From: ts2a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Thomas Omar Smith)
Newsgroups: alt.amateur-comp,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism,sci.econ
Subject: Re: Vote for 3rd party/no-party candidates!!!
Date: 8 Oct 92 00:04:28 GMT
Article-I.D.: andrew.0eoyiAK00Voq4Lcmpj
	<1992Oct7.184353.21814@news.ysu.edu>
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA

(My original postings deleted to save bandwidth)

Excerpts from netnews.sci.econ: 7-Oct-92 Re: Vote for 3rd party/no-p..
Ronda Hauben@yfn.ysu.edu (6842)



> America industry will become *more* productive, not less
> if tthere are shorter hours of work mandated by the govt in the U.S.

> That was the expereince in England when the shorter hours legislation
> was passed. Workers can be more productive if they work fewer hours.

Well, I'd like to see the figures on this one.  Last I heard, England
had pretty poor work hours.  Of course, Germany has low hours and high
productivity.  So there may be some truth to your argument.  But Japan
has very high hours and high productivity.  So it would seem that the
result is very culturally based.  I'm not convinced that Americans with
> a 40 hour work week are being overworked.

> Higher wages function the same way. Its the workers who produce the
> wealth in the U.S. By their having better working conditions, there
> is more weazlth produced.

> Working conditions and wages are not the same thing.

> Both Clinton and Bush and Perot as well stand against this historical
> lesson - that's why the campaign is useless -there is no VOICE
> allowed to speak for the truth.

> Hmmm, none of the major politicians agrees with you.  I wonder why.

> The policies that are bankrupting industry and the U.S. are the speculation
> that has developoed from the attack on workers living standards and 
> the attack on labor regulation. 

So investment is bad.  People risking money on new technologies is bad. 
In fact, doing anything but giving all money to workers is bad.  That
> appears to be your point here.

> Thus big corporations are now taking out their labor saving machinery -
> and going back to backward hand labor. That is what is bankrupting
> the country - the attack on govt. regulation by the highest officials
> in the govt.

> Thus there is rampant speculation and the country is getting poor and 
> poorer.

So firms that find it more cost effective to avoid using new technology,
due to the high costs involved, are acting to destroy the country?  has
it ever occured to you that they act this way because it is the only way
to make a profit?  if they don't act this way, then there is no
production because the plant shuts down.

> Only if there are higher wages is it cost effective to put in labor 
> saving machinery.

> Labor saving machinery means that each item can be produced
> with less labor and thus 
> more can be prolduced and it costs less to proeduce it.

> Thus labor saving machinery which is the result of higher wages lowers
> inflation because it makes goods available more cheapely.

Ok, now everyone follow the logic here.  Employers aren't implementing
cost saving technologies because the cost of doing so is prohibitively
high.  Therefore, the government should force wages up.  This forces
these firms to spend more money on new technologies.  Now, call me
silly, but no matter how I look at it, the end result is still higher
labor costs for the firm.  Either the firm accepts the higher costs
associated with installing the new technology (if the cost wasn't
higher, then they would install the new technology) or they accept
higher labor costs.  Either way, the end result is a lower demand for
labor and greater unemployment.

> No 1946-47 was a time of scarsity of produ cts - very high prices,
>  factories were being clsoed because of shortages, etc.

Wait a minute.  If there is a scarcity of goods, then factories should
be booming, due to the fact that they can get higher prices for their
goods.  The last thing that should happen is for the factories to close
if there is a shortage of goods.  What happened after WWII was one of
the single largest growth cycles in America history, as our soldiers
returned, and began spending the wages they had saved from the war on
housing and consumer goods.  This lead to one of the biggest upsurges in
the economy ever.  Your ability to analyze events and to look at history
> both seem tenuous at best.

> >So, a lean, mean management will do whatever it can to avoid
> > implementing new technologies that help the company move forward.


> That's right - no automation or investment in machinery is the essence.

Why can't you see that exactly the opposite is true?  A lean and mean
management will agressively look for cost cutting measures, which will
lead to the implementation of labor saving devices.  A bloated
management will spend more time protecting its jobs and justifying its
> existence than economizing.  And that is exactly what happened.


> You can call workers having rights and livable wages whatever you want -
> that was not what the Eastern Europe represented - but the opposite -
> The U.S. is going in the same direction as Eastern Europe in 
> its efforts to make life impossible for its workers and the result
> will bve the same - the same kind of restructuring that destryed 
> govts in eastern europoe is what is being done here in the U.,S.
> under the name of "lean management" - 

There was no attempt to make lean management in Eastern Europe.  In
fact,  a major problem they had was that their management had no
incentive to improve his factory.  Therefore, most of the factories had
very low productivity, and the managers remained in power despite their
lack of leadership.  It is only when management actively works to
improve productivity that labor saving measures are implemented.  And it
is only a lean, hungry management group that will go in and redo its
production methods to fix such things.  You seem eternally afraid of any
management structure that actively tries to bring in profits, and at the
same time demand all the improvements such management brings.  

> -- 
> Ronda Hauben                    email address:ae547@yfn.ysu.edu
> Amateur Computerist Newsletter              or
> P.O. Box 4344                   rhauben@heartland.bradley.edu
> Dearborn, MI 48126


					Tom the non hacker
					Kemp in 96!
					"If patriotism is the last refuge
					of scoundrels,  Then environmentalism
					is the current refuge of totalitarians."
					Bob Jackson
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