Economy ----LETS CUT THE CRAP The economy is in a bad way and sinking fast. This is largely a result of NAFTA which has cost the loss of jobs to foreign manufacturing . No one thought to level the playing field which Iowas already tilted with their lower wages. We are in this together. It is not labor vs, management or government against corporations. It is simply American manufacturing vs, foreign manufacturing. Manufacturing is the backbone to our economy. Until we can level the playing field, we don't stand a prayer of recovering. Here is probably the only way to do that. 1. Government must become friendly with manufacturing, not adversarial. New jobs must start from manufacturing. The countries who have taken our manufacturing jobs don't have all the corporate taxes and government restrictions on manufacturing that we do. These taxes were a way our politicians could get money with out getting citizens outraged. Ultimately citizens have to pay these taxes which companies had to pass on in the price of the products. If manufacturing is going to come back this needs to be addressed in a big way. And o by the way, how are these taxes going to be made up now that companies are going bankrupt or have much lower earnings? 2. In addition, labor must become friendly with manufacturing management. Unions must work towards manufacturing effectiveness. Wages must be made realistic, but even more important, work rules that inhibit effectiveness must be abolished. Remember, we are in this together and hopefully learned that if corporations don't profit, there is no reason for them to stay in business. ; 3. Maximum manufacturing cost effectiveness can only be reached by leveling production rates. Changing rates disrupts the factory negatively effecting every cost in the factory BIG TIME. This was the real secret to the successful Toyota System. They call it smooth loading. This is what makes Just-in-time and kazians effective, not the reverse. This was Americanized, and successfully implemented in two large plants, and documented in a book entitled 'Level Loading Production'. The reason this has not been incorporated further is that the CEO's come from their financial and marketing divisions and don't understand manufacturing. Further exacerbating this is that most financial systems they use are built for pricing not manufacturing effectiveness. This gives out the wrong message leading to bad decisions. 4. We must lower the cost of energy. In the short run this means tapping our oil resources off shore and Alaska. In the long run, ways to develop alternate sources of energy must be encouraged. It appears that the development of alternate sources has been stymied by the threat of oil companies lowering prices making the alternate source non competitive which discourages capital going into this effort. Notice to treehuggers:- when we get cold and hungry- stand aside, that tree will become our firewood. The hard part is finding the leadership to get this done? It is essential to our way of life. Thank you For your time Jim Kirwan(40 years in manufacturing) jjkirwan@juno.com
-- james kirwan, October 16, 2009
As far as education is concerned, I simply cannot understand the resistance in some quarters to voucher arrangements.I don't have empirical evidence, but my sense is that we have the most effective university system in the world. It consists of a mix of private and public institutions. The private institutions range from those closely associated with a religious body, e.g. BYU, to the godless Ivies (my tongue only partly planted in my cheek). Individuals choose their college and in many cases government or other funds are available to subsidize, in whole or in part, the tuition and other costs.
Were we to mimic this system at the lower levels in our educational system, I think there would be a number of advantages that would accrue.
First, we would see a wide range of choices for education. New and innovative schools would be able to compete in the marketplace for the education subsidies that parents would receive. One might see, for example more technical or trade schools, that would be able to better serve those who might be more interested in that than in a traditional high school education. Or one might see institutions that provide a better learning environment for those who have disabilities.
Second, teachers, at least teachers who work at their craft, will be in demand and will be able to command salaries more commensurate with their abilities than with an artificial ceiling set by a union negotiation that looks to protect the jobs of the least skilled members.
Thirdly, parents would be empowered by their ability to spend their education dollars directly. Under the current system, a parent dissatisfied with his/her public school has few options unless they have a the financial wherewithal to move to the private school system. At the appropriate election cycle, they can look to remove the politicians responsible for the system, but often that is a chimerical option. The weight of a single vote in an election is diluted by all of the other participants whose voting choices may have little to do with the school system. By contrast, a parent with dollars to spend get a direct vote every single day of the year. If a school is not fulfilling the needs of the child, the parent has the option of taking those dollars elsewhere.
-- Edward Shea, October 27, 2009
I quoted Philip Greenspun's Economic Recovery Plan on my blog:http://lessco2essay.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-to-write-economic-recovery-plan.html
Part of the rhetoric of a generic economic recovery plan is (in part) trying to restore an older previous state of affairs.
In writing my own Economic Recovery Plan, I ran into difficulties because I defined the problems very broadly. The outcome is in the following posts: I settled for a few very narrow proposals that are not a return to the past at all. Recovery, if it happens, will be a side effect of moving ahead.
My perception of the kind of change that can happen in 11/2010 is the name of these kind of plans needs to change. Instead of "recovery" the rhetoric should be built around a sense of "advancement" or "moving ahead".
Instead of thinking of reviving manufacturing, I suggest we take the digital computing capabilities and thermodynamic and microeconomic realities that are dimly visible and bite down hard.
-- Lee McKusick, December 1, 2010
A recurring theme in the document is the need to convince investors to make investments in the US.7 years after the document is written, US stock prices have soared, corporate bond yields have reached unprecedented lows, and still, I've been recently advised to invest heavily in the US because other options (Europe, Japan, emerging markets) are significantly worse.
It looks like the US turned out very competitive in terms of attracting investment capital, without implementing most of the changes proposed in the document. Perhaps the explanation is that it's been helped by the way competing economies are run. Then there's QE...
-- Yossi Kreinin, December 26, 2015
Yossi: Great observation. People certainly have been enthusiastic about buying existing U.S. assets, such as real estate in Manhattan. When I wrote the article I was thinking about companies building factories, buying and installing machines for those factories, etc. "Investment Falls Off a Cliff" is a 2012 WSJ article that says "U.S. companies are scaling back investment plans at the fastest pace since the recession, ..." What I would like to see is a chart showing the total spent worldwide on potentially productive investments such as factories and equipment that goes inside a factory and then the percentage of that total spent in the U.S. To me that would best show the competitive position of the U.S.
-- Philip Greenspun, December 26, 2015