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Mtnjim
06-10-2009, 04:29 PM
Here's something from

years gone by, but is still relevant.



THE RACE

A Japanese company (Toyota)

and an American company (General Motors)
decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River Both teams practiced


long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.


On the big day, the Japanese won by a

mile.


The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate
the reason for the crushing

defeat. A management team made up of senior
management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.


Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person
steering, while the American team had 8

people steering and 1 person
rowing.


Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a


consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second
opinion. They advised, of course, that too

many people were steering the
boat, while not enough people were rowing.


Not sure of how to utilize that

information, but wanting to prevent
another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was


totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering
superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent

steering manager. They
also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person
rowing the boat

greater incentive to work harder. It was called the
'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners

and free
pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes
and other equipment, extra

vacation days for practices and bonuses.


The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the

American management laid off the rower for poor
performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles,

and
canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was
distributed to the Senior Executives

as bonuses and the next year's
racing team was out-sourced to India.


Sad, but oh so true! Here's

something else to think about: GM has
spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US,


claiming they can't make money paying American wages. Toyota has spent
the last thirty years building more than

a dozen plants inside the US.


The last quarter's results:

Toyota made $4 billion in profits while GM racked

up $9 billion in
losses.

The GM folks are still scratching their heads (and waiting for more
bailout

money.)


If this wasn't so sad, it might be funny! :POKE:

belgareth
06-10-2009, 07:34 PM
More relevent than ever. Thanks

for that.

DrSmellThis
06-27-2009, 11:57 PM
More

relevent than ever. Thanks for that.

Thanks. Jim. GM really screwed up over the decades. I have been

dealing with them all my life, as My family business depended heavily on them. Now we won't even take orders from

them, because they don't pay their bills on time, and haven't for a while. I hope the industry learns from their

mistakes. The last thing we need to do is throw more good money after bad; and I am saying this despite the fact

that I might personally benefit from GM's renewed success. Yes, the auto industry is important to the US. But we

need to support something "sustainable" (interesting new economic buzzword) to avoid pissing away

preecious tax dollars.

Oh BTW, I am no longer capable of using any formatting whatsoever as I type. Maybe

Love-Scent doesn't like my browser, or Firefox has revised itself to be incompatible? More and more websites seem

to require IE. Sorry. I normally like myposts to be well organized, but that is now impossible unless I figure it

out.

Mtnjim
07-09-2009, 09:43 AM
Hey DST,

It's not

Firefox, I posted this using FF.

belgareth
07-27-2009, 02:17 PM
Is this how

Socialism Works? Is this what Obama, Gates, and that "Racist" cop are going to talking about?

Let's suppose

that a group of 10 graduate students regularly go out to a pub for beer, and the tab for the 10 comes to $100 total.

If they pay for their bill the way Americans pay for our taxes (based on our so-called "progressive" tax system),

the breakout would be like this:



The first 4 people (the poorest) pay nothing. They get to drink for

free.

The fifth pays $1

The sixth pays $3

The seventh pays $7

The eighth pays $12

The ninth pays

$18

The tenth person (the richest) pays $59.



Being good friends and liberal progressives, that's what

they all agree to do. It seems only fair that each person should pay what they can afford to pay, remembering the

old adage they learned in school: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" (Karl

Marx).



Every few days, the 10 good friends would meet up in the pub and would pay up as agreed

upon.



Then one day, the proprietor gave them a deal. "Since you are such good customers, from now on", he

said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your tab by $20. You can just pay me $80!"



Everyone wanted to

continue to pay their bill just the same way as they had before. So the first four people (the poorest) are

unaffected. They continue to get to drink for free.



But what about the remaining 6 people? How should they

split up the unexpected $20 savings "windfall" so that everyone would get "his fair share"? They figured that $20

shared by 6 comes out to $3.33 each. But if they simply subtracted that amount from each of the 6 paying friends,

then person #5 and person #6 would actually be paid to have their beers since person #5 only paid $1 anyway and

person #6 only paid $3!



What to do?



The pub owner came to their rescue. He suggested that each

person's bill should be reduced by roughly the same amount, and he used his calculator to work out what that should

be:



Persons 1-4 continue to get to drink for free

The fifth person, like the first four, now pays nothing

and drinks for free (100% savings!)

The sixth pays just $2 instead of the original $3 (33% savings!)

The

seventh pays just $5 instead of the original $7 (28% savings!)

The eighth pays just $9 instead of the original

$12 (25% savings!)

The ninth pays just $15 instead of the original $18 (17% savings!)

The tenth pays just $49

instead of the original $59 (16% savings!)



All 6 friends were better off then before. And their first four

buddies continued to drink for free, because they didn't have a lot of money.



They all felt pretty good

about it.



After they thanked the pub owner and left to walk back to campus, they began to compare their

savings under this new deal.



The sixth person was very quiet, though. Finally he blurted out. "You know,

splitting up the bill that way wasn't fair! I only got a dollar out of that $20 we all saved, and yet (he pointed

to the tenth person) he got $10!"



"Hey, you're right", shouted the seventh person. "I got cheated too. I

only saved 2 dollars. It's unfair that he got back 5 times more than me!"



"Damn it! I've been ripped off

too", yelled the eighth. "Why should he get back $10 when I got back only $3. The wealthy get all the

breaks!"



"Wait a minute", screamed friends one through four. "We didn't get anything at all! The system

exploits the poor!"



The first nine people surrounded the tenth person and beat him up.



The next day,

tempers had cooled down and the nine friends showed back up at the pub. They were sorry for what they had done and

they wanted to apologize to their tenth friend.



But the tenth person didn't show up for drinks. So the nine

proceeded to drink without him.



When it came time to pay the tab, they discovered that they had a problem.

They didn't have enough money among all nine of them to pay for even half of the bill!



"And that, boys and

girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works", says Professor Kamershen. "The people who

pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy,

and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat

friendlier."