Long live our old appliances! (04-08-2025--Hour3)

[00:00:04] What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to 3 on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to thepetekalendershow.com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button, get every episode for free, right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support.

[00:00:28] This is a piece by Mark Ostreik over at Reason.com. Last week, President Donald Trump's administration turned its chainsaws on the Department of Energy, cutting, canceling, or pausing a handful of onerous regulations set to hobble households and commercial appliances, right?

[00:00:53] So there was a bunch of regulations that were fixing to come on the books, and they cut them. Anybody who has coughed up a small fortune for a barely functional appliance knows the stakes. And I can tell you, I have seen this. It is, it's offensive. It is offensive.

[00:01:18] The amount of money that is charged for appliances with a lifespan of eight years. Offensive. I saw a video the other day. Some guy had a freezer and set up a, he pulled the door, he pulled the front door off of the freezer.

[00:01:44] He stuck a thermometer in the thing. This freezer was like a 50 or 60 year old freezer, okay? He has the freezer outside. I want to say he was in Tennessee. He sets the freezer outside. The door is off of the freezer. He hangs a thermometer and trains a camera on the thermometer in the freezer and then records nonstop for the entire summer last year.

[00:02:14] And then put it all together in like a super sped up time lapse deal. That freezer never stopped working and the ice inside of it never melted. It didn't stop running. I mean, it was running nonstop, full bore, constant.

[00:02:34] He's like, they don't make these like this anymore. No, I don't know. Maybe it was a deep fake, cheap fake or whatever fake. I don't know. Maybe it was. I don't know. I just, I get the sense based on my own experience with various appliances that they just don't build them like they used to. You know, I had an old washer and dryer that was in my very first house that I bought in 2005.

[00:02:59] And the washer and dryer that came with the place, I think were manufactured. I think it was like a week after the invention of electricity. I think that's when these things were built. And aside from having to replace one of the bands, never had a problem with it. Never had a problem with them. Refrigerators? Dishwashers? Oh my gosh. Do not even get me started. Okay, well, no, we're already starting on.

[00:03:28] The dishwashers. We have a dishwasher, came with our house, supposedly brand new, though it was. It was brand new. And it's, I will tell you, it is a whirlpool. And that thing trips our circuit breaker about once a week. It trips the circuit breaker.

[00:03:54] Coffee pot and refrigerator trips a circuit breaker. Now, maybe that's the circuit breakers because they implemented the stupid new GCIs or whatever, the ground faults or whatever. It's not ground fault. Whatever. But like these, it trips these, these things that like, oh my gosh, it's gonna, you know, burn the whole house down kind of thing.

[00:04:19] But the amount of money for, like, and I'm the guy, like, I, the last new fridge or the previous new fridge that we bought, because when we, Chrissy and I bought our house down in the Steel Creek part of Charlotte, this was 2009, I think. And we bought our house. We needed a fridge. And, um, I saw one in the parking lot at Home Depot. You know, they had it out front. They were trying to sell it. So I walk up, I look at it, and the thing was, and this is, uh, this is 15 years ago.

[00:04:47] And the thing was reduced, you know, and it had a dent in the bottom of it. And I was like, eh, hmm. It was like 40% off or something. I was like, eh, still too expensive. Because it was like $1,000. Like, I'm not spending $1,000 on a refrigerator. I don't need it to do all of this stuff. A week later, we go to Home Depot. The fridge is now moved to the little vestibule area, you know, between the sliding doors. And we go in there. It's still there. And now it's marked down 60%.

[00:05:15] So now I'm looking at it like, hmm, this is now getting down into my price point, you know. And a guy comes out and he's like, hey, you interested in this fridge? And I was like, I might be. I said, I see it's got a dent down there. And he's like, I'll tell you what, I'll knock another 30% off. I'm like, sold. I will buy that fridge for that kind of price. And then it leaked a little bit. But whatever. Like, the point was, it was way cheaper than, I think it was like a $1,500 fridge.

[00:05:44] And we got it for like $500 or $400, something like that. But when we went to look at refrigerators for the house that we're in now, we were shocked at the amount of money. And here's the thing, like, I don't need a fridge to do all of this stuff. I don't need it to be connected to my Wi-Fi. Why would you need that? Why do you need Wi-Fi? Oh, so I can look in and see if I need something when I'm at the grocery store. Yeah, that's what lists are for.

[00:06:12] You write a list and you put it on the fridge. And then you take the list with you. Or you have your wife send you a picture of it if you're already at the store. Like, that's what you do. And here's the thing, if you forget to buy something, then, yeah, you're going to have to go buy it again. Go to the store again and buy it then. That's okay, too. You don't need Wi-Fi in your fridge. This author at Reason says, My 30-year-old Bosch dishwasher was a marvel.

[00:06:42] This is the 30-year-old one. Efficient. Precise. Scouring dishes in 45 minutes like a Prussian drill sergeant on a deadline. Last month, it died. I had to drop $800 on a sleek successor, expecting progress. Instead, I got a two-hour grease-smearing farce that leaves forks, like my optimism, caked in

[00:07:06] the grime of dashed hopes, a victim of the Department of Energy's regulatory straitjacket. That's the thing, too. The dishwasher we have at our house now is a, quote, high-efficiency one, and it runs for three hours. Three hours. I thought it was a mistake. I was like, oh, surely that's like a sanitization cycle or a pots and pans cycle or like a double cycle. Like, there's, why would it run three hours?

[00:07:36] That doesn't seem high or efficiency. Well, it does seem like a high time count. Why would you do that? And then the stuff comes out and it's like, some of this stuff doesn't even look like it's been cleaned. Like, you have to set everything up exactly correct and like, oh, you don't even have to wash the dishes. It has a sensor. It has a sensor that will know how dirty your dishes are. It's like, just wash them the same way every time. Because I'm not like, I'm not like super cleaning the dishes before they go in the dishwasher.

[00:08:06] Nor am I just leaving them all caked on with all the crud. It's always the same kind of level of stuff on the dishes I put in there. I don't need a sensor in there. I couldn't buy a dishwasher though without one of these fancy sensors. It's just something else that breaks. Don't even get me started on the dryer. Okay, I am started on the dryer. The dryer has been sending us error messages like every six months telling us that there's a clog in the line and it still runs.

[00:08:37] Like, there's no, we don't have pets, right? It's just two of us. We're not drying that much stuff that it should be. And what's gone wrong is this is a Samsung and it's running all of the lint traps. It's all of the lint is bypassing the stupid lint trap. I've had them out to the house and now they're wanting to charge us like $200 service calls each time. I'm like, well, after like three calls, I could just buy another dryer. And that's what I'm going to be doing.

[00:09:05] And I'm going to be looking at all the yard sales for all of the 1970s era models. Because I have lost confidence in appliance makers. Well, but maybe things will get better now. Now, maybe things will get better because of this, because of what Trump has done. All right. So spring is here, a time of renewal and celebrations. You got graduations, weddings, anniversaries, and the special days for mom and dad.

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[00:10:31] Hello. How you doing? Good. What's going on? I have a little input on this manufacturing job. If they bring all these jobs back, who's going to work on them? Let me give you a little history. I used to work in the mid-90s at one of the top auto manufacturers in the United States. And back then, there was wait lists of thousands of people wanting to work in that manufacturing place because the pay was very good, the benefits was great, and everything.

[00:10:57] Now, since today, they can't find people to work in the manufacturing jobs. Young people do not want to do that. They actually was in a position a few years ago. They were calling back old retirees to come and see if they could work on the line. And the pay is very good, but they can't get young people. They don't want that. They can get more money in IT and working in TikTok. They're working on the assembly line. Well, this is the question I was asking in the last hour is you've got right now,

[00:11:27] the stat is that there's half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs per month in America. So half a million unfilled jobs. And I've heard this in like the auto tech, you know, for people working in the garages. And those are skilled labor. And you can make good money doing that work. And they have problems filling those jobs.

[00:11:51] So if the idea with the tariff strategy is to, you know, ignite this manufacturing renaissance in America, then do Americans actually, will they even work those jobs if you create them here? No, this company, they will charge, I mean, they will hire these people making 80 grand a year. These 18, 19, 20, 20 year olds, they don't want that. They don't want to do that kind of work. Yeah. No, it's because it's difficult work.

[00:12:18] And they've been told by their older generations that, you know, I want a better life for you. So you're going to go to college. I heard it, you know, my nieces and nephews have heard it from their parents. Like that's always been this sort of narrative that's been advanced because that was how you got out of a lot of the really backbreaking types of work in years and decades ago.

[00:12:45] And so now the manufacturing jobs are, yeah, they're difficult and they're taxing physically, but I don't believe they're probably a lot of them. Some of them will be obviously like oil riggers and stuff like that. That's going to be very difficult work. But there's a lot of other manufacturing jobs that are not necessarily backbreaking work anymore, but it can be tedious, you know, and you're standing in one place for on your feet all day long. Like that might be, yeah, like the, and people think it's beneath them.

[00:13:16] So. Yeah. So that was my two cents. Yeah. Okay. Earl, I appreciate it, man. Thanks. Okay. All right. Take care. You too. All right. Let me go over and talk to Ralph. Hello, Ralph. How's it going, Pete? All right. With Doge and everything, Trump. Ralph, your connection is breaking up. Are you on a speakerphone? Yeah. And everything. Let me, I'm inside of the Mecklenburg County Registered Deeds.

[00:13:46] Oh, my gosh. I'll call you back later. Tell them we said hello. Not my fault. It might come in. No, that's all right. That's all right. Give me a call back. That's fine. In February, Donald Trump's Department of Energy postponed three efficiency rules from Biden

[00:14:09] that were related to central air conditioning, heat pumps, walk-in coolers, freezers, gas tankless water heaters as well. It also carved a special regulatory category that would free up the tankless heaters from Biden's near ban.

[00:14:29] Just last week, the Department of Energy cut four more rules outright impacting ceiling fans, dehumidifiers, external power supplies, and the electric motors that power almost everything. This isn't just red tape that is slashed. It is a rare win for choice and function over dogma. What did we dodge? Dodge? Well, we dodged quite a bit. The electric motor mandates specifically.

[00:14:59] These rules hit everything from your blender to your garage compressor. Like all of it. Ostensibly, the goal was to reduce electricity use and emissions. Sounds noble, right? Until you realize what it does to the products that we actually use. Because the motors have to skimp on low-end torque, which then hobbles the appliances that need a quick jolt.

[00:15:26] Think about your AC unit, you know, gasping as it kicks up on a hot day or a blender that stalls when it's trying to chop up the ice, right? And then what? It has to run longer, right? It's like the dishwasher. I got to run it again. It's like the low-flow toilets. Remember that? You're like, oh, yeah, we're going to reduce the water consumption. Yeah, except now I got to flush twice every time because it doesn't all go down.

[00:15:54] I waited to do this topic in the third hour so people would be done with their lunch breaks. You're welcome. Ralph has called back. Hey, Ralph. Ralph. Oh, no, that's not Ralph. It's Carol. Hello, Carol. Hey there. Hey, what's going on? So, you know, we have your washing machine and it's got all the sensors and all the bells and whistles. And weirdly, the agitator just kind of like stopped.

[00:16:24] You could see it was trying to work. And my boyfriend, who's very, very handy, was going to fix it. And he's just like, you know what? He's like, I can't fix this new stuff. So we went on Marketplace, bought one that only has two settings for $60. Nice. And this thing works like a charm. It does the clothes in like half the time. I'm serious. I mean, it's crazy. I believe it.

[00:16:49] And you were saying about the dishwasher, our dishwasher for it to dry, so it dries thoroughly, has to run over 200 minutes. Yeah. Ours runs for, I think it automatically sets up at two hours and 58 minutes for one cycle. That's the normal cycle. Three hour cycle. That's crazy. If I don't want them completely dry and then they kind of like the heat dry, whatever, it's still 133 minutes. Yeah. It's insane.

[00:17:18] So we are very happy with our new washing machine for $60 on Marketplace. How old of a machine? Is it like an old machine or is it a brand new one? No, it's an older Maytag. Yeah. It's got two settings. It's only a smaller, extra large. You don't get to set the water temperatures or whatever. But here's the thing. If it breaks down, my boyfriend can fix it. Can fix it. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Carol, thanks for the... I felt your pain and I went to Marketplace and fixed it. No, it's a good lead.

[00:17:48] I appreciate the call, Carol. Thank you. You're welcome. Bye. Take care. No, that's what we were looking at. We started looking at the Facebook, the neighborhood Facebook yard sale page. Maybe somebody's selling a washer. All we need is the dryer. The washer is still working fine. And it has the sensors and all of that stuff. Christy loves doing laundry. I'm not just saying that. No, I'm not just saying that. No, I'm serious. She loves doing laundry to the point where a couple of years ago, I think she forgot that I actually do know how to do laundry.

[00:18:18] It's just she never lets me do it. She's always doing loads of laundry, really small ones. She's very color specific. Very color. Like I did too. I did whites and colors. And she has like pink, red, purple, brown, blue. Okay, I may be exaggerating a little bit, but it's not that far off. Here's a great idea.

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[00:19:40] Cabins of Asheville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion. And they have pet-friendly accommodations. Call or text 828-367-7068. Or check out all there is to offer at cabinsofashville.com and make memories that'll last a lifetime. I have some emails. This one is from Cindy to Pete at thepetecalendorshow.com. I hate Kenmore. Sorry.

[00:20:07] I hate that Kenmore is out of business. And I miss Sears so much. Yeah, of all companies, to completely miss the mail order shift. Like, Sears? That's, like, that's how you started. I remember doing this topic when the Sears closed up in Asheville.

[00:20:38] And I went in there before it closed. It was so sad. But, yeah, I mean, we grew up looking through the Sears catalog. But apparently, towns used to collect up all of the Sears catalogs when they first started. And they would bring them to the town center and burn them. They'd burn them. Because they were like, Sears is putting the mom and pop's stores out of business. They viewed the Sears catalog as an existential threat.

[00:21:05] But, I mean, it's a case study in poor management, you know, over a very long time. Because of any corporate entity that should have been positioned to become, like, you know, Amazon. Sears was it. Instead, it was a bookseller. That's what Amazon started as, right? They just sold books at first.

[00:21:32] Anyway, Cindy says, I share your frustration with appliances. Basic washer, dryer, check out Speed Queen. That's a brand. I was told by a salesperson at a big box store that Maytag is the choice now. He said, stay away from Whirlpool for a while because they're having issues and are always breaking down. Second choice would be GE. And for refrigerators, stay away from Samsung. Yeah, I think our Samsung is the dryer.

[00:22:02] Yeah. Not happy. David says, mom left not one, but two Kenmore upright freezers to me when she passed away. The newer one is about 20 years old and the other is almost 30. Neither one is fancy, but they both work like a charm. And the one repair issue between them was a part that I replaced myself. Got a, oh, yeah, all right, well, I'll see if I can figure this one out in a minute.

[00:22:31] It sounds like, hang on, yes, this is from Tim. It sounds like you have the arc fault, yes, this is it. The arc fault circuit breaker, AFCI, instead of a ground fault circuit breaker, GFCI. Any arc or spark will trip it. When a motor starts, there are sparks inside. Right, right. When we bought our house in Asheville, right before we came back to Charlotte, we were in the middle.

[00:22:59] So we closed on our house in Asheville. And then two days later, I was offered this job. So we like moved stuff in and then like moved it all out. We were in that house for like a month. Christy was. I immediately came out. Like I, I, I just, we moved everything there and then I came down to start working.

[00:23:24] So the first night we were in that house, we plugged in the television and it, it tripped to the breaker on half of the house. All three of the bedrooms and the living room all went out. And we finally got a guy to come out. It was under, cause it was a brand new home. So it was like under repair or under warranty and all. And he told us about this. Cause I started looking through like electricians, um, websites and like the chat rooms and stuff.

[00:23:53] And I didn't understand any of it, but they were all like raging about these arc fault interrupters. And, uh, you get like, if you get a bad box as an electrician and you're just putting in all of the breakers, um, and you get a bad box, like the whole house could be tripping. And that's what was happening to us. So he came in, he, he did all of the, uh, the fixes for us. But, um, yeah, like it's just, it's nuts.

[00:24:20] The, the defective breakers, the amount of defective breakers basically from China. And so we're having that problem. Uh, so we probably do have an arc fault, uh, problem in our, cause, and then I found out he was telling me that they just made it code in North Carolina to make the breakers required on the refrigerator circuits. So when your refrigerator kicks on and an arc occurs, it's going to detect that arc and it's going to shut your fridge down.

[00:24:48] So let's just hope it doesn't happen while you're on vacation because that would really stink coming home to that. Um, Dennis says, I got a dryer. I bought used for 60 bucks back in 1991. And it works fine. My washer is a Kenmore that is 40 years old. My dishwasher is 75 years old. That means both my hands are still getting the job done.

[00:25:18] Very nice. Well played, Dennis. George says we needed a new washing machine after our high efficiency washer died. After two years, we bought a refurbished washer from race city appliances in Mooresville. And I'm very happy with it. If you're shopping for a classic machine, you might give them a look. Only if that classic, I require that it have the flames painted off of the wheel wells. That's how I want my classic. All right.

[00:25:47] If you're listening to this show, you know, I try to keep up with all sorts of current events. And I know you do too. And you've probably heard me say, get your news from multiple sources. Why? Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground news. It's an app and it's a website and it combines news from around the world in one place. So you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check.ground.news slash Pete.

[00:26:15] I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground news a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check.ground.news slash Pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get 15% off any subscription. I use the vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.

[00:26:44] Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground news as they make the media landscape more transparent. So we have a listener, a longtime listener of the program. His name is Chris. He is looking for work. I read an email the other day. I've been trying to find it. I cannot find it. Somebody had emailed me, I think, and said that they had job openings. They couldn't find people to fill. Chris is looking for a job.

[00:27:13] So I'm going to do this. If you are aware of a job opening, Chris is looking. Please send it over to me and I can forward it to him. All right? So send me an email. Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com. And then I will forward it over to Chris. And then he can go apply and he can make contact with you that way. So if you work someplace, you own a business, you're hiring, there's a listener who's looking for work.

[00:27:42] And so, I mean, you know he's a good person because he listens to the show. So send me an email. Pete at the Pete Calendar Show dot com. I'll keep looking through the emails, Chris. But I just I've been looking during the breaks. I can't find it. So I don't know. If it was an email, maybe in a tweet or something, I get a lot of communications. I get a lot of communications. But I apparently read something the other day and I don't remember when it was. So that's that's the best.

[00:28:12] It's the best I figured to do in the meantime. All right. Let me talk to Keith. Hello, Keith. Keith. Hey, Pete. How are you doing? Oh, you know, getting by. What's going on? You remember back during the Obama administration, the Energy Star ratings that they were putting on things? Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember that thing where somebody submitted a gasoline powered alarm clock that managed to get the rating? I had not heard that. No.

[00:28:42] Yeah. I got to see a picture of it. It had a poll start on it and everything. Something based on a loophole in the rules about how much electricity it used. Nice. And it didn't. So it made the rating. So it made the rating. Yeah. Right. I mean, like, I don't know. I don't ever look at that stuff. I know it's there and I know they have the numbers, but I don't I just I don't even I don't care. I don't care. I want to know, like, is the washing machine going to wash my clothes? Right.

[00:29:10] Well, I've got I've got the same three hour dishwasher thing that just amazes me the first time I started it. And I've got a refrigerator in my house that is four years old that I'm replacing right now. I've got one out in my barn from the mid 60s that has never stumbled or fall. Right. It runs great. Right. Yeah. We the other one when we bought the fridge, one of the fridges, they told us, well, you know, this will be on these things will run about, you know, eight to 10 years. I was like, what?

[00:29:39] Eight to 10 years. It's a fridge. Like these things are supposed to my parents still have their original fridge in that house. Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. The refrigerator I put out in my barn was in our house when we bought it and my wife wanted a new one. So we bought a new fridge that lasted about seven years and bought another one. Now this one's dead. But the one out in the barn still just kicking right along. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's not a surprise. Keith, I appreciate the call, buddy. All right.

[00:30:12] Let me see here. I had, oh, Pete, this is from Good Wahoo. I still believe what I have said previously about the tariffs are a negotiating strategy to get countries to lower actual tariffs. But more importantly, the non-tariff barriers, the trade barriers, which are in effect much more onerous. These are state subsidies of domestic industries, regulations that are always too high to surmount

[00:30:39] devaluing currencies and outright theft of intellectual properties. However, I believe most of these initial high tariffs will come down substantially based on country by country negotiations. But some tariffs will remain, possibly 10%, which the administration looks as a cost of doing business in our country for imported goods and as much needed, a much needed source of long-term revenue. Which it won't be, by the way. If you close the trade deficit, then you don't make the revenues, right?

[00:31:10] Anyway, it's a shrinking pie. But Trump plans to use them to bring down tax rates and the $37 trillion national debt. I mean, again, this is... Look, I appreciate all of the speculation, because that's all this is, on what's really going on. But you don't know. I don't know. Nobody knows what's really going on. We're getting mixed messages from the White House itself. So nobody knows what's going on.

[00:31:36] So I appreciate the predictions, but we shall see. That's what I keep saying. It's like, we shall see. And he better be right. That's all. He better be right. Because if he's not, it'll be a mess. Russ says, I call dibs on working next to Pete if we both end up working the line in the Upton Sinclair novel or the Gulag type setting.

[00:32:06] Don't get me started on appliances. Nothing works as well or lasts as long as it used to. We haven't had a dishwasher to last more than four years, but we have friends who bought a 1950s house with original appliances in the late 90s, and everything still works to this day. HVAC, kitchen appliances, everything. Mark says, I disagree with what caller Mike said. Put the mills in the right place, and they will have plenty of people to work.

[00:32:35] I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure that that, uh... Pete, I hear the Maytag repairman has lots of work to do. Lots of work. Um, yes. Planned obsolescence, says Carolina Bulldog on Twitter. It's a Pete tweet. Yeah, planned obsolescence. Like, we're going to make this technology, but we're going to make sure that you have to replace it after a certain amount of time. Or, we're going to have to put a kill switch in it, so as soon as the warranty period ends,

[00:33:05] we hit the kill switch, and then it dies. So now you can't get the free replacement or repairs. So this guy at the Reason.com, writing in, uh... What is this called? About Trump's energy department saving our appliances. He says, Every rule hits manufacturers with retooling costs, hits consumers with higher bills, and our homes with clunkier gear. His dishwasher, he says, is a poster child. A five-gallon water limit strangles it.

[00:33:34] My old Bosch used ten gallons. At 307 kilowatt hours per year energy cap, it starves the heater and the pump. My German-engineered Jim used to shoot scalding hot water and dry dishes in minutes. New efficiency rules bloated cycles to more than two hours just to scrape at the grease. Four hours when I have to double up on the wash.

[00:34:04] Right, because you've got to run the thing twice, because it's not getting the stuff clean on the first run-through. Dozens more rules remain, though. Rules that hike our prices, gut performance, and drive out American manufacturers in favor of compliant mediocrity. What a great term. Compliant mediocrity. That is the state of our appliances in America. Compliant mediocrity. It is time to end this era of compliant mediocrity.

[00:34:34] If I do say so myself. I applaud Trump for all of the efforts to do that. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support, and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast. So if you'd like, please support them too, and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page, or go to thepcalendarshow.com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone. Thank you.