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What Happens When A Company, Or An Economy, Can’t Squeeze Any More Juice Out Of The Lemon
Submitted by Erico Tavares of Sinclair & Co.
Presented here is a simple framework that can help us analyze the impact of certain policies in our companies and economies. This is Part 1, in the forthcoming Part 2, perhaps the most interesting one, this framework will be used to show why the Keynesian approach will deliver very little results in western economies
Optimizing Economic Performance – Part 1
- Squeezing the Lemon
We began our professional career at General Electric when it was still under the leadership of the legendary Jack Welch. At that point he was ramping up the implementation of Six Sigma, a systematic approach to improve and manage key company processes in order to reduce errors and inefficiencies, across the entire organization.
This was a bold move given the size of the company, but Welch astutely realized that this approach could deliver radical benefits to an organization that had been in operation for over a century. There was always more juice that could be squeezed out of that lemon. And that’s exactly what happened across many of the company’s businesses and divisions (we did our bit and even earned a green belt in the process).
What really impressed us at such an early stage of our “real work experience” is that a business is all about processes (when we moved to investment banking later on, it all became about faxes at midnight!). It's an obvious statement really, but it’s only when you are fully enmeshed in fixing communication breakdowns, file corruptions, server and IT failures, document losses and customer complaints that you can really appreciate it.
Improvements typically don’t work in a linear fashion, but more like shown in the following graph:
What is being described here is how much effort we need to exert in order to achieve a certain level of improvement (time in this context is an unnecessary complication, so we assume everything happens instantaneously), and this largely depends on where we are in that curve:
- At the outset, a large number of opportunities for improvement can be achieved with relatively little effort. This is called the “low hanging fruit” and it’s a good analogy. You can easily pick up those fruits without having to use a ladder, which requires much more effort for the same result;
- After that you can reach an acceleration stage, as you become more knowledgeable of the process, can execute it faster and even improve it further;
- Of course trees don’t grow to the sky. At some point to sustain additional improvements more and more effort is required. Think of this as squeezing harder to get those last drops of a lemon – just like Welch (although he also found many new lemons). As a result the curve starts to flatten, and it can even turn down beyond a certain point (like you pushed the engine too hard and now it’s broken).
what is interesting is that this graph can be applied not only to a company but to the entire economy – which is nothing more than an agglomeration of all the processes undertaken by economic agents. It provides a simple yet very intuitive and powerful framework that we can use to conceptualize a number of economic policies and events.
In fact, the more we think about it, the less the classical division between microeconomics (which studies the behavior of individuals and production entities) and macroeconomics (which deals with the performance of the economy as a whole and not its individual markets and components) makes any sense - certainly not in the 21st century.
And in our view it is this disconnect between the two that is at the heart of the failure of Keynesian economics – which at best is incomplete and at worst is all just baloney. You might disagree given the pedestal on which John Maynard Keynes was placed by academia and government, but please bear with us throughout these series. It never hurts to get a different perspective (although the truth might…).
OK, so what happens when a company or an economy can’t squeeze any more juice out of the lemon? Is it doom and gloom?
Not necessarily! They can still function with much less growth, as long as the cash inflows can sustain the outflows. But there is a pathway towards continued improvement and hopefully new growth… through INNOVATION! This is what has sustained Mankind’s relentless march towards seven billion people on this planet today. Eat your heart out Malthus!
When innovation is mentioned images of robots and computers immediately spring to mind. These can certainly be a part of it, but there is a multitude of other interrelated areas to consider. Many companies in the 1980s found little to no improvement after introducing robots in their production lines. Why? Because they were still repeating the same mistakes, only now the machines were repeating them faster.
So what other things can also be regarded as innovation? Plenty – as far as the human imagination can reach in fact. Here are just a few (more mundane) examples:
- Better management practices. At GE many improvements were made just by managers encouraging people to think about their own business processes, even without getting into all the sophistication of Six Sigma. That's the power of a spotlight. And the whole initiative was further cemented by tying it to executive compensation. Good management can make a real difference.
- Better educating and training. The more skills you bring to your job, the more effective you can be (provided they are relevant of course). For instance, learning how to really take advantage of Microsoft Office can help you automate a number of menial tasks and give you more time to do better things (we are certainly not advertising Microsoft here, but we speak from experience after almost going insane on a project if it weren’t for Excel macros).
- Better logistics. Amazon is testing the use of drones, which could significantly reduce total logistical costs per mile. And you can also reduce the number of miles by relocating production and distribution centers, which Amazon already did. In some countries (like Brazil) there is still a lot of juice left in that lemon, and country and financial risks aside these tend to make the most profitable infrastructure projects.
- Better process reengineering. Henry Ford did not add robots to the assembly line (OK, they did not exist back then). But he radically transformed how automobiles were manufactured. Rather than having each worker focus on a certain part of the car, he made them specialize on very narrow assembly tasks along a production line streaming around the shop floor. And the increase in both productivity and the bottom line was massive – so much that he could afford to pay his employees much more to compensate them for all the mind numbing repetition.
You have probably heard the story about NASA spending millions to invent a pen that would write in Space, whereas the Soviets merely used a pencil. This is just a myth, but it illustrates the point that you don’t need to be super fancy to innovate; often the simple solutions work best.
Let’s go back to our graph and see what happens once innovation gets in the picture:
Finding new and better ways of doing things shifts the curve upwards, so that we can achieve more with the same or even less effort. Again, this is applicable not only to our companies but also to our economy as a whole (and even to our own individual skills and competences, but that’s getting a bit deep…).
These improvements can significantly add to our wealth and well-being. A worker in an advanced economy can produce an abundance of cars leveraging all the technology and infrastructure at her disposal. With that extra time she can go to a movie, dinner with friends, bicycle ride and so forth – all of which contribute to more economic activity elsewhere. She can also learn new skills that will make her even more productive at work and therefore more valuable. It’s all part of that acceleration in the curve.
In contrast, the reality of millions of people in developing countries can unfortunately be very different. Many spend a considerable amount of time just to pick up water. Imagine if you had to spend more than four hours a day just to pick a bottle of (dirty) water; what would that do to your productivity? Much more time is also robbed by lying in bed fighting diseases, many of them preventable using modern medicine. This leaves precious little time and opportunity for work or study – basically to break away from that vicious cycle of poverty and economic underachievement.
On the flipside, there is an abundance of low hanging fruit opportunities in these developing nations, where even the most modest of improvements (like buying a bicycle) can generate a huge return. No wonder their growth prospects remain so compelling. The outlook for developed nations in this regard is much less rosy, which is a big part of the reason why our governments and central banks have become even more interventionist in the economy.
In Part 2 we will look at this important economic reality in more detail and use our framework to assess if more government intervention can boost our fortunes in a durable manner.
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The people running the show think and act like a fucking contagious disease.
Growth is not the meaning of life, unless you are selling debt.
Pretty sure the only problem with the "Keynesian" model is that it completely ignores fully half of Keyne's actual economic model.
The second you borrow outside of a recession you've broken his model - whether that be for government or private spending.
Which, of course, means that under Keyne's model, government borrowing their currency from private banks, at interest, should be impossible. He was more Austrian than his name has been given credit for.
just take out a loan for more lemons
http://www.philiacband.com/propaganda.html
Job Situation - http://www.dailyjobcuts.com
They already squeezed what they could
How's this for a squeezed out lemon: SNAP and EBT cards down across the country. Beta test? Next month is going to be one for the ages.https://downdetector.com/status/snap-ebt
Well, the only thing left after squeezed to a pulp, is nothing more than a useless bitter rind.
"In some countries (like Brazil) there is still a lot of juice left in that lemon, and country and financial risks aside these tend to make the most profitable infrastructure projects."
What I have in mind for Brazil and Argentina is not merely a lemon squeezing, but a stint inside a blender.
What's green and yellow and red and goes a hundred miles per hour?
Brazil inside a blender getting turned into a productive, modern nation-state.
No thread about sqeezing lemons can be complete without this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDN45bUQZWY
Much better version here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyhu2ysqKGk
Cut to the chase:
https://youtu.be/Zyhu2ysqKGk?t=4m4s Bankers squeezing their lemons till the juice runs down our backs.
See there! We always knew trickle down works!
Which brings us to 'what is, and what should never be"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzK0pYJbfKg
I've seen business's optimize themselves to death because they wouldn't understand the difference between cleaning up the house and burning it down. I've been watching the various old line tech companies fire their experienced engineers and programmers and hire code monkeys fresh out of college and H-1B's and then not understand why they can't compete.......
Takes a very special type of MBA to drive things into the dirt.
Growth is absolutely necessary because - Inflation.
growth because of intrest on debt---fixed it for ya----
Inflation and debt are two sides of the same coin.
thank you for bonking the knee jerkers who only salivate like pavlovian bred at the word Austrian, barking ecstatic "Sieg Heil"-- ignoring Midas's old disease.
Keynes understood how to use an accelerator and a brake.
You could sell him a Model T and know he could use it both on the hill climb as in the vale descent.
The AUstrians know how descend in free wheel but don't know how to climb in the fog. That's cos they haven't learned the trick of modern climbing. In the fog they hog their gold and the world stops like in depression which leads to awesome social repression. All the while the Austrians say : "Its OK; our Oligarchs will save us once those low brows are all dead!"-- Midas, you miserly gold hoarder and herd thinning, cold hearted psychopath !
Not saying the US Oligarchs, fed on Friedmanite rage to fester this financialized electronic maze, are now correct to sing "calling Neo-Keynesian print to infinity to save our asses."
No siree, that ain't Keynesian methods; its just "may the devil take the hindmost" brazen scamming. When the house catches fire you run off with everybody else's wealth.
Midas's sons all the way.
o/o/c - which Austrian school economics texts have you perused?
He learned it from reading Keynes, no doubt.
wow,,, how innovative!
Would be more accurate to say that you haven't learned by not reading Keynes, but you're good at barking, just as the OP posited.
Keynes understood how to use an accelerator and a brake. You could sell him a Model T and know he could use it both on the hill climb as in the vale descent.
That was the theory; but it can't work in practice. Government institutions don't produce wealth, they consume it. The Model T in your metaphor would soon run out of gas.
Yup, to prove your point is head down feet up in reality, lets just look at the period which covers the 40s 50s upto mid 60s.
The world and the USA followed Keynesian logic, apart from the Bancor (and that was for POLITICAL reasons not economic).
How did that work out for the US economy inspite of huge marginal tax rates?
It worked out pretty well and only went belly up 'cos Bancor had been replaced by...."exorbitant privilege"...remember that? That dislocation of overspend occurred in Nam war and great society spend.
So in REALITY, not in theory, how did Keynes's system--athough bastardised by Dexter in USD hegemony--work??
It worked better than the shit storm that has grown ever since we revoked BW and became Friedman's goats to be milked by "our money other people's debt" sleight of hand!
Why don't you recoginse that?
What REAGANOMICS has done is not Keynes. Its Friedman's logic but pumped toxic squared.
And..once the shit hit the fan in 2008 its only been one thing : print print print.
Now you can call it what you like but it ain't Keynesian economics.
Having said that at ZH, words don't have any sense; Monetarist print is Keynesian and Olgarchy big capital is SOCIALISM.
I can't argue with such blatant trollism.
Now now FP, you might want to retry that American experiment in a world which was not recently flattened by WWII; it's all roses when you're the only shop in town.
Complete agreement on those practictioners of Friedman's voodoo though and the empty-headed drivel to which you dared respond as well as the futility of attempting to fill such a void.
But the government isn't supposed to consume anything, in Keyne's model.
They are supposed to be completely hands off in the boom, and then borrow to spend on public works (and only public works), employing people who have lost work during the bust cycle.
The real problem is that we made 90% of people obsolete for the workforce in the 70s. So we promoted desk job as "desirable" and offered stupid levels of salaries for them and demeaned those 10% of positions (and people) the country actually needed to run - those who still know how to build things.
The desk jobs were a requirement before computers. People were required to keep track of the flows. To organize the flows.
And you leave out the value of management. And the engineers.
You forgot the sarc tags.
You're making a ludicrous argument, unless governments are not responsible for defense of the realm or are expected to make guns from butter rather than metals.
The real refutation of your foe would be to point out that the government partners with industry and is often made up from the same humans who once toiled in same; how can the same people be productive in one endeavour yet unproductive in another?
Boosting aggregate demand with debt-fueled patronage of the unemployed masses may work for awhile, but how, pray tell, do they transition from this role without again creating the unemployed and what could the possibly commission that won't have some effect on the resources then used? It's no secret Keynes had to dig to the bottom of a well to find an apt metaphor.
It may not work. Keyne's model presumes that the government investiature in public works will keep people employed while businesses go bust, and then new start-ups which have better business models will eventually pick up the workforce.
It might not work. It might do exactly as you say. But it's a damn sight foolish to refuse to try something different because it might only be marginally better than what we have now.
I don't know much, bu tI think you're right.
What passes for Keynesianism now might be better called Krugmania.
Even hipsters like P-Krug would agree that $700B to the criminals is less in service of the economy than $700B to those indebted to them, but if you follow the trail of the building of that debt back, you will find yourself holding a string attached to the very monetarists who insisted that deregulation, financialization, and squeezing the working class into higher productivity for less or equal pay was the way to go.
Then you get to chew on the bittern skin....lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is....etc...
But the real story here, from a marginally different p-erspective, is the clash of Supply Side Vs. Demand side economics...
Just in Time, Hyper financialization, Advertising over-load, 90% off sales.....all symptoms of the dying supply side, deficit funded madness...
Demand side designs coming...a new way to thinking about why we do what we do and how we do it...
About time...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjmWeypvoQg
I didn't understand what you wrote, but I up voted you anyway. It sounds really good.
And when that's done, you use the biomasses for further extraction; throw another peasant on the fire, won't you darling?
Re "On the flipside, there is an abundance of low hanging fruit opportunities in these developing nations..."
Developing? What country is "developing"? China? Sh*t, man, the USA was looted over the past 25 years, the factories shut down, and moved there.
What is left to develop in China, or steal from the USA?
I'll tell you the real lowhanging NUTZ in developing countries and where that thought really comes from...
In India as an example, the average person (salaried) pays 12-18% interest to buy homes, cars, white goods and the like....
12-18% down to 1-2% is a LONG way to fall.
Nowadays an inclusive economy is one where everyone can BANK their money, so it can be stolen later...
So yes, via said financialization will come the concominant increase in the sales of all things shitty and not-needed, cheap chinese crap FTW..
Fiat driven opportunities abound...
The problem with Keynesian is the money multiplier...there save you a word count of 1,000 words.
And, the problem with the "Money Multiplier" is that: It Is A FICTION.
GE's Six-Sigma religion also focused upon cost transfer, moving internal costs/risks to external suppliers. As many BK "suppliers" generated as WMT.
- Ned
Very astute observation. Same shit here.
The world famous flop, the Tata Nano micro car was an exercise in Vendor Hammering by Tata to get obscene pricing.
POS it is anyways...
Here's a ittle quote about GE:
"General Electric Co. plans to exit the bulk of its lending business, including a $26.5 billion sale of most of its real estate, as Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt refocuses the company on its industrial roots.
In the broadest restructuring since the GE Capital unit destabilized its parent during the 2008-09 financial crisis, GE plans to unload its middle-market lending business and consumer platforms while keeping only the operations that support its manufacturing arms. Potential buyers have made a “significant amount” of inquiries, GE Capital CEO Keith Sherin said."
You can squeeze and squeeze... until the juice runs down your leg, but then you'll fall out of bed. GE did. Usurious motherfuckers. And their appliances suck.
Let's see, in September '08, GE Capital a) couldn't meet the total company payroll and b) blew up so much that GE is still paying no taxes on the tax-loss-carry-forward scheme. Snowflake to the rescue! And Buffett bent Immelt over the table with his $5BB "short term investment."
I guess bankruptcy is kinda' destabilizing. And GE was already on its ass recovering from the $9BB +/- replenishment of GE Re's capital when they were sold to Swiss Re. (Barrons had the humorous story and the roflmao retort from Immelt and Welch)
Result:
and on the GE appliance quality issue, you sir are missing the point. GE's market for those appliances is the McMansion builders, not the end users. Six Sigma (and lean) optimized the design to work within the warranty period (3 years - 0 months + 3 months) to get a low cost line that met e.g. Toll Broz warranty on the house.
- Ned
{above from guys I've known for decades and stories in Barrons}
You can squeeze and squeeze... until the juice runs down your leg, but then you'll fall out of bed. GE did. Usurious motherfuckers. And their appliances suck.
As for their Nuclear Power Plants, they are outright Insanely Dangerous with Spent Fuel Cooling Pools located up off the floor in the Reactor Rooms. Sorry Fukishima, I guess they just plain Oooopssss'd that one!
Speaking of the Tata building a POS, here's the crash test video. The fun starts at about 2:00:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZhcsnUBJxo
Beats the Chinese though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPsRbIAvDDs
That'll leave a mark...
Six Sigma is nothing more than Industrial Engineering for RETARDS (and/or stuggle with basic arithmatic).
But this little gem speaks volumes as to their absolute fucking ignorance of finance and investment banking-
If one doesn't understand how applied industrial engineering has transformed banking and investment banking (as well as corporate finance generally) over the past decades, then they really should not be writing such articles.
In short- it's how we got here, where TPTB can rule over everyone with impunity.
Where loan origination and Markov-chain text generators meet.
What happens when WMT is CRG? And then RBT? It ends up TFM.
When all else fails you just lie, or use planned obsolescence. It's been going on for a long time.
"Growth" OR "Improve your condition"
I' focus on improving our condition. ( I say our because I know full well, by acting in my own self interest, I'll help improve socitity as a whole)
There is a limit to how much people can or want to learn. Almost nobody has 2 Ph. D.s, for example. That means it is easier for EMs to catch up to DMs than it is for DMs to advance further. That is the key to China and Korea's success. Added productivity from training/education has limits.
i get your point, but your example rings a little hollow. in my experience a PhD is a detriment to productivity and efficiency. maybe there is some innovation advantage frome time to time.
They start eating their own.
"Because that's where the money is"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willie_Sutton
Answer - The tax base collapses and the currency collapses.
Keynesian economists are completely unable to tell whether work is productive, or investment is productive. They have absolutely no way of knowing, when money is injected into an economy, if the money will have a good effect or not. That is why people like Krugman keep insisting the answer is more debt - the Gopvernment should inject MORE money into the economy. Keynesians blindly assume that all money that is put into an economy must serve a good purpose and produce useful results. They honestly have no idea about how to measure or describe real "productive work". It does not exist in their theories at all. America made an enormous mistake when it put Keynesians in charge of monetary policy.
The biggest problem with economists and government is that they both think the economy is manageable. Ergo, they see themselves as having a duty to manage it, whether for their own good, the good of the rich, or the good of us all. All efforts at management require the managers to make some assumptions. Keynsian theory assumes that government money spent during recessions will be applied to projects that will prove over time to represent a fine return on the capital invested. If you asked Keynes, I doubt he would approve of increased government spending if it involved paying somebody to dig a large hole, then fill it up, dig it again, fill it up, ad infinitum, just to pump money into the economy.
But you certainly do have to seriously question the assumption that the government will choose the very best projects to fund with that borrowed money during recessions, or, for that matter, the assumption that, if it ever happened, that the government would wisely apply the revenue from increased taxes during boom times.
Classical economists assume that, in the private sector, the natural human inclination to greed and self-interest will, in a market economy, make everybody work their asses off to get ahead, which will in theory result in maximum production and the lowest possible prices, which benefits us all.
Somewhat oddly, that same assumption is not applied to the people who run the government. They will supposedly make decisions on purely utilitarian grounds, eschewing their own self-interest. If we have learned anything, it is that such an assumption is pure garbage. Politicians and bureaucrats are like everybody else, scrambling to get ahead in the game of life and first and always looking after #1 when push comes to shove.
I would amend your conclusion to read that America, or any nation, makes an enormous mistake when it puts anybody in charge of monetary policy. No matter who they are, or what economic school of thought they profess to follow, in the end they will decide to do what is best for them, then explain that it is sound economic policy based upon whatever school of economic thought best suits their agenda.
To put anybody in charge of monetary policy is akin to putting a collar on your own neck and the leash in their hands.
"The knowledge problem" was posited by some economist or other who excoriated central planning and central planning theory. Might be a good moment to post the rap video featuring Hayek and Keynes.
What happens? Your kids get arrested for trying to sell lemonade in a roadside stand.
THE END
When life hands you lemons, squeeze them over lobster.
What's the good of producing something when the Worker who makes it cannot afford to buy it?
that may be a symptom of squeezing the lemon too hard and the curve is trending downward along with our standard of living.
i'm guessing making charts and kissing jack welch's ass paid pretty well.
Fake it til ya make it! USA! USA! USA!
your avatar: samuel jackson, whitney huston, geico caveman? my eyes are getting bad being on ZH everyday
Sam Jackson/Bob Ross. Paintin' those pretty little motherfuckin' trees!
Innovation.... It's the one thing that corporations and their socialist regimes kill quickest.
Well, at least you are half correct. Gubmint destroys innovation by taxing/regulating it to death. Corporations do the vast majority of innovation today because much of high tech innovation is so capital intensive. See Intel, Apple, Samsung, Tesla, IBM, Atmel, Actel, Amgen, and on and on...
Most of these corporations seem to be using their capital for stock buybacks. As for R&D, it is usually for government prosecuting wars or persecuting citizens. Yes,,, much innovation there.
Yes, buybacks are a recent trend.
You should read up on innovation budgets then get back to me. I know that you love shouting about THOSE DAMN WARS(!!!!!) but that's not where biotech/tech innovation research is focused.
Yes... much innovation.
"Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell".
Edward Abbey
Stalin and Mao were the best lemon squeezers of modern times. When millions die of starvation, you know they have nothing left to squeeze.
I watched big biz squeeze the lemon by moving over seas or laying off employees or hiring illegal aliens. I wondered how much more they could squeeze the top line up. Then they shoved all their pension funds on to the Government and I thought that was all they could do. Then I watched in amazement as they then destroyed the economy to have the Gov. bail them out with free money. I don't even want to contemplate what they will do next.
Buy back stock with borrowed money and leave the small retail investor on the hook while they retire to the beach front home.
If you (entire country) would insist on buying made in the USA, by legal labor, products would be made in the USA by legal labor. Pretty simple, really. But most insist on the cheapest price for the best product not caring where it is made. Start paying $100 for the USA toaster that can be had for $20 and the manufacturing jobs come back. The vast majority will refuse to do so then complain about jobs going overseas.
No, it's not 'pretty simple'. Desirable? Yes.
There exists in place, an entire 'economy' of Regulatory Hell, that has been created over DECADES, that precludes the 'pretty simple' solution for the average consumer. Much like the IRS, who, if were to be done away with, would literally unemploy millions of people, the Regulatory machine, if rolled back to actually return the ability of the business owner to again make quality made American products at competitive price points, would immediately unemploy millions of people - both in the government AND private sector. This is NOT a 'small' problem... And in today's Bizarro-world of Control-Freaks, bringing back what you suggest only happens AFTER a complete and utter economic Collapse.
I don't disagree with most of what you said but, yes, it is simple. If you want manufacturing jobs back in the US as much as possible, no matter what the price, buy made in USA. It will be made in the USA.
With the $80 left over I can buy some ammunition. Give me the $20 toaster and while you are at it get the government off the back of industry. Maybe then American would only cost $25 and then the price differential might be worth it. $75 ammo and $25 made in America toaster. I could live with that.
that $80 difference is all being sucked up by the murdering thieves that call themselves government.
Sat at a stop sign behind a girl in a porsche with a license plate that read, "MYDREAM" and thought how screwed up we are.
Here we are sitting on 350k tons of spent nuclear rods sitting in over loaded swimming pools that will have to sit there for 100 thoudand years. Rivers and lake so polluted with heavy metals that you either cant eat the fish or should only eat 1 per week.
Diseased and polluted ocean full of dead coral and killer bacteria from global warming.
Failing antibiotics and spreading resistant diseases that havent been heard from in 500 years.
Cancer from GMO foods speading like wildfire.
Guys who think they are girls and girls who think they are guys considered normal and part of the new educational system forced upon our children.
Unsustanable debt from the moment your born till well after your death.
And a future for our children that is nothing short of swimming in a cesspool of debt, bumper to bumper idle traffic and killer cops shooting at anything that moves.
And all the sheep can do is dream about a car.
"WE" or rather "YOU" are done! Put a fork in yourself.
The crash from the national debt with an ensuing depression will kill many more people off than GMO or spent nooookular fuel rods. When supply chains dry up, beta blockers and other medication will go bye bye and people will literally stroke out. Population control is coming one way or another.
But the enviro freakout needs to stop. Enough already! It's neither based in science nor is it accurate. It's all about pushing an agenda of equalization, collectivism and redistribution and it's disengenous. More importantly, it distracts from discussions on real problems. Envirowhackoism has become a GD religion.
+1000
If the systems supporting their cooling breaks down, spent nooookular fuelvrods will kill everyone.
Running in circles screaming now...
</s>
"dream about a car?"
No. Was she hot?
How did her ass look as she got out of the car?
</s>
lovin it!
Damn, I followed this German girl's ass about 2 Km down the street. Her jeans hung just right and those ass cheeks were.....unbelieveable. I got a dirty look from her boyfriend, so I hauled ass, but I got photos.
I suspect the radioactivity is the culprit in the extinction of sea life.
There was a prophecy in Revelations that at the end times 1/3 of the ocean would die.
Well, John, writing at Patmos, may have been right...
If you are a big enough lemon/company it doesn't matter if there is nothing left to squeeze.
'Ol uncle Sammy will step in and hand you "free" bucks and tell the taxpayer to bend over and fuck off.
The taxpayer responds by saying...Please sir can I have some more.
Welch was as sociopathic as they come. Guess that is what makes a man great in America. I've always wondered if there's any connection between Welch's quick rise in GE to accomplishing the Springer Tungsten Facility in northwestern Nevada, where the General Electric Company built a 1,000 tpd underground mine and mill facility in the early 1980's for its sole domestic supply of tungsten. Springer operated for less than a year when it was shut down due to depressed tungsten prices stemming from China's aggressive selling into the market. Remember the gold-plated tungsten discovered and later China requiring ALL gold it buys to be purer than London Delivery Bars. Obviously I have NO proof. Just wondering how Welch became the youngest GE chairman ever.
When he retired from GE he took a severance payment of $417 million, the largest such payment in history. Yep, Welch squeezed the lemon and made himself a lot of lemonade. Others, not so much a drop.
THERE AIN"T NO DEMAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Demand or desire?
More accurately: there is no money , and no one wants to take on debt.
'Management' has squeezed the lemon alright: the lemon hasn't a cent to spend on the products.
IF we had a functioning economy and a functioning monetary system instead of a usury pyramid...
Well Mr. Tavares, the greatest fruits of innovation come from challenging outmoded and manifestly false preconceptions about how things should be. To wit, the blind faith we in the West have that the way we do things is the way they should be done.
You think we're so smart because we have modern medicine and robot factories to produce mountains of crap for us to piss away our pointless lives purchasing. Then you look with pity on the Third World because they are just too dim to learn how to do it like we do.
This arrogance blinds you to the reality that the Third World is desperate because the First World steals their resources to fund its own vanity and idleness.
You have no insight, Tavares. Go serve this crap to your corporate masters. The Third World knows what you will never understand: true progress comes from being connected to the land, being surrounded by loving family and supportive community, and the pursuit of things much greater than money.
Your mindlessness is emblematic of everything that's wrong with the West.
To that I can only say Amen.
When life gives you AIDS, make lemonaid.
What do you call two gays on roller skates?
"Rolaids."
bada boom!
OT - On this day in Hx Aug 29:
1831 - Michael Faraday demonstrates 1st electric transformer
1925 - After a night on the town, Babe Ruth shows up late for batting practice
1929 - German airship Graf Zeppelin ends a round-the-world flight
1929 - Aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh makes her first solo flight
1953 - USSR explodes its first hydrogen bomb
1957 - Congress passes Civil Rights Act of 1957
1966 - Beatles last public concert (Candlestick Park, SF)
2012 - Banana Spider venom is found to be effective in relieving erectile dysfunction
(warning, banana spider bites may result in severe tissue necrosis)
"We began our professional career at General Electric "
The first thing the author reveals is what a pompous douche he is.
"time in this context is an unnecessary complication, so we assume everything happens instantaneously "
The second thing the author reveals is that his methods are non-scientific.
"improvements were made just by managers encouraging people to think about their own business processes...the whole initiative was further cemented by tying it to executive compensation. "
The third thing the author reveals is that he has bought into the meme that even where improvements/productivity enhancements specifically come from NON-management that specifically rewarding managment for implementation is both the proper allocation of rewards for improvements and is morally justified for some undefined reason or other.
Let us be honest about this tart and demeaning terminology: THE LEMON IS THE WORKER.
Interesting that the author/manager chooses a term for their worker which is also used to describe a defective product.
It never occours that a large part of the problem with innovation and productivity improvements is that the rewards are being siphoned into the pockets of 'management' and away from those persons that generate them.
Further: that when the NON-managers that produced the results perceive this is indeed the case:
1. the incentives for further productivity and innovation collapse
2. NON-managers who feel that they have been cheated out of their due rewards manifest reactionary impuses toward trade unionism, calls for government wage and benefits interventions and higher business taxation and regulations, etc.. etc.. to seek redress outside the workplace..
3. As both incentives for innovation and externalities such as trade unionism, government wage and benefits interventions and higer taxation and regulation mount the gains from the productivity and innovation are siphoned away from the business entirely -and this ultimately incentivizes management to seek accoodation with 'less demanding workers and governments' in foreign climes...
I think we've all seen quite enough of the ugly economic damage 'innovated' by bad/self-absorbed managment via the combination of crude methologies and sequestration of compensation for innovation and productivity gains to themselves.
Lastly: Jack Welch left GE in such a wonderfully robust and efficient state that it needed a massive public bailout in 2009. There isn't much legacy for Jack and the management of GE to be proud of if this fact is taken into context of this conversation.
GE was insolvent and bankrupt in 2009 if not for the support of the public purse and the taxpayers.
IF one is to give managmeent all credit for the health of a company as the author seems to assert: GE's management, Mr. Welch included, were probaly far too lavishly compensated based on the fact that the company was indeed eggregiously over-leverage and quite fragile.
One might even say that in effect the underappreciated workers bailed out the management via the public purse... -and have still not received due compensation for it...
I have been witnessing first hand what "professional management" does to companies for over 4 decades. There is little more than scorn and disdain for most of what I have seen.
Companies are founded by entrepreneurs with dreams, vision, and a burning desire to succeed....regardless. They invest heart, soul, and very often all of their financial resources into building their baby. If success comes, and they are able to break through that $30-50 million ceiling in annual revenue, they must seriously start turning over both responsibility and authority to others. So long as the founder is active and involved, this usually turns out fine.
Then, at least 1 of 2 things happen. The second generation comes along, and/or the company is taken public.
Second generation management is usually no where near as competent as their parents were. Of course, there are exceptions, as in the Trump example we see today, but most begin the inexorable turn to "professional management". If/when the company goes public, and a BOD gets involved, the "pros" will be layered in even faster and thicker.
Now, don't get me wrong. There are some really well run public companies and some great managers out there, but there are a whole lot of really lousy ones, too, and they do immense damage to the culture and cohesiveness of a business, as the internal competition heats up with the pressure to deliver quarterly profits. The focus becomes the bottom line almost exclusively to everything else. The long-term heath and survival of the business becomes secondary when most of the management team has their resume in their desk drawer, and all that matters is maximizing their bonus before moving on. The passion for the widget or the customer is lost or diluted, along with the loyalty to the worker bees that make everything happen. Since "professional management" tends to have no real loyalty to the company, the workers soon figure this out, and their loyalty dissipates, too. It is a 2-way street, after all.
The original entrepreneur might decide to pass by a fad that could indeed be profitable short term, but may also damage or distract from his long term vision. He might realize, for instance, that yes, a new process will save a few dollars, but would over time be detrimental to retaining valued employees. The "professional manager" may take those paths for personal gain and to boost the bonus and resume. After all, when the SHTF, he will be gone - off manage some other hapless business venture.
Obviously, mammoth corporations with worldwide operations must have sophisticated management, but that is really the problem. Biggness. Big Banks, big corporations, and big government. All tend toward dysfunction and corruption, and none can stop themselves over time. Morality is lost to the false god of efficiency in the corporate world, and paternalism in government, as sociopaths, psychopaths, and con-artists of all stripes scratch and claw their way to the top positions. Those things can be true in small organizations, too, but not as prevalent, and certainly not as damaging to the general populace.
There are no cures to the human condition.
+ Sig Sigmas to you, sir.
Corporations are entities with a centralized power and decision making structure. A corporate structure encourages political behavior more than it encourages entrepreneurial behavior. Unfortunately, the state protects corporations so that they become TBTF, while simulatneously creating barriers to entry for true entrepreneurs who are willing to fund their own dreams if the state would just stop sucking their investment capital from them in the form of taxes and licensing fees (and a government inspector to tell you how many feet above the floor a fire extinguisher should be installed, as if it makes a bit of difference since most employees don't pay attention to where fire extinguishers are located and wouldn't know how to use one anyway, but that's besides the point).
I watched a documentary on robotics some years back. There were interviews with folks from a variety of fields. One, a robotics expert, smiled gleefully as he announced that 'mankind would soon be irrelevant'. And my immediate response was... irrelevant to what?
Personally, I doubt he had any real notion of what he meant... I suspect this author suffers from much the same thing.
The idea that the woman who produces several automobiles, and then skates off to a dinner party (and thank God we are measuring productivity in terms of women, as we all know what has happened to men) is infinitely more productive than the woman who spends four hours gathering water (guess that well must be some distance away) overlooks the fact that this measures only one kind of productivity. Moreover we might not need the automobile at all if the centers of production weren't flung far and wide across the landscape. In fact it is the complexity as relates to this specialization that has contributed largely to pushing mankind to the very edge of extinction... not meaning, of course, to not give due reference to the demonic, low-life thugs who print the currency and it's multiple derivatives.
My point is, that squeezing the last few drops out of the lemon ignores the possibility that we have been misusing the lemons in the first place. I have two daughters (some of you know that I had a son until a couple of years back, and I only mention that now as I find it somewhat awkward to make mention of my daughters and ignore my son as though he never existed... a personal digression I will apologize up front for) one who is about to start on her PhD in biology, and the other who is off to medical school... and I have emphasized upon many occasions that the most important understanding they can have is the knowledge of what it is that they truly believe... a thing most people never truly know, and consequently they spend a life thrashing and floundering about...
This world has become all about squeezing lemons. Somewhere along the way we, as a species, we're encouraged to sell our souls for stuff. And now that much of the low hanging fruit has been plucked, and we are left to fight over the few morsels that still cling to the tree, some of us are starting to realize that the real winner in all of this was the woman at the well.
As I recall she was the one who got to meet face to face with the creator himself...
Wow...this is my second "Amen" on one thread. We, as in humanity, will learn this lesson eventually, but it will likely be too late.
Fuck yah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnK9a79LOrk
What happens? The citizens go after the banksters, start rounding them up and throwing them into prisons.
Well here's next ; they'll shorten school cycle to 8th grade so kids at 14 years of age can join labor force be taxed and be able to debt load!
What it can't be done ? Been doing it for decades in eastern Europe!
Why would we want them to join the labor force? They might actually produce something. Far better to keep them in school until they are 35 years old. Talk about Debt Load, at tens of thousands a year in tuition, and all that money goes to the teacher's union, as income that gets taxed, with a good percentage of it going into pension funds to provide support for stawks (in the boom years) and bag-holders for Goldman Sachs for whatever they want to sell (in the bust years). And then when we've squeezed the students out of all the loan money they can carry, THEN we'll put them in the work force and withhold taxes from their minimum wage McDonalds paychecks. They don't need it for rent because they live in their parent's basement anyway.
'Keynesian approach'? There is nothing Keynesian about bailing out banksters and print money to buy up Treasury paper and prop up the stock market. Glad to see people recognizing the misuse of Keynes' name. This has got to stop.
What Keynes said was that the Government saves money in the good times in order to spend in in bad times on projects to create work which indeed via the multiplier would stimulate the economy. What we see today has nothing to do with Keynes, it's a travesty.
http://www.barrons.com/articles/quantitative-easing-redux-1440826605
Quantitative Easing Redux?
Fed officials always try to disconnect the bank’s actions from stock-market gyrations, but history doesn’t support that indifference.
By Vito J. Racanelli
August 29, 2015
If a “rate hike” is Wall Street’s obsession this year, the effective opposite, “quantitative easing,” gets much less mention after three mammoth rounds of central-bank asset buying, or quantitative easing, in the past few years. But what’s that we hear? Another thing the Fed’s Dudley said last Wednesday was, “I’m a long way from quantitative easing. The U.S. economy is performing quite well.”
Fed officials always try to disconnect the bank’s actions from stock-market gyrations, but history doesn’t support that indifference. “It will take less than a 20% decline in U.S. stock prices for the Fed to begin discussing a new round of quantitative easing,” says Darren Pollock, a portfolio manager with Cheviot Value Management.
On several occasions in recent years, a Fed official has stepped in with easing statements following market routs. The Fed knows it can’t let the stock market fall without backpedaling on its tough monetary talk, Pollock says. It must try to keep stock prices from plummeting and pulling down consumer confidence, which could affect the economy.
Stocks recovered big-time last week, but remain vulnerable. Should the market fall some more, Pollock says, “It may force the Fed to do a U-turn and speak of a willingness to provide more stimulus—like QE.”
The Fed won’t let all the effort and money invested in propping up the economy since 2008 go to waste. It won’t stand at the plate and strike out looking. The Yellen put lives.
lemon zest
There seems to be a lot of economics writers who obviously: "AIN'T BEEN TO NO MUSIC SCHOOL" !!!!
(figuratively speaking)
Etiological myth, you are wiser than that. The tax payer deserve what cult they follow today.
If micro and macro are linked (which I believe they are) then we have to realize that the moment you create a framework you leave out variables (you look at a company or an economy as an aggregate and forget that it is made up of individuals).
Usually when innovation is mentioned as a solution, rarely do people suggest leaving individuals to innovate and improve their own lives on a micro scale, improving the whole system in an organic and unplanned way. Usually what people really mean is that innovation and improvements need to occur in a certain way by incentivizing (ie subsidizing) specific individuals (or corporations), to undertake specific projects deemed worthy by specific "experts" (usually themselves or their favored politician). What they really mean is that for the common good and to save humanity from itself we need to redistribute resources (steal from some people and funnel the money to other people) and add another layer of complexity to a system that is already so complex and fragile from the same type of solutions of experts that came before them. Lets find a way to make our supply chain a little longer, shall we? The world is too dependent on cheap oil, so lets come up with an innovation to pump oil more efficiently (which does not mean we consume the same with fewer resources, but rather that we can consume more at a faster rate). Lets spend a fortune on over-"educating" the masses and put them in a classroom where we teach them they can all be Steve Jobs one day.
So we are catapulted toward the breaking point of a fragile complex system, and all the while everyone is talking about the innovative solution that will save us if only the government will borrow a few billion more to fund it, (don't worry we can print the money and export the pain to other poor saps who aren't smart enough to have the world's reserve currency. )
What if innovation actually comes from individuals who reduce their reliance on this system and come up with their own ways to insulate themselves from the boom-bust cycles of Keynesian/Monetarist/Insert-your-version-of-a-centrally-planned-economy-here policy? What if an individual doesn't depend on convincing the masses to buy-in to his framework, but can build a framework of his own and limit his exposure as best he can? What if our problem is as much cultural as it is financial or technological or logistical? What if reliance on "the system" has led us to forget we are actually responsible for ourselves and that we actually share space with other people -- so maybe using the state as a force against our neighbor is not going to get us anywhere -- so building honest voluntary support systems with other self-reliant individuals might be better for our communities than what the District of Columbia has on offer?
While I am all for innovation and the idea that we can improve our situation, many innovations bring about their own set of new problems. Can a computer or an iphone be used to make production more efficient and to increase communcation? Yes. Are kids who spend 5 hours a day on Facebook producing anything of worth or communicating in a way that is meaningful? We have lengthened our food supply chain and innovated in mass farming techniques -- and come up with preservatives for food that can give us a shelf life of 18 months for our mostly-soybean oil-and-sugar convenience foods, which families eat while watching Duck Dynasty. Innovative? yes. Supported a massive boom in population? yes. A solution? Not so sure.
In certain PIIGS countries different governments over decades of malpractice and corruption have used the technique of the frog in the pot to increase taxes to business and the average worker to unsustainable level . Now that the economy has tanked the ones in government finally realize that the population has no money to spend , consumer spending is non existent because the working people have been robbed by the abolition of the CPI index compensation for the wages .So with inflation and no compensation , over the years the average Joe Blow has lost a large percentage of his salary because of inflation . Now that things are so bad the priority for families , at this point in time is to put food on the table and pay the exorbitant bills . some politicians speak about reducing taxes , a task that is going to be very difficult , considering all the commitments burdening the state .
With a national debt over 100% of gross national Products , consumer spending stalled and small business in the verge of bankruptcy , the future doesn't look very appealing . The landscape is littered with closed shops and the businesses still active are just one unpredictable or unplanned tax bill away from bankruptcy .
The rate of tax for small business is over 68 % of the total income . Despite this incredible taxation rate , politicians in government speak about attracting investors in the country . How would such goal be achieved would be very interesting to watch . An increase of interest rate could push some PIIGS countries over the edge .