Free Republic

Aquarius’s new take on internal combustion engines will be the big leap forward that vehicles need, says company founder. The notoriously conservative car business – autos, after all, are still largely powered by the internal combustion engine, developed nearly 150 years ago – is in for big changes, according to Gal Fridman, chief marketing officer and co-founder of Aquarius Engines. “Our enhanced engine design uses energy much more efficiently, and eliminates the valves and rods that cause energy loss,” he said. “If a car equipped with a modern standard internal combustion engine can go about 600 kilometers on a tank...

Ride-on lawn mower manufacturer Cox Industries might only employ 60 people today from 160 a decade ago, and has suffered three break-even years because it hasn’t rained enough, but co-owner Ken McColl says the Australian economy still can’t afford businesses like his to disappear. “We have 400 separate suppliers, almost all of them local small businesses,” McColl tells BRW from Cox’s 20,000 sqm factory headquarters at Acacia Ridge, Queensland. “From the makers of a specialist washer, to the electricians and plumbers and maintenance people here at the factory. I’m not even counting our bank, insurer or sandwich shop around the...

?The crushing burden of government regulation plays a key role in the ongoing exodus of American jobs.Why are thousands of American jobs disappearing, only to reappear overseas? Since early 2001, the economy has shed nearly three million jobs, many of them well-paid positions in manufacturing and the hi-tech sector. Initial estimates from the Labor Department suggest that 15 percent of those jobs have materialized in low-wage countries such as China, India, Mexico and the Philippines. The Bush administration, parroting a refrain favored by many Establishment economists, insists that most of the job losses reflect dramatic increases in productivity. In other...