From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,sci.econ
Subject: Re: Clinton doesn't understand business (was: A SAD JOKE!)
Date: 7 Oct 92 17:00:14 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc,sci.econ
Distribution: usa
Organization: LNK Corporation, Riverdale, MD

In article <1992Oct7.081508.28292@netcom.com> eclipse@netcom.com (Brian McCullough) writes:
>
>You are providing only half of the equation.  Business must be allowed to
>function freely to remain prosperous and create jobs, to be sure.  But
>business unchecked and unregulated will eventually reduce jobs and lower
>workplace conditions to a level anywhere from exhaustive to nightmarish.

	I seriously doubt if anyone who posts on the Internet really has
much to complain about where workplace conditions are concerned. What is
the plight of all those Bob Cratchits out there ? Desk isn't big enough ?
The cheap old company has its low rent offices on the wrong side of town ?
Profit sharing plan too chincy ? Health insurance plan sucks ? (BTW, Pay or
Play - essentially Clinton's plan - is no help on this last) I'm just sick
of the whining I hear all the time from such people...on this subject, you
can't tell the wimp conservatives from the wimp liberals. The most honest
thing I've seen on the Net in a long time is the guy who more or less said
that this election was not about sharing the sacrifices, but about passing
the sacrifice on, invisibly, to someone else...and based on the pecking order
in THIS country, my "draft number" is real LOW. It is time to stop blaming 
and start working on the problem.

>
>The tendency of any business is to cut unnecessary spending.  Fine so far.
>As has been stated above, the costs of running one make that imperative.
>The problem is that many businesses don't stop when they get to the essen-
>tials, but cut past that to the point of eliminating jobs until their re-
>maining employees are stretched to the limits physically and mentally.

	And the quality of the products goes to pot, and the company loses
market share, and lays more people off...is it not amazing that after all
the largess that the Japanese threw into the US stock market in the 80s,
that there should be a capitalization problem ?? Which leads to two basic
iron laws of economics:

	1. You don't get something for nothing.

	2. There's a sucker born every minute.

	These days there are advantages to being so stinking poor that you
couldn't afford to buy a nice house whose "paper value" is sinking by
the day. The greedy guys have been taking a bath. Why should I bail them out ?
Most of them took off their beads and put on business suits when they found
out that Ozzie Nelson wouldn't support them in school anymore (or their
grades weren't quite good enough to get into Oxford or Yale Law School) :)

>
>At this point two reactions start to build.  First, the additional fatigue 
>and stress weighing on the remaining employees lower their productivity, 
>no matter how hard they try to counter it.  Exhausted people don't function
>at peak efficiency.  Second, those people whose jobs have been cut stop 
>spending money, since they don't have it to begin with, and incoming busi-
>ness drops.  The average business responds by cutting down still further,
>thus worsening the situation.  This syndrome was first noted in the early
>years of the Great Depression, by the way.

	FDR's response was the inspid Keynesian motto, "Spend yourself rich."
It took 6 years of "spending yourself rich" to get the country out of the
Great Depression. One BIG difference was that Grandpa and Grandma knew how
to SAVE MONEY, and HAD BEEN saving money in the twenties when the financial
markets collapsed, and ruined their nest egg. Now the financial markets are
okay, but "spending ourself rich as consumers" is the problem, not the
solution. Even Clinton's advisor Bob Reich knows that the wave of the future
is to sell QUALITY products, not volume. And to do this (See Reich's book,
"The Work of Nations"), you need the best talented, most motivated laborers
that you can buy on the market. Consequently, bottom line squeezing of 
labor is counterproductive, from the standpoint of management. That's why
the Democratic party's screwing around with employee compensation decisions
is so terribly counterproductive - it limits the ability of businesses to
construct attractive compensation packages that GET and RETAIN terrific
employees. If that happens, the bottom line takes care of itself...
except when management or labor (or BOTH) get greedy. The problem is not
just that CEOs are overpaid...it is that EVERYBODY is overpaid, and 
undermotivated. The real problem with Reich's book is that it perfectly
described what is going on out there. Big competitive labor market, lots
of job-hopping, no company loyalty. Reich miserably failed to address the
issue of setting corporate objectives and company cohesion in the setting
of current market conditions. If you set the value of "company loyalty" in
the equation to zero, how, Oh My Prince, does this affect the Bottom Line ?

>
>A similar logic applies to taxation.  Most businesses need a source of 
>trained, skilled workers.  This usually means a college, university, or
>trade school.  But these institutions require more support than the stu-
>dents themselves can pay -- especially if they or one of their parents
>has lost a job due to an employer's desire to "run lean."  The govern-
>ment will have to help out from time to time, and anyone who benefits
>should help shoulder the cost. That's not fun, granted, but it's better
>than the alternative.

	Setting the value of "company loyalty" to zero, the Democrats
round out the equation by jacking up the value of the skills of individual
laborers. There is a deliberate trade off being attempted here, and yes,
our Great Socialist Academic Powerhouses are engineering a marvelous
unfriendly takeover of the country. I don't have a clue as to why a
smart capitalist firm would EVER spend its hard earned cash to send
its managers to Harvard Business School, to have them trained as 
"organizational guerrillas."

>
>I have suffered greatly in recent years under employment with a company
>that operates under these forms of shortsightedness.  I am more than
>willing to give the Clinton / Gore plan a try.  If Mr. Bill does what he
>says he will do, the biggest shock will come to the least honest busi-
>nesses.  If not, and he causes an unusual amount of pain and suffering
>in the business community, well, I and the other common working folk have
>had the pain and suffering from twelve years of Reaganism to shoulder;
>pardon my saying so, but if it is to continue, I think it's your turn.

	Simple solution - you're a star player. Go Find Another Team To
Play On. And remember this less, as a REALLY MEAN old Army commander once
said to me, "Riggs, when the team is in the cellar, you fire the manager,
not the star player." I guess that's why our Army is unbeatable, but our
businesses are getting clobbered.

>
>Here, for your consideration, is a counterargument (a formal point-
>by-point rebuttal would oversimplify the matter) to your original ar-
>gument, presented by a man who is DEFINITELY voting for Bill Clinton
>this fall.  And now ...
>
>GET THIS THREAD THE HELL OUT OF REC.HUMOR!

So why did you not remove rec.humor from the followups ?

Bill R.

"My opinions do not represent those of my employer or any
government agency."


-- 
Bill R.