Nikom Chimnok on sun 19 mar 00
At 10:33 17/3/00 EST, Andy Buck wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I find that the difference in the labor and associated costs of
>making a pot work out roughly as a ratio (price per pound). My base price
>ratio is currently at $6.00 per pound of clay used to make something on
>the wheel.
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Nobody around here thinks much about price per pound when selling wares, but
since I'm the guy who makes the invoice/packing list for exported items,
where net and gross weights must be reported, I watch that number. For full
containers of glazed, once-fired hanging planters going to Japan, we are
currently getting 48 cents a pound. The same items sold retail here go up to
71 cents a pound.
At this rate, the owner of the pottery drives a Mercedes (albeit 13 years
old), plays golf and dabbles in real estate speculation. So far as work he
mainly signs his name. The manager has a house with a remotely controlled
motorized front gate, a new 4-by Toyota and a 2 year old Honda for his wife,
who is a school teacher. He does virtually nothing. The main saleslady works
10 hours a day, 7 days a week, owns a house and a car and has sent her 3
younger sisters to college on around $400 a month, mostly from commissions.
The throwers and decorators make around $200 a month, live in crude houses,
ride motorcycles or bikes, wear clothes, eat every day, and drink whiskey.
The firemen make about $150 a month because they work so much overtime. I
make about $200 a month cash but have numerous perks, my favorite one being
that most of my time is free to do whatever I want, including anything from
mixing 5 tons of experimental clay to going home and sleeping, if that's
what I feel like. Also all my expenses are taken care of--free house,
lights, water, medical care, cable TV, Internet hookup. Numerous laborers,
slipcasters, glaze sprayers, etc. make about $80 a month, and somehow stay
alive, tho damned if I can figure out how. Excluding me, only the owner and
manager have ever ridden in an airplane or been out of the country.
I would guess that in this feudal society it takes at least 100 workers
living in borderline poverty to support one person who lives like an
American--tho given the underbuilt infrastructure, no one here, no matter
how rich, really lives like an American. But the poverty of the workers is
not onerous--they're don't complain much, and aren't about to start a
revolution. The main reason for this is the climate: you don't need much of
a house, nor much in the way of clothes, and fresh food is cheaply available
year round. Medical care is cheap, and so is education--we have a very high
literacy rate, as well as a rapidly falling reproduction rate. I don't
expect things to change very fast. If the price of our products ever gets to
$1/pound, it'll most likely be because of fluctuations in currency rates,
and not because the workers are getting more pay.
Nikom, kicking back and analyzing things
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