Daily Archives: May 29, 2016

Don’t Use Your Toilet As A Waste Basket.

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Tossing bits of personal care products down the toilet may seem harmless. After all, there is a big drain hole under the toilet and most stuff immediately disappears when you flush it. However, just because a piece of dental floss that you threw in the toilet vanished when you flushed it doesn’t mean that it made it all the way to the sewer line under the street. It is possible that it got caught on a joint or elbow or something else in the drain line under your floor, and because dental floss doesn’t dissolve in water, it can catch other things going down the toilet until your toilet isn’t flushing at all. Remember, if a plumbing repair is the result of your misuse or abuse of the plumbing, your landlord can make you pay for that repair. When a Roto Rooter man cleans out a clogged toilet line, the hooked blade at the end of his snake brings back whatever it was that caused the clog. It is quite often dental floss. If the stuff that clogged up your drain line could only have come from you and shouldn’t have gone in your toilet in the first place, you will have to pay for that Roto Rooter visit, and those visits can be very expensive. The ONLY thing that should go in your toilet aside from human waste is toilet paper. Do not flush paper towels. Toilet paper is designed to disintegrate in water. Paper towels are designed to hold together when wet. Do not flush tampons. Some of the worst toilet clogs are caused by flushing tampons, especially the kind with a string in the middle of it. As I said, if you are flushing anything but toilet paper, it could cost you a lot of money! Also, flushing stuff that shouldn’t go in your toilet is very bad for the environment. Separating out non-biodegradable junk at sewage treatment plants is a huge expense for water districts everywhere.

IS IT SAFE TO FLUSH FLUSHABLE PRODUCTS?

The short answer is No. There are a lot of products sold in supermarkets that say ‘flushable’ on the label, including facial and baby wipes, cosmetic applicators, and cleansing cloths. In 2014, Consumer Reports tested a variety of wipes that were labeled ‘flushable’ and concluded that it isn’t safe to flush any of them. Here’s a short video from Consumer Reports explaining why: Are They Really Flushable? You should put flushable products in your trash can, not the toilet. As I said before, the only product that is safe to go in your toilet is toilet paper.

AREN’T FLUSHABLE PRODUCTS GUARANTEED?

Yes and No. Nearly all flushable products are guaranteed not to clog up your drain line; however, these guarantees are virtually worthless. All they say is this – if our flushable product clogs up your drain line, we will refund your purchase price. Now what does that mean? It means that if you pay $3 for a package of flushable wipes, and you flush them, and they get stuck in your drain line, and you have to to pay a plumber $300 to get them out, and you complain to the manufacturer about this, then they will send you a refund check for $3 – the price you paid for the wipes. They may also send you a letter of apology, but that is all they are going to send you. They won’t pay your $300 plumbing bill. None of the manufacturers of flushable products will pay your plumbing bill if their products clog up your drain line. And if you complain to the supermarket that sold you the wipes, you probably won’t even get your $3 back. The most you will likely get from them is a sympathetic letter from some faceless vice president in charge of health and beauty products telling you to take your complaint to the manufacturer. So remember – when you flush flushable products, you do so at your risk, not theirs.

Worthless Guarantees.

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A lot of products come with worthless guarantees. Remember, product guarantees are written by lawyers working for product manufacturers, not consumers. I sometimes read guarantees on products with a suspicious eye when I am in stores. (My Uncle Maurice used to do this with me. He was good at finding dubious guarantees.) Here are 2 of my favorites. California Fire Logs. There used to be a convenience store next to Berkeley Bowl that sold fake fireplace logs. You have probably seen these in stores. Fake fireplace logs are shaped like logs but are made out of sawdust and wax. This store sold a brand called California Fire Logs. On the front label of these logs it said in a big starburst: “New and Improved! Now guaranteed not to explode in normal use.” I remember thinking: “Hmmmm. Now exactly what does that mean? If this log explodes in my fireplace and burns down my house, who gets to decide what ‘normal use’ means? Do I get to decide that or do they?” The other product is Star of India Cobra Repellent. I have a box of this somewhere in my house. This product was made in India for sale in India. On the front of the box it says: “Warranty. If our product fails to keep cobras out of your house, we will refund your purchase price.” I thought: “Hmmm. If this product fails to keep cobras out of my house, who gets the refund check? My estate?”
 

Is There Lead In Hershey Bars?

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This is another Yes and No. The State of California is threatening to sue Hershey for failing to put Prop. 65 warning labels on their chocolate bars telling consumers that Hershey bars contain lead. Well Yes, there is lead in Hershey bars, but Hershey doesn’t put lead in their chocolate. Why would they? The fact is that all cacao beans contain a small amount of lead. As Hersheys explains: “All foods that are grown in nature contain small amounts of elements and minerals, such as cadmium and lead, which occur naturally in all soils because they are found in the Earth’s crust.” You may have seen stories in the press over the past year about this and thought about switching to a different brand of chocolate. That won’t do any good. There is a trace amount of lead in all chocolate. In addition to Hershey, California has also filed or threatened to file Prop. 65 lawsuits against Trader Joes, Green and Black, Lindt, Whole Foods, Kroger, Godiva, See’s, Mars, Theo, and Ghirardelli. There’s no decision yet. (P.S. – There is also a surprisingly large amount of nicotine in eggplant, but that’s a story for another day.)

Will Businesses Replace Workers With Machines If The Minimum Wage Goes Up?

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It frustrates me whenever I hear politicians debating this question, and politicians debate this question this all the time. The people who claim that businesses will replace workers with machines if the minimum wage goes up usually just don’t understand economics.

The simple fact is this – As soon as a machine is invented that can do the job of a worker, it is just a matter of time before that worker is replaced by that machine. The national minimum wage is now 25% lower than it was when Lyndon Johnson was president, adjusted for inflation, but tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs since then anyway due to automation. Consider automobile assembly plants. 50 years ago, when Lyndon Johnson was president, the floor of an auto assembly plant needed hundreds of workers in order to function. Today, auto assembly plants have hundreds of robotic arms making cars with just a handful of workers. Was this because of increases in the minimum wage? No. Auto factory workers were never paid minimum wage. They always made more than that. All my life I have heard politicians say that raising the minimum wage would lead to millions of people losing their jobs, but that has never actually happened. However, this time, maybe it will. California is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, phased in over several years. I am confident that expensive French restaurants in Silicon Valley will be able to absorb this cost, but what about businesses in the Central Valley? Cities in the Central Valley like Stockton and Modesto were poor before the financial meltdown of 2008, and they never recovered from that. Frankly, I am very skeptical that small businesses in the Central Valley will be able to pay $15 an hour and stay in business. We will see.

The bottom line is this –  regardless of whether the minimum wage goes up or not, businesses will continue to replace workers with machines as soon as those machines are invented and are practical. This is has been going on continuously ever since James Watt invented the steam engine in 1775, which kicked off the Industrial Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution had nothing to do with minimum wage laws. They didn’t have minimum wage laws in the 18th Century.