Your right and I agree that the carmakers fell alseep and got caught. Import cars when you and I were kids were total junk. Bad cheap shit and there was no doubt. Today, they rule the world.

Chrysler has great stuff today and they shold have done it in the 80's like you say. Gleasons made all the gear cutting machines but never wanted to go after the gears for front wheel drive cars. they, like the car makers suffered heavy for those mistakes.

It was always more simple. I often wonder if all this progress, inflation and upward spiraling is worth it. We have tonns of shit today. games, gadgets and widgets that make our lives simple and easy?! or not. It all comes at a cost.

Remember when the stereo system was all american, like you say? you had a choice to listen to the radio or listen to a record. NOW, good god! tubes or ss. SET or Mosfet, Radio, records, CD's DVD audio, SACD Mp3, and satellite radio for goodness sake. you get the idea. too many choices.

It's all a pyrmid scheme and its getting close to the top. I think we are all after nastalgia for one single reason. It was simple and its relaxing.

The hard decision is. We all want to earn more money, have our house values increase for no reason and have a retirment plan that we could actually live on for a few years. But, we want to be less frustrated, fewer traffic jams, less trips to the store to buy and finance some new thing everyone else has to make things easy. and lets not forget it would be nice to take less prozak, heartburn, blood pressure and cholesteral medications too.

I dont know if we make things that are inferior for any other reason than affordability. Speaking of cars though. I always thought the car companies were holding out on fuel economy technology to hold up the heads of the oil industry. If a driver in a race car can survive a crash at 150mph, why is it so many 50 mph crash's produce fatalities

Bill

Maybe when you compare US wages to places like Europe where the rates are more closely matched. Its the benefit packages that play more into effect as you say.

What do you think? Having been involved with unions. do you think that th unions have pushed to increase workers compensation so much that it's priced us out of the market? I have never been involved with unions and Ive done fine. I have a lot of friends in thr trades and they are all in local unions and they are all quite happy too.

Well, your right. I cant imagine living in new york, la, san fran, boston to name a few. I cant say much about the steel industry but I think when you say the workers in cheap markets wont stand for it very long is on target. Isn't that the cycle that the proponents of cheap labor are hoping for to even things out later on?

I'm in no way suggesting the unions are lazy, shiftless, etc. At one point workers needed to group together and be paid better and have better working environments. All I bring up is did all this negotiating and constant pushing for more wage and benefit, accelerate inflation so fast that the rest of the world never caught up or got left behind. Thus causing a large gap in what we pay vs what they pay?

Its funny the 20 bucks cost you 50 to cut the lawn. Your an employer now and that what all the benefits, withholding tax and overhead cost some employers to pay an employee 20 bucks. I'm just talking out loud cause I just realized it's very similar in that respect.
It sucks, for sure. there are a lot of things that keep tipping the scale against us and take money out of our pocket.

Id like to allow less immigration into the US and keep more of the money we give to other countries in aid to our own people.

I don't like just in time manufacturing. Its a fancy term for cutting inventory cost, increasing delivery time and all in all having less support for your customers. Believe me, the raw materials are extremely costly. This kind of thing is just a touchy feely way to get around having inventory and breeds outsourcing. This whole concept will be full circle pretty soon. No matter what kind of JIT or CELL facility you have. It more stressful then having inventory.

The only people who "like" just in time are bean counters. They have no sense or feel for what its like to constantly change employee's direction and always need to push something through so it can be put together and shipped to make a deadline. Because, Customers don't like just in time. They like inventory that ships today. The accountants like lower inventory level since finished product has the most value. More value in wip can be pushed around cost wise as to what state its in. finished is finished and has a set cost.

I don’t like short term employees either. It far to costly to train people and bring them on board, get them settled and specialized in a field. Temp agencies and part time help is more costly than having planned out work loads and cross trained employees that can shift from one task to another. The employee becomes less stagnant doing multiple jobs and you can in essence, be a person short in every dept. When you become two people short you hire some one and you wont have to get rid of them as long as business stay at a moderate fluctuation.

If business tanks, then everyone is fucked and layoffs are inevitable. By the same token, growing too fast is just as lethal.
Its really a smaller version of the global eceonomy. It all has to stay in balance. Right now it seems more out of balance.

Bill