I agree with you. I was not trying to say that you can compete in all
cases by reducing only your own labor costs. But was trying to
emphasize that manufacturing jobs would go away even if no jobs were
exported. In some cases you can compete with China and in other cases
you can not. But in every case to compete you need to wring out as
much of the labor costs as you can.

Yesterday I had some gravel spread on the driveway. One truck comes
with a trailer. The driver unhooks the truck from the trailer and
spreads the load on the truck. Then hooks up to the trailer and
transfers the part of the trailer holding the gravel to the truck, and
spreads that gravel. Hooks back to the truck and transfers the
container back to the trailer and drives off. Result one truck driver
delivers and spreads essentially two truck loads of gravel.
One less truck driving job.

Dan


"Ed Huntress" wrote in message v.net...
"Dan Caster" wrote in message
m...
Part of my point is that it is not just jobs going overseas. You can
be competitive by being so efficent that labor is a small part of the
cost.

There's one point that's worth clarifying here, Dan. The direct labor in
manufacturing runs around 10 - 12% in many segments, and it's a common thing
to conclude that this can easily be overcome by improvements in
productivity.

Ed Huntress