On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 12:35:43 -0400, Ralph Mowery
wrote:

In article , lid says...

On 07/16/2017 11:29 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote:

[snip]

I know of some small bussiness that only take cash. No checks or credit
cards. Mainly restraints. Some of them do have a bank cash machine in
them where you can put in your card and get cash back.

That happened when I needed a money order, and the store would only take
cash. It seemed strange that they had no objection to my getting cash
from the ATM five feet from the counter (that is, I actually used a
debit card).

The store does not own or have any thing to do with the money you get
out of it. Say your credit card is fake and you buy from the store, the
store may be out of money. If you use the same card on the ATM, it is
the bank that is out of that money and not the store. You might as well
go to an ATM 5 miles away as far as the store is concerned.



Actually, there are many privately owned ATMs, especially in places
like convenience stores. Such machines can be extremely profitable
for those that operate them. A local casino has a number of private
ATM's throughout the facility and they charge a $3 fee for each
withdrawal. Considering the electronic transaction fee being paid by
the owner of the machine is only couple of cents (if any), that is a
great profit margin.

They want cash for the money orders because they would have to add the
merchant fees into the fees they are charging for the money order. In
ten states it is still illegal to surcharge the customer for using a
credit card.

On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 11:41:54 -0500, Mark Lloyd
wrote:

Here, they have "curbside recycling" where they take mixed paper,
plastic, and metal (no glass). Sometimes I've wondered it it's really
just a way to get people to wash most of their trash.

Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.
We should be putting aluminum and maybe steel in the recycle, paper
and plastic should be in the burn barrel (for a waste to energy plant)
and everything else should just go to the land fill either before or
after it is burned.

On 7/17/2017 12:41 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 07/16/2017 06:11 PM, Frank wrote:

[snip]

I blame spell check. They let stuff go if spelled correctly even if
sentence does not make sense.

I've had problems with that now. Often, the "mutant words" and 'not' and
'now', which can give the sentence opposite meaning. Worse than
lose/loose or breath/breathe, some of the cost common errors.

Used to get a 5 cent return on bottles here in DE but now we throw
away the bottles and the state still charges the deposit but they keep
it to help pay for recycling at the dump.

Here, they have "curbside recycling" where they take mixed paper,
plastic, and metal (no glass). Sometimes I've wondered it it's really
just a way to get people to wash most of their trash.


Same crap here. Incredibly stupid. Dump was originally recycling at
the dump but could not afford it but now they could with getting tax
they could. This is as it is done in some other places. I hard in
Florida someplace 5 separate containers required. Ever other vehicle on
the road there must be a garbage truck. This is what happens when
politicians give a solution to a technical problem.

On 7/17/2017 12:17 PM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 07/16/2017 11:29 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote:

[snip]

I know of some small bussiness that only take cash. No checks or credit
cards. Mainly restraints. Some of them do have a bank cash machine in
them where you can put in your card and get cash back.

That happened when I needed a money order, and the store would only take
cash. It seemed strange that they had no objection to my getting cash
from the ATM five feet from the counter (that is, I actually used a
debit card).


Makes sense. Let's say you buy a $100 money order. They charge you $2
for it. You pay with a debit card and they pay a transaction fee of 2
1/2% or $2.50. Not a very good business model. Plus you could reverse
the transaction on your card, etc.

So, you go to the in-store ATM and pay $3 service charge. The store
gets a part of that so now they made $3 from you instead of losing 50
cents.

On 7/17/2017 1:12 PM, wrote:


Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.

Why is glass useless? It may not be economically sensible to ship glass
scrap very far, but the glass plant near us used every bit they could
get. They made mostly bottles and jars.

On 07/17/2017 10:17 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 07/16/2017 11:29 AM, Ralph Mowery wrote:

[snip]

I know of some small bussiness that only take cash. No checks or credit
cards. Mainly restraints. Some of them do have a bank cash machine in
them where you can put in your card and get cash back.

That happened when I needed a money order, and the store would only take
cash. It seemed strange that they had no objection to my getting cash
from the ATM five feet from the counter (that is, I actually used a
debit card).


Why would they object? If the ATM dispensed cash on a bogus debit card
that wouldn't be their problem,

On 07/17/2017 10:20 AM, Mark Lloyd wrote:
On 07/16/2017 12:04 PM, rbowman wrote:

[snip]

Wonderful. I've noticed in the supermarket checkout line that the new
chipped credit cards take even longer to validate than previously. The
only thing worse than standing there while someone fumbles with a card
to buy a $5 sandwich is when the charge is declined.

Things go much faster with a $20 bill.

I normally use cash for anything $20 or less.

One exception is for a $1.09 root beer float at Sonic. At the time, it
was easier than dealing with change.


That's my stealth savings account. Pay cash, get change, throw the
change into a 3lb cottage cheese tub every night. When the tub is full,
take it to the coin machine at the supermarket. There is no fee if you
get a gift card instead of cash and Amazon is one of the available
cards. You don't actually get a card, just a code you can enter into
your Amazon account. A full tub nets out between two and three hundred.

On 07/17/2017 12:09 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 7/17/2017 1:12 PM, wrote:


Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.

Why is glass useless? It may not be economically sensible to ship glass
scrap very far, but the glass plant near us used every bit they could
get. They made mostly bottles and jars.

There was a local scheme to crush glass and use it to partially replace
aggregate in asphalt. Glassphalt is not a new idea but it didn't work out.

On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 14:09:39 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 7/17/2017 1:12 PM, wrote:


Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.

Why is glass useless? It may not be economically sensible to ship glass
scrap very far, but the glass plant near us used every bit they could
get. They made mostly bottles and jars.

Clear glass may be good for jars but mixed, colored glass is not
useful for much except maybe brown beer bottles and they seem too
uniform to be using much in the way of other colors.
I agree, if you can hit the glass plant throwing your empty, it may be
worth recycling them but trucking glass half way across the country is
not.

On 07/17/2017 11:00 PM, wrote:
Clear glass may be good for jars but mixed, colored glass is not
useful for much except maybe brown beer bottles and they seem too
uniform to be using much in the way of other colors.
I agree, if you can hit the glass plant throwing your empty, it may be
worth recycling them but trucking glass half way across the country is
not.

I once hauled aluminum cans for LA to the Kaiser Mead smelter north of
Spokane. That marvelous idea, energy deregulation, put paid to that. It
eventually became more profitable for Kaiser to resell the electricity
than run a smelter.

The smelter was originally run by Alcoa and its output helped build the
planes that won WWII. It's like the Springsteen song 'Youngstown':

"Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard's just scrap and rubble
He said "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do."
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country's wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for "

Somebody made money from deregulation but it wasn't the 400 people that
were laid off when the smelter was shut down and scrapped for the copper.

On 7/18/2017 1:00 AM, wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 14:09:39 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 7/17/2017 1:12 PM, wrote:


Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.

Why is glass useless? It may not be economically sensible to ship glass
scrap very far, but the glass plant near us used every bit they could
get. They made mostly bottles and jars.

Clear glass may be good for jars but mixed, colored glass is not
useful for much except maybe brown beer bottles and they seem too
uniform to be using much in the way of other colors.
I agree, if you can hit the glass plant throwing your empty, it may be
worth recycling them but trucking glass half way across the country is
not.


Clear glas must be clear. When our town started recycling at the dump
they has a container for clear, another for colored. One colored bottle
would contaminate a big container of clear. There was always some
idiot. . .

I've been told the best glass has some content of recycled in it.
http://www.gpi.org/recycling/glass-recycling-facts

Never thought about it going into fiberglass but they take it too.

In article ,
says...



I once hauled aluminum cans for LA to the Kaiser Mead smelter north of
Spokane. That marvelous idea, energy deregulation, put paid to that. It
eventually became more profitable for Kaiser to resell the electricity
than run a smelter.


There is an Alcoa smelter near me. A number of years ago the made more
off selling the electricity than aluminum. I thinkthey quit or really
scaled back on the smelting and just sold electricity.

On Tue, 18 Jul 2017 09:20:42 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 7/18/2017 1:00 AM, wrote:

On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 14:09:39 -0400, Ed Pawlowski wrote:

On 7/17/2017 1:12 PM, wrote:


Recycling is just a make work program for people unqualified to do
anything else. The only thing that actually have a cash value is
aluminum cans in most places. Paper and plastic ends up costing more
to ship than it is worth and the environmental impact is usually worse
too. Glass is really totally useless.

Why is glass useless? It may not be economically sensible to ship glass
scrap very far, but the glass plant near us used every bit they could
get. They made mostly bottles and jars.

Clear glass may be good for jars but mixed, colored glass is not
useful for much except maybe brown beer bottles and they seem too
uniform to be using much in the way of other colors.
I agree, if you can hit the glass plant throwing your empty, it may be
worth recycling them but trucking glass half way across the country is
not.


Clear glas must be clear. When our town started recycling at the dump
they has a container for clear, another for colored. One colored bottle
would contaminate a big container of clear. There was always some
idiot. . .

I've been told the best glass has some content of recycled in it.
http://www.gpi.org/recycling/glass-recycling-facts

Never thought about it going into fiberglass but they take it too.

That does not change the fact that most glass in "recycle bins" gets
sent to the land fill. We don't sort ours before we set it on the
curb, creating make work jobs for a bunch of low skilled workers and I
think they burn everything but the metal. They were just shipping it
to the landfill until the paper got wind of that. This is a boondoggle
all around because the indians get the first shot at the electricity
coming out of the waste to energy plant at a nickel a KWH for their
reservations and casinos. Granted we are 500-1000 miles away from any
reprocessing plants for just about any recyclable. Even the scrap
value of metal has dropped to the point that we do not have
"scrappers" anymore. It used to be that any piece of metal you set on
the curb was gone in a day. Now they don't even come for copper and
aluminum.

On 07/18/2017 07:20 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
Clear glas must be clear. When our town started recycling at the dump
they has a container for clear, another for colored. One colored bottle
would contaminate a big container of clear. There was always some
idiot. . .

I've been told the best glass has some content of recycled in it.
http://www.gpi.org/recycling/glass-recycling-facts

I worked for a company that made the polystyrene foam clamshells for
McDonalds. One of the advantages of thermoplastics is you can grind the
defective product and feed it back into the line. The clamshells had a
tan color rather than the pure white of virgin styrene, part of which
was due to the amount of regrind being used. McDonald's is a very
demanding customer and would use colorimeters to ensure the product was
the same exact shade. If the process was running right and there wasn't
much regrind that required tinkering.

That whole history is educational. McDonalds went from the original
paper wrapping to foam to save the trees or something. Then they went
back to paper/cardboard to save the landfills. Both were marketing
decisions based on what the public's perception was at the moment.

I've been out of that industry for a long time and don't know what is
used today but we were using freon by the railroad tank car for the
blowing agent. That wouldn't fly today. The best part of the job was ice
cream cones were made in another part of the plant. You could eat the
defective parts. Sugar cones hot off the press are good!

On 7/18/2017 11:52 AM, rbowman wrote:


I worked for a company that made the polystyrene foam clamshells for
McDonalds. One of the advantages of thermoplastics is you can grind the
defective product and feed it back into the line. The clamshells had a
tan color rather than the pure white of virgin styrene, part of which
was due to the amount of regrind being used. McDonald's is a very
demanding customer and would use colorimeters to ensure the product was
the same exact shade. If the process was running right and there wasn't
much regrind that required tinkering.

That whole history is educational. McDonalds went from the original
paper wrapping to foam to save the trees or something. Then they went
back to paper/cardboard to save the landfills. Both were marketing
decisions based on what the public's perception was at the moment.

I've been out of that industry for a long time and don't know what is
used today but we were using freon by the railroad tank car for the
blowing agent. That wouldn't fly today. The best part of the job was ice
cream cones were made in another part of the plant. You could eat the
defective parts. Sugar cones hot off the press are good!



I worked in foam plastics for 47 years. Our blowing agen was pentane.
About 15 years ago we had to capture emission, but it did not have the
bad rap that CFCs had. Nevertheless, all foam plastics were bad to an
uninformed public.

On 7/16/2017 9:12 PM, Wage Slave wrote:
On 7/16/2017 8:27 PM, dpb wrote:
On 07/16/2017 4:44 PM, Terry Coombs wrote:
...

Since when is getting money that *I* PAID IN being "on the dole" ?...

'Cepting it's not an actuarially sound program; the larger number by
far collect more than they paid in plus what typical earnings would've
been...

--


That may be true for the SS disability fraudsters but not for most workers.

If you log in to the SS site, you can see your yearly contributions
since you started slavery. Take those yearly contributions and plug
them in to any good investment calculator with a modest rate of return
and you can see the lump of money you'd have today. There's no way
I'll ever get all of mine back.

The problem is that the democrats have been using the Social Security
funds to fund lazy people.


Absolutely right. I contributed less to my 401k having to retire from
the company very early and now I get back more than my SS.

Only something like 60% goes to retired seniors and disabled and widows
and orphans get the rest, not to mention government stealing for other
programs.

On 7/18/2017 11:52 AM, rbowman wrote:
On 07/18/2017 07:20 AM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
Clear glas must be clear. When our town started recycling at the dump
they has a container for clear, another for colored. One colored bottle
would contaminate a big container of clear. There was always some
idiot. . .

I've been told the best glass has some content of recycled in it.
http://www.gpi.org/recycling/glass-recycling-facts

I worked for a company that made the polystyrene foam clamshells for
McDonalds. One of the advantages of thermoplastics is you can grind the
defective product and feed it back into the line. The clamshells had a
tan color rather than the pure white of virgin styrene, part of which
was due to the amount of regrind being used. McDonald's is a very
demanding customer and would use colorimeters to ensure the product was
the same exact shade. If the process was running right and there wasn't
much regrind that required tinkering.

That whole history is educational. McDonalds went from the original
paper wrapping to foam to save the trees or something. Then they went
back to paper/cardboard to save the landfills. Both were marketing
decisions based on what the public's perception was at the moment.

I've been out of that industry for a long time and don't know what is
used today but we were using freon by the railroad tank car for the
blowing agent. That wouldn't fly today. The best part of the job was ice
cream cones were made in another part of the plant. You could eat the
defective parts. Sugar cones hot off the press are good!


Company I worked for used recycle polymer in two of their most
profitable products. There was a color problem but these products did
not have to be clear. They did not brag about being environmentally
friendly by using recycle. Customer did not need to know and might want
to pay less.

Our dump takes glass, paper, cans and plastic but does not want
polystyrene or plastic bags. People do not realize that all this crap
must be separated and cleaned. I keep telling this to my wife that it
does not matter if she washes PET soda bottles or not. Only reason to
do is perhaps keep down smell of trash can in the garage.

On Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:16:07 -0400, Frank "frank wrote:

The problem is that the democrats have been using the Social Security
funds to fund lazy people.


Absolutely right. I contributed less to my 401k having to retire from
the company very early and now I get back more than my SS.

Only something like 60% goes to retired seniors and disabled and widows
and orphans get the rest, not to mention government stealing for other
programs.

The real problem with all of these programs is there is no investment
or savings. The government spends the money as soon as they get it so
current beneficiaries are depending on taxes on working people and we
have a ratio of around 2.5 workers per recipient. This was a very
successful program when it was around 16:1 but it is unsustainable
now. There was never a "trust fund". The surplus money was always
spent.

On 07/18/2017 10:29 AM, Frank wrote:
Company I worked for used recycle polymer in two of their most
profitable products. There was a color problem but these products did
not have to be clear. They did not brag about being environmentally
friendly by using recycle. Customer did not need to know and might want
to pay less.

I think it was '71, sometime during the oil embargo, when I was at the
NPE in Chicago and material of any type was hard to come by. I remember
talking to one guy who had to take two carloads of styrene toilet seats
for regrind to get one of virgin styrene. We sold thermoset molding
systems so regrind wasn't an option. There was a lot creativity with
replacing compounds with stuff derived from furfural. The stuff flowed
like water and the moldmakers had fits adapting to it.

rbowman posted for all of us...



On 07/17/2017 11:00 PM, wrote:
Clear glass may be good for jars but mixed, colored glass is not
useful for much except maybe brown beer bottles and they seem too
uniform to be using much in the way of other colors.
I agree, if you can hit the glass plant throwing your empty, it may be
worth recycling them but trucking glass half way across the country is
not.

I once hauled aluminum cans for LA to the Kaiser Mead smelter north of
Spokane. That marvelous idea, energy deregulation, put paid to that. It
eventually became more profitable for Kaiser to resell the electricity
than run a smelter.

The smelter was originally run by Alcoa and its output helped build the
planes that won WWII. It's like the Springsteen song 'Youngstown':

"Well my daddy come on the Ohio works
When he come home from World War Two
Now the yard's just scrap and rubble
He said "Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do."
These mills they built the tanks and bombs
That won this country's wars
We sent our sons to Korea and Vietnam
Now we're wondering what they were dyin' for "

Somebody made money from deregulation but it wasn't the 400 people that
were laid off when the smelter was shut down and scrapped for the copper.

Al Gore

--
Tekkie

On 7/18/2017 12:29 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:16:07 -0400, Frank "frank wrote:

The problem is that the democrats have been using the Social Security
funds to fund lazy people.


Absolutely right. I contributed less to my 401k having to retire from
the company very early and now I get back more than my SS.

Only something like 60% goes to retired seniors and disabled and widows
and orphans get the rest, not to mention government stealing for other
programs.

The real problem with all of these programs is there is no investment
or savings. The government spends the money as soon as they get it so
current beneficiaries are depending on taxes on working people and we
have a ratio of around 2.5 workers per recipient. This was a very
successful program when it was around 16:1 but it is unsustainable
now. There was never a "trust fund". The surplus money was always
spent.

Al Gores balls should be put in his lock box.

Frank posted for all of us...



On 7/18/2017 12:29 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:16:07 -0400, Frank "frank wrote:

The problem is that the democrats have been using the Social Security
funds to fund lazy people.


Absolutely right. I contributed less to my 401k having to retire from
the company very early and now I get back more than my SS.

Only something like 60% goes to retired seniors and disabled and widows
and orphans get the rest, not to mention government stealing for other
programs.

The real problem with all of these programs is there is no investment
or savings. The government spends the money as soon as they get it so
current beneficiaries are depending on taxes on working people and we
have a ratio of around 2.5 workers per recipient. This was a very
successful program when it was around 16:1 but it is unsustainable
now. There was never a "trust fund". The surplus money was always
spent.

Al Gores balls should be put in his lock box.

I thought they were gnawed off...

--
Tekkie

On 07/19/2017 01:32 PM, Frank wrote:
On 7/18/2017 12:29 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:16:07 -0400, Frank "frank wrote:

The problem is that the democrats have been using the Social Security
funds to fund lazy people.


Absolutely right. I contributed less to my 401k having to retire from
the company very early and now I get back more than my SS.

Only something like 60% goes to retired seniors and disabled and widows
and orphans get the rest, not to mention government stealing for other
programs.

The real problem with all of these programs is there is no investment
or savings. The government spends the money as soon as they get it so
current beneficiaries are depending on taxes on working people and we
have a ratio of around 2.5 workers per recipient. This was a very
successful program when it was around 16:1 but it is unsustainable
now. There was never a "trust fund". The surplus money was always
spent.

Al Gores balls should be put in his lock box.

You would have to find them first.