http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/business/21cnd-gm.html?hp IS the job market getting tough in America?
gm are boned.i read an article a couple of years ago in an engineering magazine comparing american car manufacturers to japanese ones.gm was the most inefficient of all of them,i think they were loosing over $500 on every car they sold at the time.
the time it took them to make cars.i cant remember the exact figure but i think it took them about 10 hours more of labour per car.i guess it comes from having complete control of a market for so long that they could operate how they liked,then other cars which were cheaper and better got into america and they lost a huge share and have been slow to change their ways.so root cause would be complacency i guess.
Very. Why pay an American $10-20/hour when you can open up a new factory in China, India, Mexico, and soon South America and pay your workers there pennies on the dollar. There will only be fewer and fewer jobs in America from now on until they are all gone or until the job market levels out and we are all making much less here than we are now. Or, until workers world-wide say enough is enough and unite to throw off our "dollar is god" attitudes.
But i think America will create jobs of Higher Technology, those labor intensive jobs are unsuitable for you because your society is highly-educated. FORD is the legend of automaking in US, how is it now?
Well there were 45% of the American working population unemployed in the 1930's and they survived that, so I guess they can survive anything.
And you noticed that how? Not being argumentative, just wondering upon what are you basing that statement. Overall production volume, production per man-hour, or what? And compared to which countries?
Well, well, well. And you were the guy that just jumped on Baron Max about not knowing how to use/apply statistics??????????? Perhaps you can do much better by showing us some actual numbers, eh? Personal opinions count for little - again referencing what you said to Max.
I never claimed I had statistical data to back my position up. I said I noticed it. I also noticed that american are all mouth when it comes to work. They claim a lot. But produce little of what they claim. Notice the words 'i noticed'.
Then perhaps you notice that I have noticed the exact opposite. Perhaps it depends on where we did our noticing? And while we're on the general topic, I also noticed that the people in Ireland seemed to be the hardest working bunch I've seen anywhere in the Western world.
If Irish people work harder than american workers it might be possible that american workers don't work that hard. They do make long hours. I notice that. And they do have little holiday. But they don't get much done. I noticed that too.
That's still a very broad statement to make without some sort of qualifier as to where, how long you observed and under what conditions. For example, you could watch a fire station for a full 24 hours and note no activity at all. You could also watch workers on an assembly line or in a meat packing house and see that hardly a moment is wasted.
Very well, then, since I much prefer hard numbers to the opinion of an individual, here's something else for you to "notice." http://www.photius.com/rankings/economy/gdp_per_capita_2004_0.html
That's GDP... how does that transfer to hard work? Some people in the 3rd world work 16h a day in mines. Yet you don't see them on the GDP chart. You got some other random data?
It is because engineers have much less input as to what needs to be done. The technology portion is usually run by non-technologists. While engineers are not good marketeers, when bean counters and marketeers control engineering...this is what happens. American cars are designed to last only 100,000 miles not by designers but by marketeers. People are supposed to change cars in 3 years or 45,000 miles, while Japanese and German cars last a long time. In the last 15 years people are keeping cars longer and quickly found out that American cars are no good. I gave two used Volkswagons to my two kids. They could not break it and got tired of it and sold to their friends. My American cars all died. My Honda and Mitsubishi still going strong though Honda's transmission went out and Honda paid half of it. American car companies have serious systemic problems - from the design, production to the distribution and repair. They are all being done the old way - no new ideas. Now GM is hoping they will go bankcrupt and do not have to pay the pension. By the way, American cars lose their rated horse power in 50,000 miles. That is why they had to make bigger engines to compensate. It is not that we can not engineer the product for 300,000 miles but the bosses tell us that they need to sell more cars and sooner it breaks, people buy more. No more than 4 years at 15,000 miles per year. Now Volvo is getting the same management...
