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The price of cars and housing have gone up in part to regulation however they both have gone up in cost due to increased size and features. I'm not sure your four on the floor is from a generation ago so your examples I feel are exaggerated in an attempt to blame the govt for all of this
Certainly, for houses, increase of size is quite important. There is no getting around the added costs of more square footage. But regulations have absolutely had a material impact. Compare various national and local building codes in effect today compared to the codes in effect in 1950. Those codes in aggregate are government mandated quality improvement. There is no free lunch, of course, so those quality improvements drive up the cost of housing. While most of those improvements are, IMHO, worth the added expense, some are not.
(EDIT: I forgot to add that in many locations, a significant driver of housing cost is governmental regulation mandating a percentage of houses must be sold for less than the market price, indeed less than manufacturing costs, all in the name of regulators' mandate for social engineering.)
When it comes to four on the floor, when I was learning to drive, a 4 speed manual transmission was the default transmission in volume automobiles (maybe not in luxury brands). Even today, when I travel to 3rd world countries, it is rare to find an automatic transmission. Why? Well, (a) there is no governmental mandate for improved fuel economy, (b) an automatic transmission costs much more, and (c) local buyers do not value the improved fuel economy sufficiently to warrant the added capital cost of that automatic transmission. Here in the USA, the governmental mandate for improved fuel economy swamps consumer choice.
Last edited by SportyandMisty; 10-29-2014 at 08:39 AM..
There was a company where the employees owned 51%, but due to poor CEO decision, not only was the equity built up eroded and wasted, the acquired and later accumulated debt by CEO over indulgence in poor investment and selling off lucrative components, resulted to drive it straight into bankruptcy. This was aided by an over exaggeration by the CEO of what figures mean. They saw a 19 Billion dollar annual generation of income, but were void of being aware that it takes billions of expense to generate 19 billion income, able to yield 1 billion in profit.
Before long they whittled that 1 billion profit into multi billions of debt, underfunded pensions and every other felonious decision imaginable. Still, the "Poor Decision Making CEO walked away with a golden parachute to the tune of $Million". In the wake was a devastated company, many laid off employees and pensions destroyed and turned over to the Pension Guarantee Company.
And how many workers have lost their job because of greedy demands by unions? Just sayin.....
I don't buy it as a general argument. Why? Technological advances leading to increased productivity should have been more than enough to offset these increased costs. I'm not defending government, btw. I'm just not buying the argument that government regulation has led to inflated prices in the auto industry.
Going beyond that, 5 minutes on Google Scholar yields many scholarly articles on manufacturing costs in the automobile industry. (note: that's Google Scholar, not vanilla Google.)
Here is just one of literally hundreds of relevant articles. Note: this is published in 2001, which shows just how important governmental regulation is to manufacturing costs even back then. It is published in JOM. First, what is JOM?
Quote:
JOM (ISSN 1047-4838) is the technical journal that reports scholarly work from the spectrum of materials science and engineering, from groundbreaking laboratory discoveries, to emerging development and design techniques, to state-of-the-art processing, fabrication, and applications of metals, ceramics, plastics, composites, and other materials. In pursuing this goal, JOM strives to balance the interests of the laboratory and the marketplace by reporting academic, industrial, and government-sponsored work from around the world. It is published monthly by Springer Sciences & Business Media, LLC (Springer), in cooperation with The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS)... JOM’s editorial scope encompasses archival-quality technical papers, general overviews, economic outlooks, articles on developments in engineering education and other professional concerns, research and business updates, and conference and literature reviews.
Although the use of aluminum in cars has been increasing for the past two decades, progress has been limited in developing aluminum auto bodies. In fact, most aluminum substitution has come in the form of castings and forgings in the transmission, wheels, etc. Car manufacturers have developed all-aluminum cars with two competing designs: conventional unibody and the spaceframe. However, aluminum is far from being a material of choice for auto bodies. The substitution of aluminum for steel is partly influenced by regulatory pressures to meet fuel efficiency standards by reducing vehicle weight, and to meet recycling standards. The key obstacles are the high cost of primary aluminum as compared to steel and added fabrication costs of aluminum panels. Both the aluminum and the automotive industries have attempted to make aluminum a cost-effective alternative to steel. This paper analyzes the cost of fabrication and assembly of four different aluminum car body designs,making comparisons with conventional steel designs at current aluminum prices and using current aluminum fabrication technology. It then attempts to determine if aluminum can be an alternative to steel at lower primary aluminum prices, and improved fabrication processes.
(emphasis added above to draw your attention to the relevant passage.)
I chose that article as a juxtaposition with the new 2015 Ford F150 truck, which now uses all aluminum for the body & the truck bed, which drives up the cost of manufacturing. It also, by the way, will drive up the cost of body shop repairs, which in turn drives up the costs of automobile insurance. The jury is out on this approach: it is quite risky. See http://www.autoblog.com/2014/03/17/f...m-debate-poll/.
Why? To save about 700 pounds in the weight of the vehicle, according to Ford, which is part of its corporate effort to comply with ever-tightening fuel mileage regulations, despite the risks cited in the link above. Said differently, it is mandated quality improvement, where quality improvement is in the eye of the regulator, not the consumer.
Or, said differently, it is a mandated increase in the price of the vehicle.
Let's take another widespread regulation: After years of delays, NHTSA issues backup camera rules - Autoblog beginning 2018, all vehicles sold in the USA must have rear backup cameras. This also is a mandated quality improvement, where quality improvement is in the eye of the regulator, not the consumer.
Or, said differently, it is a mandated increase in the price of the vehicle.
From the linked article: "Because it is so difficult to find a good job in America today, I often recommend to people that they should consider starting their own businesses.
But thanks to the bureaucratic control..., small business ownership in America today is at an all-time low.* It is almost as if they don't want the "little guy" to win.* Every avenue of prosperity for the middle class is under assault..."
Reminds me of the entrepreneurial Oregan girl selling home-made mistletoes on the street was shut down, and told panhandling however is allowed there.
American middle class, may you rest in peace.
I know! Rules about every stupid friggin' thing everywhere! I can't do a damn thing without my life being micromanaged constantly by somebody!
If you understood corporate structure as you claim, you'd have a different concept to understand how employee ownership works. the structure of the agreement is what you'd need to have knowledge of. Then you'd know the position the CEO holds in making decisions, what ever the situation the CEO follows the stock ticker, not the voice of the owners. That's why CEO pushed to be not only CEO but Chairman of the Board - if you understand the collusive mix that is, then you would understand the post as expressed.
The company is owned by the stockholders
Unless you get the employees to buy out the real owners then you aren't going to tell the board anything
No one is going to listen to employees and no one should. Unless you pay up or own something you don't get to tell people what to do. That's basically stealing
Unless you get the employees to buy out the real owners then you aren't going to tell the board anything
No one is going to listen to employees and no one should. Unless you pay up or own something you don't get to tell people what to do. That's basically stealing
See now that's where I disagree, to an extent. If people need employees to do their work, then they really should care a bit about keeping them happy.
The U.S. federal poverty line has been determined using the same general framework since the mid-1960s. In that time, the official measure has come under criticism as an inadequate way to measure the number of people truly in need.
In 1995, a National Academy of Sciences panel made recommendations for how an alternative poverty measure could be developed. Since then, the Census Bureau has worked in partnership with the Bureau of Labor Statistics to further these recommendations. The result was the supplemental poverty measure, which produces state level poverty rates that differ considerably from the official poverty measures.
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