"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
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Ed Huntress wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
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Ed Huntress wrote:
"Buerste" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
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"Buerste" wrote in message
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"Wes" wrote in message
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"Buerste" wrote:



That's life. You do the best you can for your workers. But you'll
never be able to compete in a manufacturing field that responds to
technical productivity improvements and still keep them employed,
without a high rate of growth for your business, because it would
require an ever-declining wage rate -- until they couldn't live on
it at all.

Nonsense.

Nope. No growth, no employment. And with improving productivity, less
employment -- unless you have substantial growth.

Yeah, you have to pay attention and keep broadening your business into
areas
where growth will occur.
What you said was that growth can't keep up. The facts and the evidence
don't support that unless you want to keep making buggy whips. Then there
is
plenty.

What I said was that you can't maintain employment without a healthy rate
of growth. That applies to goods-producing industries in general, and to
individual companies in particular. I've never tried to sort it out for
the whole economy, but the pattern has been clear for years now in
manufacturing.

Here's employment in goods-producing industries since 1940:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2.../USGOOD?cid=11

Here's the growth it took to sustain those levels of employment:
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/IPMAN

Since about 1970, the output of goods produced in the US has had to be on
a pretty steep incline just to keep manufacturing employment about level.
In other words, you need a lot of growth to keep from laying people off in
manufacturing, due largely to improvements in productivity. And if you
have even a slight downturn in manufacturing output, you get a big dip in
employment.

All of this is happening, of course, while the population is increasing.
So the percentage of people in manufacturing keeps dropping, even though
the total number is fairly flat. Where do the others go? As I've said,
I've never tried a full analysis, but a lot of them never return to
manufacturing.

So, as I said to Tom, it doesn't matter if you're chasing wages or not;
your competition is automating, here and abroad, and you have to, as well.
And unless you grow, you're going to wind up with fewer people.


Let's take Cleveland as an example.
The cities population and tax base continue to evaporate. One area that
will
definitely grow is the downsizing business.
Flint Michigan is taking the lead on this. They will be wiping out half
of
the place with bulldozers and putting something, or in saome cases
nothing,
in the space created. The population will move to the space that is left.
I
was born in Flint's East Side Ed. My grandmothers family had a successful
screw machine business on Dort Hwy. in Grand Blanc for half a century.
Two
years from now the East side of Flint won't even exist and the screw
machine
shop in Grand Blanc died with my Uncle Del, but what is left of all of
that
when the city is done will be serviceable and vibrant. They will attract
new industry. I might move back just to watch it happen and lend a hand.
The
valuations will certainly be right but I'm pretty well hooked on warm
wheather and ocean breezes.

Tom might consider expanding into the automation industry. He seems to
have
a knack for it. There are also a ton of trainable people in his area.
He'd
experience real growth if he focused on the sort of automation the energy
business was going to need to make, oh I don't know, batteries for
vehicles
that we'll otherwise buy from Korea.

What you have to be able to do is see opportunity, get organized and
seize
it. Otherwise, you just set yourself up to fail eventually.


--
John R. Carroll

All well and good. That requires getting into another business. If he
wants to keep all of his people employed, he'll need to sell more than
brushes.

--
Ed Huntress


Yep, or at least new products into new markets. 80% of what I make today,
didn't exist 10 years ago. The trick for me is to find a market/product
that is hard to make, over priced and nobody want's to really do but they
have to keep customers happy with "me-too" items. Then I'll just tell my
guys that it can't be done.

Nobody wants to deal with flat wire, it's a bitch. We're now the biggest
and best in the world. It's a little niche but it's a nice little niche and
not even the Chinese want anything to do with it.