How do Liberals View Business?
 

I am intrigued by how people with liberal leanings view business challenges. So I have a question based on the scenerio below:

Let's say you have a solid well run business with the following cost structure for a product that you sell for $100.

50% is cost of materials and overhead.
40% is the cost of labor.
10% is profit of which 5% you reinvest (Capital improvement, R&D, etc.)

A new competitor enters the market, selling the same product you sell for $85.

You can reduce the cost of materials and overhead by 5% right away by re-negotiating contracts with suppiers and vendors and going on a cost savings program.

In the first year you are willing to sacrifice profits ( and your reinvestment) to make up the 15% difference. and you lower your price to $85 to meet the competition.

In the second year your competiton lowers their price to $80. You can not lower your overhead any further, in fact inflation is going to make any future savings almost impossible. You have already lost one year of profits and sacrificed one year of re-investment in the business.

What do you do?

In your answer please indicate if you lean conservative or liberal.

Sell to the highest bidder while you can still make a buck!

Fiscal Conservative, Social Liberal.

You'd stop selling the product. Last I checked, companies stopped selling products they couldn't sell. Texas Instruments used to make a computer, the Ti-91, I believe (I own one, it's old as balls), they lost money, they stopped selling it. Also, unless the two products are identical, you're assuming that somehow this competing product is going to make so much of a difference that a company has no choice but to drop its price, rather than producing one of a higher quality, or perhaps marketing it towards a different crowd. This is almost like a scenario where a generic drug producer comes into the playing field to somehow knock down a name brand product. I can't recall times when a name-brand company was forced to critically rethink their drug's production such as this when a generic brand came along.

I really don't see what this has to do with conservative or liberal, especially considering I have no idea what either word means.

I'm a liberal. I'm also a businessperson and an entrepeneur.

I'd say in the first place, you're working with terrifyingly small margins if you're only making 10% of your retail price. Most everywhere I've worked (and CERTAINLY every business I've managed) has had a minimum margin expectation of 20% and targets in the 25% to 30% range. That's for general retail sales, there are certainly circumstances where you'd extend discounts, but that margin range allows you to do that.

Second, I've been in businesses where the competition undercut my prices to un-competable levels. It's not fun. What you do is, you don't even try to compete on price. You position your product as distinct from the competitors', you compete on features and services, etc. Profit margin is the lifeblood of any business, and if there comes a time when I can't sell my products or services in a way that preserves the margin I need, I'll go into the shrimp business.

I'd cut labor by about ten to twenty percent while increasing R&D by about ten to fifteen percent.

If the competition is going to undercut your prices to the point where you can't remain competitive, then you should take a different stance regarding your business decision. Instead of trying to offer low-cost, generic items offer high-quality, high cost items.

Yeah, that's well put. You have to differentiate on things other than price. Someone will ALWAYS undercut you but that won't matter in many markets where people seek better quality and service.

I would simply cull the best ideas from the article, below, to "motivate" an influential member of congress to "convince" a federal agency to buy my product, at my stipulated price, whether it wanted to, or not, via one of the federal "no bid" contract opportunities that has become so commonplace in the last six years........
Disclosure: I am a cynical liberal, resisting the "bait" of the "t word" tone of this thread's OP.

This doesn't sound like a very "solid well-run" profitable business to begin with. It sounds like a money pit to me. If you go into business selling a product with only a 10% profit margin (or 5%!) , you're going to have a lot of stress in your life, as if running a business isn't stressfull enough. You at least better hope this product is not your primary source of income, but something of a loss-leader.

As far as competition goes, this little "experiment" doesn't really deal with any sort of reality, as far as the complications of business ownership. There are ALWAYS adjustments that can be made to overhead, labor, cogs, and such. And also to the items which you wish to sell.

Owning a business is not a political decision. How do "liberals" view business? What an utterly vague question . What does that even mean? Is business a different color to "liberals?" Does business smell different?

Small business owners can ill-afford letting their political leanings interfere with their work, as they are to busy working.

As far as "leaning" politically, I try not to. I am what I am, I think what I think, I am open to suggestions. What does that make me?

Profit margins depend on the industry. Microsoft has profit margins that average 25.3%, GE - 11.8%, Mcdonald's - 10%, Intel -17%, Ford - less than 1% average over the last five years. 10% in the example is reasonable.

Would anyone cut employee costs?

This depends greatly on the market that you're in. Depeinding on what you're selling, there are very easy ways to seperate yourself from the rest of the pack, despite having an identical product. In food, for example, places like Trader Joe's do excellent business because they market to the health conscious crowd. Now when you get down to it, a bag of tortilla chips is the same no matter where it comes from. Fritos use the same ingredients as the tortilla chips from Trader Joe's, but because of marketing people expect that the product is healthier. Now, this is slightly deceptive, but this is also business. You are responsible for the incomes of a lot of people in your company, and trying to play the hero by not allowing your marketing division to do their jobs will hurt those people.

If I were in the hypothetical business situation layed out, I would do a number of things. First, I ALWAYS have a plan B, C, D, and E. Putting all your eggs in one basket in business should be a lasy resort, as it's massively risky. I would fall back on plan B, which was a lot less profitable than plan A in the beginning, but is safer now. Say when I start a business I have plans to sell widgits, bleebles, and shnozles. Because widgits provide the best effiency of cost to profit, I sell widgits in the beginning. Now that someone else is selling widgits cheaper, I move back to bleebles. I recoup cost with bleebles in order to reestablish the widgit business (market research, product development, etc.).

I would only cut employee costs as an absolute last resort.

Generally you give up the market rather than compete?

If you cut back on capital investment, R&D, etc., how do you distingush your product?

Where do you get the money to switch production from your plan A to your plan B?

Your employees want at least a cost of living wage increase, what do you do?

I was guessing that you were intending to give a situation in which competition was no longer possible.
Experience in marketing tells me that I can do it by myself in a few minutes. A responsible business owner has to know his market and his customers backwards and forwards. Know what they want, and be sure that what they want is your good or service.
Unless one is planning on selling off the business, one would need to invest money no matter what direction you take to deal with the problem. Even if you cut wages, you're cutting production. You lose something no matter what.
I would cut employee costs only as a last resort. Employees work harder than dollars, so I'd rather have one that the other.

Cutting employee costs does not always entail cutting wages. Sometimes it is just laying off one or two employees. Sometimes it means not paying yourself.

The key is to diversify your product base and/market your products in such a way that your "premium" price is acceptable by the public.

The last step in the process is cutting your wages.


There are many unanswered questions in this scenario:

what sector (retail, service, manufacturing, etc.)
what other products do you sell
what is your employee base
etc.

Currently I am assuming retail and one product only (which is stupid because as a retailer with one product you deserve to go out of business).

...................Withdrawn........................

I think everyone here is overlooking the obvious solution... hired thugs… to remove the competition.

Oh yeah my political leanings, Anarcho-capitalism... but mostly I’m liberal towards social issues, but conservative towards business. But my response does still stands; remove the competition before they get to big.

The OP insists that only two choices exist, and as some have already pointed out is a false assumption. Even a "widget" identical in every way to the competitor's discounted "widget" has the potential for product differentiation.

Ace, the act of reducing employee expenses in either pay or benefits has the unintended consequence of high turnover. Turnover is extremely costly to a business, and poorly trained employees create poorly made "widgets." The higher priced "widget" maker capitalizes on this mistake.

Edit: Oops...I am a biconceptualist. :suave:

A very good friend of mine who happens to be a raging liberal thanks to having his balls in his wifes purse, and who worked for moveon.org to look for voter fraud (pause for laughter) just started his own business.

I'm waiting to see how long his liberalism lasts :)

1. You hope that there is a segment of society that doesn't want to shop at that other store for whatever reason...

2. You could wait them out for a while longer to see if they are purposely taking a loss at this store compared to the locations where they are the only store in town. (Is it against the law to lower prices until your competition goes out of business and then raise prices really high knowing that the barrier to entry in the market is too high for anybody else to start up a different business)

3. Look at expanding into other markets. Or advertising it differently.

4. Could robotics be used instead of lots of labor? The setup costs might be high, but robots work 24/7 and the government doesn't regulate and tax them.

5. Either offer early retirement to some employees or let some employees go.

Social liberal, fiscal conservative. Libertarian on a lot of issues.

I agree the scenerio is simplistic, and we can make it a lot more complicated. But I think those who question the simplicity and the assumtions are trying to take the easy way out of dealing with the real delimas faced by real business manager every day.

At some point, you have to address your labor costs if you want to stay in the market.

Fundementally, if you leave the market most if not all jobs are lost. That is not good for employees.

If you do nothing, and leave your price higher than the competition, you loose market share, and jobs will be lost.

If you continue to cut other expenses and fail to earn a profit and re-invest, the business with deteriorate and jobs will be lost.

If you address labor costs, you may be able to save the business and save jobs for many while only sacrificing either the jobs of a few or lowering wages/benefits.

It seems that no course of action would be acceptable to some of you, but let's assume you do address labor costs. How would you do it?

Easy rule: If it costs you $1.25 to make widgets, and you sell them for $1.24, eventually, you will go broke.

Try to compete in the areas of service and quality, and avoid the price war. If you can't compete in those areas, you're in big trouble.

I'm a card-carrying Barbara Boxer-Michael Moore supporter. :lol:

If I were a conservative, I would slash middle managment, shift production overseas, reduce operation and materials costs at the expense of product quality, divert some R&D funds into celebrity-endorsement advertising to dupe customers into believing the company has a leading-edge product, and then go public.

If I were a liberal, I would be in an industry where I would only have to wait for the government grant cheques to come in.

You could fire all of your employees and hire people desperate for a job, any job. They will work for $5.15 (or less, if you don't ask questions). Then tell them how to use public assistance to get benefits like health coverage paid for by taxpayers, WIC assistance because your stay at home wife just gave birth and you don't make enough money, you can take away the pensions and 401k's because retired workers don't help the company make money (they might get some social security when they reach 75-80*).

*The age will be raised in the next 40 years since people are living longer and are healthier...and the system won't have enough money currently.

But, then every job will be the same with low pay. If my competitor will only pay X amount, why should I pay more than that? If they don't want a job, they can live on the street. Nobody will be able to get ahead except for the people who own multiple businesses in many locations, or hold large amounts of shares as initial investors in the company.

The crazy idea would be to give a small amount of stock to your employees each month. The longer they have worked there, the larger amount of the company they own. Yes, management might have to give up the large percentage of the company they are holding on to. The hedge fund and mutual fund managers might not like it because there are a lot more people owning the stock so it won't move as much, but there would be fewer outstanding shares so that might help.

(I wonder if they track what the average hourly wage for an American worker is, and if it has gone down since NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Technically, the wages are supposed to go back up once those foreign countries start buying goods made here. What will probably happen is businessmen there will start up companies to compete and sell locally in those countries.)

Or you would wait for them to put a tarrif or tax on some foreign component that your competitor needs.

And better quality does sell if you market it right. I paid $180 compared to $140 because the more expensive one made by a big American company had a density of 4lbs/cubic foot vs. 3lbs/cubic foot. A stupid consumer would of said, I'll take the $140 one because it's cheaper (and it won't do the job). If the no-name brand comes out with a 4lbs/cubic foot version for $170, then the other company has to show me that their product will last longer or is better in some way to justify spending the extra $10.

Although I can't speak for their tortilla chips, the items that Trader Joe's sells tend to have little or none of the crap that the national brands use. Compare the ingredients on something like mac and cheese (Kraft vs TJ's) etc.

Most, yes, but in tortilla chips you have: corn, oil, salt. That's the same in Fritos or Trader Joes.

i have considered responding to this thread, but find the little experiment in the op to be incoherent. i understand it to have been spun out of the discussion about walmart exploiting economies of scale unfairly---ace seemed to have difficulty with this notion that not all firms are equivalent as a function of differences in scale, and so posed this problem that eliminates scale as a problem.

in the op model, abstract variables (firms) produce an undefined commodity.
nothing is defined about how that production is organized--modes of organization are treated as if they do not matter in principle--which is absurd if you are actually trying to think about production practices and strategies.

the rules of the economic game are not defined--apparently in this fictional land of econ 101, you can assume that the metaphysics of capitalism are such that one can arbitrarily move in and out of the scenario provided in order to locate legal and/or institutional parameters that enable your argument to function.

the reverse of this apparently also obtains: competition is assumed to be shaped by something on the order to natural laws--ok so if not natural then mechanical--economic activity is a kind of hydraulics--an action on the part of one actor is assumed to result in a reciprocal action from another. this assumption has to be in place if the erasure of the organization of production as a factor is to be coherent--that is if this erasure is not to grind the game immediately to a halt.

within this game, labor costs are a variable cost: so it is assumed that firms can treat workers like they treat other forms of overhead and that no particular issues follow from eliminating or deskilling the workforce. without making stipulations as to types of production, all that is happening in the op in this regard is a kind of strange little test the function of which is to see how disposable you, as hypothetical capitalist, understand the workers to be--you know, workers---the people who actually make the commodities that your profit margins rely on.
so there is a way in which these little "thought experiments" function to help you as hypothetical capitalist to rationalize elimination of people's modes of livelihood in the interest of protecting your own profits.
in this regard, it is little more than a version of comuter games that get you used to blasting other human being to atoms with death rays.

underneath this is a refusal to accept the simple fact that capitalist economic activity is a type of social activity, that there is no coherent separation between the economy and the wider social formations within which economies operate.

and this separation of the economy into a special zone of human activity, one that floats above society and history, governed by a special metaphyics of capitalist competition, is at the origin of most of the more obviously self-defeating tendencies of capitalist activity.

the treatment of workers as things----as dehumanized, as simply a type of technology that can be thrown away once "market forces" render them "obsolete" or at the whim of management----or as a response to the only Law that capital takes to be meaningful--its own profits--is generally not isolated--it is generally of a piece with assumptions about consumers, about the social formations that surround both firms and consumers (for example) that treat everything as a means to an end. that end is profit.

so the allegorical game presented in the op is incoherent unless you accept a whole series of assumptions that ace did not spell out----and unless you bring into the game assumptions concerning when and how you can step outside the rules and refer to social factors in order to make the game coherent. so it puts folk who consider the game into the position of having to create coherence for themselves in order to play---but because the game leans on econ 101 modelling practices, players find this importing of information to be simply the way in which one plays this sort of game and not a problem with the game itself.

all this is very strange and on another morning would not be worth my time to explain. for better or worse, it is friday and the sun is out and so it seems interesting, in a fleeting kinda way.

o yes--i am neither a conservative or a "liberal"--the conservative mode of parsing politics and the categories that it relies on is also incoherent.
but whatever.

Personally I don't respond to the incoherent, why do you?

What I have difficulty with is the notion that a corporation is often considered "bad" when the corporation does what it need to do to survive.

The model is not the point of the OP. What I want to understand is given a business problem that may lead to a negative impact on employment, how people with different political leanings would respond. My gut tells me that most people would respond the same given the exact same set of circumstances. If that is true then how do you explain the views that some posters have toward business?

I find beauty in simplicity, I fully understand that many do not.

I assume a basic understanding of the rules of economics.

True, the OP is fictional, but I can point to hundreds of real companies who have had to deal with the kind of problem outlined in the OP. If this were an MBA course we could spend a full semester on a real business scenerio, but this is not an MBA course. In fact - I am about at the limits of my attention span as it is.

I wanted this to be open ended. Giving those interested in responding the ability to make some of their own assumptions. You could have taken the scenerio in any direction you wanted. I admit failure. There was not much creativity in the responses, and I am sure that is my fault.

In most business situations familiar to me, labor is a variable cost.
If you make that assumption, that is your decision. I have not directly stated how I would respond to the scenerio. There may be ways to respond that I have not considered, hence the open-ended question.
I remember in the early 80's - I had a Commodore 64 computer. I purchased a very simplistic game titled - Themal Nuclear War". In the game you could obtain an arsenal and start a war, and hope to win or not start a war and hope to win if the computer started one. You could build an offensive or defensive arsenal. You could avoid building an arsenal and hope your computer opponent did the same or simply would not attack, etc,etc In all there were about 10 variables and time, to this day it was one of my all-time favorite games and it was just a grid, x's o's and a few other characters. I could have harped on the assumptions put into the game my choice was to enjoy the game. You seem to want to harp on the assumptions for some reason that I really don't understand. The developer of the game had an agenda as do I in my OP. They felt nuclear weapons proliferation would always lead to nuclear war and the death of millions. I would have loved to talk to the guys who wrote the game, but thats me. I don't have a problem with people who I disagree with.

My point here is that everyone has to do what is their best interests, because there is no free lunch. The world is either eat or be eaten. employees must be proactive and not take their jobs for granted. companies should not take things for granted either.

I agree with you here. Not sure your basis for stating I have a "refusal"...

What?!? I am just an average "Joe" who went to a state school. the above is way over my head.

Did you ever state what you would do?

i did what i would do, ace: i rejected the problem.
and i provided reasons for it.
so in a way i played the game.
rejecting the game is a way of playing it.
i wouldnt have had the sun not been out this morning, though.
i was in a reasonably good mood.
then i started reading more about this obscene legistlative travesty in the senate yesterday and that went away.
now i am going to find coffee and push reset.


and just to be sure you know----this is purely an intellectual game for me---but i realize that my tone slips away from my complete control sometimes, particularly when i strongly disagree--so nothing personal in any of this, yes?

I don't want to get all Matrixy on you - but by rejecting the problem you accepted the problem. Perhaps your response is more creative than I originally thought. However, in the real world when you reject your business problems for whatever the reason your employees still suffer. I guess I have to conclude you have no more concern for employees than any greedy capitalist.

The problem ace, is that in the real world, no problem is this simple.

There are all sorts of variables.

Playing your game does nothing more than provide an answer of convenience to your agenda (as you put it).

If that was all you wanted was an answer within the parameters of your game... fine. The problem is, you wish to take your extremely limited premise and extrapolate it into the the real world.

Most here recognize that and either refuse to play or have pointed out the short comings of your premise.

The answer really does hinge upon what kind of business it is. There are all kinds of things each sector can do besides firing people and/or lowering salaries. The OP wants the stereotypical Liberal response, I'd wager, which is to not fire anyone and therefore look like pussies.

The incompleteness of the question is my rebuttal to that argument. And the fact that it has obviously gotten around despite its incompleteness is perhaps a testament to the mindframes of its messengers. Not of deficiency, necessarily. But of selective vision.

......Exactly..............No Offense to Ace, Just not worth the time,and inevitable arguments.

I agree. I thought it was a simplistic contrived scenario not worthy of response.

I can answer from my own experience as a business owner, but as previous people have stated your guidelines are not true to life.... at least not in any experience I have ever had.

In Sept. of 1995 I bought a pizza place in a city of 16,000 and 8 other pizza joints (Pizza Hut, Domino's, Little Ceasar's were the nationals, East of Chicago, Checker's and Tubby's were regional chains with more stores elsewhere and 2 drive thrus that had pizza delivery and could deliver beer and wine).

The place I bought did about $1,000 -1,500 a week in sales. They paid their drivers as independant contractors and really didn't make much. But the owner was rich and he had given it to his kids to run because he felt they needed to learn business. They didn't do anything but live off dad so he sold it to me for $35,000.

I took over on Sept. 7th 1995, my mothers birthday and by Dec. 1, 1995, I was doing $10,000 per week in sales and still climbing. My net profit after all my overhead, was about $1500/week. By March, 2 competitors were close to going under.

How did I do it?

I worked my ass off, I was there an hour before opening to an hour after close (95% of the time), I did whatever needed to be done thus showing my employees that I didn't ask them to do anything I wouldn't. I started paying my employees $7.5 an hour (with monthly raises), bonuses, plus mileage, had charitable Tuesdays, where the first Tuesday of every month all sales monies went to a certain charity in town (and I never wrote any of it off).

I offered the best product, most reliable service and took pride in what I did.

By paying my employees more and treating them with respect and allowing them to have fun, (I would take them out to dinners, take them to my home and have hot tub parties, and so on) I promoted loyalty. This loyalty showed by their families and friends ordering on a regular basis, respect amongst the town for not just how I treated employees but how I ran my business.

I had to pay full price for my goods (and those prices especially on cheese could skyrocket and were unpredictable from week to week), unlike the nationals that have their own distribution, or those locals that had more than 1 store and could contract lower prices, my overhead was far more. My prices were low, but there were 2 or 3 lower.

Domino's (and a friend of mine was the franchisee) would cut their prices to match or beat mine. If I ran a special, he did the same one (except he couldn't offer the Ribs, subs and the pasta dinners like I could).

I could have easily dropped wages and made more for myself, but I made what I needed and was living quite well. At first the wages were bogging me down and I was losing money, but every week as sales grew my losses became less and profit prevailed. It was about a month before I started showing profit, had caught up on debts and was pretty much becoming a cash coww.

I could have lowered the quality of the product, by buying cheaper ingredients, but again, why? I wanted to serve the best at affordable prices and I did.

I could have written off Charitable Tuesdays (which were loss days because I gave away food that day, however, employees were not forced to work and volunteered, so I didn't have to pay their wages), but it wasn't about that it was about helping the community that supported my livelihood.

I was even looking into expanding into other nearby cities.

The only thing that stopped me was my gambling addiction. Had I not gambled there is no doubt in my mind I could have kept the business thriving. But I gambled, I chose to stop paying attention, I chose to hire people that would steal me blind, and I chose not to be there.

So, there you have it, a business that grew and thrived and was run by a very liberal owner.

I would hire a bunch of thugs to go over to my competitor's business and kill them. I am the ultimate free-marketeer.

Ah the mafia way of doing business. Better yet, be the one that loans the money, or own major shares of stock in that company, so when his profits rise, he is paying for you to stay in business and compete against him.

Then when he can't make payments you close him down or better yet own enough stock so that when he starts beating you, you dump your shares at a premium price and hurt him that way.

See, Ace, your question is posed from a black-and-white paradigm of corporate behavior. It's survival at all costs, and that's that. What I hope pan and I, and other liberal entreupeneurs have demonstrated is that there are a myriad approaches to having a business succeed while still treating the staff like human beings, and not like numbers on a general leder. It may take more creativity, but it's also more fun and more rewarding, and it's WAY better than mere survival.

It's more like the Rockefeller way of doing business. Or the original union-busting way of doing business.

I certainly understand people not wanting to respond, etc. but the thought that the scenerio is not true to life or unreasonable strikes me as a bit odd.

The begining analysis of any business problem begins with a review of historical information and making assumptions about the future. I don't know how some of you would make your business decisions, but the way I make mine is to assess my costs and income and build a proforma income statement. This is exactly what was in the OP, in a simplified form.

Perhaps some of you can tell me how you would have made the OP more realistic. Otherwise, I will conclude that you simply want to avoid the embarassment of answering the questions I presented.

You have not proved anything. Pan's business failed. Roachboy rejected the problem. Others have took the route of saying the OP is not realistic. Like the ostrich that sticks his head in the sand - liberal entreupeneurs seem to want to take the path of avoiding reality, avoiding tough choices and avoiding real debate.

Just to be clear. Regardless of the OP, assumptions, simple business problems, etc. - I ask this question:

If you have to address labor costs, how do you do it?

With as much sensitivity as possible.

I've fired people. I've fired people for cause, and I've fired them because their continuing employment is fianancially untenable for the company. I hated having to do it, but I had to do it. I did it in a company of under 20 people, where every employee is like family, you know their kids, you've been to the company baseball games and cookouts together. It doesn't get harder than that. At those times, I wished I could treat them as numbers, just subtract them off the balance sheet. But I couldn't--not and look at myself in the mirror that night.

I think part of what makes answering your question difficult, ace, is that we're suspicious that there's a point you're trying to make, and nobody wants to step into a pit of quicksand. So here's a simple question for you: what's the point of this thread? What point are you out to make here?

That woulnd't be a safe assumption, as there are more than two reasons to respond in the way that people have responded. Pretending like the other option is that one would be embarassed is confrontational and possibly flame.

I thought I was pretty clear in my answer, and you probably consider me to be pretty liberal.

It's not true to life because being forced to address labor is an artificial limitation.

And I don't think it's a sincere question, respectfully. Because you have not offered your own solution. I am more curious as to how you would resolve the problem, rather than as to how you would pick apart someone else's attempt to tackle this (IMO) poorly stated problem. It feels like you already have a "liberal" response in mind and are waiting to pounce on it.

Would you cut wages/benefits across the board, or target certain employees? Do you ask for government assistance? Do you move operations where costs are lower? Do you require employees to do more? Do you make charges against your competition? Do you do the same thing that "big business" does all the time that makes them "bad"?

How do you fire someone with sensitivity? Does that mean you give them flowers, buy 'em dinner and say its me and not you, before you fire them? Or, do you simply tell them the truth?

P.S. - The point has been made. I fully understand the liberal approach to business - denial, rejection of potential problems, and the focus on trivial matters. I have a much better understanding of how great American companies started by hard driving conservative capitalist are driven to ruin when taken over by weak liberal "head in the sand" bureaucratic types. Thank you.

I was the managing partner for 7 years of a business with 17 employees. When I was not firing someone for "cause"....Cause is "no call, no show, theft of company property, etc....I always explained the dismissal as a workforce reduction, and offered the option of uncontested unemployment benefits.

I was faced with declining demand for our company's services and products, at times, and the nagging and rising cost of providing the traditional major benefits at that company, a defined benifit pension plan, and company payment of the entire family major medical benefit for each employee.

I never reduced wages....I went some months without drawing a paycheck, I only gave across the board pay increased to employees at the top pay scale (a workforce primarily of skilled craftsmen) two times in the seven year period, and I changed the costly defined benefit pension plan to a 401(k) plan, offsetting some of the loss of benefits that older workers would have received under the defined benefit plan.....by offering a 100 percent company paid match to all employee personal 401(k) contributions.

After the longest period of being unable to offer wage increases, I designed and debuted a successful, "gain sharing" incentive plan to increase productivity and efficiency, and I increased advertising budgets and invested in equipment and methods to increase both the perception and the reality of market leading, "quality work", in our industry and in the minds of potential customers.

I was active in managing and promoting the trade assoc. in my industry, regionally, and on a state level. I was an officer in the local assoc. and a delegate to the state assoc. I helped draft lobbying strategies and met with the lobbyist for our state assoc. to isolate and plan "pitches" for "make or break issues. On a local level, I shared cost and pricing info and business strategy with competitiors who were fellow trade association members, to successfully educate craftsmen turned business owners about the economics of their businesses, and the importance of offering guarantees to customers and fair wages and benefits to employees to influence "realistic" pricing, across the local industry.

Competitors who were non-members, were often encouraged to join our trade association. If seven years is enough of a measure of successfully lowering costs and maintaining the value of wages and benefits to workers, in a period of declining and or static revenues and profits, I succeeded without "help from the government". Taxes, licensing fees, accounting fees for the business and it's pension plans, increasing government regulation and health care costs all were aggravating, but they were equal challenges for all "top tier" competitors, as well. My business was located in a high cost, highly regulated state, but that also meant access to a pool of higher income customers, an above average population concentration, and a large pool of potentially educated and qualified workers.

None of what I experienced influenced me to be "more conservative or libertarian." I am still bitter, though, about the "Harry and Louise" "hit job" by big insurance and partisan republicans who derailed the Clinton "health reform" plan. All of the small business owners who I knew then, who were burdened by the high cost of company paid employee health benefits, were disappointed by the propaganda "blitz" that permanently shifted the profit advantage to competitors who paid little or no employee health benefits, in 1993....and since.

Wow. Generalize much?

People don't wish to play your simplistic scenario and you jump to conclusions that support your assumptions.

Nice.

This thread should have been titled: "How does ace view liberals?" Then you could have just answered your own question in post number 2, instead of dragging it out to number 43.

A lot of pointless posting and thought could have been better spent on other things.

If a corporation does anything it needs to survive, is that action justified? Is survival of the corporation the only goal?



I worked for 10 years (long ago) managing retail branches. My branches were always the most profitable branches in my region, and I always paid a higher hourly wage than my peer managers. I was often encouraged to cut back on my labor costs so that I could be more profitable. :eek: Many could not see the obvious: I was more profitable because of my kick-ass staff. And they kicked much ass because they wanted to be there and they made more dinero.

I generally handle labor issues by treating my people better, and raising the expectations of their performance. Everyone tends to win that way.

My girlfriend owns two business that are the most successful in her field in the state of Oregon. Successful defined as volume of sales and profit. I would say they are the most successful because everyone enjoys working for her AND because they are profitable. She pays significantly more than her competitors.


Your model is silly, and the conclusions you draw about liberals because of it sillier. Although I'd guess you started with those conclusions, didn't you?


Oh, and people would consider us both liberal.

I would make a better quality product or newer technology that I can sell for 50 times what the competitor sells his. Example - Taxol sells so cheap now generically, so reformulate it in by adding BSA to the drug. Sell it for 50 times what the generic is under your new patent.

Yes, I am guilty of generalizing.

I started with an open-ended question and followed with some open-ended questions. I started with a belief on how people would respond, but I was willing to go with the flow and looked forward to an interesting discussion and perhaps gaining some insight. I gained no insight. My original beliefs were confirmed.

When the model was questioned, I asked how anyone would make it better. The response was more of the same.

I defended the model, there was no response to the defense other than some saying what was said prior.

I questioned why would someone respond to the "incoherent" (I would generalize to include overly simplistic, or that which is a waste of time, maybe you would not, but I would) and I got more of the same.

There were a couple of thoughtful responses. However, I believe my conclusions are correct or I am totally confused and not able to understand what I have been reading. I sure you can guess what I think about that.

I am disappointed that people did not want to "play", but by not playing and giving reasons, you, me or any reader can certainly draw conclusions, which I did, about those reasons. We could have been talking about an hot dog stand or general motors. I could have given days worth of reading material about the specific business environment and you folks want me to believe that would have lead to better responses? That thought makes me laugh:lol:

Ace, I have to question either your honesty or your ability to see a solution that doesn't correspond to your preconceived notions. Many of the participants in this topic proffered ideas to a competitor threat that didn't fit your OP constraints or your expectations. I would suggest that you were the one that was unwilling to "play" once we stepped outside of where you hoped to lead us.

One case in point that you chose to ignore (and there are many others):

I can't give you a "how-to" about this. You treat them like human beings, not like pawns on a business-oriented chessboard.

Great. Welcome to the quicksand. Congratulations on trapping me into proving that liberals are idiots. Remind me to ignore any future liberal-baiting threads you start.

Incidentally, I deeply pity you for the limitations of your imagination. Hope life works out for you in your black-and-white view of things. Have fun proving that life is how you already think it is.

Ace, please don't have the same failings as Ustwo in his thread. Read all the responses (espically mine!!). I posted in #10, then in #12.

Excuse me???????

My business did not fail because of how I ran it, and my post made that point perfectly clear.

Why it failed was I allowed my addiction to become more important. When I closed my doors I was still kicking my competition's asses. I was still making the sales, I just wasn't there and I was devoting all my time and money to gambling.

So unless you know something I don't, I'd like to know how my business failed because of the way I ran it.

It didn't fail because of how I ran it, I take great pride in how I built the business up, so don't go there with me.

I'd like to see you take something that makes $1,000-$1,500/week and in 3 months increase sales to $10,000/week and hold them there, and be totally debt free. I was and am that damned good when I choose to be.

But then again you're doing the Right Winged defensive actions right now. You can't defend anything so you ask people a question and just pick and choose what you choose to answer. It's ok Ace, it's becoming quite the nice little technique for you Neo-Cons here on TFP. :thumbsup:

Unlike some on here who want people to believe they are intelligent, multi-degreed professionals that seem to post more than they could possibly work their jobs, and skirt any issues of proving anything they say...... I can provide proof, people, dates, newspaper articles, Dean's Listings, my CDCA Certificate, and so on, and prove anything I say about myself, but then I expect those people who challenge me to come forth with their proof.

I simply answered YOUR question, you chose to take only what you wanted as an answer.

The OP did not restrict the choices to just two. I agree that products can be differentiated. When a poster presented that point - I then asked, how do you do that when you have no profits to work with and no money going into R&D. I got no response, or I did not see the response.

In your post you said that you choose to hire people that would "steal you blind". Isn't that an operational business decision. People can run successful businesses and not be involved in the day to day operations, so even if you chose not to be there, your business______ (fill in the blank with the proper word) because of the way you ran it.

Ace, I would be more than willing to reduce my staffing costs by either laying off staff or lowing wages (if that were possible -- in the case of minimum wage, I am already in the basement).

However, this would not be my first choice. I would trust that, as a smart businessperson, I am not relying solely on one product.

Just as I would never hold my business over a barrel by putting all of my faith in one key employee (redundancy is important), I would take the same approach to my products (diversification).

I would get creative with my marketing (how do you think the marketplace manages to support such diversity? Why do we have more than one brand of toothpaste? The only real difference is marketing).

I would explore other markets and other products.

I would source new suppliers. I would outsource labour, where possible.

...and so on.

In other words, there are MANY things that can be done to save a failing business, or to build a successful one. ONE of these things is cutting labour costs (either through attrition, layoffs or low wages).

Anyone so myopic as to focus on just one solution deserves to go out of business.

I re-read your response, I have gotten more caught up in other issues rather than following up with your response. Also I see that you did respond the the product differentiation question. I agree with you that over the short-run a business owner can make a differance. However, over the long-run I think you need profits and the ability to re-invest in the business for it to thrive over the long-run

Yes, I did. When the person running the business cares little and is taking all the money he can out to go gamble. Then the "good" employees aren't going to stay with a sinking ship. So they leave and you end up surrounding yourself with people who won't lecture, who don't give a damn what you do, and you believe that is ok. I know I did that. I pushed everyone out that told me I was fucking up my life and put in people who didn't give a rat's ass. They saw me as someone they could take advantage of because I didn't care.

Yes, there are a lot of people that can run successful businesses and not be there. But they hire the right people. I had the right people and it would have done well with them. But as stated, I pushed them out.

When you see your "owner" coming in and taking every penny out of the bank account and register on Thursday. Then going to Casino Windsor or Paradise Riverboat (Peoria, Ill.) and coming back broke Monday and yelling at the staff for not making more (even though sales were steady), you are not going to be there. You know the owner doesn't care and the business is going to die. Good employees left, bad employees that knew it was a sinking ship came in and I didn't care.

So, it wasn't business philosophy of "I paid my workers too much" or "I was too liberal with my workers"....... It was I didn't feel challenged anymore and I just didn't give a rat's ass. And the people I hired that did care, I made damn sure I kicked them away so I could practice my addiction.

Had I not kicked people away, had I stayed true to my vision and got the help for my addiction before I self destructed..... I would have continued growing and probably would still be open with more stores, paying the best wages possible, maintaining the quality standards I had and still making good money for myself.

In the end it wasn't "I failed", in the end it was a life experience I had to go through to learn from.

Why is the "F" word so difficult. I have failed in three business ventures, and have had one success. I am batting .250. In my corporate career after college, I worked for one company that went bankrupt. I was laid-off from another, and had a successful run at a third. In the corporate world I am batting .333. I like the Babe's point of view - "just keep on swinging".

To me, I didn't fail, my business definately did not fail. I fucked up. Failure is trying and not succeeding but having the desire to try again until you succeed.... at the end there was no trying. I fucked up.

But by all means keep threadjacking your own OP and keep it off target by singling me out and trying the personal attacks, that have nothing to do with "How Liberals View Business". I answered, you chose to try to make the answer something you want.

Yeah, well, he has an answer he wants, and your story is going to fit into it, no matter what the facts are. What's made this thread impossible is that it's not a thread, it's a talking point framed as a question.

Listen very carefully, or read very carefully - The point of the OP was for me to get a better understand of how "Liberals view business". I concluded among other things that Liberals live in a world of denial. When I fail, I say I fail. When a liberal fails, he says he didn't fail, the business didn't fail but that he f'd up. What is that all about?!? I will tell you - denial. I am not trying to make this personal, but Pan volunteered the information and I am going on what was shared and nothing else, other than me making my conclusion.

I thought de nial was a river in Africa :eek:

From everything you've posted since the OP, I doubt that very, very much. You weren't interested in a better understanding of anything--you had an agenda and a point to make, and to hell with anybody's success or life, you were going to use the answers you got to make that point. In your sad little world, liberals (whatever the hell that even means) are automatically wrong, so the point of this thread was to figure out exactly what flavor of wrong they are with regard to business.

Is it even slightly conceivable that you might have "learned" from this thread that liberals are responsible business people whose business strategy operates from a strong social conscience? No, you'd never "learn" that, because that doesn't fit your existing view or the agenda you posted to push. Or if you did see that, you'd call it a weakness.

You fabricated an artificially narrow straw-man question, and then when people answered it as if it were a real-world question, you accused them of dodging the question. Then when people started answering the question your agenda required them to answer, you used that to generalize and score points on liberals across the board.

THEN when you've got somebody telling the honest truth about how he messed himself up, you use THAT to score MORE general, broad, sweeping points on your personal political boogie-men. pan's business was successful--then his addiction killed it. It's like if I've got a clock that's running perfectly, keeping perfectly good time, and I accidentally smash it with a hammer, that's not because the clock was somehow faulty or that my maintenance and stewardship of the clock was insufficient. Something external to my management of the clock killed the clock--waving the hammer around was probably a mistake, and probably broke things aside from the clock, but that doesn't make me a bad clock haver. But you turn that into "Why can't liberals admit their clocks don't work? They won't admit that they fail to have working clocks!"

I'm actually very deeply offended by how you turned the story of pan's addiction into a broad brush to tar all those who disagree with you. You should be ashamed of yourself. That was a human being telling the truth about his life--it doesn't happen often in this world and I'll be damned if I'll sit by and let you shit on it.

You have demonstrated zero interest in learning in this thread. There has been zero acceptance or compassion or even tolerance for other human beings. You have provided zero thinking or logic. This entire thread has been a waste of database space, and I'm done with it.

First lets not confuse liberal and socialist, thats a mistake when it comes to business. While many liberals are socialists, its not fair to look at how a socialist views a business vrs a social liberal.

From my experience, knowing social liberals, they tend to run a business pretty much the same as any conservative. I think, based on what I've seen, they are slower to fire incompetent employees, but interestingly seem to pay less well than the conservative owners. This is based on a sample size of about 5 so really has no validity beyond personal experience.

I suppose how liberals 'view' business may be different, but in the end they have to pay the bills and keep the good people the same as any business owner and as such politics tend to disappear. Using recycled paper or 'fair trade' coffee doesn't make much of a difference in the end, and the tough decisions won't vary to much.

The ability to fire imcompentence has nothing to do with politics, only the ability to recognize performance and act accordingly. And the social liberals that I know (me, girlfriend, other friends) all tend to pay more then our peer businesses. I suspect owners that want to succeed know the value of labor and pay accordingly. Again, nothing to do with politics.

But I'm sure we can fit these type of decisions into political logic if we try hard enough!


Ace, I'd like your answer to the question I posed earlier. Any limitations you'd put actions corporations take?

I'd like to take a shot at this in regards to large businesses if you don't mind.

Any business that contributes more than a few hundred bucks to any polititian or political party is not elligible for government contracts. As well as any business that hires or has contracts with any member of a polititian's extended family.

I'd like to see rules against businesses using their bought and paid for polititians to influence federal agencies like the IRS and EPA, etc.. to go after their competitors and go easy on themselves but cannot figure out how to enforce it.

Heh, I just saw the closed thread that filtherton started. Too heavy handed, perhaps, but funny in comparison...

edit: and of course the conservative implications are far more worth shutting a thread down than the implication that liberals are mushy-headed :D

Having never been an entrepreneur, I had no personal experience or knowledge to bring to this discussion.

But I did find this real world comparison, based on a Business Week study, between Costco and Walmart's Sam's Club to make a reasonable argument that you dont have to pay low wages compared to your competitor to survive and thrive:
By my responding to Ace in this manner, will this thread disappear as well? ;)

Interesting Article. So Sam's could adopt Costco's smarter business strategy and layoff 30,000 of it's workers, pay the remaining another $4 an hour and generate the same amount of sales as Costco does with the reduced workforce. This appears to be good for the company, good for the workers who still have jobs, tough for the 30,000 out of work.

Or maybe if Sam paid more, he would have less turnover and more productive employees. And all 102,000 would make a more livable wage, Sam would make greater profits, the local economy would benefit and it would be a win-win-win :)

But I thought conservatives appreciated more self responsibility.

I was accepting the responsibility for self destructing and taking my business down with me.

I guess the response a "conservative" would like to hear is...... my business failed because I paid my employees too much and showed them too much respect.

Is that what you want to hear Ace????? Please tell me so I can say exactly what you want to hear. I stated the truth, my business ran fine with high wages, treating employees like family and giving what the consumer wanted. It was my shortcomings that caused me to fuck up the business (and as stated above failing is trying.... I wasn't trying I didn't give a damn... hence I fucked up, the business didn't "fail"), not my philosophy or how I ran it.

Quick edit/add on: The reason I post and am being so forthright about all this, isn't for vindication of my beliefs or any self righteous motive, actually, I am finding it very therapeutic for myself to get out all this garbage and gunk and be able to talk about it. For this I thank Ace, the pushing has reinforced and reminded me how bad I was once and how thankful I am that I have found my niche, my sanity, myself and my recovery.

Having been a worker all my life, I like the idea of workers making more money and being more productive, but the numbers have to add up.

There would be some savings due to less turnover and more productivity but the only way this will work is if the 102,000 higher paid workers result in billions of more dollars in sales.

Put another way, why doesn't Costco employ another 30,000 well paid more productive workers and match Sam's 102,000. I think it is probably because an additional 15 billion or so in sales required to do this are just not there in the retail market.

The answer flstf is, yes. Sam's should raise their wages and lay off the excess staff.

There are lots of reasons for this, but the base of it (to me) is the same reason we don't pay people to make buggy whips anymore. Better to raise the level of pay/expectations/quality for customers than to live in mediocrity.

But maybe that's a thought unique to a liberal? :D

Well, I know I said I was through with this thread, but it just got interesting with this CostCo/Sam's Club business.

You can't compare apples and oranges here. Sam's (and for damnsure WalMart as a whole) is a lot bigger than CostCo. So saying, "What should they do, fire down to CostCo levels?", or "But WalMart would go broke if they tried to pay ALL their employees that much!" misses the point.

It's true that WalMart/Sams Club are so deeply entrenched in the low-labor, low-cost approach that there's no way out short of a massive corporate overhaul, which won't happen. The point of the article isn't to give Sam's advice. The point is that a worker-centric approach that treats people generously is the more advantageous business strategy, as demonstrated by the contrast between Sam's Club and CostCo.

I did have an agenda, and a point to make but I was open to go with the flow of the discussion and learn. I did go with the flow, and I have participated in responding to what you and others presented.

Partially true. The responses speak for themselves. the points you take from the thread are different from the ones I take. I don't have the power nor am I that smart to prove anything in theoretical discussions.

I see things different than you and many others. I am willing to explore those differences. I am willing to defend my position, I am willing to expose how I think and come to conclusions, I am willing to be challenged. You may not believe that, but that's o.k.

I remember doing a study of Ben and Jerry's Icecream. I thought their business model was an excellent example of a combination of a corproation making money and being socially responsible. then they sold the business.

I am begining to feel like I am being scolded, and that I am a bad person. Is this generally how one should respond to someone who has a differnt point of view than you. What exactly did I do that was wrong?

I have not scored any points. I am not sure what you mean by that. Yes, the OP was artificially narrow, but I thought I explained that. And, the OP was simplified but it is reflective of real business problems and some of the variables business people struggle with.

I apologize to Pan, you and anyone else I offended.

Hyperbole? Or, are you guilty of what you accuse me of?

I appreciate you sharing this article.

I shop at Costco regullarly I was in a Sam's Club once, did not like it and I rarely shop at walmart. I think the beauty in competetive markets is illustrated in the article. I don't think Sam's or Walmart's business model is deserving of the labels often given. People can choose where they work and they can choose where they shop. Land owners can choose who they sell their land to. In the long-run I honestly believe the higher productivity at Costco will win the day. But understand, I am basing my opinion on productivity. Costco pays more, but they get more from every dollar spent.

Despite your protests to the contrary, you didn't start this thread to learn. I've read about 15 different "solutions" that didn't involve cutting labor, but that's not acceptable.

You didn't post your solution because you WANTED to bait people into avoiding labor reduction. "Look at those silly liberals.. they won't even fire people to save the sinking ship."

If you really wanted to "learn," you'd deign that your presentation is flawed and that forcing labor reductions is an artifical construction. But you won't -- we're just denying your perfect little situation, huh?

Is it possible to reduce costs without laying off people? Yes.

In a way, you've had your point backfire in your face. You hoped to prove that corporations weren't "bad" simply because they fired people, and constructed a situation where you thought it was the only option. Unfortunately, people came with ways to avoid laying people off - liberals, nonetheless. Wait, wouldn't that mean that laying people off wasn't the only solution? OH NOES!~

I appreciate the defense and great analogy. :thumbsup:

Ace, I accept your appology, as I stated the more I posted here the more therapeutic it became for me.

Seems we both learned something in this thread.

I learned how much crap I was carrying over all this and hadn't truly came to terms or resolved it. I think posting the issue in public and having been pushed to truly admit what I did to myself, my business and my employees helped me come to a closure, or at least the start of a closure and allow a healing process to begin.

You may have learned that Liberal business owners are good and their philosophies work as well as conservative.

Or perhaps, that when you want a certain answer, you will dig to find it, regardless of what is being said you'll only see what you want..... we all do that I am very guilty of it.

Or maybe you didn't learn anything but what you wanted to.

Either way, again, this thread for me proved to be the most therapeutic experience I have had in awhile.

Please be advised before reading further, Ace is about to come to another conclusion.

Instead of a focus on what is stated, it appears that generally people who disagree with me are more interested in trying to anticipate my intent, and think they have the ability to read minds.

I am not sure anyone ever expressed interest in my "solution".

On what basis are you saying I have baited people? How do you bait people with open-ended questions to a simplistic scenerio? I am interested an how liberals explain crticism of business when a business relocates operations to lower cost areas when the liberal would do the same given the same information. that question is not baiting, in my view it is very direct. If I got an answer, it would be informative, and worth the effort.

Yes many have said the Op scerio is flawed. I acknowledge its limitations. I have even asked how to make it better. I think I have asked several times. If I have missed the answer please let me know.

I didn't have to "antipicate" anything - you said it plainly in your own posts.

To give you a digest:

The OP:
Offered Solutions
Paradise Lost; stop selling the product
Ratbastid: Reposition your product, differentiation in services or features
Infinite_Loser: Cut Labor, raise R&D
Host: Convince the Gov't to buy my product at a fixed price

None of these require labor limitations, and effectively answer "What do you do?"

At this point it didn't seem like you were satisified. Perhaps I was mistaken, but you seem to want to narrow the scope more; you ask "Would anyone cut labor costs" ?

Replies
Willravel: Yes, but at a last resort. Diversification should have been part of my business plan from the beginning.

Still not what you'd hoped? Introduce another stipulation: 'Your employees want at least a cost of living wage increase, what do you do?'

Surely now we'll admit that cutting labor is a necessity of business.

Replies
Willravel notes that your situation seems to be setup so that competition is no longer possible.
Charlatan notes that the situation is too vague: business sector, products, employee base would cause a huge variability in the possible decisions.
Dilbert suggests thugs.
ASU2003 suggests
(1) hope for the best
(2) wait them out
(3) expand or revitalize marketing plan
(4) replace labor with technology
(5) fire people

With the exception of ASU2003's 4 & 5, these are again all viable solutions to the OP, the first stipulation and the second stipulation. No one is "avoiding the situation" or "burying their head in the sand." They just refuse to accept that labor reduction should be the first and only choice.

At this point, you're still fixated. You finally come out with your REAL point for the OP:

"At some point, you have to address your labor costs if you want to stay in the market. " You suggest that every situation eventually leads to job loss.

Four or five replies that your situation is still too generic, too black-and-white to be realistic.

Pan offers his anecdote.

Ratbastid asserts, like others, that the situation is too black-and-white.

What I hope pan and I, and other liberal entreupeneurs have demonstrated is that there are a myriad approaches to having a business succeed while still treating the staff like human beings, and not like numbers on a general leder. It may take more creativity, but it's also more fun and more rewarding, and it's WAY better than mere survival."

At this point its time to ditch the OP entirely, because it hasn't baited the labor decision yet. Your new question;

"If you have to address labor costs, how do you do it?"

Ratbastid: with sensitivity

Johnny: Again, the situation artifically forces us to address labor.

Your response:

"P.S. - The point has been made. I fully understand the liberal approach to business - denial, rejection of potential problems, and the focus on trivial matters. I have a much better understanding of how great American companies started by hard driving conservative capitalist are driven to ruin when taken over by weak liberal "head in the sand" bureaucratic types. Thank you."

Blatant attack.

Boatin asks if we should even be concerned about corporation's survival.
Rofgilead: better quality, patent your product to force the competition out

More viable solutions.

Elphaba:
"Ace, I have to question either your honesty or your ability to see a solution that doesn't correspond to your preconceived notions."

Ratbastid: Still so black-and-white

Charlatan: New marketing, diversification, other markets, outsource labor

In short, the posts have focused on two things:

(a) your solution is far too vague and generic to be of any value. The market, the employment situation, the value of the company, the products being sold, and many other factors would drastically influence the decision.

(b) you appear to be baiting us, trying to convince us that eventually labor must be decreased in order to keep a business successful. I think the majority of respondents here would agree, but disagree that it must be the first and only choice, as you seem to purport.

You asked for a way to "fix" your OP, but I do not think it can be - the ethics and business decisions of a business are unique to that business, and cannot be genericized to the point that there is a universal right and wrong way to do things.

I really think your only way to 'fix' the OP is to do exactly what you find laughable:

Why? That's what the majority of respondents wanted. Fortunately and unfortunately, I think you'd find that we would all agree if you gave a very specific example of a real organization, in a recent time period, with a real product, and real budgetary information. No one wants to fire people, so I don't think you'd find any disagreement.

The only way we'll continue to disagree is if you continue to present this situation as a definitive case for "all business decisions eventually cause reductions in labor."

I have stated that there have been thoughtful responses.

I have responded to some of those responses with follow up questions.

I have responed to those who have criticized the premise of the post.

I have responded those critical of me.

I have apologized after it was pointed out that I was being an unfair and unreasonable.

I clearly stated that I had preconcieved notions.

I stated that I had an agenda.

I gave the question most perplexing to me.

I went where the post lead.

I drew conclusions as have you.

.. hmm.. yep.

So.........

.. let's go get a beer, then? :thumbsup:

I remember John Kerry and other Democrats having a fit over businesses moving operations to locations with lower labor costs, as I have participated in discussion here many have taken a similar stance (among other issues related to business I find confusing) while being willing to do the same if they had to, or doing nothing and letting the business suffer, it is this type of question I seek an understanding of, there are others. I have not gained any insight into that question.

At this point I assume I will never get any understanding. The beer sounds good.

I think if you were to look more closely, Kerry and other Dems were talking about outsourcing and moving American manufacturing, technology and other jobs (like "help desks") to low cost foreign labor markets.

But we can have a beer while we wait for someone in India to answer the call :)

This is a much more specific question. It's what you should have started with...


From my point of view, I don't have a problem with outsourcing, as long as the people being hired are being treated well and paid an amount that is reasonable to local standards and laws.

Outsourcing to India and even China (aside from the trade balance issue), to a lesser degree, maybe yes. In Vietnam and Mynmar and other less developed economies which are increasingly popular locations for outsourcing, probably not.

If I were going to outsource, I'd do so to Mexico - possibly outside Mexico City. As I understand it, they are better trained, there is less outsourcing competition, and it's a lot cheaper for me to fly there to keep an eye on things. Just don't drink the water.

Aha! Something to discuss! Thanks for coughing up the real issue, ace. NOW we can talk.

I'm pretty torn about outsourcing. I'm not against companies doing it per se, and I certainly understand the business motivation to do it. But it sure is rough on the local economy, to say nothing of the workers. Exporting jobs (and therefore dollars) isn't good for the economy on a macro level--though I admit, I'm not an economist, and there's likely much about it I don't know or misunderstand.

On a worker level, I was a computer programmer during the time when a LOT of programming work was being shipped to India. This was before the callcenter boom moved a bunch of CS and inbound sales positions there too. It was like a nuclear bomb went off in the IT world--suddenly your job was on the chopping block and who was going to fill your seat was some telecommuting Indian making 1/3 your salary. Scary times.

I agree, but the Businessweek article specifically compares Sam's inefficient low paid worker (high number of employees) plan to Costco's high paid more efficient worker (lower number of employees) plan. If both companies adopted the worker-centric approach the result would be many thousands of Sam's workers being laid off (or never hired in the first place) in order to pay the remainder more. This would be great for those who had the higher paid more efficient jobs.

Businessweek (Wall Street) is not concerned with the numbers of employed but is more focused on how much those who are employed are contributing to the bottom lilne. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. The only downside is the 30,000 or so who would have to go out and also find worker-centric companies to work for.