From: nelson_p@APOLLO.HP.COM
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Corporate Shortsightedness?
Date: 20 Aug 92 12:13:28 GMT



In article <1992Aug20.031126.15943@s1.gov> lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich) writes:
>
>	In arguments over vacation time and other subjects, I often
>see the implied premise that corporate management _always_ (yes,
>_always_) acts on enlightened self-interest. But there is a such thing
>as _unenlightened_ self-interest, as the dedicated Adam Smithians seem
>to ignore. And there is also short-sightedness.
>
>	Examples:
>
>	In the nineteenth century, railroad cars had to be coupled by
>hand. A railroad worker had to stand between two cars that were being
>pushed together and drop a connecting pin in at the right moment. This
>was a very dangerous line of work, and there were many railroad
>workers who lost limbs and lives in the process.
>
>                                          If there are always more
>where they came from, then a company will have a different policy than
>if suitable employees are hard to find.

  But what does this have to do with vacation time?  The bottom line is
  still that companies, or at least successful ones, will still seek to
  act in their own self-interest (enlightened or otherwise) and if 
  having lots of paid vacation time provides the bottom-line benefits
  that people here claim it does they should be falling all over themselves
  to do it. 

  The other examples all reinforce this point.  Sure, some companies were
  slow to adopt modern production methods, etc, *and they suffered*.  The
  ones that were still around reformed.    But it has not been shown that
  US companies are suffering as a result of small vacations.  The Economist
  says that industrial productivity in the US is the highest in the world,
  much higher than Europe.  Our closest challenger in this respect is Japan, 
  which is not exactly a paradise for vacation-seeking workers.   

                                 
> The French TGV, and even NYC-Washington Amtrak, successfully compete
> with airline travel (for more details on American highway and airline
> subsidies, see Joseph Vranich's _Supertrains_), and do so with much
> less fuel expenditure.

  But they are also subsidized.  Perhaps you could cite some figures from
  Vranich's book on the subsidies.  What percentage of the cost of an airline
  ticket is represented by a government subsidy compared to the cost of an
  Amtrak ticket?   Ditto with cars, but make sure you account for the gasoline
  tax seperately since this is paid for by the users of the highways 
  rather than by general tax revenues.    I also question the use of the 
  word "successfully", above.  How much market share does Amtrak have?
  I don't know anyone who travels by Amtrak but I know lots of people
  who fly and everyone drives on the interstate.   As for Europe, they
  have a worse situation: subsidies for the trains and anticompetitive 
  regulations for the airlines:  An airline ticket from Amsterdam to
  Paris costs (as of last fall, when I was traveling that route) about
  4 times as much as a ticket from Boston to Newark, a similar distance.
  So of course people take the train.


---peter

  
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