Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Friday, February 12, 2021
·
104 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter
The bladder capacity of dogs on a freezing cold, rainy morning is just amazing.
@Scott:
This is equally true of a dog’s bowels.
@Scott: My Lab, like all Labs, loves the cold. Quite unlike other Labs tho, he hates the water and will hold it for hours to avoid peeing in the rain.
My tax return is going to be way higher than normal for once, so I’m about to do the most adult thing thing I’ve ever done, buy a washer and dryer. Appliances vary greatly in quality so recommendations appreciated.
@Teve:
Congrats on the tax return…Steve.
More than one plumber has recommended Whirlpool appliances.
Thanks. I’m asking all my friends, putting it on Facebook, reading websites like wire cutter, etc. I used to work at both Home Depot and Lowe’s and I’ve heard horror stories about poor quality appliances.
@Teve:
We got low tech, inexpensive large capacity GE washer and dryer 8 years ago. Very happy with them. We paid less for the pair than for a midrange front load washer is and I have heard from many friends how they will go back to top loader for their next purchase.
We also decided to get them at a small local appliance store so they threw in delivery and setup and took the old ones away.
@Teve: @Teve: Consumer Reports has LG washer/dryers at the top of their ratings. I have LG but they are the high capacity ones and so are more expensive. We do a lot of laundry and have had good luck with them.
@CSK: @Scott:
I find that the cold weather helps focus her on the task at hand when she finally decides she cannot wait any longer to head out.
@Scott: ooo, thanks, you don’t have a link to the list do you?
@OzarkHillbilly:
I had a chocolate lab cross and she absolutely refused to set paw outdoors in the rain. I’d ask her if she wanted to go out and she’d wriggle under the couch in response.
Interesting text I just got from my friend TJ who has sold appliances at both Lowe’s and Home Depot:
Nikki Haley is making her play, but is she too far behind Liz Cheney to be the GOP’s knight in shining armor? From the tone of the article, she is still contorting herself to defend Dear Leader:
After Haley rode the wave from the massacre at Charleston’s Emanuel AME I wondered if she would actually be able to continue on a more inclusive path, but I’ve stopped wondering.
@OzarkHillbilly:
@CSK:
In Minnesota, we had a pair of Great Pyrenees and a Boxer. On 20 below mornings we’d open the back door and let them out into the yard. The Pyrs would dive into the snow and roll around for 10 minutes before taking care of the business and then lay in the sun till we brought them in. The Boxer would bolt across the yard to the dog kennel, pee and defecate, then race to the door in less than 30 seconds. After that he’d curl up on a heater register.
@Teve: I have a set of the mid-level Samsung’s that have been all right once we got past the first dryer being DOA. There are zero service people for Samsung here, so they just sent me a brand new dryer and I put the DOA one out in the shed to use for parts someday.
@Teve: We have Whirlpool and at 15-20 yo they are practically antiques. They’ve both had repairs but are still running strong.
@CSK: Woof goes out on the roofed front porch, sees the rain and turns right back around before the door can close.
@Sleeping Dog: Woof loves the snow and the cold but water? Fuhgedaboudit. It was years before I got him to swimming and than he did it only to rescue me from the terrifying clutches of the water demon. I’m sure he thought all those scratches on my back, sides, and arms were a sign that were it not for him I would have died.
@Teve: Are you handy? My first two sets had top loading washers, and I bought them “in need of repair”. I sold both sets after a couple of years (didn’t want to move them) and sold both sets for what I paid for them. Most things that break on a top loading washer (and lower end dryers) are easy and in-expensive to fix, and You Tube has made that process even easier.
The biggest advantage of a new(er) set is they tend to be more efficient, in terms of power, water usage, and most importantly spin speed, the more water spun off the clothes, the less work the dryer has to do; using far less energy. The high spin speed is why I prefer front end loaders.
My son recently needed a set of, and isn’t handy. I found a place near him through the internet (exactly, why couldn’t he do that) offering free delivery and set up, and a thirty day warranty, he got a 4 year old top loading washer and 6 year old dryer for $450. And a year later when we visited him I had to replace the suspension rods, because he isn’t handy.
@Teve: personally I like that Biden is wearing jeans and a bomber jacket, not an ill-fitting suit with an absurdly long tie.
@Teve: We have an LG washer that has been going strong for quite a while now.
We had a Maytag that was utter trash–while a long time ago they were super reliable, that was not my experience. It went bad, they fixed it under warranty (for parts that cost almost as much as the original) and then it went bad in exactly the same way again.
@Owen: i’m handy, but there’s a big set of stairs going up to my place and I can’t move a washing machine up those stairs by myself. Lowe’s delivers for free and they bring it inside.
@Jax: I put the DOA one out in the shed to use for parts someday.
That is what my wife refers to as the slippery slope!
@Steven L. Taylor: my appliance-selling friend says that Maytag and Whirlpool used to be great, but the recent models of both are junk. He is strongly recommending LG and told me to wait until Memorial day and they’ll be 20-25% off. Didn’t want to wait three months but 20% off of $1450 in appliances is worth it.
@Teve: Might be worth going to the library and going through the back issues of Consumers Reports. I subscribed for many years but got tired of their lack of detail. (They spend hours buying and meticulously testing each model and then boil it down to a bunch of check boxes and a cut and paste paragraph, frequently leaving out everything I’m actually interested in.). But I go back when I’m shopping for an appliance or a car, and still fill out their annual survey. They collect detailed experiences from tens of thousands of people every year, and get very specific on the type of problems.
Side note – Mercedes and BMW drivers are usually very satisfied with their purchases but according to CR and other sources, they are near the bottom in reliability. CR taught me not to weigh how much someone likes something too much, because their rationales may be quite different form mine.
@Teve: We had a Maytag w/d set that worked for over twenty years (the dryer was still working when the washer finally gave up the ghost). We replaced it with another Maytag set (which I think was made by Whirlpool at the time and still is). The washer was utter trash. We do still have the dryer, however.
@Steven L. Taylor: yeah Maytag is owned by Whirlpool.
@MarkedMan:
Whenever someone asks “What’s the best X?” I start asking them questions, because what’s “best” for me is probably not “best” for them. Example: I love the DeWalt cordless drills, but I’ve recommended Makita to several people because it fit better (lighter weight, smaller grip, different balance, etc.)
@MarkedMan:
I worked in cars and I can confirm this. I loved my Porsche but it was a piece of shit that ate my bank account for breakfast. With Mercedes it’s not even so much an issue of reliability as the extraordinary expense you have when something goes wrong, and the cars are so overengineered that something is always going wrong. If you hook up an OBD scanner to a Mercedes you’ll get a list of codes as long as your arm. Funny story: when I was working cars I knew a woman who had accidentally bumped a Mercedes into another Mercedes at low speed, maybe 5-10 miles an hour. $4,000 damage.
I don’t want bells and whistles, I don’t want Bluetooth connectivity, I want the Toyota of washing machines, and as far as I can tell that’s LG.
@Teve: Our new townhouse came with a GE front-loading washer. The seal on the transparent dome on the inside of the door was broken; water collected inside the dome and then later leaked out onto the floor. The dealer repaired it promptly, but said that the replacement door he got was the only one in inventory anywhere in the state (Colorado, a regional distribution hub). Given the lack of replacements, I suspect the door problem is common. There’s a thousand-and-one options on the control panel that we don’t use. If we don’t run the second rinse, there’s soap residue left in the clothes. Having figured that out, the washer does a very nice job.
@Michael Cain:
I have sensitive skin and I’ve noticed that problem with every single washer I’ve ever used. If there was a washer that came with a third rinse I’d use that.
@Teve: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/index.htm
But you might have to create an account with them.
@Teve: I have the same issue and always double rinse my clothes.
@Michael Cain:
My brother worked for Unilever for a number of years, and shared a building with the testing department. He remarked that people use way too much laundry soap. Like 2-10 times too much. One problem is that people typically fill up the cap, when there are actually lines on it. Basically, unless you have a load of greasy mechanics clothes or gardeners group in dirt (and a whole load not just a few pieces), you never need more than the bottom line and probably less. For years I couldn’t get the smell out of my running shirts in the summer (my exercise clothes can be… pungent) until I followed his advice and used less and less soap. Nowadays I used a tiny amount of soap and throw in a quarter cup of vinegar and everything looks and smells great.
When we bought this house in 2015, we had to buy all appliances (it was new construction). I did a lot of research and ended up with LG washer & dryer. The washer is a top-load but high efficiency…the only issue I’ve had with it is that because I’m short and there’s no central agitator, I sometimes have trouble reaching the wet socks etc. (sigh) If you’re a normal-height person, you probably won’t need to stash a footstool near your laundry.
I do tend to use the second rinse option fairly regularly.
@Teve: The LG I have has an extra rinse button where you can get three extra rinses.
@Scott: ooooo.
@MarkedMan:
The problem is the the ‘lines’ are winners of the International Obscure Indistinct Marking Competition.
@MarkedMan: My wife’s arthritis has gotten to the point that measuring the detergent became difficult for her. We switched to the pods: one for a normal load, and two for a big one are much easier for her hands to deal with.
The Lincoln Project appears to be in self-destruct mode. What a mess.
@Teve:
That competition was won by my old water heater. The ON, OFF and PIL (for PILOT) were almost indistinct from the knob they were printed on. I kept turning it off when I meant to switch from ON to PILOT. And turning the pilot flame back on was a laborious, hazardous process (about 12 times out of ten I wound up asking the building’s maintenance people to do it for me; I tipped well).
The new one has the markings painted white, which makes them easy to see.
@Jen: I was never inclined to give them much credit, they are largely composed of the same people who made a lot of money getting us into this mess.
“I was a Republican operative for 40 years but I don’t like this latest candidate.”
“Fuck you.”
Oh shit. this Washington post article explains that the lines are deliberately hard to read. I never thought of that. If consumers can’t see the lines, they overfill the cap, and buy detergent faster. Fucking assholes.
@Teve: I’ve been busy and so not really paying much attention, but apparently the start of the whole Lincoln Project disaster started when rumors about John Weaver kicked into high gear. Now they are (probably illegally) posting private DMs of another member who left last week, and THAT issue is wound up in disparate payments…honestly, what a freakin’ mess. Yeesh.
Also, I stumbled across this on Twitter and that is so strange I can’t wrap my head around it…
@Michael Cain: Based on what my brother said, I can pretty much guarantee that even 1 for a big load is more than enough. I can’t remember the number, but he said the average person would need to wash their clothes for a fair number of cycles with no soap at all before you got rid of all the extra soap residue that’s been building up since the first time it was washed.
@Kathy: Just out of curiosity, why are you turning your water heater on and off?
When we hear that raising the minimum wage will cost jobs, what does this mean?
Someone who makes minimum wage may need to work two or three jobs to earn enough money to live on. If their wages were raised to a bit over double what they are now, as the $15 per hour target would do, they might be able to quit one or more jobs and still make a living.
I suppose these would count as “lost jobs.”
@Jen: I encountered that like five minutes before I saw your post. Somebody said that Boebert is her own second cousin. I’m not even gonna let my brain try to figure out what that means, it might hurt itself.
@MarkedMan:
It’s a natural gas heater. I am out of the house most of the day. I’ve tried leaving it on all day, and also turning it on 30 minutes before I shower in the morning and then off. The latter makes for a lower gas bill.
@MarkedMan: Part of that is the optical brighteners added to a lot of detergents. Basically like “bluing” used on whites back in the day to give an illusion of cool brightness. Optical brighteners are often what causes irritation to people with skin sensitivities, and it is designed to build up on clothes.
I found out about optical brighteners while in the military. As night vision devices started to come into greater proliferation, it was found that some optical brighteners made uniforms stand out when viewed through the devices.
@Teve: Nothing changes. Forty years ago I happened to have a conversation with a mechanic at a Mercedes dealership. He said he loved working there. It was the only place you could tell a customer with a two years old car (this was before long warranties) that he needed to replace the engine for $5,000 (also before a lot of inflation) and the customer would say, “Oh, OK.”
Years ago I read a book by an auto industry consultant. He told a story about visiting Mercedes. They bragged about their quality. Said they had expert technicians inspect and test every car at the end of the line and fix anything that wasn’t perfect. They said this took 15 man-hours or something like that. The consultant told them Toyota assembled the whole car for less, didn’t fix stuff at the end of the line, and had better quality than Mercedes.
@Teve:
Marketers. Which is to say, as you did, assholes.
@Jen:
1. You mean the DemoRants aren’t the only ones who have older men apparently inappropriately trolling younger men (and boys) seeking “snugglebunnies?” I’m shocked. Shocked and appalled. No, really. Gambling in this establishment, indeed.
2. Ewwww. Just ewww. And ick. Maybe this is why I’m hardly ever in the Twitter-verse. Although you’d think I had a stronger stomach than that.
Life here in Stumptown is going to be fun today, for sure. Snow was predicted for the last couple of days, which meant that everyone was rushing to the store to stock up for the end of the world. Rain all day yesterday, and temperatures dropped below freezing. Since SWMBO and I deliberately bought a car that you can’t put chains on, I strolled the mile to work yesterday afternoon. Sure enough, rush of people who didn’t have enough office paper or printer ink. After dark, rain continued. Cars in parking lot were iced shut. Seriously, had to warn a co-worker not to pour hot coffee over his windshield and door to thaw it enough to get in. Snowed overnight, resulting in a massive 1-2″ in my neighborhood.
Those of you who live where it snows (like where I spent formative years milking cows) will giggle. So do I. But the majority of the population doesn’t get that 4 wheel drive doesn’t mean 4 wheel stop or steer. Mud tires on 20″ rims = autorotation. Snow will soon be turned into solid ice on roads. And because it snows maybe once every 10 years here, there are 5.85 (approx) sand trucks, b/c we don’t salt our roads.
Me, I’m sitting with the cats, sipping coffee with Bailey’s, tunes in the headphones, and enjoying OTB.
PS – thanks for the hints on washers/dryers. Got to admit the Whirlpools we’ve bought this decade have been POS. Maybe LG next time.
@Jen:
All explained here. https://youtu.be/eYlJH81dSiw
@Kathy:
When it’s up for replacement, you might consider a tankless w/h. I know several people who went with them, and found the long-term savings significant.
@Teve: I’m often reminded of reading a book on politics years ago. They looked in detail at a red suburban Atlanta county. (Possibly one that’s now gone blue.) When polled the residents said the most important issue in politics was preserving the traditional nuclear family. Other data showed almost no one in the county was actually living in one. Republicans. Family values in principle, but not in practice.
@Jen:
Lauren Boebert’s mom slept with her own first cousin, which she claims resulted in conceiving Lauren, which if true means Lauren is second cousin to…herself.
@flat earth luddite:
Those are popular in Germany, we had one when we lived there in the early 1990s. It was mounted right over the bathtub, which was great in the cold months because as soon as it kicked on it would heat not only the water but the entire bathroom.
@flat earth luddite:
If you do, make sure it works on “warm”. I had one in China that worked great when you wanted hot water. But below a certain threshold (wanting a “cool” shower in the summer, for example) it would decide you don’t actually need any heat and shut off.
@Teve: Are you shopping for a full size washer and dryer? I live in a 1 bedroom apartment, so I needed a smaller machine and I found that a lot of brands outsource their apartment models, so I ended up with a Blomberg set (originally a german brand but has since been bought by a turkish company). And so far, with one minor exception, it’s been just fine (*knock on wood*). The minor exception was that a belt slipped off of the drum and I had to open it up and put the belt back on the pulley. All it cost me was a 6 pack and a shot of scotch that I gave to a friend who came over to help move the machines.
When I researched ovens recently, I learned about Samsung reliability, and I suspect that what I learned can be applied to their other appliances.
Samsung sells a ton of units, in part because they’re inexpensive compared to the competition and sometimes you get what you pay for. That said, their break down rate still isn’t bad, just average, given the price and all. However, the rule of large numbers kicks in, so their average failure rate still means they have a lot of broken units. All of that would be ok if they had an adequate customer service infrastructure to deal with all of those broken units, so you can be pretty SOL if you’re stuck with a lemon.
@MarkedMan:
This.
The directions on the detergent packaging are intended to sell you more detergent as soon as possible. My wife uses much less than half of the recommended amount of soap, and everything gets clean just fine. (I didn’t know the vinegar trick, though — maybe we’ll try that.)
@Mike in Arlington: I don’t think you save a lot of money with compact ones, and I have plenty of room, so I figured I would just get a 4 ft.³ top load washer and the comparable dryer.
https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/12-things-you-should-never-ever-clean-with-vinegar-73031
@Jen:
For no reason at all, I’m reminded of a line by Julius Caesar in “Cleopatra,” calling the Ptolemies “A long line of inbred mental defectives.”
@Teve: I’m pretty sure a good, compact washer/dryer is as or more expensive than a full sized one, so if you have the room, definitely go for the full sized one.
@flat earth luddite:
And I hear from Cracker (40 mi NW of Casa Luddite) that they have 3″ atop black ice, and 0 equipment to clear it. I’m sure Seattle is having even more fun than the law allows on a weekday.
@Jen: @Teve: @flat earth luddite: @Mikey:
Granted I haven’t done extensive research, but I can’t find the identity of Boebert’s father-of-record, i.e., the man to whom her mother was married when Boebert was conceived and born. Boebert refuses to speak about him.
It appears to be legal in most states to have sexual intercourse with a first cousin, and legal in a fair number of them to marry. The most prohibitions seem to be in the south. Maybe they had too many bad experiences with inbreeding down there and decided to curtail the option.
I got a call from my “granddaughter” yesterday. “Grandpa”, she said. And I could hear two or three other people in the background talking to their grandpas. “How many grandpas are you fucking people taking to over there?”, I said. She hung up on me. Oh, how sharper than a serpent’s tooth…
@CSK: Sure, but you have to agree that the whole pro-wrestling (semi-pro?) adds a whole other layer of…character, to the situation.
I am still shaking my head in wonderment. Or something.
Yesterday, Sleeping Dog noted that
Nailed it, dude. Good call!
Also
No, you don’t. Trust me on this one. I need to get back there after Covid is over, but only for my (postponed) high school reunion, and because I’ve been invited to catch up with a friend who I thought I might never see again in this life. And even for those reasons, I will only go grudgingly. Seattle isn’t Seattle anymore. (Although if you only been there in the most recent 25 or 3o years, you might not notice as much.)
@CSK: @Flat Earth Luddite: I was living in Dupont, WA (across from Fort Lewis) during snowfalls and extreme (for there) cold snaps in 2005/2006. Driving over I-5 I would watch people lined up to ride the dragon on the ice covered south bound lanes heading down into the Nisqually Valley. Amazingly, I never saw an accident from that location.
@Jen:
Oh, absolutely. Wasn’t Trump involved with WWE?
@Mikey: I’m My Own Grandpa.
@Mikey:
Enh. This is extremely common worldwide, and always has been. I know of at least two instances in my own family tree where an ancestor’s parents were (married) first cousins.
@OzarkHillbilly:
See also:
Heinlein, Robert — “All You Zombies”
Gerrold, David — The Man Who Folded Himself
@DrDaveT: Gotta admit, the vinegar trick is 99% because of my work out clothes. I don’t think it would be necessary but for that. My wife doesn’t like to share a laundry basket with me because she has the option of changing her mind about whether something really needs to be in the laundry. But if it goes in with my stuff that option expires after about 15 mins
@CSK: I’m uncomfortable with this. I have no problem in calling out someone for hypocrisy, but she didn’t chose her father so that doesn’t apply.
A comment on teh water heater comment…
In Brazil, we had a gas on-demand water heater… was nice, but needed venting.
Here in the US I had my first experience with an Electric on-demand water heater.
3 @ 50 amp circuits deliver power to stainless steel heating elements. Works great. No venting of excess waste like in gas tankless heaters.
QUESTION: Has anyone had positive results with stacking full-size washer & dryers?
Why: A home that we are flipping would benefit from a utility tub, but the only way to do that would be to stack the laundry.
@Teve: I had an LG washer in Korea (no dryers there except for combo washer/dryers). It was great, but I’ve never had a home H/E washer, though I’ve used them at the laundromat.
Combos are amazing in Korea–they have a “boil” setting for whites that washes the clothes at 100 C. People who used the setting told me it was expensive to run because you can’t stop and pull the clothes out after the wash cycle.
Inspirational quote/dialogue of the day:
Call it a future remembrance of all things Trump:
I met a traveler from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley.
oh, I’m such a dope…
I should have included the link of the one that I have . I have installed three of these:
https://www.homehedepot.com/p/ATMOR-PRO-27-000-Watt-5-35-GPM-Electric-Tankless-Water-Heater-Ideal-For-3-Bedroom-Home-Up-To-6-Simultaneous-Applications-AT-DWH-27HD/312805325
This thing is about teh size of a briefcase, just a bit wider.
Easy to setup, just a matter of installing proper breakers and running teh wire.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I don’t understand what that means.
@Teve: Yeah on Samsung for mid level or higher. Samsung made their bones in home electronics selling stuff that wasn’t durable but cheap enough so the buyers didn’t care back in the 60s and early 70s. Samsung was the King of $49 13in. B&W TVs.
@Teve: I feel you. I LOVED driving my Lancia Beta Coupe.
WORST. CAR. EVAH! (And I owned a Renault R-5! [which I also LOVED driving])
@flat earth luddite: yeah that doesn’t really help either, what I am missing is some kind of explanation for why not pulling clothes out after it washes is expensive?
@Teve: From what I recall being told, most people in Korea don’t use a dryer because electricity is expensive. I’m presuming that, rather than run through a dry cycle, people would pull clothes out and line dry. Hoping for Cracker’s upcoming book on life in ROK as an ex-pat school teacher. I was always fascinated by his take on a country and life I’ll never get to see.
@MarkedMan: We used to turn the water heater off in Korea because fuel had significantly different cost depending on where it was sourced and the boiler did both floor heat for the room and heating for shower and sink water. In one place, I had to stop heating the apartment because I was on a diesel fueled boiler and house heat–even as low as 60 degrees–ran the winter bill to $500/mo. I turned the boiler on and off in that house and another that used city county natural gas (piped into the house on a main), which was much less expensive.
My later houses had boilers that automatically turned off when the floor heat thermostat was triggered.
When I was at Woosong University, some teachers had apartments that used private delivery gas and diesel for their water heating. Those teachers were paid a $250 heating subsidy during the winter because their water heating bills were so high. Even at that some of them simply didn’t heat the house at all because the fuel bill was too high.
@lib cap:
I know several people with stacked full size w/d sets. Pick a set that designed to stack, and it works well, unless you’re too short to reach dryer controls (i.e., SWMBO). We found a European set with controls she could reach, but I balked at the price, which was about $1000 more than comparable LG/Samsung units.
@Kathy: I’ve never seen the math worked from that direction before. Interesting! But the conventional argument is that as the minimum wage goes up, owners of McDonalds franchises and such close their doors because they can’t afford to pay the workers any more.
I used to challenge students who wanted to argue that point to show it to me in real life. I finally saw it happen in about 2016 related to a pizza shop in Seattle, but it turned out that he didn’t close because he couldn’t afford to pay the employees; he just didn’t want to pay them and sold the restaurant to play the market for his living.
@Mu Yixiao: Mine had a thermostat that would heat the water to the temperature you told it to in my last apartment. That was really convenient, but it took a while for me to figure out how to take the thermo out of “automatic.”
@Jen: Oh no. Stan Lane was definitely a “professional” wrestler. He wrestled down in Georgia for Turner on WCW, and I think the Midnight Express went to WWE for a while. I didn’t see him in the Fabulous Ones, but wrestling was more regional then, and they never wrestled in the PNW.
@Teve: In a machine that both washes and dries, you have the option of stopping at the end of the wash cycle and drying the clothes on the line–except if you wash them on the “boil” setting at 100 Celsius. On the boil setting, the door stays locked until both cycles have finished. I assume that it’s a safety feature that prevents people from trying to unload their wash while it’s still 90 or 95 Celsius. –
@flat earth luddite:
Don’t get me started 🙂
We live in a condo, and have an all-in-one electric washer-dryer unit that was original equipment when we moved in 20 years ago. Not the stupid kind that tries to wash and dry in the same compartment, which we saw in Europe, but an actual dryer over an actual washing machine, but built as a single unit. We love it. Nobody makes them any more, as best I can tell. And as you note, “stackables” are useless because they put the top set of controls where my wife can neither see nor reach them. And no, she has no interest in needing a stepladder to do the laundry.
Every now and then, someone comes out with a new equivalent model with all controls in the middle. One of them was even a front-loading washer, which would have been great — but they all vanish from the market after a year or two.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Labor costs are large in most businesses. Franchises, moreover, can’t just set any prices they want, but have to take guidance or mandates from the franchisor. Even so, they are most likely to lay people off than just close.
This also means lost jobs. However, that’s not the end of the story. What happens with the workers who stay and get a raise? Do they spend more and create demand for other jobs, like in stores, other restaurants, other services, etc? If they quit second jobs, do those laid off from fast food joint perhaps find work there?
How about other minimum wage jobs like custodial staff? Can they now perhaps afford to eat at fast food joints and generate enough demand to sustain the franchises even with the higher minimum wage?
Besides, the intent is for a gradual raise over a few years. That’s easier to absorb, with prices rising gradually as well.
My actual fear is employers will take a page from the gig economy. That is, they layoff everyone, and re-hire them as “independent contractos” they don’t have to pay even minimum wage to. Large chains could easily do this with, for instance, fast food employees. Now instead of going to the Wendy’s in 4th and main every day, you sit by your phone and see which Wendy’s needs staff when.
But, “employers will find a way to better exploit labor,” is not a good reason to accept current levels of pay, even if I sound more than a bit Marxist right now.
@Teve: “…why not pulling clothes out after it washes is expensive”
Koreans have not taken to the convenience of electric dryers yet. Every apartment that I ever lived in except one had a clothes drying rack built into the ceiling of the laundry porch, and at that house, I made my school buy me a folding drying rack. Koreans told me about using the dryer setting that it doesn’t make sense to pay for something that you can do for free. I even had a student who boiled her cotton whites on the stove rather than using the washer on the boil setting. She didn’t think it would do as good a job as she did–but also said it was too expensive to dry the clothes in the machine.
@Kathy: You and I share the same fear. The big problem that I’ve seen in promoting the arguments that you were citing about the advantages to workers earning more was that even my business students who were arguing to abolish the minimum wage altogether responded to your points by noting “yes, but the money looks better in my wallet than in theirs.” Moar money is always better than more business at lower margin. (And yes, that is short sighted.)
@Just nutha ignint cracker: okay that makes sense.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Your students are making a very good case for Universal Basic Income. I mean, they are showing business will not pay a living wage unless forced to.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: that makes sense. Dryers use resistive heating which is very inefficient. Secondly, they are heating water, which has a huge specific heat. It’s like you’re trying to design a way to waste money. I have a great area for a clothesline outside, I might just buy the washer first.
@Teve:
Jay Leno once made a joke about solar-powered clothes dryers. It involved hanging a cord between two trees.
@lib cap:
When we first moved into our current house, the elderly couple we bought from had a stacked washer/dryer in the kitchen. We used if for a while and is seemed to work fine. The only issue was that its max load size was smallish. After I had the electrical service to the house upgraded, we bought full sized washer/dryer for the basement and gave the combo to my niece who had just purchased their first house. They used it for several years.
@Kathy: I don’t see UBI as the same boon that others see it as. I object to doing that because it is a transfer payment from taxpayers to labor benefitting the owners of capital. We may have no other choice, but my native inclinations for the solution of how to free up capital back into the hands of consumers is that it’s a problem that can be solved with guns, rope, and lampposts, if necessary. I’d rather have less stressful methods to do it, but rewarding owners of capital for being greedy by paying part of their obligation to labor isn’t one of them.