doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT, career change

Lowell, that is one thing I truly agree with!

Utter nonsense. More people than ever before enjoy the highest standard of living in this country today. And we enjoy access to better products and better services (remember when most cars were warranted for 12,000 miles and worn out at 60,000? ).

Too bad more Americans can't spend a little time working in African famine camps or Haitian orphanages or on the streets of the Middle East - we'd spend less time whining about our own pampered lives.

America and Canada were built by risk takers. And they will be lost by the risk-averse.

Profits have, do, and always will come from a balance of product cost (quality of the product and labor cost) vs selling price. Consumers determine what they will pay for various products and quailty grades of similar products. It is usually possible to reduce the quality and bump the profit for the short term. In the long term, that strategy may well sink the company. Yes, it is always possible to dilute the profits by distributing more to labor. But, it is not always wise.

Consider the American auto industry. Seems to me that they failed to meet a foreign challenge in quality for price. Further, they distributed lots of their profit in high labor costs. High cost labor is now losing its jobs.

Would it have not been better for unions and management ot recognize that the challenge was from teams of foreign labor and management? Would it have not been better to balance the cost and quality and to pay labor a sustainable compensation?

Jack, "streets of the middle-east."
Very NPR-ish!
Count me out of that trip ol' chap, but do send a postcard and let us know how you fare.
"Streets of the middle-east," you say?

Yes, I say. I've been there. And seen how people live in many parts of the world - not on TV, but in reality. Real kids, really dying of kwashiorkor; real adults crawling sandy streets on all fours, victims of childhood rickets; real orphans, abandoned on trash heaps and partially eaten by pigs; real victims, sprawled in hospital filth that would make you retch.

That's why I can't feel much sympathy for well-fed people sitting on their comfy backsides in front of their electronic gadgetry, with thousands of dollars worth of gun toys in their safes, cabinets and closets, whining about the profit-making businesses on which their own prosperity depends.

Btw, I've made my own kind of prosperity!

"Yes, I say," to the "streets of the middle-east."
Perhaps Jack, its a godless land?
...and just maybe, god has gone elsewhere these days!
They are reaping, what they've sown against Israel.

We want to be like those undernourshed, poorly housed countries? That is why we go to work and try to work for a decent wage! Since, there is no excess income to be had in the country you mentioned , there is nothing to be gained by building a factory there to sell a product to a population that can't even afford to pay attention. Our Auto industry is in trouble not just because of the guys on the line. The orders to build the product and how it is built, comes from upstairs. If the guys upstairs don't want to share in the profit, off of the backs of those that made the product, we will someday look like the middle east. In my job, I want workers to make good wages, I want them to have extra money. If they do, they will spend it and make the economy go around. The guys upstairs only want even more in their pocket so they shut down U.S. plants, move them out of the country looking for cheaper labor, that the workers can't even afford to buy what they produce. The whole mess is so short sighted to a make a profit now,the guys upstairs are trying to it all, while there is still money to be had. Because the milk cow (avg. American worker) is about to die off.

An appalling misunderstanding of economics here. Read this: http://www.detnews.com/2005/autosinsider/0510/17/A01-351179.htm
It appears that the "milk cow" (the UAW) is eating the "golden egg!"

Hi Gang,
I went into business for myself 1.5 years ago so I am still new at it but so far so good. There are definate challenges, lots of time and effort. I made as much or more money when I worked for someone else. That said I prefer to be Captain of my own destiny
wish i started it earlier.
Lowell only you would try to get things going with
" I've worked for, and with small business.
...and they'd all pick pennies-off a dead man's eyes.
This is to say nothing of the employees pockets.
Or!
The corners cut without the clients knowning.
No salt of the earth here."

After reading your posts for years I am pretty sure your statement above best describes you, not others. Are you still having trouble with your neighbors and local hunters?

You pricipals don't change because you own a business.
Jeff G.

DK - I am watching a plant die. It is dying because the union still believes that the fight is with "the guys upstairs." "The guys upstairs (TGU)" told "the guys on the line (TGOTL)" that the plant was running at unsustainable costs, had to find a way to reduce costs to be profitable, the company could not afford to run unprofitably even for a short time, and would move production off-shore if a solution was not found. The union convinced the TGOTL that TGU were bluffing. The result of a one year strike was quite predictable. Had TGOTL joined TGU, there would have been a balance of profit supported capital investment and reduced labor cost (lower wages and more productive work practices) to make a competitive plant. TGOTL and TGU have to realize that they are competing with labor-management teams. As long as they remain divided, they will continue to lose.

American labor and unions are going to have to wake up and realize that competition with management over a share of profits presupposes that there are profits. Until there are profits, that is the wrong game. America will continue to hemorage jobs until it quits playing the wrong game. And, no, I don't advocate union/labor catitulation with a return to sweat shops. I advocate considered cooperation instead of constant confrontaion.