From: fester@island.COM (Mike Fester)
Subject: Re: DOES AMERICA SAY YES TO JAPAN? - Off track!!
Organization: /usr/local/rn/organization
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 20:12:48 GMT

In article <1993Jan01.103831.6531@deeptht.armory.com> rstevew@deeptht.armory.com (Richard Steven Walz) writes:

>You know, it was real nice for you to post those references, and now
>someone can use you for a reference too! My how grand. Now, all we have to
>do is show these references to the Japanese and surely they will realize
>that they are doing something wrong in not screwing us badly enough, uh

Perhaps you might do us all a favor, and post references for your assertions
below.

>huh! In fact if we show them how well we're doing, they might just pack up
>and go back to Japan instead of staying here and eating us alive. You must

Hmm. If *I* were going to try to sell something, I'd try to sell to a country 
with money to spend, rather than one without as much.

>never have seen the formerly strong midwest of this country up close and
>personal or you'd realize that there isn't 8 or 9 or 10 per cent

Let's see, lived in downstate Illinois 18 years, family still lives there and
other parts of the midwest (Missouri, Wisconsin), friends moved to Indiana,
Minnesota, etc. Pretty upclose and personal, IMHO.

>unemployment, there's more like thirty percent, if you include the people
>who are working for less at dead end jobs now and weren't a couple decades
>ago. 

I don't really understand this. In order to support your contention that the
10% unemployment figure is too low, you cite examples of people who ARE
in fact working, and attempt to say that they are working in lower income jobs.
As it has been repeatedly posted (and you can look it up for yourself) that the
US has a higher per-capita income than Japan (where prices for things are higher
in general than here), it would seem that there are FAR more of these sorts of 
people working in Japan. How does this argue that we are getting "eaten alive"?
It would seem, rather, that Japan's industrial expansion has hurt JAPAN.
 
> And you might also notice that those few people in those towns and
>cities in the midwest that can afford to buy a new car are buying Japanese
>cars, and I guess that somehow doesn't faze you at all, now does it? The

Uh, no it does not. 

>reason they can't afford to buy American made cars is that Japanese cars
>cost less and use less gas. And when they do it, they sink us even further.

How, in small words that even a dullard such as myself might understand, is it
BAD to buy a fuel-effecient car that costs less? And BTW, *I* bought a Saturn,
which fits into the above category quite nicely, thankyouverymuch. Shouldn't
the US manufacturers put out a better product? There ARE capable of such, you
know. Ever hear of Harley-Davidson? It's conveniently located (at least, 
corporate headquarters) right there in "the formerly strong midwest of this 
country".

>The luxury in this country, one of which is called expansion of the
>industrial and research and development infrastructure or base, is derived
>from profit after you pay your employees. If we don't get that profit, if

News flash: salaries are paid even if your company does not turn a profit.
R&D is also done by companies losing money. Ask GM.

>it goes back to Japan, then we won't have shit quite shortly, because we

I thought you were contending that we already did NOT have sufficient fecal
material.

>won't be able to sell what we have been able to sell the best for the
>longest and that is our research and development, our ideas, our patents.

Hmm. Don't universities do research as well?

>The Japanese can give us all jobs working for them at $7.50 and hour and
>end unemployment completely, and maybe they can even pay us all a bit more,
>but if the profit above and beyond goes back to Japan, and the ideas that

Excuse this (obviously irrelevant) question, but *IF* we are all going to be
so poor, how can Japan then continue to sell to us? Who would there be to
buy their products?

>they might derive from setting up Japanese owned research centers here at
>lower wages even for the engineering innovative professions, then we are
>still screwed, because if you work as an engineer for a Japanese owned
>plant, you can be sure that they will have you sign away your patents and
>your ideas to them, just like we have done to our engineers as a condition
>of employment. The difference?

Uh, in one case the engineer gets screwed by a foreign company with brains, and
in the other, he gets screwed by a brainless domestic company which will sell
the patent rights to a foreign company with brains? Too simple?

> Easy, that one engineer didn't have enough
>to make a marginal patent work anyway, but if the marginal wealth remained
>in his country in his economic system, he could at least be assured that
>the technology base was improving because of him and that he would get the

Had the technology indeed been "improving because of him", we would not find
ourselves lagging in certain areas of industrial technology.

>bonuses that enablred him to eventually buy some consumer items that
>required his patents in their construction, whereas, now, only the Japanese
>will be able to buy those items at that level of salary relative to
>innovative talent or even more of their people. 

??? If only the Japanese "will be able to buy those items at that level of 
salary relative to innovative talent or even more of their people", then how
are they going to continue to sell to us?

>Oh, thank you, thank you

No problemo.

>for showing us the error of our ways when it is obvious without looking up
>a few quotes from your ivory tower that you are doing nothing but helping
>them screw us economically, and maybe you know it or maybe you have just
>been duped by facts in books. 

Care to cite those books? And are you seriously accusing him of having "been 
duped by facts in books." Can we all be assured then, that your posts are 
devoid of the ravages of facts? That indeed is a comfort.

>If you haven't seen my home town and knew who
>worked where and what they used to be able to buy with their luxury income,
>then you don't know anything for all your insulated academic prowess. I

Sorry, I'm not an academic. How kind of you to infer otehrwise, though. 
Certainly, I will not so defame you. However, I am again curious: IF these 
people cannot afford to buy as much with their "luxery income", WHY are the
Japanese selling products here? 

>watched us BE their defense department for fifty years! Wouldn't you have
>liked someone else to BE OUR defense department for *fifty years*!?? Think

Hmm. So you advocate a rearmed Japan (and probably Germany) and then we'll
just ask them to 'take care of us"? Pretty weak, IMO.

In any event, allow me to do a bit of unabashed flag-waving here: We assumed
the mantle of "protector of the free world" because it was in our own, 
enlightened self interest to do so. We had been dragged into 2 global wars in
less than 30 years, and saw (or thought we saw) the possibility of being dragged
into others if we did not provide a strong military force/blanket/whatever to 
the ravaged economies of war-ravaged Europe and Asia. We ahd our successes and
failures, but in the end (if there is ever really and "end") we succeeded in
doing what set out to do. What the world "owes" us for this is a sincere 'thank
you', and an effort to get along peacefully. Nothing more, nothing less.

>of what we could have saved: The national debt? Easily. That was all
>defensed department acquired first quarter in Vietnam, and the rest in the
>last exponentially growing cold war against the "evil empire", while

Coupla things here (they're called "facts", and they are derived from books, 
so they may confuse you a bit). We had MUCH higher deficits in 1943-45 than we 
did at any time during the Vietnam war. In fact, we had budget surplusses for 
one of those years. Also, as has been pointed out, both Germany and Japan have 
budget deficits about the same % as ours, when calculated as % of GDP.

>Gorbachev kept offering cutback after cutback, even unilateral adherence to
>the arms accords which the republicans wouldn't sign. It took getting the

Nukes don't cost that much. It is conventional forces that cost the big $$.

>old fool out of the oval office before we could start the reductions! And
>then it was still a heel-dragging president fighter jock that kept

It was a dive bomber. (those "facts" once again raise their ugly heads).

>funneling money to his arms-maker friends. Biggest budget in history and
>"read (his) lips", no new taxes. Ha. The tax was paid to the Japanese.

Hmm. This must mean his arms-maker Japanese friends.

>Europe doesn't let the Japanese get away with what we do. Their anti-trust
>sanctions were finely honed from dealing with a bunch of smaller countries
>in Europe and not having as much of a cold war debt as us. They TOLD the

Strange, is it not, that they have HIGHER unemployment than we do (in areas of
Germany, that 30% figure you doctored above is an undoctored fact). And that
they have similar budget deficits. 

>Japanese what they wanted and at what kind of price it could be sold, and
>they are doing much better for as weak a natural wealth base as they have
>compared to us. Europe is mined out and it's been lived in a long time. We
>still have four times the top soil they have and we used to have twenty
>times! We SHOULD be doing much better for our literacy and imagination and
>our resources even than Europe is, and we aren't in most things, notably

Actually, in terms of per capita income, living space, technology, etc, we
are, in fact, doing better. More airports, physicians, lower unemployment,
etc. 

>the products that Japan is given an inclined playing field toward our
>goal. I wonder if you have any idea of all this or if you just read a

I must say, I really had no idea about all these things.

>couple promo's from the Honda ad people and decided to check their sources
>and got your quotations even from them. They sound far too canned for me,
>too pat and commercial. I get the feeling I'm being sold a Yugo.

You might read any of a number of people, including Drucker, you might consult
the Wall Street Journal, the SF Chronicle, LA Times, World Almanac, the 
Economist, etc, for support of what I have said. Plaese list your sources, like
a good boy.

Mike
-- 
Disclaimer - These opinions are not so much opinions, as pearls of wisdom. Any-
one disagreeing is obviously either a) a snivelling, whining, mentally-
deficient, weak-willed, inconsequential, namby-pamby tool of some vague but
conveniently defined conspiracy, or b) my wife.
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