Waht are Things that are KILLING US Business?

[M.D. Holloway]

had a discussion with a VP at a steel mill today - he had some interesting things to say about what he thinks is killing business in the US. Here are some of the things, but I would like to hear what you guys think?

Whats killing US business is

1) Unions - too many sweet heart deals, too much in-fighting and too many grieveness's make it worthless.

2) Sexual harassment - anybody can claim it and it totally can distroy a mans/womans reputation at work.

3) Out-sourcing to sub-wage companies outside the US

4) Buying raw materials according to price and not performance or quality.

5) Ignoring the employees we have and trying to get the "silver bullet" to solve our problems.

6) Not listening to the folks who helped build the business.

7) Letting the medical benefits get out of control.

[BlueSkyJaunte]

You forgot:

0) China and the US's puppet government

Too many women in the workplace.

[M.D. Holloway]

nipples?

exactly

[red-beard]

ROFL!

[campbellcj]

IM and cell phones (for personal use) aren't helping productivity either

[dd74]

Lube: nipples?
Mark Wilson: exactly
red beard: ROFL

That has to be one of the single funniest, well-timed exchanges I've read on this board. It puts many Hollywood scripts to shame.

Hilarious!

Oh, and Lube, I agree with all 7 of the VP's assessments. How old is this guy? I guess mid-50s at the youngest. It sounds like he's seen his fair share of American business implosions.

[M.D. Holloway]

Early 60's, he rose through the ranks and got out in the hay-day. Now he magages a school districts bus fleet.

[yellowline]

Hmmm, maybe I won't major in business after all.

[dd74]

Originally posted by yellowline
Hmmm, maybe I won't major in business after all.

Yeah, but guys like who Lube is talking about are icons of better days. All personality, could pound back a few brews with you, and knew their job backwards, forwards and upside-down. America doesn't have guys like that anymore in the workplace.

I was telling someone the other day how lucky I was to work for the L.A. Times back when the Chandler family owned it. Talk about career guys who lived for their work and took unmitigated pride in the result.

The greatest part was some of the best writers and editors never went to college. Some barely finished high school.

[dd74]

Hey, Mike - did you ever get my long-winded reply to your question about your mother's work?

[alf]

Yes on Unions, that is the biggest welfare program in the world. Not so sure about China; it is good to have competition.

[HardDrive]

Unions.

I have to deal with folks from the local county IT department. Totally unionized. Their a bunch of lazy SOBs, and take great pleasure in bragging about how little work they do. They should be banned.

[StevoRocket]

"Waht are Things that are KILLING US Business?"


Spelling and capitalisation.


EDIT

I forgot - attention to detail and quality control!

[IROC]

I think it's the internet. I spend too much time on this board. :>)

Mike

[RoninLB]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by LubeMaster77

1) Unions - too many sweet heart deals, too much in-fighting and too many grieveness's make it worthless.
------- depends what business and how old the business and union is and specific to each other.. otherwise the unions have been in a serious decline for the past 20yrs. The old timer mfg are screwed as in auto mfg. US unions have traditionally been business friendly in this envelope relative to old Europe. Unions are trying to remodel to halt their declining political and economic power. So far their future seems to be in doubt over all.

2) Sexual harassment - anybody can claim it and it totally can distroy a mans/womans reputation at work.
-------- judicial activism aided by a press feeding reader interest social soap operas.

3) Out-sourcing to sub-wage companies outside the US
------- blue collar out-sourcing has never been a prob. The trickle of prof and white collar out-sourcing has the potential for a prob in the future.

4) Buying raw materials according to price and not performance or quality.
---------- the internet has fueled these markets by eliminating a delay of the middle man for real time auctions. You can still buy futures so I don't see the beef.. otherwise I don't get the "and not performance or quality" in a raw material such as copper or steel ?

5) Ignoring the employees we have and trying to get the "silver bullet" to solve our problems.
--------- internal management flows down hill and mgt politics is mgt politics. aslo competition is fierce in a global economy.

6) Not listening to the folks who helped build the business.
------- upper mgt decisions is part logical and part politics.

7) Letting the medical benefits get out of control.
-------- old school closed economy thinking is burdened with old school burdens of all sorts. GM is a good and often written about example. Otherwise medical costs involved in a inefficent cost model.

your bud missed a few things like gov't politicians making decisions concerning business, as if they understood it. Judicial power overpowering legislative. A flawed school system. A convoluted business tax system that's not world wide competitive. A flawed tax system discouraging capital formation. A Rep and Dem political system seeking short term votes over logical job formation and catering to the college crowd that listens and follows a socialist model or they risk bad press. Not to mention Sabrines-Oxley sic crippling medium size business growth and formation, congress of both stripes catering to protectionism which soaks the economy of jobs and capital. Etc. Etc.

[gaijindabe]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by RoninLB
[B]

Originally posted by LubeMaster77

Not to mention Sabrines-Oxley sic crippling medium size business growth and formation, congress of both stripes catering to protectionism which soaks the economy of jobs and capital. Etc. Etc.

This is new and this one hurts. A total waste of time for millions of workers. US productivity is taking a hit with this one...

[jyl]

I have a different perspective.

As far as I can see, US companies are currently doing very well. In almost every economic sector, list the largest, fastest-growing, most profitable companies, and you'll see that the great majority of them are US companies. I'm thinking of technology, finance, retailing, industrial, pharma, etc. Steel (where Lube's buddy works) is an obvious exception, but it is a minor economic sector.

At the level of small and medium-sized businesses, I think the US is much more dynamic than most other countries. I don't have numbers to prove this, but I believe far more entrepreneurs start more businesses here than in Europe or Japan.

Here's a quick and dirty way to check this.

Simply add up the capitalization of every region's stock market, converted into US dollars. The US markets are 47% of the global total, (Europe is 27%, Japan is 9%, Asia ex-Japan is 9%, and the rest of the world is 8%.) http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prSG00135805

The percentage of global stock market capitalization represented by the US is much higher than the US's share of global GDP - about 20% http://www.worldbank.org/data/databytopic/GDP_PPP.pdf - or of total population.

So collectively the world's investors are giving US companies a higher valuation relative to US economic output and to the US labor pool, which suggests that in aggregate US companies are extracting more output from their employees, more profit from their business, are better users of capital, and have higher growth - than companies in other regions.

This doesn't seem to me like US business being "killed".

My view, therefore, is that most of the things that the steel mill VP lists, or that Ronin listed, have not in fact been major impediments to US business. Some sound like general griping (damn politicians and wimmin - they should all let us real men get on with bizness), some sound like right-wing manifesto (damn judiciary - the judicial system in the US is more favorable to business than almost anywhere, just try to get a patent enforced in China or a dispute resolved in Japan). The others sound like problems that are becoming serious but so far haven't prevented US business from winning (health care, education).

(By the way, I know the above analysis is a bit indirect, and that we could simply look up the P/Es of the world's stock markets, or the aggregate profit margins and growth rates of each country's companies - but I'm at home and don't have access to the info.)

[kach22i]

30 years ago 35% of the voting public was in a union, today that number is down to 8%. The unions are not a major factor in anything anymore.

Time to pick on someone else.

I am a little shocked not to see anything on the "culture of greed" or more specifically the madness involved in obtaining/meeting quarterly profit goals and rosy projections for the stockholders.

Does anyone remember the accounting follies of Enron and MCI?