Pick yer pony, take yer ride. A business must be competitive to
survive. Every individual is a business even if he/she works for an
hourly wage providing value for compensation received. It's up to
each to deliver value commeasurate with compensation and with
success of the enterprise. If they can't or won't do that, they're
not competitive or earning their keep. Life lurches on.

Once a biz is viable, then those that run it can choose how the
rewards of being competitive are distributed. They can choose to
greedily exploit the wage-earners or they can share the wealth -- but
the wealth must first be won in a competitive world market,

Many U.S. corporations still do that quite well, most of them fairly
small and privately-owned so they're insulated from Wall Street
greed.

We surely should provide for the infirm, disadvantaged and unfortuate
to the extent we can do so as a wealthy nation with a healthy economy.
But life is competitive, now on a global scale where there are hungry
people eager to compete and getting better at it every day.

Leaders must work to chart the course, followers must work to help
make it happen. Oh****ohdear poor-me whining won't get it done.









On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 16:59:38 -0500, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

After following some of the links showing job loss and productivity gains,
it's quite depressing, I've come to the conclusion that one of my main goals
has been to eliminate employees' jobs. In the past year I have eliminated 3
people and outsourced semi-finished goods from other American companies at
least. But guess what? Boxes of parts don't have mood swings, PMS,
holidays, don't have to be heated or cooled, and NO SCRAP! They come in at
a set cost with out the variables. Kind of sad that I can no longer devote
the HR to barely breaking even ...on good days. But, specialized suppliers
can do so much better due to their economy of scale than I can.

My newest built machine will eliminate 2 more jobs and a hefty bonus
structure. I just came to realize that the next 3 projects will be such a
boost in productivity that 4 or 5 more jobs are in jeopardy. So does this
make me a bad guy? I don't really think so, but multiply this around the
country and that's a LOT of jobs lost with a net gain in products produced.
So, who's going to have money to BUY products in the future?