On Sep 20, 11:33 pm, wrote:
On Sep 20, 8:15 pm, wrote:





The hourly rate on all of the planes in my flying club just went up
again (second time in a year).

Archer II's just went up by another $10 per hour. Flying rates in the
past 6 years have gone up by a factor of 1.6 times yet I am still
making the same salary I was making in 2001. If this keeps up, I sure
won't be flying much...

I keep hearing claims that inflation is low, but fuel costs have
doubled in the past 6 years, and housing prices have also nearly
doubled (my house is appraising from almost twice what I paid for it
in 2000), and consequently my property taxes have doubled. Seems to
me that inflation is running pretty high since energy and housing are
both pretty big portions of everyday expenses.

Salaries are being held down by offshoring of jobs. We have lost
close to 5,000 high tech jobs in Boise in the past 2 years alone,
mostly due to offshoring by Micron and HP. With that going on, very
few people in the high tech industry in this area have gotten raises
in the past 5 or 6 years, and if they did, it was pretty small (a
couple of percent one time).

I don't see how GA is going to attract many new pilots if this trend
continues...

Dean

Many people probably have frozen salaries on the west coast too.
The wave of outsourcing will stop once the cost
of doing business across the globe equalizes. It appears
we are getting there.

One can also view the middle between the coast as places
for big companies to "out source" jobs out of their home
locations.

If Kansas can gather critical mass for aviation, Boise should
make a claim in a specialized tech field. Don't be a dispensable
auxiliary to HP and such.. Oh, yeah, how about making some
better GA gears ? From better instruments to better LSAs that
are like real airplanes :-).- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Well, I have co-founded a company that is making LED lighting for GA
(experimental category initially), but we are still trying to earn
back our initial investment and won't be in the black for many
months. I have hopes that our business will grow to the point that I
can make a living at it, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, it is a real struggle being an engineer in this
economy. I know many engineers that bailed out and took jobs in the
business and financial sector where they aren't using their
engineering skills other than their math and critical thinking. Many
of them are making better money than they did as engineers. I know
some that have gone back to get their MBAs (and the associated
lobotomy) so that they can work in business management careers.

If the trend ever does reverse, there is likely to be a shortage of
engineers with many who left the profession not wanting to come back,
and fewer new grads coming out of college since the job market is so
poor right now.

Oh well, we all have to do the best we can. Maybe we will get lucky
and half of China will die of lead or melamine poisoning.... :-)

Dean