Whats the matter with Southwest?

Southwest Airlines? I don't see how they fit in.

Heh, I was going to say the same thing. We do have to keep in mind that b_i is a renowned traveler, so I can understand why he might not like the "cattle car" of the airlines. Still, I'm a big Southwest fan.

The drive for cheap at all costs is what drove jobs overseas. You want a strong and vibrant middle class, well you let your purchasing dollar support a strong and vibrant middle class.

No government program has anywhere near the power as combined consumer choices. But people find it far easier to shit all over politicians than take responsibility for their actions.

Heh, I was going to say the same thing. We do have to keep in mind that b_i is a renowned traveler, so I can understand why he might not like the "cattle car" of the airlines. Still, I'm a big Southwest fan.

I came in here to make a case for Southwest, but it looks like that's already been done. I'll do it anyway.

I flew 4 times this summer (2 round trips). One round trip was made flying Southwest, the other US Airways. Southwest's planes were cleaner and much more comfortable (Granted, I was flying in tiny regional jets on US Air). As a consumer, you can't beat it when you can get a better experience or product for a better price.

(Vanity) The Era of Cheap Crap, or, You Don't Get What You (Don't) Pay For
grey_whiskers ^ | 5-30-2007 | grey_whiskers

Posted on 05/30/2007 6:36:08 AM PDT by grey_whiskers

By now, everyone has heard of the scandals involving the adulterated wheat gluten from China, and how it made its way first into pet foods, then into the lower reaches of the human food supply (as livestock feed). Understandably, there has been outrage, as Americans are devoted to Fido and Fluffy. “Do what you want to me, but don’t you DARE touch my pet!” is the war-cry. And at least on the surface, there has been action. China has executed the erstwhile head of its FDA for bribery. Other countries are looking askance at imported Chinese goods, such as the toothpaste flavored with diethylene glycol. And these are encouraging signs. But has anything really changed?

In order to understand this phenomenon completely, it might be a good idea to take a step back and to frame this behaviour in a larger context. While there are those who see in this rush to send manufacturing overseas a plot to level the playing field and to hollow out America’s self sufficiency, and others see it as the result of third world mercantilism, let us to look at it (as was once said during the 1986 Space Shuttle explosion) wearing our ‘mnagement hat’

Long ago, but still within the lifetime (and even during the career) of many still alive, the phrase ‘Made in the USA’ was not a marketing gimmick, nor was it a point of pride. It was simply a fact of life. Particularly after World War II, when much of Europe and Japan was devastated (think of that—the remainder of the West in shambles, and the United States pre-eminent). The United States had fulfilled its role as the Arsenal of Democracy. The troops were coming home, Rosie the Riveter hung up her coveralls, and the United States settled down to…well, let’s just say that the Stork was awfully busy. As a result, we had two social and demographic factors in happy alignment: a booming population, and lots of factory capacity. (And, don’t forget, the War was over, no more need for ration books.) And the United States was the main country able to produce consumer goods.

The United States manufacturers had grown fat and happy. Witness GM, which held a commanding lead in market share for the manufacture of automobiles worldwide. The Unions, too, had their day at the trough. Assembly line jobs were passed down as “employment for life” heirlooms from father to son. But there were problems soon to arise. With the Arab oil embargo of 1973, the gas-guzzling pieces of Detroit iron were not selling…and there was competition from overseas, especially Japan. There were two results of this. First, Detroit tried its hand at building fuel efficient cars, although badly. And the American consumer had their first taste of foreign manufacturing. And the seeds for the future were planted—market segmentation and overseas production. (For a humorous explanation of this, try reading Dave Barry Does Japan by the humor columnist Dave Barry of the Miami Herald.)

Fast forward to the 1980’s. Computers were *just* beginning to be mass produced for something other than scientists and large businesses, with the original Apple. the IBM PC, the Commodore 64, and others all appearing. The computers were slow, maddeningly difficult, but fascinating. The problem was that each computer had its own proprietary set of commands. And with brands and companies appearing and disappearing one after the next, it was difficult to get any of them to talk to one another, or to transfer work between different machines. Enter Bill Gates and the Intel architecture. A standard user interface and set of commands, and a standardized CPU. How Convenient! (For Gates and for Intel, that is…never mind that the commands were intractable as they were, that the user interface was pathetic, and that the code was buggy and led to unpredictable machine crashes.) Quality? What’s that? What a quaint notion. At least you have a machine which kind of works, most of the time. What would you do without it? Another step down the road.

And while this was going on, there was a retail store, once beloved for its insistence on buying “American Made”, which was spreading throughout the country, and using its buying power to drive down costs. “Low Prices, Always!” But there is only so far a manufacturer can go down that road, before costs must be slashed, and slashed drastically. And companies quietly began to send manufacturing of cheaper components, then of entire products, overseas – to save on costs, and to preserve market share.

So what began to be the norm, was not inevitable. It was the dismal convergence of three factors. First, the loss of pride in American manufacturing, and the introduction of the idea that “other countries can do it just as well as we can.” (True in some cases, but not all; and the ability to do something is useless without the will, as we shall see.) Second, the acceptance of the idea of convenience and low cost, even if the product was sub-par. As the old joke goes, if car manufacturers had followed the progress in computers, the average car could go 15,000 mph, get thousands of miles per gallon, and it would break down once every five miles, with a single warning light in the middle of the dashboard – Generalized Car Fault. The joke should be updated to include spam, phishing, and viruses. And finally, the mantra of market share over both service and quality. And due to market share, the number of manufacturers able to produce and sell quality goods is shrinking. The era of cheap crap is here!

But there is one more element which makes all of the other developments so unendurable. And that is the peculiarly diabolical twist of market segmentation gone mad, or the concept of “value added.” What does this mean? Let us take an example from another area of life with which Americans are fed up—health care. It has long been known, that in an attempt to cut costs, insurance companies cut back drastically on how much they pay for procedures; and the exact circumstances under which they pay. And this affects doctors just as much as patients. Remember, patients don’t have to pay malpractice insurance in order to be patients: but doctors have to pay into the lawyer’s protection racket. So even for the physician, every dollar counts. So in an attempt to get more money out of the insurance companies, doctors had begun the practice of ‘unbundling’ their services. For example, if you went in to get your appendix removed, your bill would not have just the one line item ‘appendectomy’, but the additional line, ‘laparoscopy’. What’s that? Oh, that’s just cutting your abdomen open in order to *reach* your appendix. Now billed separately.

And this technique has now spread throughout all segments of business. Yes, you can buy our cheap electronic devices. No, we won’t guarantee they’ll work for more than a year (it used to be taken for granted that TV’s and other appliances would work for 10 years or more). But, look here—you can buy this nifty “extended service plan” for the convenient low charge of just $99.95 for two years (for a product which only costs three hundred) – and if it breaks, you can pay the shipping both ways, for the *chance* that we will fix it – or maybe we’ll just send you another model, at our discretion. Or, back to computers. You can’t make sense of all the viruses and your printer won’t work? No problem. Call our tech support hotline, where we will be happy to connect you to some third-worlder reading from a script in broken English, but who is so arrogant that they will tell you that you don’t deserve their help. If you want to speak to someone who knows English, and can help, there will be a slight additional service fee. We appreciate your business, sucker.

Whatever happened to the days when quality and reliability were the mere ante for the manufacturer to be considered?

The drive for cheap at all costs is what drove jobs overseas. You want a strong and vibrant middle class, well you let your purchasing dollar support a strong and vibrant middle class.

No government program has anywhere near the power as combined consumer choices. But people find it far easier to shit all over politicians than take responsibility for their actions.

I keep having this idea that the drive to have the latest, not necessarily the greatest, is what's really killing our economy.

people buying cheap shit isnt killing the economy, people not buying any shit is killing the economy.

The drive for cheap at all costs is what drove jobs overseas. You want a strong and vibrant middle class, well you let your purchasing dollar support a strong and vibrant middle class.

No government program has anywhere near the power as combined consumer choices. But people find it far easier to shit all over politicians than take responsibility for their actions.

You make it sound as if the people have a choice. The people who shop at WalMart can't afford to shop at a local store and buy goods from a local manufacturer.
Stop blaming the sheep. IMO, the people to blame are the gov't lobbyists and unions. (Speaking as a manufacturer) I cannot afford to pay wages in my country. I must outsource to be competative or close the doors on my warehouse and put that staff out of work. If a manufacturing facility could be set up here and paid reasonable wages for the amount of work done, maybe we could turn the tide. However, the days of $30+ per hr for tightening a bolt in an auto plant + benefits + pention have made a manufacturing vaccum that cannot be reversed. If that person were paid a reasonable wage (for the work done) of around $15 per hr + benefits maybe... just maybe... goods could be produced here for a reasonable cost. As fuel prices increase and the Chinese workers get more rights, outsourcing is becoming impractical. Of course, there are still plenty of people to exploit in India.

the job of an airline is to get you somewhere..as long as it does, everything else is just luxury extras..

You make it sound as if the people have a choice. The people who shop at WalMart can't afford to shop at a local store and buy goods from a local manufacturer.

about the airline industry and the disaster of deregulation

"All this is a sharp reminder that the purpose of the industry is not to provide cheaper tickets to those of us who can be flexible about our holiday plans. The airline business provides an essential service - one of the essential services of communication on which our civilizations depend. Instead, failure has been snatched out of the jaws of success by restructuring the whole thing through open-market forces into an oligopoly system dependent on bargain-basement methods of shrinking margins, short term planning and long term instability."

Would a citation be too much to ask?

about the airline industry and the disaster of deregulation

"All this is a sharp reminder that the purpose of the industry is not to provide cheaper tickets to those of us who can be flexible about our holiday plans. The airline business provides an essential service - one of the essential services of communication on which our civilizations depend. Instead, failure has been snatched out of the jaws of success by restructuring the whole thing through open-market forces into an oligopoly system dependent on bargain-basement methods of shrinking margins, short term planning and long term instability."