The biggest problem is that often the subsidization is coming from outside the city itself.
In the US, many cities have their mass transit paid for in part by the federal and state governments. That's my main issue with it.
If people in a city decide to subsidize their buses or trains or subways that is fine. But they should pay for it themselves. People that don't live in the cities shouldn't have to pay for the mass transit in the cities.
And I would agree that goes both ways and that people outside the cities shouldn't be asking people in the cities to pay for things either unless whatever it is benefits the cities in some way.
The issue is that cities themselves are not nearly as efficient and economical and many people think because they're very heavily subsidized.
If you suddenly had all the people in the cities paying rent without rent control... paying for food without food stamps... paying for medicine without free medical care... etc a lot of people couldn't live in the city. And if they couldn't they shouldn't.
And if those people didn't live in the city then a lot of things in the city that depend on access to cheap labor etc wouldn't be viable... it would cause a chain reaction that would cause most cities to shrink in size radically.
And would that be a bad thing? Because the people that don't live in the city now would be living somewhere that they could afford.
Why are we trying to get people to live in cities in a manner that forces those people to live at the mercy of charity?
Who benefits? Not the people being offered the subsidies. They're effectively chained to government policies because they utterly depend upon them.
Not the middle class because they tend to prefer the suburbs as proven by the fact that they move there.
We can either assume its for the rich or no one at all and this is just incompetence.
Pick one. Either way the cities shouldn't be so heavily subsidized. It distorts everything.
The "price" of a good in a market is not merely what people want to pay for it. For example, how many people would buy a yacht for 100 dollars? Probably a lot more then buy one now at its current price of about 10 million to 100 million dollars depending on how big it is... but can you charge 100 dollars to sell yachets? No... you won't even break even on the costs.
And that is a major issue in mass transit. Most mass transit systems do NOT break even after collecting all the tickets and passes. Nearly all of them must subsidize their costs with taxes. And some of them even take money from federal and state programs because the systems are not actually affordable even using city taxes without adding money from the federal and state governments.
As such, saying "hey they should just lower prices" is not really rational.
To actually establish your idea here you'd first have to float the whole system on nothing but those passes and ticket revenue. ZERO subsidization. Then you could charge a market price for those tickets.
And if the ticket revenue fell below what it cost to build and maintain the system then it would shut down for lack of funding the same way companies do that can't get enough sales to pay for operations.
I thought they'd work at longer ranges then that... weren't people worried about RFID tags being read from feet away? I thought there was tech that could do that.
Both the dems and reps get big donations from business. Its a dem fairytale that they don't.
Something interesting to watch is that the republicans are having a civil war right now between the more populist tea party types and the old school business interests from the Commerce group.
What is interesting is that republicans are for or against H1B visa increases depending on which of two factions they're more in bed with at the moment.
The more establishment republicans are for more H1B visas. The more tea party types are against them.
There is an ongoing battle between the factions for control. And of course like trolls the social cons keep popping up to talk about gay marriage or abortion as if anyone really gives a shit about that when we have all this other stuff going on.
Anyway... the point is that the dems are for H1B visas to the extent that they're in bed with business interests. Some of the dems are not... some of them are... currently it looks like more of them are then are not. The dems need money right now. They're under a lot of pressure to keep control over the senate and the presidency might fall to a republican in the next election.
What is more they do not have control over the house of representatives. So the dems are very much in need of campaign money to hold on to power. And for that reason they'll basically do any deal so long as the price is right.
Al Gore, who I appreciate is not an active politician anymore, recently did a deal with a coal company in Australia to help the coal company stop the Cap and Trade system in that country. Effectively he just helped a coal company mine coal and sell coal and have that coal burned to produce power... and CO2.
Why? Money. The coal company paid him and he sold out.
You see this sort of thing all the time. Nothing unusual about it.
Build an RFID reader into your iphone bumper case. That way you won't lose it and the RFID reader can read RFID tags without requiring the RFID tags to have power.
Yes, they were talking about bluetooth which is stupid. But this seems entirely plausible if you use RFID instead.
The courts are inherently biased against defendants and have been for many years contrary to their protestations.
This is why it is always a mistake to talk to the police. There is no upside.
If they hear something from you that helps you then it is deemed "hearsay" by the courts but if they hear something damaging then its admissible evidence.
There is no upside to talking to the police. Ever. Likewise, you do not surrender information to the judge that you don't have to surrender. Including whether or not you can decrypt the files.
Just plead the fifth every time they ask you any question what so ever.
Which sounds like an abuse of the fifth, but the reality is that the court system is screwed up and the fifth is actually just protecting you from it.
You pay in blood, worry, and sweat... but its worth it because in the end you're not a slave... and submitting to all the alternatives just leads to slavery.
German labor is more automated then a lot of american labor... what is more germany enjoys quite a bit more protectionism then anything the US has had in a long time...
its complicated you can't make apples to apples comparisons across national lines easily.
Focus rather on comparisons within nations of different types of companies.
I'll grant you all that. I think that's a fair criticism. That said, the foreign companies are dealing with the same issue in most cases and this is how they get profitable.
And indifferent to the obvious problems with many corporate management cultures, the way we've organized factories in the past is not how we'll organize them in the future.
Saying management is full of incompetents and frauds is not an argument against that point. Its a different point and a different problem. A problem I'll side with you on for what that's worth to you.
But it doesn't negate or diminish the labor issue which believe it or not is a bigger problem then the management issue in most manufacturing companies. You either deal with this problem or it buries you.
Forget that its an ad for a bad product by a bad company... and just focus on over arching message... which is just a cultural difference between the US and a lot of other places.
Enjoy your free time, euros... You're welcome to it. Americans want to work.
You can always terminate operations. Not a great option but it is an option.
If companies have the courage to do this it can stop these pushes.
They don't want to drive companies out of business. They want to control them.
If you make it clear that you're a "live free or die" type of company... they have to make a choice... do they want to kill your company or leave you alone and collect taxes?
Because if you make it clear that the price of trying to control you is that you self destruct... there is little point in trying to control you.
It is only by submitting that they get what they want.
Why would a CEO care less about a company if paid in stock options rather then paid in a straight salary?
I mean... if paid in a salary he can literally tank a company WHILE working for it and not lose money until he's fired.
Where as a CEO paid in stock options has to keep the value of the company high at least until he can sell his stock options which tend to mature at least a couple years in the future.
While I agree with you that many CEOs are irresponsible that is more the fault of the current investment model.
I think we have too many small investors in big companies. It creates a problem where in the board of directors is frequently filled with people that don't really represent anyone or care about the company.
Disney for example put some school teachers on their board of directors as well as some other random people. They weren't major share holders and so they both lacked influence and interest in the well running of the company. You see this in many companies and it isn't how it used to work.
In the past, members of the board represented or literally were major share holders. They had leverage because they could sell their stock which would have an impact on the share price given that they were major share holders. What is more, many of them held voting shares which meant they could literally vote CEOs out of their seats.
Today, the boards of directors are typically meaningless. They don't really represent shareholders or have any power. And this leads to CEOs getting out of control because they're basically in charge without any accountability. The only thing that brings them down is if they piss off the shareholders enough that they form a lynch mob OUTSIDE of the board of directors and then organize to vote the CEO out. Very little of this is done from within the boards of directors these days because they're puppets with no strings... they're just a for show pageant without meaning.
As to the responsibilities of a corporation to the community and the workers etc... that's nonsense.
If I start a sandwich shop, I don't have a responsibility to my community or to the guy I hire to make sandwiches. That is unless you think providing healthy sandwiches to the public and paying the wages of the kid I hire doesn't cover my responsibilities. Because those are my responsibilities in that situation.
I don't see where I agreed to do more then that. And I don't see where you get to suddenly claim that companies are responsible for the economic well being of people that aren't even investors in that company.
Its all about contract and property law. The companies never signed contracts or made agreements to do what you're saying they should do... They do that sort of thing on occasion but they don't have to do it.
They do it because companies are made up of people and people care about other people. Also it is justified on the basis of employee and community relations... and is seen as being cheaper then the consequences of not doing it. That said, extorting the companies to do it ultimately comes out of their bottom line and that can make them leave an area if your definition of "community support" means them failing to make a profit.
Companies that can't make a profit... die. Or the government bails them out endlessly due to incestuous political entanglements... which just means other profitable american businesses are being robbed to bail out unprofitable ones...
Don't fuck with the market... it will give you face herpes every time.
This is a strawman argument. No one is arguing that we race to the bottom. And it relies upon other various fallacies as well.
For one thing, you're assuming that all market conditions and business practices will remain the same.
For another you're assuming technological changes don't happen and that we stagnate in 1950's era industry forever. Which is absurd because we've already passed that a long time ago.
The issue with the unions is that the whole method of industry that gave them birth is becoming impractical. We don't have tens of thousands of largely unskilled or low skilled factory workers scurrying around giant dangerous facilities where people lose limbs and live hand to mouth.
That's gone.
Factories have been reducing the number of people needed to produce a given product for generations. Every generation it takes fewer workers to make the same good. Or if you prefer, every worker becomes more efficient being able to produce more then the past generation in the same unit of time.
This increase in productivity is ultimately transformative because it renders labor costs less and less relevant.
Added to that, the skill level required of these workers has also increased every generation. As such, rather then having a lot of unskilled replacable drones as in past generations we are increasingly using skilled labor and doing so productively enough that we can afford to pay people quite well.
Consider the unions for skilled labor. Notice how they're all less militant. Unions for electricians, carpenters, etc. None of them are running around banging the hammer and cickle because they have leverage simply by being skilled. You can't just replace them because you can't just find people that have those skills at less then their price. You simply can't. They don't exist. Now could I find people that can fetch and carry things as with the old school dock workers? Yes. Any illerate moron can do that. Which is why the dock worker's union is probably one of the most militant unions in the United States.
They are mellowing over time and a lot of that is due to their jobs requiring more skill in successive generations. They operate large cranes now that you have to be trained on and it takes a long time to get good with it. What is more, you don't need many crane operators as opposed to legions of guys that would literally carry everything off the boat by hand. Which is how boats used to be unloaded until the container ships started to become common.
Container ships spelled the doom of the dock worker's union. They're superfluous now. The labor at the dock doesn't need a union. They're skilled labor and we only need enough of it to run the cranes, some forklifts, some trucks, and do clerical work. For that you don't need a union.
And that's just half the issue. Not only do we not need the unions anymore, they're actively getting in the way of the transformation of our industry from something inefficient and outmoded to something internationally competitive and modern.
I'm not advocating workers get paid nothing and have no rights. To the contrary, I'm advocating that they get paid more and have the ability to get a job anywhere in the world in their industry at the drop of a hat.
How? By not interfering with the modernization of industry and allowing factory labor to transition fully to skilled labor. At which point they'll if anything get paid a good deal more and their skills will be so in demand anywhere in the world that they can live where ever they want, put their skills on a resume, get hired.
Everyone wins. The companies make more money. The workers are liberated from outmoded social and political models while making more money. And the consumer wins because it will lower the cost of goods, increase economic investment in the local economy, and provide more domestically produced goods.
Seriously... doing otherwise is stupid.
Would you suggest we farm the way we did 200 years ago? Think
If executive contracts were the problem then the foreign companies would not do better in the US then American companies.
They are and so the common denominator are those contracts which are uncompetitive.
The logic while politically inconvenient and economically upsetting is nonetheless inescapable.
As to executives sucking every last dime out of a company, that is true in some situations, however you'll find that if you total up the total budget spent on executive compensation... especially on senior management... and compare that to the amount spent on practically any other portion of the labor pool you're generally looking at a tiny fraction of the company's total budget.
You could in most cases pay the executives literally nothing and not change the economic standing of the company.
An old and I think witty comment from William Randolf Heist was as follows:
A man sent Mr Hearst a letter saying that he had so much money while so many had so little. He said that Mr Hearst should divide his money up amongst the people of America and raise all our standards of living by sharing.
Mr Hearst responded by sending the man a check for 10 dollars saying "here is your share".
The point is that while some people are very wealthy or are paid a great deal more then others those same people are also uncommon. Divide their gains amongst us all and you'll find it doesn't amount to much. This is especially true if you want to talk about an automotive company that employs tens of thousands of factory workers while having a relative handful of executives.
Oh sure, you can cite the mid level executives if you want to get higher numbers but those people are also not paid a great deal more then your factory workers.
I'm sorry... I don't like coming to the conclusion... its just logic. You can deny it if you want but I say this as someone that feels friendly to your sentiment... you are deluding yourself. That is not an insult but rather empathy. I feel the same frustration you do... I really do... but you can't point at the sky and deny the Sun. It is.
You deal with the problem first by admitting you have it.
My personal solution to this issue is massive automation.
The unions will say that means lower employment as factories will lay off people and replace them with robots.
That's absolutely true assuming production remains fixed and no new industries come out of it and if we assume that the US economy will not lose all its factories if it does not evolve.
I do not make those assumptions.
I rather assume that companies will produce as much as they can produce and that more efficient production always leads to more production. As such factories that employ 2000 people might still employ 2000 people but with ten times the production.
Even if you do have fewer people working in the factory you might have more factories or the wealth generated by having those factories be so efficient might open other jobs in other industries.
Look at what the industrial revolution did for agriculture. We used to have about 70 percent of our labor force in agriculture. Today, its perhaps 5 percent while production of food is far higher.
Suggesting we stay with outmoded factory labor policies is as unsustainable as suggesting that we go back to small family owned farms with manual labor tilling the fields.
The sort of factory the unions want is dead already. Its gone.
This attempt to sustain it merely weakens the companies and loses us the opportunity to jump on the future.
I further assume that new industrial models will be better for new companies that want to make things in the US. Lots of things that can't be made here now could be in the future if we can have enough automation to make it practical.
I don't suggest we pay people poorly. I believe in win win situations. I think we can pay people as well or better so long as we have higher per employee production. If every employee produces 10 times what they produce no
Its a choice. As a company, it is your money. You can do what you want with it. You can invest where you want. You can employ who you want. You can pay them what you want.
The government can invalidate contracts but they can't force you to sign contracts or force you do things you don't want to do.
You just have to be willing to call their bluff. This means in many cases shutting down operations or relocating because local officials are interfering with local business activities.
imagine if you had a farm where you grew tomatoes and every so often bandits came through and stole your tomatoes and raped your wife. Well... you don't have to grow tomatoes there. once you've figured out that there is an undesirable pattern of behavior in the area you can conclude that you might be better off going somewhere else that the bandits aren't going to steal your tomatoes and rape your wife.
Detroit is not a great place to run a business for a lot of reasons. Everyone should leave. Everyone. Empty the city until all that is left is stray dogs.
Then start over. So many places just need a reboot.
And if we're fair, we'd have to recognize that the only reason Detroit hasn't gone through a reboot is because we keep giving them money. Stop doing that. Let them sink or swim on their own. They'll drowned of course... leading to an exodus from the city... which will leave a much more humble and reasonable city thereafter that can have a hope of restarting.
They are free to do it. Just as free as Toyota was to do it.
Will the Unions whine? Its a question of rights. The unions have a right to whine. They don't have a right to stop it.
If the unions want to buy the car company and then decide how to run it, that is fine... buy the car company.
If they want to have no investment in the car company and just work for it like employees... then that is what you are... an employee. You don't decide as an employee where a company builds a factory.
Full stop.
Now through the labor department unions can use special interest politics to make life difficult for companies. But those companies can't be forced to keep factories open. Open a new factory some place the labor department isn't going to stop... if that means another country then that's what you have to do... then you shut down the factories in the union areas. Utterly shutter them.
Its not a question of whether something is easy or not. Its an existential threat to the company. They don't have a choice. They must do things in a competitive fashion or die.
Must.
Do or die.
If the unions refuse to cooperate then they can't be involved in the company's future. Retaining them in that position means accepting death. The only companies that will survive are the ones that either get a new contract with the unions that is competitive or that cut the unions out entirely one way or another.
I suppose you could get a lot of back door government handouts... but then your business is less about selling cars and more about getting corrupt politicians to give you subsidies.
Which is fine as far as it goes... just be honest about your business model at that point. You're a subsidy company at that point... not car company.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest problem is that often the subsidization is coming from outside the city itself.
In the US, many cities have their mass transit paid for in part by the federal and state governments. That's my main issue with it.
If people in a city decide to subsidize their buses or trains or subways that is fine. But they should pay for it themselves. People that don't live in the cities shouldn't have to pay for the mass transit in the cities.
And I would agree that goes both ways and that people outside the cities shouldn't be asking people in the cities to pay for things either unless whatever it is benefits the cities in some way.
The issue is that cities themselves are not nearly as efficient and economical and many people think because they're very heavily subsidized.
If you suddenly had all the people in the cities paying rent without rent control... paying for food without food stamps... paying for medicine without free medical care... etc a lot of people couldn't live in the city. And if they couldn't they shouldn't.
And if those people didn't live in the city then a lot of things in the city that depend on access to cheap labor etc wouldn't be viable... it would cause a chain reaction that would cause most cities to shrink in size radically.
And would that be a bad thing? Because the people that don't live in the city now would be living somewhere that they could afford.
Why are we trying to get people to live in cities in a manner that forces those people to live at the mercy of charity?
Who benefits? Not the people being offered the subsidies. They're effectively chained to government policies because they utterly depend upon them.
Not the middle class because they tend to prefer the suburbs as proven by the fact that they move there.
We can either assume its for the rich or no one at all and this is just incompetence.
Pick one. Either way the cities shouldn't be so heavily subsidized. It distorts everything.
mass transit is already hugely subsidized...
The "price" of a good in a market is not merely what people want to pay for it. For example, how many people would buy a yacht for 100 dollars? Probably a lot more then buy one now at its current price of about 10 million to 100 million dollars depending on how big it is... but can you charge 100 dollars to sell yachets? No... you won't even break even on the costs.
And that is a major issue in mass transit. Most mass transit systems do NOT break even after collecting all the tickets and passes. Nearly all of them must subsidize their costs with taxes. And some of them even take money from federal and state programs because the systems are not actually affordable even using city taxes without adding money from the federal and state governments.
As such, saying "hey they should just lower prices" is not really rational.
To actually establish your idea here you'd first have to float the whole system on nothing but those passes and ticket revenue. ZERO subsidization. Then you could charge a market price for those tickets.
And if the ticket revenue fell below what it cost to build and maintain the system then it would shut down for lack of funding the same way companies do that can't get enough sales to pay for operations.
These markets are being screwed up by politics... both international and domestic.
If we self generate then the powers that be can sit on it and spin... I really can't wait.
again, they haven't stopped informing people... they just won't do it by email anymore.
That's dumb on their part then because obviously the email should be individually configurable.
contextually that doesn't make sense because they're not recalling patches or changing patches but merely informing people ABOUT patches differently.
Previously you could put yourself on a mass email list for patches.
MS is saying they're not doing that anymore.
But they will retain an RSS feed for the same patches.
Therefore, this appears to be a response to anti spam legislation/rules.
I don't know why subscribe and unsubscribe would not satisfy those laws but apparently MS is convinced they don't... so...
I thought they'd work at longer ranges then that... weren't people worried about RFID tags being read from feet away? I thought there was tech that could do that.
Plus 5 insightful for me and -1 for you... suck it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Both the dems and reps get big donations from business. Its a dem fairytale that they don't.
Something interesting to watch is that the republicans are having a civil war right now between the more populist tea party types and the old school business interests from the Commerce group.
What is interesting is that republicans are for or against H1B visa increases depending on which of two factions they're more in bed with at the moment.
The more establishment republicans are for more H1B visas. The more tea party types are against them.
There is an ongoing battle between the factions for control. And of course like trolls the social cons keep popping up to talk about gay marriage or abortion as if anyone really gives a shit about that when we have all this other stuff going on.
Anyway... the point is that the dems are for H1B visas to the extent that they're in bed with business interests. Some of the dems are not... some of them are... currently it looks like more of them are then are not. The dems need money right now. They're under a lot of pressure to keep control over the senate and the presidency might fall to a republican in the next election.
What is more they do not have control over the house of representatives. So the dems are very much in need of campaign money to hold on to power. And for that reason they'll basically do any deal so long as the price is right.
Al Gore, who I appreciate is not an active politician anymore, recently did a deal with a coal company in Australia to help the coal company stop the Cap and Trade system in that country. Effectively he just helped a coal company mine coal and sell coal and have that coal burned to produce power... and CO2.
Why? Money. The coal company paid him and he sold out.
You see this sort of thing all the time. Nothing unusual about it.
Build an RFID reader into your iphone bumper case. That way you won't lose it and the RFID reader can read RFID tags without requiring the RFID tags to have power.
Yes, they were talking about bluetooth which is stupid. But this seems entirely plausible if you use RFID instead.
The courts are inherently biased against defendants and have been for many years contrary to their protestations.
This is why it is always a mistake to talk to the police. There is no upside.
If they hear something from you that helps you then it is deemed "hearsay" by the courts but if they hear something damaging then its admissible evidence.
There is no upside to talking to the police. Ever. Likewise, you do not surrender information to the judge that you don't have to surrender. Including whether or not you can decrypt the files.
Just plead the fifth every time they ask you any question what so ever.
Which sounds like an abuse of the fifth, but the reality is that the court system is screwed up and the fifth is actually just protecting you from it.
uncompetitive cost and production models are an obvious existential threat.
You pay in blood, worry, and sweat... but its worth it because in the end you're not a slave... and submitting to all the alternatives just leads to slavery.
German labor is more automated then a lot of american labor... what is more germany enjoys quite a bit more protectionism then anything the US has had in a long time...
its complicated you can't make apples to apples comparisons across national lines easily.
Focus rather on comparisons within nations of different types of companies.
I'll grant you all that. I think that's a fair criticism. That said, the foreign companies are dealing with the same issue in most cases and this is how they get profitable.
And indifferent to the obvious problems with many corporate management cultures, the way we've organized factories in the past is not how we'll organize them in the future.
Saying management is full of incompetents and frauds is not an argument against that point. Its a different point and a different problem. A problem I'll side with you on for what that's worth to you.
But it doesn't negate or diminish the labor issue which believe it or not is a bigger problem then the management issue in most manufacturing companies. You either deal with this problem or it buries you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Forget that its an ad for a bad product by a bad company... and just focus on over arching message... which is just a cultural difference between the US and a lot of other places.
Enjoy your free time, euros... You're welcome to it. Americans want to work.
You can always terminate operations. Not a great option but it is an option.
If companies have the courage to do this it can stop these pushes.
They don't want to drive companies out of business. They want to control them.
If you make it clear that you're a "live free or die" type of company... they have to make a choice... do they want to kill your company or leave you alone and collect taxes?
Because if you make it clear that the price of trying to control you is that you self destruct... there is little point in trying to control you.
It is only by submitting that they get what they want.
Why would a CEO care less about a company if paid in stock options rather then paid in a straight salary?
I mean... if paid in a salary he can literally tank a company WHILE working for it and not lose money until he's fired.
Where as a CEO paid in stock options has to keep the value of the company high at least until he can sell his stock options which tend to mature at least a couple years in the future.
While I agree with you that many CEOs are irresponsible that is more the fault of the current investment model.
I think we have too many small investors in big companies. It creates a problem where in the board of directors is frequently filled with people that don't really represent anyone or care about the company.
Disney for example put some school teachers on their board of directors as well as some other random people. They weren't major share holders and so they both lacked influence and interest in the well running of the company. You see this in many companies and it isn't how it used to work.
In the past, members of the board represented or literally were major share holders. They had leverage because they could sell their stock which would have an impact on the share price given that they were major share holders. What is more, many of them held voting shares which meant they could literally vote CEOs out of their seats.
Today, the boards of directors are typically meaningless. They don't really represent shareholders or have any power. And this leads to CEOs getting out of control because they're basically in charge without any accountability. The only thing that brings them down is if they piss off the shareholders enough that they form a lynch mob OUTSIDE of the board of directors and then organize to vote the CEO out. Very little of this is done from within the boards of directors these days because they're puppets with no strings... they're just a for show pageant without meaning.
As to the responsibilities of a corporation to the community and the workers etc... that's nonsense.
If I start a sandwich shop, I don't have a responsibility to my community or to the guy I hire to make sandwiches. That is unless you think providing healthy sandwiches to the public and paying the wages of the kid I hire doesn't cover my responsibilities. Because those are my responsibilities in that situation.
I don't see where I agreed to do more then that. And I don't see where you get to suddenly claim that companies are responsible for the economic well being of people that aren't even investors in that company.
Its all about contract and property law. The companies never signed contracts or made agreements to do what you're saying they should do... They do that sort of thing on occasion but they don't have to do it.
They do it because companies are made up of people and people care about other people. Also it is justified on the basis of employee and community relations... and is seen as being cheaper then the consequences of not doing it. That said, extorting the companies to do it ultimately comes out of their bottom line and that can make them leave an area if your definition of "community support" means them failing to make a profit.
Companies that can't make a profit... die. Or the government bails them out endlessly due to incestuous political entanglements... which just means other profitable american businesses are being robbed to bail out unprofitable ones...
Don't fuck with the market... it will give you face herpes every time.
Sales of their rivals are not that bad actually. So this argument is meaningless.
As to racing to the bottom...
This is a strawman argument. No one is arguing that we race to the bottom. And it relies upon other various fallacies as well.
For one thing, you're assuming that all market conditions and business practices will remain the same.
For another you're assuming technological changes don't happen and that we stagnate in 1950's era industry forever. Which is absurd because we've already passed that a long time ago.
The issue with the unions is that the whole method of industry that gave them birth is becoming impractical. We don't have tens of thousands of largely unskilled or low skilled factory workers scurrying around giant dangerous facilities where people lose limbs and live hand to mouth.
That's gone.
Factories have been reducing the number of people needed to produce a given product for generations. Every generation it takes fewer workers to make the same good. Or if you prefer, every worker becomes more efficient being able to produce more then the past generation in the same unit of time.
This increase in productivity is ultimately transformative because it renders labor costs less and less relevant.
Added to that, the skill level required of these workers has also increased every generation. As such, rather then having a lot of unskilled replacable drones as in past generations we are increasingly using skilled labor and doing so productively enough that we can afford to pay people quite well.
Consider the unions for skilled labor. Notice how they're all less militant. Unions for electricians, carpenters, etc. None of them are running around banging the hammer and cickle because they have leverage simply by being skilled. You can't just replace them because you can't just find people that have those skills at less then their price. You simply can't. They don't exist. Now could I find people that can fetch and carry things as with the old school dock workers? Yes. Any illerate moron can do that. Which is why the dock worker's union is probably one of the most militant unions in the United States.
They are mellowing over time and a lot of that is due to their jobs requiring more skill in successive generations. They operate large cranes now that you have to be trained on and it takes a long time to get good with it. What is more, you don't need many crane operators as opposed to legions of guys that would literally carry everything off the boat by hand. Which is how boats used to be unloaded until the container ships started to become common.
Container ships spelled the doom of the dock worker's union. They're superfluous now. The labor at the dock doesn't need a union. They're skilled labor and we only need enough of it to run the cranes, some forklifts, some trucks, and do clerical work. For that you don't need a union.
And that's just half the issue. Not only do we not need the unions anymore, they're actively getting in the way of the transformation of our industry from something inefficient and outmoded to something internationally competitive and modern.
I'm not advocating workers get paid nothing and have no rights. To the contrary, I'm advocating that they get paid more and have the ability to get a job anywhere in the world in their industry at the drop of a hat.
How? By not interfering with the modernization of industry and allowing factory labor to transition fully to skilled labor. At which point they'll if anything get paid a good deal more and their skills will be so in demand anywhere in the world that they can live where ever they want, put their skills on a resume, get hired.
Everyone wins. The companies make more money. The workers are liberated from outmoded social and political models while making more money. And the consumer wins because it will lower the cost of goods, increase economic investment in the local economy, and provide more domestically produced goods.
Seriously... doing otherwise is stupid.
Would you suggest we farm the way we did 200 years ago? Think
If executive contracts were the problem then the foreign companies would not do better in the US then American companies.
They are and so the common denominator are those contracts which are uncompetitive.
The logic while politically inconvenient and economically upsetting is nonetheless inescapable.
As to executives sucking every last dime out of a company, that is true in some situations, however you'll find that if you total up the total budget spent on executive compensation... especially on senior management... and compare that to the amount spent on practically any other portion of the labor pool you're generally looking at a tiny fraction of the company's total budget.
You could in most cases pay the executives literally nothing and not change the economic standing of the company.
An old and I think witty comment from William Randolf Heist was as follows:
A man sent Mr Hearst a letter saying that he had so much money while so many had so little. He said that Mr Hearst should divide his money up amongst the people of America and raise all our standards of living by sharing.
Mr Hearst responded by sending the man a check for 10 dollars saying "here is your share".
The point is that while some people are very wealthy or are paid a great deal more then others those same people are also uncommon. Divide their gains amongst us all and you'll find it doesn't amount to much. This is especially true if you want to talk about an automotive company that employs tens of thousands of factory workers while having a relative handful of executives.
Oh sure, you can cite the mid level executives if you want to get higher numbers but those people are also not paid a great deal more then your factory workers.
I'm sorry... I don't like coming to the conclusion... its just logic. You can deny it if you want but I say this as someone that feels friendly to your sentiment... you are deluding yourself. That is not an insult but rather empathy. I feel the same frustration you do... I really do... but you can't point at the sky and deny the Sun. It is.
You deal with the problem first by admitting you have it.
My personal solution to this issue is massive automation.
The unions will say that means lower employment as factories will lay off people and replace them with robots.
That's absolutely true assuming production remains fixed and no new industries come out of it and if we assume that the US economy will not lose all its factories if it does not evolve.
I do not make those assumptions.
I rather assume that companies will produce as much as they can produce and that more efficient production always leads to more production. As such factories that employ 2000 people might still employ 2000 people but with ten times the production.
Even if you do have fewer people working in the factory you might have more factories or the wealth generated by having those factories be so efficient might open other jobs in other industries.
Look at what the industrial revolution did for agriculture. We used to have about 70 percent of our labor force in agriculture. Today, its perhaps 5 percent while production of food is far higher.
Suggesting we stay with outmoded factory labor policies is as unsustainable as suggesting that we go back to small family owned farms with manual labor tilling the fields.
The sort of factory the unions want is dead already. Its gone.
This attempt to sustain it merely weakens the companies and loses us the opportunity to jump on the future.
I further assume that new industrial models will be better for new companies that want to make things in the US. Lots of things that can't be made here now could be in the future if we can have enough automation to make it practical.
I don't suggest we pay people poorly. I believe in win win situations. I think we can pay people as well or better so long as we have higher per employee production. If every employee produces 10 times what they produce no
A baseless insults is not a rebuttal, constructive criticism, or even technically an argument or thought.
Its just a bit of animal noise you decided to type into your browser and then send through the internet to waste my time and patience.
Please stop wasting bandwidth or stop wasting oxygen.
No one has to pay that though. Ever.
Its a choice. As a company, it is your money. You can do what you want with it. You can invest where you want. You can employ who you want. You can pay them what you want.
The government can invalidate contracts but they can't force you to sign contracts or force you do things you don't want to do.
You just have to be willing to call their bluff. This means in many cases shutting down operations or relocating because local officials are interfering with local business activities.
imagine if you had a farm where you grew tomatoes and every so often bandits came through and stole your tomatoes and raped your wife. Well... you don't have to grow tomatoes there. once you've figured out that there is an undesirable pattern of behavior in the area you can conclude that you might be better off going somewhere else that the bandits aren't going to steal your tomatoes and rape your wife.
Detroit is not a great place to run a business for a lot of reasons. Everyone should leave. Everyone. Empty the city until all that is left is stray dogs.
Then start over. So many places just need a reboot.
And if we're fair, we'd have to recognize that the only reason Detroit hasn't gone through a reboot is because we keep giving them money. Stop doing that. Let them sink or swim on their own. They'll drowned of course... leading to an exodus from the city... which will leave a much more humble and reasonable city thereafter that can have a hope of restarting.
They are free to do it. Just as free as Toyota was to do it.
Will the Unions whine? Its a question of rights. The unions have a right to whine. They don't have a right to stop it.
If the unions want to buy the car company and then decide how to run it, that is fine... buy the car company.
If they want to have no investment in the car company and just work for it like employees... then that is what you are... an employee. You don't decide as an employee where a company builds a factory.
Full stop.
Now through the labor department unions can use special interest politics to make life difficult for companies. But those companies can't be forced to keep factories open. Open a new factory some place the labor department isn't going to stop... if that means another country then that's what you have to do... then you shut down the factories in the union areas. Utterly shutter them.
Its not a question of whether something is easy or not. Its an existential threat to the company. They don't have a choice. They must do things in a competitive fashion or die.
Must.
Do or die.
If the unions refuse to cooperate then they can't be involved in the company's future. Retaining them in that position means accepting death. The only companies that will survive are the ones that either get a new contract with the unions that is competitive or that cut the unions out entirely one way or another.
I suppose you could get a lot of back door government handouts... but then your business is less about selling cars and more about getting corrupt politicians to give you subsidies.
Which is fine as far as it goes... just be honest about your business model at that point. You're a subsidy company at that point... not car company.