Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Wyatt's Torch
"A "good thing" as in companies can no longer charge prices high enough to support their cost base so they cut costs (read - layoffs). That kind of a good thing?"

You mean, is it good that Intel cuts the price of their computer chips every year? Yes. Is it a good thing that long distance and cell phone service gets cheaper every year? Yes.

Lowering prices is often a function of reducing one's own internal costs via productivity enhancements. That's just as true for the Intel's and Texas Instruments of the world as it is for American farmers, who buy better machinery that allows them to farm more land, faster, better, and cheaper than low-wage hand-hoers in Third-World countries.

It pays to become more efficient. Of course, there will always be a few Luddites who lament the demise of the cotton-picking jobs, but most educated men will eventually realize that all involved are better off when the machines multiply the labor of men.

To wit: my father went on a business trip to India some decades ago. He saw 1000 men digging a ditch with shovels and he pointed out to the supervisor that one man in a bull dozer could do taht work faster, better, and cheaper.

So the supervisor took my dad to another location where several hundred Indians were pounding rocks into powder for cement, using hammers.

Why are you showing me this nonsense, asked my dad. Because this is how we make sure that everyone has a job, replied the supervisor.

Laughing, my dad then told him that if he really wanted to employ more Indians, then he should replace the shovels with spoons and ban the hammers altogether. After all, we wouldn't want the men to be more efficient, right?!

Sadly, even in America we still have a few uneducated holdouts who think that improving efficiency is a bad thing. Don't let prices drop, they plead. Why, those cotton pickers/rock crushers/ ditch diggers might get laid off, they cry!

31 posted on 11/06/2002 12:18:18 PM PST by Southack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 22 | View Replies ]


To: Southack
This is not about the normal decreases in prices due to inefficiency and obsolescence (i.e. the high-tech industry). This is about getting people to buy your goods and part with their hard earned dollars. Why have the automobile companies been running 0% financing for 2 years now? Why is the real estate market softening? Why is the market refusing to go back up? It is all about finding the right price level.

BTW, what have INTL's revenues done over the past few years? Until Intel

38 posted on 11/06/2002 12:28:29 PM PST by Wyatt's Torch
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 31 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson