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Technology Stocks : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Amy J who wrote (67516)	4/11/2005 9:56:22 AM
From: GVTucker	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77400

OT Amy, RE: I think your reference point included a teacher that you know, that must be an awesome, hardworking teacher. My reference point include a whole bunch of teachers. I am confident that my presence in a family full of teachers strongly biases my thoughts. I don't worry about engineer pay too much, any more than I worried about declining pay for geologists after the oil boom peaked in the early 80's. With low geologist pay, fewer people entered the industry. In time, demand shifted, and now there's a huge demand for good geologists, and they're getting paid accordingly. With engineers, the same thing will happen. A whole bunch of people entered engineering a half a generation ago. The decline in salaries we're seeing now is a reflection of that excess supply combined with a post-bubble decline in demand. If engineering is important enough (and I think it is), this will reverse soon enough. With the market for teachers, though, pay never gets high. Schools aren't an entirely capitalistic venture, so we cannot completely depend upon the free market to solve problems like it will for engineers or geologists. That's why I worry a lot more about teacher pay than any other occupation. Pay our teachers well and our kids will have to tools to excel, no matter what field they choose. The field they choose isn't nearly as important to me as teaching them well in the first place. RE: the gasoline discussion..... I think you're spot on here. The market is solving this "problem" right here and now. Ford and GM are having huge problems right now because they depended excessively on SUVs and the higher gasoline prices are killing SUV sales. Toyota, consistently innovative company that it is, has bet a ton of money on the hybrid market and is reaping the rewards right now. And while the capacity shortage in refineries makes gasoline a unique situation in the energy market, note also that the issue of high crude and natural gas prices is starting to work its way through now, too. The rig count is practically at the same level that it was in the 70's. Capital investment is finally flowing into energy and out of other areas. On top of that, energy prices is slowing the economy by itself, which will do more to suppress prices. The energy business has an amazing ability to self-correct and it is happening again right now. It won't help the economy in the short run (say, over the next couple of years), but in the longer run it will help the next upswing do even better, just as the boom that started in the early 80's was fueled by ever declining fuel prices.