Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay • Hacker News Board

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#31

Post by palish » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 5:42 PM UTC

openfly wrote: post #24

hop wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read his autobiography "My Life, and My Work" http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/7213 Its fascinating. I think highly dyslexic is a better description than illiterate for Henry Ford, he was a genius. Pioneered material science, machining and forming metal cost effectively, made the assembly line, 161 patents, created enormous opportunity for hard working and smart people, brought cars to the masses. His politi…

Wow, that's a horrifically one sided and incorrect view. Only held btw in the US, and by people who are not familiar with the actual history. Ford, like GM and IBM invests considerable effort in hiding their roles in that war. Ford however, was one of the few who "took sides". They didn't just support the Nazis for economic reasons ( which is pretty damned horrific ), they actually hindered allied production purposef…

I would love to learn more.

But you haven't provided any concrete stories, references, or even descriptions in your response. Just a lot of what seems to be gossip.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#32

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #21

jswinghammer wrote: post #2

This sort of thinking drove government policy at the start of the Great Depression. President Hoover tried to maintain high wage rates seeing them as the cause of prosperity and not the effect of greater productivity. Henry Ford was probably the most influential person in this camp but most of American business at the time was on board with it as well. Murray Rothbard's "America's Great Depression" has probably the b…

"proto-New Deal policies?" As I understand it, Hoover was preoccupied with maintaining a balanced federal budget through budget cuts and tax increases. That's the opposite of countercyclical spending, which along with some welfare state components made up the new deal. Maybe he was on board with the welfare state and the idea of people having high wages (who isn't?), but the government doesn't cut the majority of pay…

Hoover didn't balance the budget, he doubled the national debt.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Debt1929-50.jpg

It is true, however, that he raised taxes on the rich. Sound like anyone we know?

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#33

Post by seanalltogether » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:00 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #18

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He ran a "company town" - had stores, sold them lumber to build houses etc. Most of the money came right back to him.

For some reason(Correct me if I am wrong), the company town business model seem to have completely disappear. This, to me, suggest the uncompetitiveness of company towns.

Maybe, but I'm not surprised to see that they failed around the same time the notion of a large corporation took off. The goal of a large corporation is to reduce liabilities while increasing profits, not the other way round. Company towns probably just weighed these companies down while they tried to turn their attention to a national infrastructure.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#34

Post by hugh3 » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:03 PM UTC

ugh wrote: post #27

mikecane wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he the first to do that? I read a book about Frick & Carnegie and was shocked to learn Frick had company housing and stores for the workers of Carnegie's steel empire. I wonder where this idea came from? Not even wikipedia has its origins: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_store EDIT: I should have clicked more. Pullman: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_town

Company housing was very, very common in Europe when the Industrial Revolution really got started. Many German towns which got a train connection early on have these typical big red brick houses were the workers lived, probably the most visible reminder of that practice.

And, of course, it's still very common in newly-industrialising countries like China.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#35

Post by jbooth » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:03 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

jbooth wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"proto-New Deal policies?" As I understand it, Hoover was preoccupied with maintaining a balanced federal budget through budget cuts and tax increases. That's the opposite of countercyclical spending, which along with some welfare state components made up the new deal. Maybe he was on board with the welfare state and the idea of people having high wages (who isn't?), but the government doesn't cut the majority of pay…

Hoover didn't balance the budget, he doubled the national debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Debt1929-50.jpg It is true, however, that he raised taxes on the rich. Sound like anyone we know?

Yes, the debt went up. Tax revenues collapsed in this period, remember.

But Hoover was trying to balance the budget. He saw it as a goal, an end to itself that would reassure credit markets and do a bunch of good. FDR saw stimulating demand as more important in the short term. That's the difference between them. Hoover was raising taxes to try and balance the budget, and only increased government spending very slightly considering he had 25% unemployment. FDR threw it all to the wind for a few years and massively increased deficits as a deliberate policy.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#36

Post by kiba » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:04 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #29

kiba wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So there are several books that said the same thing about Hoover, but does that mean it is more likely that these historians are more accurate than the historians who provided a renegade viewpoint? I have read another book that said that the early new deals program and regulatory framework were essentially made by insider players, who wrote the rulebooks to fit their business operations. Suddenly, you would have a fe…

> Renegade viewpoint? Yeah, in absence of better proof provided, I'll stick with the opinion of the majority of historians. The rest of your points haven't had anything to do with government finances or the attitudes of both presidents towards countercyclical spending vs balanced budgets. They seem like some blindly-applied-backwards-80-years modern republican simplifications about the nature of "government programs"…

Yeah, in absence of better proof provided, I'll stick with the opinion of the majority of historians.

What is your rationale for sticking with whatever the majority of historians said?

The rest of your points haven't had anything to do with government finances or the attitudes of both presidents towards countercyclical spending vs balanced budgets. They seem like some blindly-applied-backwards-80-years modern republican simplifications about the nature of "government programs". Some dude got screwed by Goodyear at some point in history? Huh?

Sorry about non-sequitur here. I was talking about the effects of FDR's New Deal programs and regulations, and Goodyear was just one data-points amongst many(presumably).

Even so, why you think mine is a Republican simplification of government programs?

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#37

Post by yummyfajitas » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:06 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #14

qq66 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the "chess"-like planning ahead here, but it seems as though unless Ford was selling a huge fraction of the discretionary purchases in the country, it would be hard to finance this... If you spend $100 to give your workers 2 extra hours of leisure a week, maybe only $5 or $10 would be spent on Ford cars and the rest would be spent on other stuff...

He ran a "company town" - had stores, sold them lumber to build houses etc. Most of the money came right back to him.

It only came back to him if the company stores wildly overcharged his employees. If an employee spent $100 in a store with a 10% markup, Ford still lost a net of $90.

Do the math - paying your workers "enough to buy your product" is an utterly flawed business model. It might work incidentally (i.e., high wages might attract high productivity employees), but it doesn't work as stated.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#38

Post by kiba » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

jbooth wrote: post #35

yummyfajitas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hoover didn't balance the budget, he doubled the national debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Debt1929-50.jpg It is true, however, that he raised taxes on the rich. Sound like anyone we know?

Yes, the debt went up. Tax revenues collapsed in this period, remember. But Hoover was trying to balance the budget. He saw it as a goal, an end to itself that would reassure credit markets and do a bunch of good. FDR saw stimulating demand as more important in the short term. That's the difference between them. Hoover was raising taxes to try and balance the budget, and only increased government spending very slight…

Hoover, a one-time business whiz and a would-be all-purpose social problem-solver in the Lee Iacocca mold, was a bowling ball looking for pins to scatter. He was a government activist fixated on the idea of running the country as an energetic CEO might run a giant corporation. It was Hoover, not Roosevelt, who initiated the practice of piling up big deficits to support huge public-works projects. After declining or holding steady through most of the 1920s, federal spending soared between 1929 and 1932 -- increasing by more than 50%, the biggest increase in federal spending ever recorded during peacetime.

--Totally biased source, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122576077569495545.html

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#39

Post by dkimball » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:11 PM UTC

robfitz wrote: post #5

But it is the influence of leisure on consumption which makes the short week so necessary. The people who consume the bulk of goods are the people who make them. That is a fact we must never forget -- that is the secret of our prosperity. That is pretty evil mastermind... he's thinking on a whole other level.

But on the other hand:

"[The well-managed business'] workmen have the leisure to enjoy life and the wherewithal with which to finance that enjoyment."

Ford theorizes that greater amounts of leisure time and better pay for workers are good for both the workers, for their enjoyment, and the employers, for having larger markets; I don't see this as evil.

Re: Henry Ford: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay

#40

Post by jbooth » Wed, Jul 07, 2010, 6:13 PM UTC

kiba wrote: post #36

jbooth wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Renegade viewpoint? Yeah, in absence of better proof provided, I'll stick with the opinion of the majority of historians. The rest of your points haven't had anything to do with government finances or the attitudes of both presidents towards countercyclical spending vs balanced budgets. They seem like some blindly-applied-backwards-80-years modern republican simplifications about the nature of "government programs"…

Yeah, in absence of better proof provided, I'll stick with the opinion of the majority of historians. What is your rationale for sticking with whatever the majority of historians said? The rest of your points haven't had anything to do with government finances or the attitudes of both presidents towards countercyclical spending vs balanced budgets. They seem like some blindly-applied-backwards-80-years modern republi…

Because, respectfully, the entire thought process displayed by your post seems to consist of "government = bad, therefore new deal = bad". It shows very little effort to understand what was actually happening, it boxes a huuuuuge range of possibilities into a simple black/white viewpoint, and it's a silly oversimplification that has high correlation with modern republicans.

As far as what the majority of historians said, if it's them or you, and you're not saying something very very persuasive, I'll tend to believe them. No offense intended.