Opinions and/or experience with Autozone Airtex fuel pump for '89 Toyota?

Large corporations are the problem, but they are also the solution. Corporations, though, do what the stockholders want them to do. Because the current system today involves so many complex securities rather than direct stock investment, often the stockholders have no idea what they are actually investing in and they have no idea what is going on beyond the stock price and, at most, the current quarter's earning's report.

This is not a recipe for a well-run business, this is a recipe for a corporation devoted entirely to short-term profits at the expense of actually growing the business.

Until shareholders are actually able to see where their money is going and have some interest in the corporations themselves, until they are able to come to annual meetings and point out that shutting down plants and moving production overseas is not good for long-term profits and that when corporate officers vote themselves enormous severance packages that it encourages them to leave, this will not change.

--scott

Reply to
Scott Dorsey
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The big problem is government. The easy way to make profits is to use government. It's the political means vs. the productive means. The more the political means is used the worse it is for the great majority of people long term.

We live under a short term environment due to the monetary system. A dollar today won't buy as much tommorrow. This encourages all sorts of short term decision making. From big corporations to individuals. The building of capital is discouraged, spending/consumption is encouraged. Plus there is all sorts of government meddling in the economy that make it very difficult to project what things will be in 10 or even 3 years. It just leads more into the get-while-the-getting is good mentality.

I believe that goes back to the monetary system as well. It's what drives wall street and that driver pushes through into other decisions.

Reply to
Brent

Total manufacturing output has grown.

In the last 9 years the number of manufacturing jobs has shrunk. 40 years ago the Gary Ind. steel mills employed 50,000 steel workers today Gary steel mills produce about the same amount of steel as 40 years ago but there are only 6000 steel workers. The main factor in the decrease of manufacturing jobs is not due to a decrease in manufacturing output (which hasn't decreased), but an increase in the amount of production per worker.

The vast majority of goods coming from China are the type of goods found on the shelves at Walmart. They are mostly low tech and if they are high tech it is mostly the low tech part of the production chain that comes from China. If you have an Ipod made in China most of the value comes from components made in places like Japan and Malaysia. The Chinese are assembling those components and shipping them to the US so they count as Chinese exports even though most of the value came from Japan or Malaysia. If the Chinese start making the high-tech components as well as assembling them, it will be the Japanese and Malaysians that are hurting.

Reply to
jim

cite your source. all the propaganda always states output per worker, not total production. and "total production" includes things like power generation, which is not by any reasonable argument, something tangible that we could export. especially when its price doubles over 10 years, creating a doubling of "value" for exact status quo in production capacity.

i understand that - that's why i said it. see above. but productivity per worker != total productivity output.

no dude. when dell and hp and motorola ship their manufacturing to china in order to take advantage of artificially low labor rates, those companies are required by the communist party to also relocate their r&d functions so their technology can be stolen too. those jobs are being lifted from the u.s., not just today, but forever. the malaysians don't have any native high tech the chinese want. and the japanese absolutely [and very smartly] refuse to ship any r&d out there so their play, unlike ours is strictly labor only.

looking forward, as tektronix, raytheon, timken, g.m. ship their r&d and manufacturing to china, as boeing ship r&d and manufacturing to china, those are not the loss of low end jobs here, those are the loss of our strategic superpower status and military independence. "productivity" doesn't enter into it.

Reply to
jim beam

Don't forget all the immigrants that 'must' be brought in to do the R&D work that remains in the USA.

Reply to
Brent

Manufacturing output tends to drop in a recession so there was a sharp drop in manufacturing at the end of 2008. That was the largest and longest decline in manufacturing since the 1930's depression. So yes there was a peak in output in 2008 but about 2/3 of that lost output has been regained in the last year and in another year it will likely once again be at an all time high. If you look at the long term trend US manufacturing output has been increasing steadily since WW2.

And yes if you look at worker productivity the numbers are much more impressive. The productivity per worker in the US is way above any other country.

Reply to
jim

that is a whole different issue because our lower education system regularly fails our own. 95% of math phd's produced in our universities go to non-nationals. that is, by any measure, absolutely ridiculous. the fact that we /need/ to import is a symptom, not a cause.

Reply to
jim beam

again, cite your source. that's not what i've seen.

again, cite your source. germany is by usual measure much more productive than the u.s.

Reply to
jim beam

mean while:

Reply to
jim beam

"We forgot that the more stable and safe way to go is to make things."

Bill Gross, PIMCO

Reply to
jim beam

The condition of the school system is part of an overall agenda that comes right out of the foundations, thinktanks, policy groups, etc.

The lack of people going into that work I believe is because not only is the educational requirement and work more difficult/demanding than other fields, but it's less rewarded (over all, career wise) than other fields talented people can go into and looked down upon culturally in many aspects. Why beat your head into the wall trying to make stuff when finance, stock/commodity trading, etc and so are so much more rewarded?

Reply to
Brent
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Try the bureau of labor statistics.

Reply to
jim

i'm asking a serious question and that is just a brush-off.

when you say "Total manufacturing output has grown", where do you get that from? we agree on productivity per person, which the department of labor will quote you, but where does your "manufacturing output" number come from?

Reply to
jim beam

juxtapose california and texas. texas used to be in the tank and now is one of the leading states. california used to be on top and is now in the tank. that is no accident.

indeed - i know that situation personally. but it's undermining our long term economy /and/ military security. the only thing that's kept us afloat in that regard are the old farts - but they are rapidly retiring. once they're gone, there's no one to replace them and we're stuffed.

Reply to
jim beam

Look at Table 2 Output by major industry sector

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Reply to
jim

that doesn't answer the questi "US manufacturing is still the largest in the world and has been growing continuously ever since WW2."

i asked you three times to back that up. the first two times you simply ignored the request. and this time, your cite is ridiculously off-base. not only was that report written in 2005 using "chain-weighted" block stats, it purports to look forwards a whole decade using only one decade of history!!! no technical statistician would put their name to garbage like that, let alone publish it - it would end their career. and i think those projections like "The following manufacturing subsectors are expected to lead the pace of output growth: computer and electronic product manufacturing (12.7 percent); plastics and rubber products manufacturing (3.7 percent)..." when in fact we've seen both sectors desert domestic production simply illustrate the point.

Reply to
jim beam

I had no expectation directing you to the bureau of labor statistics data would do anything but baffle you, but it did shut you up for a couple of days.

Their predictions appear to fairly accurate. In the case of computer and electronics they predict a decline in jobs in that sector and at the same time an increase in output. You have got it into your head that is an impossibility. Oh well........

Reply to
jim

er, if you think that a single gross aggregated decade gives you a statistical basis on which to predict a future decade, you're either delusional or retarded.

only if you live on a plant where domestic computer and electronic product manufacturing having /not/ increased by the predicted 12.7 percent can somehow perversely be seen as being accurate. and that's not any planet i'm familiar with.

that is a spectacular statement - their predicting an increase in domestic production [which is NOT productivity per employee, the only figure you seem to be able to talk about], then being proven wrong, is by any normal measure seen as a failure. your apparent inability to differentiate "production" from "productivity" can be categorized in the same way.

Reply to
jim beam

You are the one one who believes that not me.

Reply to
jim

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