From: miller@hmsp04.wg3.waii.com (Griff Miller X7114)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: DOES AMERICA SAY YES TO JAPAN? - Off track!!
Date: 18 Dec 92 16:20:13 GMT
Organization: Western Geo. - Div of Western Atlas Intn'l Inc., Houston, TX

In article <1992Dec17.123430.24528@hellgate.utah.edu> llarsen%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Loren Larsen) writes:

>Sense?  Okay, let's suppose you own a business and you have just a few
>big customers and one of those customers is much bigger than the rest.  So
>you decide to get together with your board of directors and design a plan to
>put your biggest customer out of business.  Who in their right mind would
>do that?  So now, explain to me what the Japanese have to gain by putting
>out of business their strongest customer, in fact their only strong
>customer.

They can then run that customer's business themselves.

>BZZT! WRONG!  Consider that almost 80% of all Honda cars are made from
>the ground up in the US.  Seems to me that injects quite a bit of money
>into our economy.  

That's what they want you to think. They are not made from the ground up, 
they are ASSEMBLED from the ground up. There is a BIG difference. Do you think
that they just give us the parts to do this?

All we've done is put a car together - a task requiring comparatively little
skill. All the stuff requiring highly-skilled labor (which is where the
money is) has already been done - in Japan.

>More and more manufacturing by Japanese firms is moving
>to the US.  Why?  The cost of transportation is a very large portion of the
>final cost of a product now.  Why?  Advances in manufacturing have been
>tremendous over the past decade.  Advances in transportation have been much
>less.  Airplanes are no faster and not much bigger, neither are the boats
>that transport them.  The labor to load goods has just increased.  So it
>is much to the advantage of the Japanese to move their factories right next 
>to their best customers.  

You're darned right it's to their advantage. But call them assembly lines,
not factories.

>Besides that, we have a resource they don't have,
>land.  What do the Japanese do with their profts?  They invest it in America.
>Only about 2% of the profit from a Honda motor car goes back to Japan.  

2% of the assembly, maybe. Don't forget, the parts used to assemble that 
car were Made in Japan. Assembling that car here costs them about $700.

>What does it mean when people lose their jobs?  Is society and more poor?
>Nope, the good is still being produced and probably for less money because
>more frequently than anything their job was eliminated because the need for
>that person's work output has now been automated or made more efficient 
>through technology.  So we have the same output AND we have freed up that
>person to do something else.  Society has gained.  That person has not gained
>though, at least not immediately.  Now they can go start a business, learn a
>new skill which will advance technology even more.  THE problem is that people
>don't believe the last sentence.  THE problem is that we don't as a country
>provide training for people to go and learn new things.  THE problem is we
>expect that when we lose our job that we are going to find another one just
>like it.  

The problem is that people out of work find it very difficult to start a 
business, learn new skills, believe in sentences like that. The problem is 
that people out of work don't pay taxes and without taxes the government 
can't afford to retrain anyone. The problem is that when you lose your
job you have to find a similar one because retraining takes time - time
without a paycheck.
--
Griff Miller > miller@monarch.wg3.waii.com < use this for email.

          *** My opinions are mine, not Western's. ***

   "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but 
    fools despise wisdom and discipline."   - Proverbs 1:7 
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