Nand wrote:So, a lot of you are jumping ship, dropping Motorola and getting foreign stuff at lower cost. Wasn’t that the start of the problem all along? When you buy American, you are paying for America wages. When you buy foreign, you loose in the long run because eventually there are no jobs left and no taxes to collect.
From some of your posts it looks like the American government and many state and local governments use taxes collected from American citizens to support foreign labor because they produce and equal quality product for less money. Isn’t this one of the reasons why Motorola and others now produce most of their product where the labor cost is lowest? The skill level doesn’t need to be high since a machine builds most of the product. Testing and alignment is done with the guidance of computer-controlled equipment. The machine doesn’t care where it is located as long as it is in an atmospherically controlled room. The same is true for all the components that make up the assembly.
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There are no simple answers to issues like these, but I would like to offer my perspective.
Yes, it is indeed true that much of the electronic and computer equipment we all blithely purchase is made overseas, and it's also true that much of it is pretty good quality stuff.
However, it's also true that a lot of it is crap, built as cheaply as possible out of inferior materials and components and (apparently) designed to almost literally fall apart after a couple of years usage.
Believe it or not, I think a lot of the problems can be traced back to attitudes created in consumers by the personal computer industry. Over time, computer buyers grew accustomed to buggy software and frequent system crashes. Real high-quality programming techniques (the ones that cost a fair amount to implement) have gone out the window in favor of "just good enough to sell."
This attitude, unfortunately, has carried over into buying electronics.
Put more simply, most folks now EXPECT electronics to cost a tiny amount, and break down regularly. We've been driven away from making an INVESTMENT in our technology, and into making a commodity purchase, all because the manufacturers have gotten so greedy that they've come to see money as their end product as opposed to what's supposed to roll off their assembly lines. "Oh, It broke? It'll cost more to repair than it will to buy a new one. Throw it out."
Do I need to draw a picture of how incredibly wasteful this mindset is, to say nothing of what it'll do to the environment in the long term?
Motorola is an American company that used to design and manufacture EVERY SINGLE product they once made right here in this country. They were, like so many other technology companies, PRODUCT-DRIVEN as opposed to money-driven. They understood, at one time, that good-quality products and good customer service, offered at fair prices, will sell themselves and GUARANTEE ongoing profits and customer loyalty.
Unfortunately, like so many other once-great companies, they got greedy. They started being more concerned about manufacturing money as opposed to product, and I think we all know what happened after that.
I have nothing against any business making a fair profit. What I have a BIG problem with is the pursuit of ever-increasing profits at the expense of all other considerations. Motorola, like Tektronix, has lapsed into this mindset, and I don't see it stopping until there's nothing left.
Another poster drew a parallel between greedy CEOs who join a company, generate tremendous shareholder results by running said company into the ground, and then move on to their next victim, and serial rapists. While a bit lurid, the analogy is more accurate than I think many would like to believe.
What worries me is the question of who's going to be next? M-A/Com? Or Harris? Or Cubic? They all make radio gear, and they all have at least some manufacturing capacity right here in the States. However, they are also all publicly-traded businesses, and this makes me wonder if the same sickness will eventually strike one or more of them.
Keep the peace(es).
