that did several things, and it too was handled as a separate division of the company. They did things like ironing, clothing repair, mostly buttons, taking peoples clothes from the dryers for them and folding them. But we would not handle dirty clothes for them because it would infringe on the laundry and dry cleaning companies also owned by Norge franchises.
The accounting for the laundromat was a thousand times simpler than for the florist and greenhouses, hi hi.
About the only thing harder than the laundromat was the restaurants I owned. Those were a royal PITA to handle, at least on the franchise side, on my restaurant side it was much easier. The franchise side counted cups and individual items to an exact count. The restaurant side worked in bulk units only. We didn't count each individual item. We used a Yield method of sorts. I case of Pepperoni yielded on average 160 pizza's ordered with Pepperoni. Sometimes we got 140 and other times 180, but that case still cost the same. But this way we didn't have to account for an employee having a pizza that wasn't picked up, or one that got burned and ended up in the trash. We did have to be careful about losses, but not account for every single slice of Pepperoni, hi hi. I should say the franchise side, everything was portion packed when we bought it, at a higher price too, and you had to account for every single portion.
It could get crazy keeping the paperwork for the franchise side.
My first exposure to inventory control was only a few weeks after I was hired at Motorola. They would shut down the plant during the last two weeks of the year and at least the first week of January. It could have gone longer in certain cases. During the shutdown certain employees were asked to come in and do a physical count of the inventory. Every freaking resistor, capacitor, coil, screw, and length of wire had to be accounted for. This was the time they also did asset counting and every single piece of furniture and every single component of every single machine had to be accounted for. That was all done manually without the aid of computers. I lucked out and was asked to work that first year. Usually people didn't want to come in during the Christmas holiday, and you did not get paid for that particular time off. We had one heck of a time doing all that counting, but those numbers were passed onto the accounting department and the plant was not allowed to reopen until the books balanced. Talk about migraine headaches. LOL
It takes a certain kind of mindset to be a successful businessman. The challenges are infinite and the solutions to problems are not always obvious. When I worked in IT for Motorola there too was a lot of pressure to get things working properly. It wasn't just my management that had great expectations of me but also the management of the departments which my expertise depended upon. More than once I heard screaming about how many thousands of dollars, or was it millions, are being lost while I was just sitting at the computer terminal looking stupid while production was shut down. People would often ask how I (and my co-workers) could possibly deal with all that pressure. It was indeed tense at times but greatly satisfying when the problems were solved. I learned early on how to ignore the pressure while I was in the process of trying to fix things. In the final analysis the job was fun because of that pressure. Doing a good job is very satisfying, but doing a good job under pressure is a form of elation the average burger flipper never experiences.
Of course my salary was paid no matter what because I didn't own the business. I worked for somebody else all my professional life. That was kind of a safety net and helped me maintain my sanity. Doing what you did and your livelihood depending on it is more pressure than I could take.
That's the way it was at our florist too. It took three men an entire week to count everything stored in our warehouses, and nothing could go in our out during that week.
In the cut flower shop alone we had thousands of rolls of ribbons, and aerosol flower staining cans.
And this particular year, 1980 and every ten years before that, they did an exact count. Down to the yards of ribbon left on open rolls, and the weight of each opened can of flower stain. How many wires were in the holders at each designers desk too. It was crazy every tenth year, and I never saw the purpose in doing it that accurately. Still don't.
As far as I'm concerned, once bolt of ribbon was removed from inventory for use, no matter how much was used from it, it was considered no longer in inventory. Same with anything in small boxes or cans. Once it left the supply area and went to the work area, that was it, it was no longer in inventory.
Since I was handling much of the accounting work in 1980, I decided to look back to previous tenth anniversary inventories, just to see if it really made a difference. It did in one way, but from 1950 to 1980, the amount of inventory IN USE was nearly identical. Less than 1,000 unit difference of individual items either way. Amazing when you consider how many feet are on a bolt of ribbon, or how many wires are in a box of florist wire. But it does make sense, because every night before they leave work, each designer would fill their wire racks, and make sure there were no empty slots on the flower stain shelf or ribbon racks. And since they know they can't get into the storeroom or warehouse for a week, they make sure and have their stations fully stocked for the week ahead.
Major holidays at the flower shop were very stressful. During my grandfathers era, employees might work a 16 hour day on holidays. During my dad's era, he would stop answering the phone and take no orders after 2 pm, and still the employees had to work 14 or more hours. A few of us worked around the clock, taking cat naps at our desk for 2 hours at at time, but kept going. Just before my dad had his heart attack, I had convinced him to only run the employees for 12 hours and no more, and to hire some of the basic work from kids after school. Which he reluctantly did.
This brings us up to my era, when I took over for dad while he was in the hospital and for his recover time after that.
I brought in 8 kids, and assigned 1 kid to each designer. Their job was to prep the containers, bring flowers from the cooler to the designer, and on things like centerpieces, add the greenery for them. Sorta like assembly line style. All the designers did was design the arrangements, then their helpers would add the tags, wrap the packages and add the delivery stickers and put them on the delivery tables. We did not stop answering the phone until our normal quitting time of 5:30 pm, but told those who ordered after 4 pm, their package would not arrive before 7 pm.
I did pay the designers time and a half during their normal 8 hour work day, because none would be getting any overtime. It was like a bonus for them. And for the first time in history, we handled twice the amount of orders, and all the drivers were back in at their normal time, except for a half a dozen hot shots after closing. All the employees got to go home at 5:30 like on a normal business day. Even with paying 8 extra kids, and paying time and half during the normal work day. Our end labor cost for the 3-day holiday spread was 1/3 less than any previous year.
Despite doing twice the amount of orders, at 1/3 less cost, dad still blew his top at my changing how things were done. He said you can't work the designers like truck-horses. But they all told him things ran smoothly, and they enjoyed working that way. One even said, we were able to stay fresh and productive. Even so, dad didn't like it, it was not the way things have always been, and not the way grandpa did things either, hi hi.
I'm going to brag a bit on something here, because I saved the company from a major loss.
We had Quonset greenhouses about four miles from us, and two of those greenhouses were nothing but carnations, because we supplied most of the carnations sold down on wholesale row to other florists.
About a month before our largest delivery of the year to wholesale row was to take place, I got wind that they had purchased an entire rail car of carnations from an unknown source, and they would not be ordering from us this season.
I came up with a gimmick to sell those carnations, not at wholesale either, to sell all of them at retail, and only one to three at a time.
It would cost a bit of money up front to pull this off, because I had to have a special box designed with three glass windows. The box was shaped like an octagon, with tall arched windows on the front three panels. In the bottom had to be a wax lined box that held a small block of Hydrofoam, and this had to slip into a square but tall shipping box that could be sent via the USPS.
I placed a newspaper ad in each major city in our state, and the seven states that surrounded Missouri. Plus took a 30 second commercial on TV that ran on four different channels. I took it right after prime time and it still was priced at 35,000 dollars a minute. Ouch. But we did it through an ad agency so it only cost like 60 thousand for four spots on each channel. That was just dumb luck. We sold not only enough to pay for all the advertising, the special boxes and overwrap carton, but got slightly more than full-retail price for each of those carnations. Only about 10,000 sold with only a single carnation in the box, all the rest sold with three carnations in the box. We actually had to buy 25,000 carnations from wholesale row to fulfill the last of the orders and use up the remaining boxes. We expected more sales of the single carnation, so were surprised so many were for the three carnation box.
So, not only did we not lose the crop, we quadrupled how much money they would have made if they sold them to wholesale row. But yes there was a lot more work involved, but not that much more work. Our existing workforce in the remote greenhouses were able to handle it all, with only one extra employee for soaking the Hydrofoam, and folding the boxes so they were ready to use.
Dad didn't have anything to do with this, since it was one of my uncles departments. But my uncle was more than elated he didn't have to toss the crop. He did not know how much we made from my escapade, and I never got a bonus for doing it, which sorta POed me. But then I did all of it off the clock too, when I should have stayed punched in. But I didn't want my dad to know what I was up too either, hi hi. Good thing I could write company checks and had the money back in the bank before he had to balance expenditures with income, hi hi.
Most of my early life I did have a full-time job and started my businesses as a side-line operation.
They did not take up much of my time in the evening, except on rare occasions when i got more orders than expected and had to get them out the door. It wasn't until later years when I was building rooftop greenhouses and getting my Wonder Plants company going that I needed to work at it full time.
Plus you know I had the Handymenders business after the flower shop and Wonder Plants closed down.
With so many small tabletop businesses all bringing in a little something, they all added up so I was making a decent income for a lot of years.
The story of how you sold all those carnations has earned you bragging rights, and then some. My wife of many years is a big fan of carnations, and daisies. No doubt she would be interested in the boxed carnations idea and perhaps a persuasive ad on the television would motivate her to purchase such an item. I have nothing against carnations, but boxed? Hmmm. I'd have to think of a good reason to pay cash for that kind of package. Obviously there were a lot of people not thinking like me when you had flowers to sell. Most likely you would have been in for a major loss if you did not do all that advertising because it seems to have influenced a whole lot of potential customers. You knew that, I'm sure. Your tip about losing the order to a boxcar full of flowers was the saving grace of the entire operation. I don't how how you came to know that in advance, but therein is where I see your knack for being a successful businessman. You instinctively know how to do things that are important to success.
Inventory has tax repercussions which is why companies pay attention to it. There are financial reports and balance sheets and all kinds of things accountants rely on for accurate numbers. Banks need to keep things balanced to the last penny while corporations are only concerned about rounding to the nearest dollar. But, all those dollars must be accounted for to determine profit, net worth, market value, and most importantly tax liability. Then, too, keeping tabs on inventory helps reduce shrinkage and pilfering by the employees. And, you know they do it. LOL
One of the main reasons we invested in a Hyperbaric Storage System was because Wholesale Row were often overstocked by making large purchase deals all the wholesale florists shared with each other. This always put the local suppliers in a cramp being stuck with flowers we raised to keep them in stock.
But they are in business to make a profit also, so when an opportunity comes along, we don't blame them for taking it.
Some things don't do well in Hyperbaric Storage Units, so we may end up shipping coffin sized crates of flowers to different areas of the country using overnight or one day shipping. Then the local growers at that end get mad at us, hi hi.
The whole industry changed considerably as small growers were replaced with those big Mega-Farms who produce millions of flowers. Some flowers can be picked early, crated and shipped around the world, such as gladiolus. So that's how we bought them too. Can't raise them yourself any cheaper.
Most of the carnations we sold in the decorative box, people just left them in the pretty box, and then used the box over again as little display cases for things like grandpa's pocket watch, etc. They looked sorta like a coachman's lantern, something you would put a candle in, except these were cardboard with glassine windows.
I just looked through about 900 boxes to see if I could find something similar. Not even close, drat.
I'm sure you've seen boxes with glassine windows before, like corsages come in.
Except I had them make octagonal when looking down from the top. From the front they looked like a coach light.
The cellulose film was one piece that covered all three window areas, and had an arched top.
They really were cute boxes!
In a family business, almost anything somebody needs, they just take it, hi hi.
Roses come 22 to a package, but are sold by the dozen, usually.
Hot Dogs come 8 to a package, and buns 10 to a package.
Or vice versa 10 hot dogs and only 8 buns.
There is a method behind this madness, hi hi.
In the perishable end of the business. You have to expect a certain amount of loss. So perishables are usually purchased by Lots, and although the flowers are sold individually or used in arrangements, we take the number of Lots used to produce X number of arrangements, which are usually an assortment of flowers and greens. No real reason to inventory eaches on the perishable items.
On the non-perishable things, having a more accurate count is only marginally beneficial. The cost to count what's left in each box can end up costing more than the items you are counting.
But to be honest here, rather than count how many wires were in a box, we just weighed the boxes and estimated how many were left in the box, on the decade count we did that tight.
In the restaurant business, we had to toss a lot of perfectly good product items, simply because we put more in the dressers bin than we sold during the 3 hour time period we were allowed to hold items.
There is a really great doughnut shop on the way to Maryville. We stop every time we are out that way.
They only make a certain number of each type of doughnut, which is based on experience as to how many sell.
A customer was in the store and mad because they never had the ones he wanted left near closing time.
I heard the owner talking to him, and he said, the fact that you asked for these three types, the counter girl punched that into the register as shorts. Then the owner ran to the back and came back with a huge ledger book.
He opened the book and showed the man how many of each doughnut they make each day.
There were other columns that showed how many of each time he had to throw away unsold, and another column for home of a certain type were requested after they were out for the day.
He specifically pointed out the three varieties the man was mad about, to show him, if he makes more than 32 of them, they end up throwing away two or three, and only about once a week were they flagged as being short.
It takes the sale of five doughnuts of that type to make up for tossing just one, and I would have to raise my prices.
Apparently seeing this appeased the man, because he left with a smile on his face, hi hi.
I have a pretty good mental image of what that carnation box could have looked like. I don't know why being boxed, however, made the flowers so appealing. LOL That's purely a bias on my part and I'm sure those boxed carnations gave many people hours and hours of viewing pleasure. Then, too, advertising leaves subliminal messages in the mind. Perhaps if I experienced some of the promotional material my thinking would change. I know how that works when buying groceries so that flowers could be the same way.
We had a mom and pop donut shop near us up north. You didn't want to go near the place before nine o'clock in the morning. There were times when the lines of people were out the door. I'd have to say the donuts were pretty good and a lot like cake texture. Some that were obviously deep fried were more like the Krispy Kreme variety that is mostly air. At least half that morning crowd was on their way to work which explains the line. There was no drive through and I'm not sure how that would have worked in a donut shop anyway. Their coffee was excellent and I believe that is what accounted for at least half their business. The shop never closed, except for Christmas, and most of the donut preparation was done overnight. There was a huge glass window the customers could look in and watch the baking while they stood in line waiting to be served. I don't think I ever saw anyone in that room idle. LOL Well, mom and pop retired. Maybe not, but they probably were millionaires at the time. They sure sold a lot of donuts. The next owners were southeast Asians of some variety. As you would expect the prices came up a bit when the new owners took over, but they made a critical error when they decided not to serve coffee anymore. They were still in business a year later but no longer 24 hours and there were no visible lines of people waiting to be served. The parking lot was hardly populated. They also had to cut down on the variety of available donuts. I suspect some were more costly to make than others. They did start serving coffee again, but unlike the previous owners they no longer sold the beans to their customers. Plus, it just didn't taste the same. I do believe the donuts are what made that place great, but ... just maybe ... there was something extra in the coffee too.
I think one of the reasons we managed to sell so many, was that the president at the time just made Grandmothers Day an officially recognized day. And most folks never though about getting grandma something, and these little gifts where just what the doctor ordered at the time.
Normally we can sell whatever crops we raised, but this was an odd year all year anyhow. I was manager for a couple years already and more or less had control of the cut flower shops checkbook, hi hi. I'm guessing 1979, I know it wasn't 1980, but could have been 1978.
I don't like Krispy Kreme donuts at all. To me they taste like overly sugar coated grease balls. Makes my tongue slide off the roof of my mouth, hi hi. And I don't drink the Speed Drug Coffee either.
But I do LOVE well made donuts with a flash film of sugar coating.
Bob's Donuts was the Go To place for donuts when I was growing up. He also supplied many of the Catholic Schools with donuts on Friday's. He had a whole second building added behind his just for handling those school orders.
Before the foreigners took them over, Dunkin' Donuts used to be OK, not as good as Bob's. Then they discontinued their flagship donut, the original Duncin' Donut with the handle.
I did know the trick both Bob's and Duncin' Donut's used in their glazed and some other donuts. A drop of Almond Extract. Not enough you could really taste the Almond, but it did alter the taste just enough you thought they were better, hi hi.
Bob's also used Vanilla Extract in most of his donut varieties.
He served Manhattan Coffee, and sold a lot of it too.
Almond flavoring the sugar glaze? That's an interesting idea and sounds like a sure winner to me. I wish I knew more tricks of the trade because most of them are simple. I read about the "secret" to making amazing lettuce salads being to sprinkle a tiny bit of salt over the top just before serving. It does make a difference because it brings out the moisture and flavor of most anything you put in that salad. I also tend to use superfine sugar instead of regular granulated sugar. It isn't supposed to be any different than any other sugar, but it seems to sweeten things up better. Likewise Kosher salt is a course version of regular Morton salt, but it too melts differently and seems to add something extra.
______
To change course for a moment, I want to mention something about the prescription I recently picked up at Walgreens. You wrote not too long ago that some of the prices came down for the medications you are taking. I'm taking two different, and very common, pills for hypertension. They are dirt cheap and the co-pay ends up being $4.00 in my case. Well, the price for that has gone up to $4.05. I'm not sure who is getting that extra nickle because the insurance coverage is the same until the end of the year. The vendor or Walgreens is taking more these days. Prices apparently are not coming down for all drugs.
______
And, as long as I'm going off course, let me say a few words about Linux; Linux Mint in particular. I've not totally abandoned Ubuntu but it is no longer my Linux OS of choice. They have gone off the deep end lately and I don't like the direction they are going. Thus Linux Mint got promoted in my opinion of Linux OS's. The biggest stumbling block with Mint is that it retained too much Debian. Now they seem to be thinking like me and have veered sharply off course and dropped a lot of the Ubuntu features. This all came to high focus in their latest release number 20.xx wherein they decided to play nice with nVidia and not screw up the boot process. In fact not only does Linux Mint now boot cleanly into nVidia hardware, but it also updates the drivers automatically. That is astounding given their long standing policy of bashing proprietary drivers. Lo and behold, I discovered Linux Mint is not the only OS to do this. I have found at lest two other Debian-centric OS's that now boot cleanly into my nVidia hardware system. I might go back to the Cinnamon desktop if this trend continues. And, unfortunately, they still use the crappy installer from Ubuntu and trash the Windows bootloader manager in the process. Mint STILL cannot be placed side by side with any Ubuntu distro.
I have a commercial grade of popcorn salt I use on things like Broccoli and Cauliflower, just a touch.
About the only thing I add to salads is a pinch of superfine sugar. And for myself I do sprinkle some table salt if it has tomatoes in it.
A couple of my scripts that always cost me 14 dollar co-pay have come down to 12 dollar co-pay.
But one of them that was Tier 2 got moved up to Tier 3, which upped the price considerably the last few times I got it.
However, recently the price I pay, although it is still Tier 3 has dropped way down. Basically it was like 45 dollars, jumped up to 126 dollars, and is now down to 38 dollars. Crazy, but glad to see it is coming down.
My wife is on several different types of Insulin. A couple of them are very expensive and the price so far is unchanged.
A couple of other the price is now around 1/2 of what it used to be.
But the ones she used to get for 25 bucks is now 35 bucks, which we thought would happen.
In the end, taking all of them into consideration, she is paying about 20 bucks less for all is all.
Linux Mint 18 has always worked perfectly. Linux Mint 19.3 is a nightmare when it comes to Networking and Folder Sharing. They keep trying to fix it and only keep messing it up further.
The big suggestion on Linux boards is to roll back to Linux Mint 18 until they get the bugs out.
They've added a few new features to Linux Mint 20, but still have not addressed the bugs they introduced in 19, which carried over into 20.
I still run the Debian version I installed on the Silver Yogi when I got it from you. It works perfectly, so I don't see changing it. I guess I could wipe the other OSs I installed and try a newer version, but time for me is hard to come up with for messing around.
Although Ubuntu is what drew me back to Linux, I never was really all that fond of it.
And on my older computers I had at the time, Debian just ran better than Ubuntu, less bloat.
I shouldn't be surprised but the different experiences we have with Linux is sometimes startling. Like Ubuntu, I've run Mint for many years and always kept the updates current. Since I wasn't actually too interested in using MInt I can't say that I notice a lot of problems with it other than just getting to the desktop in the first place. That was entirely a video driver issue which they apparently fixed in the 20.xx release. I have a wireless HP printer, the NAS, and a laptop on my LAN and am always amazed at how well all Linux distro's connect. Mint never gave me any more network problems than did any of the other versions of Linux I tinker with. Booting, however, is a major issue with just about every Debian derived OS I've ever tested.
Some of the Linux light weight OS's are more like Debian than is Debian itself. I never installed a virgin version of Debian until I tried to help you out one time. It is incredibly naked and takes somebody well versed in the basics to use it. Getting it to be productive after that is even a greater fete. I have to give you extra credits for mastering Debian. I found the most problems with Debian being related to their FOSS policy, which apparently they are now abandoning in favor of dealing with the real world. A lot of people in the tech support forums have asked tough questions and were issued evasive replies when asked for help booting nVidia drivers. I think Debian developers didn't realize how many non-FOSS people are out there in the real world. The big issue that remains is the Linux developers' high minded bias against Microsoft. Some day they will have to come to an understanding that you can boot Linux from the Windows bootmanager and A LOT of people are out there trying to do it. Grub needs a major work over to prevent Linux from breaking Windows boot. I'll never forget the response I got from a Linux developer when I told him his Grub breaks the Windows bootloader. He said he never knew Windows could boot Linux.
Regarding insurance, my Medicare Part D premiums have come down about $15 a month. So now instead of $2400 a year we'll only have to pay $2000. Of course the new pricing of the drugs we take will not be available until after the enrollment period has expired, but I can predict what will happen. The deductible and co-pays will go up ... mmm ... about $20/mo. I guess there is a big push to cut the costs of insulin drugs. A lot of people depend on it and it will be a blessing if the costs truly can come down.
Maybe I'm just lucky. I install Debian, install the programs I like, and it just works, including file sharing and networking.
This may not be true for later versions. Once I have one that is working right, I hate updating to a newer version.
Unless I do a clean install on a new partition to try it out and find everything works right.
File sharing works perfectly on Linux Mint 17, but on 19.3 I've never got it to work at all yet, and I've tried just about every trick posted on the various forums. Many say just forget it and install version 18 because it works right, hi hi.
Yeppers! Every time the enrollment period ends and we can't change, the prices go up. That should not be allowed!
The drug companies are doing with Insulin like they did with super cheap Epinepherine. They won't sell Epinepherine unless it is in their Patented and Expensive Epi-pens.
The inventors of Insulin made it FREE to those who make it, no royalties, in order to keep the price at rock bottom.
We saw how that went. The greedy drug industry kept hiking the price higher and higher for no logical reason.
Also, it should be an OTC item, not something that requires a prescription, but you can thank the insurance companies for that infringement.
When I had to use one heck of a lot of saline on my late wife's legs where they split open again.
And after the insurance would not pay for more at the high dollar price.
Our pharmacist told me where I could buy the same stuff by the gallon without a script for only like 2 bucks a gallon.
The insurance companies are also ripping of Medicare BIG TIME.
My Nebulizer NEW costs between 35 and 39 dollars.
My Insurance company charged Medicare a tad over 55 dollars a MONTH for it as a rental to me.
Without Insurance, I could buy my Albuterol for around 18 to 26 dollars.
My Drug Plan charges 110 for the Albuterol, and a 130 dollar dispensing fee.
And then bill me for 66 bucks a month until I reach my 400 dollars out of pocket.
We are in the wrong business Yogi, we need to be a Medicare Insurance Plan company!
The frustrations one can encounter with Medicare and with insurance companies are limitless. I'm not sure how sleazy they are, however. Understanding healthcare and reimbursements is about as easy to do as understand how computers work. Many people benefit from them without understanding the goings on internally. Healthcare is a very personal experience and for the most part is taken for granted. The people who need it most can least afford it, but that doesn't mean the providers are doing anything underhanded. Some do, of course, but there is a lot of oversight in both the insurance industry and in healthcare.
I don't know of any other countries in the world where private healthcare is the default system. Most other places on earth get their needs taken care of from some government subsidized enterprise. In theory that approach eliminates the middle man, i.e., the insurance companies. On the other hand it takes away the profit motive which ultimately affects the quality of service. I'm not totally convinced that the government owes it's citizens "free" healthcare or "free" education. If that is what the citizens truly want, then it should be written into the government's charter. And, I guess that is exactly where the problem rests in this country. Not enough people can agree on a common method of providing healthcare and education that is equitable for all.
So, maybe you're right. If we can't beat them, we could possibly benefit from joining them.
As far as Linux goes we are both equally lucky. What that means is that each of us have different expectations and uses for computer operating systems. I don't have a need requiring a solution so that any operating system that allows me to run this website is fine with me. If my livelihood depended on how well my computer worked, I might not be looking for a Windows replacement and rejecting all those Windows wannabe's. My pursuits are more for personal enlightenment than for anything else. I love solving problems of the technical sort, but am not so interested in what programs work where. As far as Mint 19.x goes I didn't keep it around very long to discover a lot of it's problems. I do know my routine evaluation includes the ability of an OS to connect to and work with my LAN, and Mint 19 passed that milestone when I checked into it. I always upgrade (via clean install) to the latest release on the assumption that security and functionality has improved. Now that Mint has gone rolling, I may not have to do that anymore.
I have many English friends where they have Socialized Medicine.
They are ALWAYS begging for Donations to have a family members illness or a much needed surgery covered, because their system won't pay for the life-saving surgeries.
I have one friend named Andy Davy who almost lost his daughter to one such illness.
He had to get the funds to take her elsewhere to get her life-saving operation.
The sad part is, IF she could have gotten the operation when needed, she could have fully recovered.
But by having to wait so long, much of the damage caused is now permanent damage.
His daughter name is Kayleigh by the way. Sad state of affairs when you can't buy insurance because the government is supposed to but doesn't. I don't see a benefit myself, so glad we don't have it here!
There is a rather large accounting firm here that does a whole lot more than just accounting. They handle the payroll for hundreds of companies too.
They have been using RedHat now on their floor computers for like over 15 years.
But from what I understand, their Mainframe is either Spark or something else, but handled by Sun.
They just added a new Mainframe computer from IBM, and in so doing, all the machines connected to that mainframe are now all running an IBM version of Enterprise Debian instead of RHEL.
I've not been able to find out why they made the change though, since IBM often uses RHEL on floor computers.
Our city government here uses UNIX, and about half of the floor computers are either MAC or Windows, and the other half are all different Linux Distro's, most of which I never heard the name of before. But I think they are all possibly BSD based. I say that because when the monitors are idle, besides the CofK logo, that panels looks like what BSD uses. They only run the programs assigned to each computer and that's it, no extra's. Sorta like my doctors office now, hi hi.
Two women who were very active on this site lived in England. I would talk extensively to both of them about the different approaches to healthcare in our respective countries. The cost of insurance always astonished them and they didn't seem to mind the taxes they had to pay in lieu of insurance premiums. Nothing is truly free was my argument. Both ladies died, unfortunately.
One claimed she got all the care she could expect treating her lung cancer - she was a heavy smoker. She insisted nothing was lacking and that the quality was as good as you could find anywhere in the world. However, she did concede that in some cases there was a wait for surgeries, but even then many people also had private care providers at a somewhat higher price than what NHS offered. No waiting in those private places.
The second lady also defended the NHS but admitted to some possible shortcomings. She was happy with the healthcare she received and was resigned to the fact that she was terminal. I don't recall exactly what she died from but everything that was available was given to her. She had some connections in the medical community and even got drugs most people did not have access to. There was one drug available in the USA that was promising, but it was not available in England. She talked about coming here for treatment but never did.
Much of what you commented on was more or less a rarity according to the ladies. They felt "free" healthcare for ALL people (socialized medicine) was much better than the best care in the world for only those people who could afford insurance. Healthcare not being provided for some people was a concept these two ladies could not comprehend.
IBM bought out Red Hat recently. I'm not sure what that means for their legacy systems, but it sure as Hell isn't going to be FOSS. LOL
In my opinion the purpose of insurance was to fuel the industries they apply to, allowing those industries to charge much higher rates than were considered reasonable. And along with those industries charging higher and higher rates, thanks to the insurance companies fueling them, insurance rates accelerated at an alarming rate. But for a time, they did cover everything. Now they cover very little. And Medicare is almost a joke. You have to be totally destitute to get Medcaid.
But for those who are really poor, they have much better free coverage than those of us who are paying through the nose.
We keep our insurance plans because of the major expenses that may some day arise.
But almost all the drug plans are a big scam.
My wife and I sat down and calculated how much we paid for our drug plans, what the amount we had to pay before they paid anything, and what our co-pays are after we pay the initial fee. In my case, I was paying like 1,100 bucks more than my prescriptions would cost without insurance. My wife on the other hand lands in the donut hole often as early as March and then is not covered until she pays out like 6 grand, after that everything is covered. Even so, based on the amount she pays in, and what little they cover up until she lands in the donut hole, they are making money hand over fist, for drugs that shouldn't cost more than a few bucks.
I guess you know different people than I do. Most of those I know are in the same boat as Andy Davy. Their medical care plans do not cover the things they are saddled with. Which is why they have to come up with the money to have it done on their own.
Heck, if you go over to Montgomery Village here, nearly everyone living there has 100% of their medical expenses covered at no cost to them. This is government subsidized housing, and they get welfare, food stamps, and tons of other benefits. This is why they can drive new cars, buy fancy clothes, and eat like kings. They know how to gimmick the system!
RedHat was only free in their very early years. When they only offered RedHat with a service contract, that is about the time they also issued CentOS, the free version of RedHat. But the Enterprise edition or RHEL if you prefer has never been free that I remember.
I used RedHat many years ago, and about a decade ago used CentOS for a short time.
But it wasn't until I started using Ubuntu that I got brought back to using Linux for nearly everything.
Then after I started using Debian, everything I do is now done on Linux. Works perfect for me!
It's hard for me to accept that the health insurance industry came about as a result of some conspiracy to gouge the general public. My thinking is that it was intended to be exactly what you keep paying your premiums for; coverage for catastrophic illness. It's based on statistics of a large group of people as opposed to the actual cost any one individual experiences. Some folks win. Some folks lose. Insurance is no different than any other capitalistic venture. It works because of the profit motive. The only alternative I can think of is the government supplying the service because they are the only entity with enough resources to do it. The downside is that it smacks of socialism. Given the different stories you and I hear, I remain undecided about government sponsored healthcare.
Drugs fall into the same category as any other commodity. The companies will charge what the market will bear. The negative side to that is indeed the insurance companies' support of the high costs. You explained to me in great detail how a company needs to recover it's costs of doing business and then tack on a profit to the retail price. Drugs companies must follow that same procedure, but they also have the insurance people in the supply chain. I'm certain that the need for drug insurance came about the same way as did the need for health insurance. People could not afford the high prices out of pocket so that averaging things with group coverage became the norm.
It all gets pretty emotional when our health and well being is at stake. That's a problem because it takes away the incentive to find alternatives. You need that drug no matter what and you can't boycott the company if their prices are out of reach. So then the subsidies happen and situations such as the one you describe arise wherein people on welfare are living a better life than that you or I can. Again, I can't help but to think that taking the profit motive out of the formula is the only way to optimize and equalize the system. There could be other ways, but I haven't heard about them yet.
I've been lucky enough to find some of the drugs I take for well below name brand and even generic brand prices.
Two of them I can now get a two week supply for 88 cents. The generic is 12.95, and the name brand 16.95.
If a company can make it cheap enough to package it, distribute it, and a retailer can sell it for 88 cents.
Tell me how 16.95 isn't price gouging. Or even 12.95. It's the same product!
The fastest way to communism is to make the people dependent on the government for everything!
