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

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

#71

Post by nerfhammer »

kiba wrote: post #38
jbooth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

It's deliberately misleading. "between 1929 and 1932" is a misleading way of saying "in 1932". Almost all of the deficit increase and public works spending occurred in 1932 (due to a single bill: the Emergency Relief and Construction Act) near the end of Hoover's presidency, but by saying "between 1929 and 1932" it makes it sound like it was a consistent policy throughout the downturn. In reality by that time in 1932 the depression was already near its worst lows and Hoover had tried keeping the budget balanced prior to that and only had a few months left in office.

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

#72

Post by kiba »

jbooth wrote: post #61
jswinghammer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With all due respect that's because you haven't read more on the subject. Lord Keynes himself is quoted in Rothbard's book as approving of the United States government's response to the crisis. The notion that depressions are caused by a fall in aggregate demand is looking totally at the symptoms of the crisis and not the causes. Rothbard might be one person but he's not a minor figure in 20th century economics by an…

You were doing awesome until "seizing of all gold" -- obviously had a viewpoint but were giving credence to other viewpoints as well.. then that doozy. History forgives him because he ended the depression, won WWII and not everyone agrees with you about abolishing the gold standard being equivalent to quote "seizing of all gold".

For the record, the great depression didn't end until after WW2.

War productions does not make prosperous societies simply because the allocation of resource is redirected to military purpose, not to civilian needs.

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

#73

Post by megablast »

qq66 wrote: post #13

Amazing article -- I did not know that modern American "consumer culture" was deliberately created by Henry Ford.

I thought it had a lot to do with the end of the war, the overcapacity that all those new factories and workers created, and the start of the advertising industry.

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

#74

Post by gridspy »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #37
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.

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.

That other 90% doesn't drop off the planet. It goes to a company that splits it into profit and expense. Both are spent by different people, but all the cash goes back into the economy.

The profits might be spent on luxuries, the costs on materials. Once again it split up. Every time a small fraction goes to the government, or to Henry Ford.

His point is that he wants all business in America to be vibrant, not just his own (because his businesses would die if it weren't part of an ecosystem)

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

#75

Post by sliverstorm »

mikecane wrote: post #22
joshfraser wrote: post #10

cool, now get back to your 90hr a week startup...

Heh. How much time do you think Ford put in when it was all a startup for him?

I have no evidence whatsoever, but I'd imagine a good 70 hours a week at least. You lived your job back then- ref: farmers. Plus, the fact that moving to a 5-day work week was so monumental strongly implies the entire nation was on a 6-day work week, and the loosly-religious ones probably worked on Sunday too.

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

#76

Post by sliverstorm »

openfly wrote: post #15
qq66 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He also created modern American industry. Try to evaluate his output at a finer grain than the entire individual over his entire lifetime.

I gotta godwin this, I just can't resist it. Sorry. "I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration" - Adolf Hitler Ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/daily/nov98/na...

So? Maybe if Ford said Hitler was his inspiration, but not the other way around.

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

#77

Post by jquery »

jbooth wrote: post #40
kiba wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> silly oversimplification that has high correlation with modern republicans

I tried to downvote your post because of this line, but I ended up mis-clicking and upvoting, so I might as well explain myself.

I am not a Republican, I am an independent. This holier-and-smarter-than-thou attitude that seems to be mestastisizing needs to stop. Please argue your point with facts and reason, not with a "it sympathizes with viewpoint [X] and is therefore invalid." Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, and Conservatives are all guilty of this, but here on the West Coast (where the Hacker News audience predominantly resides) there is a sort of reflexive superiority complex which seems to have developed especially acutely in those on the left side of the political spectrum, in which there is little hesitation, even outside of overtly political forums, to announce that certain views are wrong simply Republicans subscribe to them as well... And of course we all know that Republicans are all about the blunt-force, black-and-white simple-minded thinking, as opposed to subtle, sophisticated, and nuance-loving Democrats.

Sorry, I'll cut my rant off early. I hope my point got across without offending anyone.

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

#78

Post by CamperBob »

jquery wrote: post #77
jbooth wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> silly oversimplification that has high correlation with modern republicans I tried to downvote your post because of this line, but I ended up mis-clicking and upvoting, so I might as well explain myself. I am not a Republican, I am an independent. This holier-and-smarter-than-thou attitude that seems to be mestastisizing needs to stop. Please argue your point with facts and reason, not with a "it sympathizes with v…

And of course we all know that Republicans are all about the blunt-force, black-and-white simple-minded thinking, as opposed to subtle, sophisticated, and nuance-loving Democrats.

Repudiate the Tea Party, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh, et al., and we can talk.

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

#79

Post by stretchwithme »

kiba wrote: post #72
jbooth wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were doing awesome until "seizing of all gold" -- obviously had a viewpoint but were giving credence to other viewpoints as well.. then that doozy. History forgives him because he ended the depression, won WWII and not everyone agrees with you about abolishing the gold standard being equivalent to quote "seizing of all gold".

For the record, the great depression didn't end until after WW2. War productions does not make prosperous societies simply because the allocation of resource is redirected to military purpose, not to civilian needs.

I don't know when exactly it ended but I'm quite certain there was little time to continue experimenting with socialist schemes when one is under attack. Industry needed to be able to function in order to produce everything required to win.

And, yes, war is NOT good for the economy or anything else, other than repelling invaders. When all your shit's blown up, you ain't got shit.

I figure that without the wars of the 20th century, we'd all have twice as much wealth, if not more.

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

#80

Post by patrickk »

stretchwithme wrote: post #79
kiba wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, the great depression didn't end until after WW2. War productions does not make prosperous societies simply because the allocation of resource is redirected to military purpose, not to civilian needs.

I don't know when exactly it ended but I'm quite certain there was little time to continue experimenting with socialist schemes when one is under attack. Industry needed to be able to function in order to produce everything required to win. And, yes, war is NOT good for the economy or anything else, other than repelling invaders. When all your shit's blown up, you ain't got shit. I figure that without the wars of the…

Not to mention twice (or much more) as many people. Oscar Schindler saved over 1,100 Jews from death, and there's over 5,000 or 6,000 descendants of those survivors today. Can't remember the figures exactly, but it's a lot. And of course, with more people, markets are bigger, potential workforce is bigger, which leads to more wealth, which dovetails nicely with your point about wealth.
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