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Americans fleeing big cities in search of cheaper homes« on: April 22, 2006, 10:05:22 AM »
This is from an MSNBC article. [url][/urlReport: Americans fleeing nation's big citiesPeople moving further from metropolitan areas in search of cheaper homes]Riverside, Calif. a burgeoning cityThe metropolitan area that attracted the most new residents was Riverside, Calif., which has been siphoning residents from Los Angeles for years. The Riverside area, which includes San Bernardino and Ontario, had a net gain of 81,000 people a year from 2000 to 2004."Riverside has grown to become the 13th largest metropolitan area in the nation. It’s a short drive to several mountain ranges, and it’s within driving distance of the beach. Locally, it is known as the Inland Empire....“When you look at housing prices in Southern California, along the beaches and coastlines, you’re able to obtain a very large home for a much lower price” in Riverside, said Cindy Roth, president and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce....Homes in Riverside aren’t cheap. The median price — the point at which half cost more and half cost less — was $374,200 in 2005. But they are less expensive than Los Angeles, where the median price was $529,000."My comments:If gap between Riverside/inland empire prices and LA /OC prices continue to narrow, then the attractiveness of the IE declines. Why?. because the IE has little to offer, despite the glowing accounts on this and other commentator sites. It has relatively fewer high-end jobs and not much high-tech industrial corporate parks such as south OC has. And few commercial hi-powered commercial/banking/fimancial clusters such as Dwtn/westLA or Costa Mesa?newport beach. The IE is as of now basically one gigantic residential exurban sprawl for households who fled from the high coast prices and found low-cost homes in these boonies. And they have had to commute long distances to ther LA/OC coast to the jobs which are still concentrated along the coasts. Have been all over the IE and have seen few hi-end industrial/commercial/financial parks such as is found along the LA?OC coast. Those large gigantic commercial industial buidings that one sees in the CHino, ontario and fontana area are mostly large warehouses for receiving and transhipping all the imported studf from overseas, mostly china stuff. Warehousing/logistics does not offer much high-paying positions except fot a few at the intermediate and up management levels, and maybe class A trucking, which income is unstable. In Short there is not in the IE at this time a really built-up concentration of hi-end industrial/commercial/financial jobs and sectors to justify continuing RE home price appreciation. The bubble is now peaking and prices still going up due solely to demand for agffordable housing by Angelinos and OC'ers who are priced out of the coast. At Some point the IE prices will stop increasing as supplycontinues to build up and homes in IE cease to be affordable due to the Coast refugee's export of the coast bubble to the IE. ualty.com/forum/index.php?topic=599.0
Sunday, May 07, 2006
Monday, March 20, 2006
right-tilt fault zone
right-tilt fault zonDelivery Companies Pressured
The state is cracking down on firms that have converted their drivers into contractors.By Marc Lifsher, Times Staff Writere
This a from a long article on the state of califfornia cracking down on courier/messenger companies that convert their delivery employees to undependent contractors. I have been and i/c courier driver for three different companies since 2001. before that i was a salaried emplyee for 4 other companies. The difference between being a salaried driver and and I/c is that being an I/C you have absolutely no state benefits such as unemployment or state workmans comp that you pay into. You can , however, pay into social security thru filing your schedule se, as i have done as an I/C . Essentially thr I/C is in many respects a small self-owned business entity and should be seen as such. He /she there fore has to carry all benefits , including making provision for health insurance, private savings plan, accident insurance, ect. The Money that one can make as a self-employed I/C can be greater, in some cases far more than that made as a emplyee driver, particularly if you can wrangle a high commission rate from the company you contract with. As for degree of comtrol exercised by the contracting company, well, they do provide you with constant job assignments via a leased communication device, usually a nextell twp-way pager. Theoetically you cab decline to take the assigned jobs, What happens. you get no jobs, period. As for control of routes , the I/c can determine how to deliver the assigned jobs so does exercise a large degree of control over that. In other ways the I/c has a bit more freedom that your average salaried employee. He cab dress in own garb, go as fast or slow as he wants, take as much or as few assigments on a given day as he wants, .take long lunch breaks ect. The dispatcher can control you only so much because you are operating on your own in your own vehicle. You may go as long as a week and never see the disptch-operational hdqtrs of your contracting company. You can also in many cases elect to take off when you want or leave early or punch in late. Of course dispatch can also decide to give you less jobs , and inferior jobs as payback for taking too much time off, or even decide that they do not want to contract with you anymore. In that sense they do exercise control over you.
This article mentions that Delivery companies have increasing gone the I/c model as way of cutting labor costs, in some cases by 30-40%. This also undercuts competitors with salaried employees. Looks likes thousands (15,000 positivily identified) of drivers incorrectly identified as i/c's. Are you one of those who is classifeid incorrectly as an i/c but arre really an emplyee. And is your company failing to pay to the state back payro;; taxes and workmans comp.
some quotes from the article:
"Enforcement actions to date have identified about 15,000 drivers as being incorrectly classified as independent contractors. Regulators estimate that tens of thousands more could be working illegally as contractors for employers who are failing to pay the state over $100 million in back payroll taxes and workers' compensation premiums. ....
"in October, California insurance fraud investigators, accompanied by Massachusetts State Police officers, served a search warrant on the offices of NICA Inc., a Braintree, Mass., company that provides services for courier firms that convert their drivers to independent contractors. NICA said it does 30% of its business in California. "..............
"The company, which has worked with 400 companies employing 16,000 drivers in 42 states, said its strategy could be good for drivers as well as its clients.Contract drivers, if they hustle and are truly independent, can cover more territory and make more money than hourly workers, argued Tim Bergin, NICA's western region sales director."You can double your income," said Ty Conley, a NICA-affiliated driver in San Bernardino. "I can work for myself and have so much more freedom."
"Last year, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Howard J. Schwab ruled in a class-action lawsuit that FedEx Ground drivers, who are required to buy their own trucks, should be deemed employees because the company has "close to absolute actual control" over them "
The state is cracking down on firms that have converted their drivers into contractors.By Marc Lifsher, Times Staff Writere
This a from a long article on the state of califfornia cracking down on courier/messenger companies that convert their delivery employees to undependent contractors. I have been and i/c courier driver for three different companies since 2001. before that i was a salaried emplyee for 4 other companies. The difference between being a salaried driver and and I/c is that being an I/C you have absolutely no state benefits such as unemployment or state workmans comp that you pay into. You can , however, pay into social security thru filing your schedule se, as i have done as an I/C . Essentially thr I/C is in many respects a small self-owned business entity and should be seen as such. He /she there fore has to carry all benefits , including making provision for health insurance, private savings plan, accident insurance, ect. The Money that one can make as a self-employed I/C can be greater, in some cases far more than that made as a emplyee driver, particularly if you can wrangle a high commission rate from the company you contract with. As for degree of comtrol exercised by the contracting company, well, they do provide you with constant job assignments via a leased communication device, usually a nextell twp-way pager. Theoetically you cab decline to take the assigned jobs, What happens. you get no jobs, period. As for control of routes , the I/c can determine how to deliver the assigned jobs so does exercise a large degree of control over that. In other ways the I/c has a bit more freedom that your average salaried employee. He cab dress in own garb, go as fast or slow as he wants, take as much or as few assigments on a given day as he wants, .take long lunch breaks ect. The dispatcher can control you only so much because you are operating on your own in your own vehicle. You may go as long as a week and never see the disptch-operational hdqtrs of your contracting company. You can also in many cases elect to take off when you want or leave early or punch in late. Of course dispatch can also decide to give you less jobs , and inferior jobs as payback for taking too much time off, or even decide that they do not want to contract with you anymore. In that sense they do exercise control over you.
This article mentions that Delivery companies have increasing gone the I/c model as way of cutting labor costs, in some cases by 30-40%. This also undercuts competitors with salaried employees. Looks likes thousands (15,000 positivily identified) of drivers incorrectly identified as i/c's. Are you one of those who is classifeid incorrectly as an i/c but arre really an emplyee. And is your company failing to pay to the state back payro;; taxes and workmans comp.
some quotes from the article:
"Enforcement actions to date have identified about 15,000 drivers as being incorrectly classified as independent contractors. Regulators estimate that tens of thousands more could be working illegally as contractors for employers who are failing to pay the state over $100 million in back payroll taxes and workers' compensation premiums. ....
"in October, California insurance fraud investigators, accompanied by Massachusetts State Police officers, served a search warrant on the offices of NICA Inc., a Braintree, Mass., company that provides services for courier firms that convert their drivers to independent contractors. NICA said it does 30% of its business in California. "..............
"The company, which has worked with 400 companies employing 16,000 drivers in 42 states, said its strategy could be good for drivers as well as its clients.Contract drivers, if they hustle and are truly independent, can cover more territory and make more money than hourly workers, argued Tim Bergin, NICA's western region sales director."You can double your income," said Ty Conley, a NICA-affiliated driver in San Bernardino. "I can work for myself and have so much more freedom."
"Last year, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Howard J. Schwab ruled in a class-action lawsuit that FedEx Ground drivers, who are required to buy their own trucks, should be deemed employees because the company has "close to absolute actual control" over them "
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