From: llarsen%peruvian.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Loren Larsen)
Subject: Re: DOES AMERICA SAY YES TO JAPAN? - Off track!!
Date: 17 Dec 92 12:34:30 MST
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

In article <BzExLy.7IH@news.cso.uiuc.edu> irvine@uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Brent Irvine) writes:
>In article <23078@venera.isi.edu> jlacoss@paddington.isi.edu (Jeff LaCoss) writes:
>>have been dumped in order to kill US competition.
>
>In 1955, the Regency Company [never heard of them, did you?] INVENTED
>the pocket transistor radio, it took a couple of years to come to
>market [remarkably quick for the times].  Sony came along and COPIED
>the design EXACTLY [well they changed the cover and put their name on it...]
>then preceeded to undersell the Regency.  I don't need to tell you 
>who drove whom out of buisiness.  Suits were brought to court, but 
>Regency was basically told to take it on the chin by the government,
>who refused to act due to "geopolitical interests."
>
>Japan has been having pretty much a free ride up to the present, with
>virtually unlimited access to our markets, with freedom of action that 
>would make any of our CEOs turn green with envy.
>
>>
>>>Do you know when the US will get back on track?  When it stops blaming
>>>Japan.
>>
>> YOHO!
>> There IS something to be said for the statement about "blaming."
>> What's needed is to stop the bitching, pull in the collective belt,
>>get down to competing on a LEVEL FIELD, and kick 'em in the ass.
>
>Yeah, why blame Japan for mounting a concerted effort to put our
>buisinesses out of buisiness, when they have.  Makes no sense.
>But if your point was stop the continued finger pointing, and
>ACT [punitive tariffs, treating Japan like they treat foreign
>countries, actually putting teeth into Super 301 and such] then
>I agree.

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.

>BZZT! WRONG! Take the cigar away!!  The low prices HELPS drive [or
>for a lot of manufacturers HELPED drive :( ] American manufacturers
>out of buisiness because those low prices are designed with a razor
>margin or at a loss specifically to DRIVE AMERICANS OUT OF BUISINESS.
>The consequence is that there are less jobs, and less $$ in the
>economy - so i seriously doubt that as a whole we are a richer people
>for it.

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.  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.  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.  Of
course they buy land in the US which we can tax at our discretion.  We can
tax them the full property price each year in taxes if we want because they're
Japanese.  They don't vote.  

so let's suppose American's lose jobs because of tough Japanese competition.
What does that mean?  First, it means our process of designing, building and
delivering a product was inferior to theirs.  So now the produce instead of
us.  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 change in world makes these stataic beliefs completely 
anti-realistic.  We are still living in the world where people learned a skill
got a job and did that same job for the rest of their lives.  That is not the
world we live in.  We must have the courage to face that change.  If not,
the Japanese will surely destroy us, but not really because we never even
fought.  Of course if we fail to fight, we destroy them at the same time.

Loren



Xref: sparky misc.consumers:20691 rec.autos:29902