On Thu, 2005-03-10 at 20:41 -0500, Steven Buehler wrote:
> And the American family is paying a heavy price in the form of
> workaholics and busted families and a significantly diminished sense of
> community than there was just 15-20 years ago. I don't even know the
> people who live next door to me. Americans get an average of 18 days
> of vacation per year, compared to an average of 25 days in Europe.
> Americans, in general, might be working longer hours and being more
> productive, but they are burning themselves out in the process compared
> to our Asian and European counterparts.
We're largely to blame for that, because we brought the lawyers. Then
companies brought their lawyers and ... guess what? You shouldn't trust
your employer, period.
It's a hard lesson I've learned. I'm 2,400 miles away from my wife
right now, trust me, I've seen it all. I don't accept contracts I don't
like, and I don't take "no" for an answer the 100th time. And if
companies think they have leverage over me, they quickly realize I
didn't need the position, and then those people have to answer to the
executives. ;->
> Actually, the reason "made in Japan" has not been as much of a
> laughingstock as it used to be was because of an American, I believe it
> was Peter Drucker. His ideas about quality control were not accepted
> in the U.S., so he took them to Japan, and they were all ears. They
> even have an award every year in his name.
Dude, you're talking to a gentlemen who has an engineering degree and
did reports on this stuff in my microeconomics and technical management
courses. ;-> So trust me, I know _all_ about this.
But the Japanese have dropped in favor over the last decade, largely
because the "quality" has changed. You're still living in the '80s, the
Japanese are not the same anymore as they were in the late '80s.
They've gone from cheap labor to more costly labor as of '85, and the
management and efficiency has tanked to.
The result has been a steady decline. Too many people are still
believing in Japanese cars because of their past quality. The resale
value is all that is left because people are putting blind faith.
You're better off buying a late '80s Toyota because it'll outlast that
late model one on the lot. ;->
> I was just looking at Consumer Reports...their top rated car in terms
> of reliability was a Korean car (the Hyundai Sonata).
Korean != Japanese. Don't make that mistake. ;->
> While the U.S. makes are improving, they're nowhere near the top yet.
> Chrysler uses Hyundai engines in at least one of their vehicle lines.
Depends on what car. My 70% American assembled Mazda B2300 (with a Ford
VIN number no less, because it's a Ranger with a different front design)
is a mis-mesh of countless Western, Far Eastern and other parts.
It ranked extremely high in a Consumer Reports review -- and exactly the
same as the Ford model it is a 1:1 version of. The whole concept that
Japanese is different than American these days is pretty much gone.
And as you mentioned, same deal with Korean, Tawanese, etc...
To get back to IT, people think India is the place to go. Not!
It's Ireland, Israel and a few others. India has gotten to be too
expensive for too little value for outsourcing.
> Companies really don't take care of you anymore. It used to be that
> you could spend your entire career (30-40 years) at a single company,
> retire, and live off your pension for what life you had left. That
> doesn't happen anymore. A statistic put out a couple of years ago
> suggests that the typical individual will change careers five times
> during their working years. Not jobs, *CAREERS*. Delphi, the auto
> parts and systems maker, just announced that they were terminating
> company-paid health and welfare benefits for future retirees as a
> cost-saving measure (something like $500 million).
But what do you want to do, have the government be a safety net?
That just removes choice and, worse yet, penalizes those who _do_ take
care of themselves.
Reality: No one is going to take care of you but you.
Especially as the Baby Boomers retire, Gen-X won't be able to take it.
I plan on taking care of both of my Baby Boomer parents, as a son
should.
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org ---------------------------------------------------------------- Community software is all about choice, choice of technology. Unfortunately, too many Linux advocates port over the so-called "choice" from the commercial software world, brand name marketing. The result is false assumptions, failure to focus on the real technical similarities, but loyalty to blind vendor alignments.
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