dagblog - Comments for "A Reason to be Grateful. "

I think you have the

moat — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:20:46 +0000

I think you have the beginnings of a manifesto;

Whatever may or not stimulate the market ecology, no harm will come from punishing the people who most obviously took the money and ran. We have to start somewhere.

Head too full of beer for

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 01:08:36 +0000

In reply to My take is at one point,

Head too full of beer for coherent response, but overall, looks like a gold nugget you dropped in here.

My take is at one point,

kgb999 — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 19:11:14 +0000

In reply to Gunther Williams? family

My take is at one point, their business declined to the level that they had no choice but to furlough folks (that's pretty much where I've been stuck for going on two years now ... so I must cop to a bit of projection here).

When business picked back up, it provided the company with options how to proceed. Looking out across the need in their community and the need in their family of workers, they wanted to help both (I imagine it's a small enough community so that the distinction was probably a bit more blurred than it would be in a big city). Up to that point, the way the company had approached helping the community was to write a check. But "business picking up" is by no means the same as flush with cash. Faced with furloughed workers who needed to get back on the job, not enough work hours to keep them busy, and a great need in the community; the company took stock of their resources and innovated.

A really cool thing is that the company has now embraced that innovation and made it a part of it's long-term operational policy. The thought processes behind this decision are a big part of what I think we business owners need to deeply ponder.

Is it realistic to count on people going the extra mile, when the path of least resistance is always beckoning?

Of course not, but you are asking the wrong question. To me the question that this story brings to mind: will *YOU* go the extra mile even though you can not count on anyone else doing so?

Or are we so caught up in the idea that willingly giving more than someone else is forced to give would be so unfair as to be a perfect justification for doing nothing at all?

As cmaukonen said on a FDL post yesterday (loosely paraphrased) - until we stop sucking so bad as people, our government is destined to suck. A corollary to this could be that if everyone behaved as this company has, we wouldn't need to look to the government to sustain our communities with a Keynesian response that basically boils down to "Wise economists show that the government must save us ... therefore it's not my responsibility."

Don't get me wrong, clearly at this point a proper course-correction is going to have to involve a certain disgorgement by the government simply to restore equity to all national stakeholders - it was the vehicle used to create the current inequitable situation. The most effective mechanism to accomplish this is a Keynesian-style investment in national infrastructure. This in turn is going to require recovery of expropriated funds. In the current situation, I diverge somewhat from classic Keynes in that I feel the bulk of required revenue should come from taxing the shit out the people who ripped us off in order to recover stolen money rather than putting it all on our national charge account and allowing crooks to keep their ill-gotten gains.

BUT, and this is important, the government doesn't exist to force Americans not to suck. It is an extension of us. In that, the libertarians are right.

There is an ownership and personal responsibility component to growing and embracing healthy communities that is pretty much entirely lacking in the Democratic orthodoxy. If the government doesn't do it for you - it doesn't get done. But that's only true if we refuse to do it on our own.

Gunther Williams? family

Peter Schwartz — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:30:53 +0000

In reply to A Reason to be Grateful.

Gunther Williams’ family business, Idaho Sewing for Sports Inc. of Grangeville, Idaho, was hit hard by the recession. But laying off employees didn’t sit well with him. It seemed counterproductive to let skilled employees go in order to save the business, he says. So in January 2010, as work began to pick up, Williams took what some might consider a radical action—he brought back all of the company’s furloughed employees full time, with a twist.

I'm a little unclear on this, and perhaps you don't know either.

It sounds like he first furloughed these employees because he felt he couldn't afford to keep them on. In fact, it sounds like he felt that doing so was necessary to "saving the business"--that keeping them on would kill the business.

Presumably, letting these folks go would save the business and give him enough money to write checks to charity, etc.

But then, I guess, he decided that he didn't need to fire them to save the business. He could bring them back full time, and even pay them to go out into the community--and, in fact, the business didn't go under.

So are we to think that he miscalculated when he first decided to let those employees go? Or was it that he had traditionally factored a higher profit margin (along with money to give back) into what he thought the business could afford without going out of business?

I know this is off the beaten track from what your main point--which I applaud--but I'm curious about the nuts and bolts.

Two of the things we hear, primarily from conservatives, is: 1) you can't count on people "doing good" (or doing much of anything) unless there's a financial incentive. A water-seeks-its-own-level sort of argument. So here, even if we say he miscalculated what he could really afford, there is the question: Is it realistic to count on people going the extra mile, when the path of least resistance is always beckoning?

2) Sorry, can't remember the second one...

Yessum. Happy Thanksgiving

Qnonymous — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:58:53 +0000

In reply to A Reason to be Grateful.

Yessum.

Happy Thanksgiving Williams Family!!!