Word: avoidance
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...True, those Asian and European firms flocked to the South to avoid Detroit's high-cost culture. But while southern auto employees extol the union-free, right-to-work rules of their states, the truth is that they might still be earning the basement-level wages of a Mississippi textile worker today if the UAW hadn't leaned on the likes of Mercedes in Washington. "Mercedes wanted a much lower pay scale when it arrived here," says Cashman, who notes that veteran southern autoworkers now earn "only fractionally less" than the average $27 an hour for Detroit workers (and often...
...Another strategy: avoid comparison shopping. In a store, you're likely to compare the specs of one flat-screen TV to the next, even though at home only the absolute experience matters, not the relative one. In your family room, whether the screen is 42" or 46" might not be nearly as big a deal as how easy the remote is to use. You'll get a better feel for the overall experience of each TV if you look at one and then leave the store for a few minutes before coming back in to look at the next...
...Japan learned a similar lesson during the economy's Lost Decade after a stocks-and-real-estate bubble burst in the early 1990s. In a pathetic attempt to avoid losses, Japanese banks kept pumping fresh funds into debt-ridden, unprofitable firms to keep them afloat. These companies came to be known as zombie firms - they appeared to be living but were actually dead, too burdened by debt to do much more than live off further handouts. One economist called Japan a "loser's paradise." The classic zombie was retail chain Daiei, which limped along for years, crushed by debt...
President Bush's fiscal lifeline for GM and Chrysler, announced at the White House Friday morning, amounts to a $13.4 billion handoff to the incoming Administration of President-elect Obama. The deal is rife with indistinct targets the automakers must meet to avoid being forced to repay the loan in three months, squishy conditions for union sacrifices and a deadline that can be changed under numerous circumstances. And of course the entire thing can be renegotiated at will by the incoming Administration...
...hard to avoid the conclusion that this is agribusiness as usual. That said, there are reasons to be cautiously hopeful. Vilsack's spoken encouragingly about capping subsidies and using that money to drive a conservation agenda...On the other hand, he presided over the biggest expansion of feedlot agriculture in Iowa." - Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and a sustainable agriculture advocate, on Vilsack's prospects for bringing about change, National Public Radio...