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Reuters
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The maker of steel frames for buildings is among an estimated 150,000 businesses across the desert state preparing for the measure that places Arizona at the vanguard of more than 100 U.S. states and municipalities taking on immigration enforcement. The law, passed days after a federal immigration overhaul died in the U.S. Senate in June, punishes first-time violators who knowingly hire undocumented workers with a 10-day suspension of their business licenses.
A second offense means they lose it.
“The only people who should be nervous are employers who hire illegals at cheap rates to gain unfair advantage over their competitors. They should be worrying a lot,” said John Kavanagh, a Republican state lawmaker who co-sponsored the bill.
“(Already) we have had businesses shut down, businesses that will not go ahead with acquisitions. It is going to get worse before it gets better,” said Julie Pace, one of the lawyers bringing the employers’ suit.
“Arizona will get bypassed economically. We will be known as tough but stupid from an economic perspective,” she said.
So, its OK for the corporations to break the law as long as it helps Arizona economically? Give me a break.
#38, Thomas,
Microeconomics is the study of how scarcity is managed by individuals, households and firms.
Ok, so you looked it up and found a definition that fits your new idea. I disagree with that definition. Why not:
“Microeconomics examines the economic behavior of agents (including individuals and firms) and their interactions through individual markets, given availability, cost, and government regulation.”
or
“Microeconomics examine how decisions and behaviors affect the supply and demand for goods and services, which determines prices; and how prices, in turn, determine the supply and demand of goods and services.”
If we cannot compete on price, then we have to compete on other metrics such as productivity, location, etc.
You are such a small minded loser. So typical of why America is foundering economically. I seriously doubt you have any idea of what “productivity” is. The answer was in my restaurant example. QUALITY. One restaurant cost less, was equally located, and served as much food as the other place. Only their quality sucked. The service is what drove me (and many others) away. Oh, and the other place is very profitable. Yes, some people still eat there, but fewer and fewer all the time.
Consistently your type ignore long term benefits for those short term profits. I worked for this company a few years ago. They shut down their main plant in Arizona to move to China. Our plant made more customized products on short notice and thus was spared the massive layoffs. It took about a year until the first major company canceled all orders. Orders were late, product was defective, it was impossible to talk with an engineer, salesmen were only giving empty promises. Did I mention the massive recall? The little things, such as they had the company phone number wrong on the product. Boxes marked with the wrong part or size.
Let me try to put this in terms you can understand. A given machine or process is working at any degree of productivity, it doesn’t matter. The company has a 5% profit margin. The machine etc makes a faulty item. If the item is caught at the machine then the machine must make at least another19 items to just equal the loss of that ONE item. If the item gets further downstream and into other assemblies, the cost escalates very quickly. Add the dissatisfaction to the cost if the item ends up with a final customer.
Then there is that other “metric” you didn’t mention. Delivery. It matters less what your cost is if I can’t get one. That is when I go to the competition. If you deliver late, you hold up my production schedule. Again, I’ll go to the competition. If you deliver them damaged or unusable. Yup, I’ll go to the competition. If you deliver the wrong item, color, size, model, or whatever, competition here I come. Why? I have customers I want to keep. I can’t keep them if I can’t give them my product.
So you see, microeconomics has very little to do with scarcities. It is mostly about people’s reactions to circumstances. It’s all about human behavior.
…and that sort of economic theory, presented as incontestible fact, is what the legendary liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith was referring to when he coined the phrase ‘the conventional wisdom.’ Meaning, among other things, that it is mere tradition which has passively come to be regarded, erroneously, as fact.
#38, Thomas,
Part Deux
You really come off as someone that has no clue how the real world works. If the price of labor goes up, all things being equal, business owners only have three choices: raise prices, lower costs, or lower profit margins. If a given worker is more productive than others, then the increase in wage may be worth it.
If the price of labor is the whole part of your business then maybe pimping isn’t for you. Any other business has other costs that play as well. If you run a business then you know that things are never equal. Do you think that restaurant owner pays the same as MacDonald’s for their lettuce and ketchup? Have you complained about that lately?
I was a Quality Manager for years. I taught Quality related subjects. It is easy to see that you don’t understand basic business methods. If you think there are only three choices for a business then you sure the hell don’t know what it costs to run a business. Productivity is a bad word to use for a metric. The number that comes out means nothing. It is the number of good product leaving the door that doesn’t come back while the customer does that is important. We call that “efficiency”.
Efficiency is NOT dependent solely upon the employee. It is dependent upon all the inputs including, raw material, environment, tools, instructions, design, and assembly complexity. The employee is only one piece of that equation and Management makes up the rest.
The cheapest price is seldom the cheapest when buying durable goods. I used to drive past a plastic container factory every day. One day I noticed the plant was closed and a big “For Sale” sign was up. What happened? Wal-Mart decided to import their plastic containers from China. The consumer saved a few cents buying containers. The economy lost over 50 well paid individuals that couldn’t contribute to the economy any more. In the long run it cost consumers more then they saved.
Well I fully expect you to shout “that is competition”. Only it isn’t. It turned out that China is subsidizing those manufacturers. And, the new plastic containers were thinner, cracked easier, didn’t seal as tightly, and melted in the dishwasher. So in the end, society lost twice.
To get more productive labor we agree that the owner needs to pay more.
Not necessarily. Blaming the labor for a business’s ills is standard procedure for those who can’t run a business. Is it the fault of the waitress if her order is prepared wrong? Or late? Or undercooked? Or she has too many tables to wait? Or no one told her that the daily special had changed? Or the washrooms are dirty? Or there are flies bothering the customers? Or the gumball machine ate the kid’s quarter. Paying her more or firing her won’t fix any of those problems. None of which are her fault. All them are Management’s problems.
Profitability is dependent upon people paying more than it cost you to provide the item or service. Most anyone can sell something once for more than it cost. The trick is to do that repeatedly. That means attracting and keeping customers. Staying with the restaurant, if your food is hot, prices are reasonable, service fast and courteous, I still won’t return if that furry thing in the hamburg has a long hairless tail or three days later I’m hospitalized with e. coli. food poisoning. Extreme examples sure, but important policies when you think about them.
#40, THC,
The most unfortunate thing about Economic theory, especially Macroeconomics, is you could put 100 Economists from the 100 top Universities and still not find two that agree. Which is why Social Sciences “theory” does not have the same weight as Natural Science theories.
My favorite Economist earned his Phd in Math and Physics, not Economics. W. Edwards Deming. If you know of the man you will see his theory in my last two posts.
…when people and organizations focus primarily on costs (often dominant/typical human behavior), costs (due to not minimizing waste, ignoring amount of rework occurring, taking staff for granted, not rapidly resolving disputes, and failing to notice lack of product improvement—plus, over time, loss of customer loyalty) tend to rise and quality declines over time.
#39
Clearly your nom de plume is in reference to the quality of your education in economics. Your examples about microeconomics substantiate my definition. Microeconomics is the study of how individuals (or firms or households) manage scarcity. Supply and demand, “interactions of individual markets” etc are all related to that same subject. If it was your intention to agree with my definition, you could have said it more succinctly.
RE: Productivity
Quality of service does not *equate* to productivity. Quality is an important factor but speed is also a factor. One can be more productive if you can produce more of the same quality product as a competitor. In reference to restaurants, a waiter could be considered more productive if they are able to wait on more tables than another waiter with an equal quality of service.
> Consistently your type ignore long
> term benefits for those short term
> profits.
Seriously, you sound like an ignorant hippie. Get out in the real world and run a business. If revenue does not cover costs then no amount of altruistic feelings will correct that problem. Sometimes, on rare, rare occasions it makes sense to continue to operate a business at a loss if there is some other gain to be made. The obvious example is the Japanese and their domination of the camera market during the 1970’s. They sacrificed short term profits for long term market share. However, 99% of the businesses out there do not have the ability to affect the market in such a way.
RE: Delivery
No question that time to market is a core metric when evaluating your choices. However, what you seem to ignore is that business *do* evaluate that metric but do so objectively. Can delivery delays be overcome? If not, what is the total delay? What is the estimated cost at that delay including the ill-will created by inpatient customers? What is the cost of such ill-will? Those metrics are *also* evaluated. What may shock you is that overall cost of such delays do not always mean nearly as much as you think. Do I care if newegg ships my hard drive a day later than normal because it is being shipped from Japan? Probably not. As always, it depends on the industry. You seem to want to make the assumption that *maximizing* quality is *always* the right business decision and that is simply not true. As someone said “a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.” Quality is unquestionable important but is not the only factor. Take your restaurant. Suppose you could hire one of three waiters: a bad waiter which was inexpensive, a good waiter which was more but not much more than the bad waiter or the uber waiter which cost twice as much as the good waiter. Most business people would choose the good waiter because it represents the best balance of quality and cost.
> So you see, microeconomics has
> very little to do with scarcities
AHAHAHAHHAHAAHA. Are you here all week? That is on par with saying that computers have little to do with technology. You could not be more ignorant about economics and that is why you fail.
#41
> Any other business has other costs
> that play as well.
Let’s review the choices: increase prices, lower costs or lower profit margins. Lower costs does not *only* mean lower costs by cutting labor. It could mean make cuts in other areas to offset additional labor costs. If that is possible, then more power to you. However, the next obvious question will be why that cost reduction was not implemented earlier. At some point, a company does not have the liberty to reduce costs in other areas. Another solution is to devise a more efficient means of production. That is another way of saying that you found an innovative way to reduce production costs which can offset the higher labor costs.
> Efficiency is NOT dependent solely
> upon the employe
…
> The employee is only one piece of
> that equation
> and Management makes up the rest.
I agree and I never said efficiency was solely dependent on the employee. However, what you are missing is that when labor costs go up, the three choices I mentioned are the only ones available. Now, there are innumerable ways to achieve those three choices and they are obviously not mutually exclusive but at the end of the day, the additional costs have to come from at least one of those three areas.
RE: Wal-mart
You do not seem to realize that labor along with regions (cities, counties, the country etc) ALSO compete in the global marketplace just like companies. So, yes that is competition. However, if the Chinese government is subsidizing the competing plastic factory that is an entirely different issue. The Japanese tried that during the 1980’s with the automotive industry among others. That is a aberration of the market that requires governments to sort out. That is an entirely different subject and OT IMO.
> Blaming the labor for a business’s ills is
> standard procedure for those who can’t
> run a business
Huh? Who said anything about “blaming” labor? Labor is a cost just like taxes and office supplies. If costs go up, you have the three choices I mentioned. You then went off on a tangent about waiters being blamed for inefficiencies in related operations of the business. Again, different subject entirely. If the restaurant is that poorly run it may very well be possible to offset higher labor costs by merely improving the efficiencies of operations. However, that only works for poorly managed operations. What about well run operations?
RE: Macroeconomics
I agree that macroeconomics does not enjoy nearly the same level of consensus or mathematical clarity as microeconomics. Keynes ideas have been out of favor with many for some time. Like the weather, there are enough variables to make prediction and quantification difficult. That is not true with microeconomics primarily because it only deals with individuals or companies.
#44, I don’t know what the hell you are trying to suggest. You keep claiming there is only three options. That is a mistake and shows your short sightedness. There are many options available that only need to be found out. Restricting yourself like that shows why you are not a wise business manager. You are unwilling to look beyond that piece of paper with the red ink on it and see your business.
#44,
If the restaurant is that poorly run it …
Uummm, haven’t you been repeating there are only three options? Several times you have referred to labor costs for the fix. My point is maybe labor is not the problem. Most problems arise because of management. Excessive costs are usually a sign of poor management.
I use to teach people “Don’t work harder, work smarter”.
#43,
Microeconomics is the study of how individuals (or firms or households) manage scarcity. Supply and demand, “interactions of individual markets” etc are all related to that same subject.
I don’t agree that microeconomics is all about the management of “scarcity”. Many people might equate “scarcity” with “supply and demand”. They are not similar. Scarcity is a subset of “supply and demand”.
I don’t care if green beans reach the status of gourmet food, I am still not eating them !!! I don’t care if our neighbor gives us a bushel basket of them for free. I am still not eating them. In other words, neither scarcity nor overwhelming availability will get me to eat green beans. The same for women’s underwear. Or pink sweat socks. Or expresso coffee machines. That is all behavior, not scarcity.
#43,
Sometimes, on rare, rare occasions it makes sense to continue to operate a business at a loss if there is some other gain to be made. The obvious example is the Japanese and their domination of the camera market during the 1970’s.
Bad analogy. The Japanese produced a consumer product that was profitable. It was cheaper and better quality than what was previously available. The mainstay were 35mm SLR cameras. The status quo consisted of Kodak point and shoots and expensive Leicas and Rolloflex Range Finders. Photo enthusiasts loved the SLR and 35mm format much better than the Kodak offerings. Interchangeable lenses won over many. Professionals loved the lower weight and versatility.
The short story on this is Japan never subsidized cameras. If anything, Japanese cameras were a paradigm in the photo industry.
#43,
What may shock you is that overall cost of such delays do not always mean nearly as much as you think. Do I care if newegg ships my hard drive a day later than normal because it is being shipped from Japan? Probably not.
Wrong again.
If I schedule my production to run on Tuesday because the seller told me I would have the material on Monday, I will be damned pissed off if it doesn’t get here. MY customer is being promised delivery by Friday. Shall I make the seller pay for my staff that sits around with no work? Who will pay for my changing the machines over to another product and then changing them back when the material finally arrives? My cost for the late shipment to me will most likely be more than the cost I get for the end product.
I don’t give a shit what you think about Newegg being late. I just went through this with another shipper over a Christmas present that was late. I needed the present by Monday morning as the person was flying that afternoon. DHL had left in it in my door when I returned from the airport. It was too late. Promised delivery was Friday, December 21. I cared.
If you really believe delivery is not important then you are just as bad a business person as I originally suggested.
#43,
As someone said “a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
Geeze, don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?
Sure someone might have said that. That neither makes it right or logical. Management is hired to make that perfect plan today, not tomorrow. The best plan is one that lets everyone know what they are doing, where they are going, what is expected of them, where they can find the tools and material they need, what is their schedule, and so on. When you have a perfect plan, people don’t have questions. Changing a plan in the middle is the recipe for a disaster. Make your perfect plan today, not tomorrow.
Thomas,
Just to reiterate. I am not an economist. My degree is in History. Since I graduated though, I have taken many courses including economics. I used to teach others in Quality Practices, including company managers. I know how to run a business. I also know how a business will fail and many of the signs of poor management.
If you have your own business, please, hire a manager. A professional that understands how to make things work. That appreciates customer satisfaction. Someone who doesn’t fluff off “work smarter, not harder” as just a slogan.
#45
Actually, I am currently a business manager (executive) and, until I was recently hired as an executive, ran my own business for over a decade and since my degrees are in economics and mathematics, I think I know a bit about microeconomics. What you clearly lack is an understanding of what is meant by the three options.
#46
Noooo. If you had read the rest of the post you would realize that improving efficiencies in operations is simply another means of lowering costs and thus one of the three choices. Furthermore, had you continued to read you would have noted that the obvious question that comes up when sufficient improvements in operations are implemented as to offset new costs is why those efficiencies were not implemented sooner. On top of that, you cannot play that game forever. At some point, your operation is sufficiently efficient such that additional labor costs cannot be offset by improvements in operational efficiency.
#47
Economics is itself the study of scarcity. Money happens to a primary item in scarce supply. Microeconomics deals with how individuals or firms manage scarcity and macroeconomics deals with how nations or societies manage scarcity. That you do not know that or think it is untrue in no way changes its veracity. I suggest chatting with an economist or, even better, actually taking a class on microeconomics.
Supply and demand is a means for explaining how individuals react to scarcity. Supply and demand has no meaning when you have infinite resources and an unlimited ability to acquire those resources.
#48
RE: Cameras
Actually, it was a quite a relevant analogy. For years, the Japanese camera companies operated at a loss with subsidies from the Japanese government. Granted, they also came up with innovative products however they were able to undersell competitive products until they put their competitors out of business. In short, their government interfered with the market to run their competitors out of business. That is a break down on the part of our government to counter that interference.
#49
No one said that delivery is not important. The actual question is *how* important as measured by the marginal benefit vs the marginal cost. If the marginal benefit exceeds the marginal cost then it makes sense. Will a week make a difference? How about a day? How about an hour? How about a nanosecond? There is a cost to those improvements that goes up geometrically with each improvement. With as little practical knowledge as you have it is difficult to explain. In the technical world, is the equivalent of having 99% uptime or 99.9% or 99.999%. The cost goes up substantially with each additional fraction of a percentage point and it may not make sense from a cost standpoint to maximize it.
#50
Again, your lack of practical knowledge is showing. You can almost never devise a perfect plan on short notice. In the trenches, when you are under the gun, you can almost never devise a perfect plan no matter how talented your team. However, you often can devise good plans on short notice. Thus, to say that you want a perfect plan today is to be ignorant of the choices you are given: Good plan now, perfect plan tomorrow and you need a decision now.
#51
“Knowing” how to run a business as opposed to *actually* running one is called “book knowledge” which is vastly different from practical experience. I have watched many liberals like yourself change attitudes when they are put in a position of actually running a business. There is a BIG difference between “knowing” and “doing.”
No one disagrees that “working smarter” is better than “working harder.” Where we clearly disagree is what is defined as “smarter”. To me smarter implies “optimal.” That means maximizing benefit while minimizing cost. However, what you do not understand is what is entailed in the meaning of “benefit” and “cost.”
#52,
Actually, I am currently a business manager (executive) …
That means as much as being a hooker’s pimp. A business manager ? Ya right. Executive too??? Ok.
At some point, your operation is sufficiently efficient such that additional labor costs cannot be offset by improvements in operational efficiency.
Ok, so you reduce your employee’s salary. But what about when your raw material costs increase? Or your shipping cost? Or your utilities? Or your consultant’s. Or your land taxes? Or your machinery wears out? Or you need new tooling? Or the toilet paper needs refilling?
You keep returning to “labor costs” as a defining cost. It isn’t. It is only ONE cost of many. All the costs associated with a business are variables dependent upon each other for their determination and effect on the bottom line.
*
RE: Cameras
…
Granted, they also came up with innovative products however they were able to undersell competitive products until they put their competitors out of business.
The Japanese camera industry was not subsidized by the government any more than American automobile industry was subsidized by the American government. They succeeded because they brought the world inexpensive optics. Previously, only expensive equipment had the same quality of optics the Japanese manufacturers were producing for far less. The Japanese made money.
Their products were innovative, very well made, user friendly, reliable, and inexpensive. In other words, they were just better. If you don’t understand how someone could produce something better than you for less cost then I suggest you don’t belong in business.
*
No one said that delivery is not important.
Oh??? How about in #43 where you wrote
Do I care if newegg ships my hard drive a day later than normal because it is being shipped from Japan? Probably not.
Yes yes, you sort of qualified your answer earlier with an “if” and a “maybe” and a “well it depends on the industry”. So then I guess one could also say cost, quality, reliability, availability, or even the preferred model are unimportant too.
*
Again, your lack of practical knowledge is showing. You can almost never devise a perfect plan on short notice. In the trenches, when you are under the gun, you can almost never devise a perfect plan no matter how talented your team.
Again you don’t know how wrong you are. If you continually run around putting out fires you are not running the business. The proper way to run a business is NOT to have any fires in the first place.
Gee, that really sounds “bookish” and “theoretical”. No. It is a fact. You make a plan and stick to it. Everyone knows what they do, where everything is, how to do it, the time frame it is to be done in, the color, size, model, etc. All the raw materials are available. All the machinery is available. All the necessary molds or tooling is available.
When you have a poor plan then yes, you will start putting out fires. If you need to make a change then the plan wasn’t made correctly. If you need a decision today, use the plan you made yesterday because that is the one you are going by. There are no reasons to change a plan mid-production run.
So why is there a fire? Material not arrived? What??? Didn’t someone confirm the order? Machine tooling can’t be found? What??? Didn’t anyone verify they were ready to change the machine? Parts don’t fit? What??? Where was the production quality? Are they the correct parts? Wasn’t all that outlined in the plan???
*
“Knowing” how to run a business as opposed to *actually* running one is called “book knowledge” which is vastly different from practical experience.
My previous comment on planning is just a piece of a six hour lecture I used to use. I had many examples. One example is the automobile industry. One large plant producing cars built during the 1990s was approximately 90% manufacturing and 10% warehouse. Another auto plant built around 1958, a few miles away, was about 50% manufacturing and 50% warehouse.
With all the automotive manufacturers, suppliers are given a contract. They knew they would have a certain volume bought but they had to perform. If you shut down their assembly line because they ran out of your parts, you paid for their down time. More than one supplier went belly up after failing that test. One friend lost his job after they failed to supply rocker arms to an engine assembly plant. It cost them over $5,000 an hour back during the mid ’80s.
With that first plant I mentioned, suppliers were told when to deliver their parts. For example, dock B-12 at 9:15 to 10:00. That meant they had to have their truck at that dock no earlier than 9:15 and must have it out by 10:00. So if they showed up at 9:14, they were sent away, even if the dock was empty. They could come at 9:50, but that left only 10 minutes to unload. If they pulled into B-10, they were fined and sent on their way. Everything in that plant was dependent on the material arriving at the right time. Yes, the vehicles leaving that plant were good quality and sold well.
One day I sat in in a coffee shop near this plant with a couple of their top executives. Someone mentioned all the trucks driving around the block killing time until they could unload. What a waste of fuel !!! Within a year they had built a truck stop where the trucks could wait without wasting fuel, adding unneeded wear to the trucks, or taking up traffic and wearing out the roads. But they didn’t change their warehouse plan.
*
So if your practical experience is putting out fires instead of planning, you aren’t running or managing a business. You are letting the business run you. Just knowing what I do, I guarantee I could find ways to save your company serious money. And not by reducing the payroll. Unless you are the Executive Business Manager to a group of hookers.
Let’s recap:
1. You know nothing about microeconomics and thus cannot speak intelligently about the effect of a wage increase.
2. You have no practical experience actually running a business much less making one profitable where you are required to manage costs and thus have no idea what goes through the minds of real business people when faced with those decisions.
3. Since you lack knowledge in microeconomics, you are also apparently unfamiliar with the concept of diminishing returns. At some point, time spent devising the perfect plan is more costly than going with what you have. Thus, the source of the cliche that a good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
4. Lastly, you have a habit of assuming that every general statement about business can be applied in exacting detail to every business problem and circumstance and this obviously ridiculous. Each industry has its own unique set of requirements. It may very well be the case that a day delay in automobile manufacturing is costly but that is never the question that business people ask. Instead, they ask, “How costly?” In microeconomics, this is a comparison of the marginal cost against the marginal benefit. If the marginal benefit of a decision exceeds the marginal cost then it is a good decision. The trick is ensuring you include all the factors into the determination of marginal benefit and marginal cost.
Therefore, I am ending my part in this conversation. You appear to be simply ignorant. I suggest that your best course is to educate yourself by taking a course or two in microeconomics and try running a business where you must manage costs and employees for a couple of years.
Thomas,
You are a Business Manager (Executive). I can only assume for either a string of hookers or a garage band that needs someone to drive the truck and carry the heavy stuff into the High School Gym.
Let’s recap:
1. You know nothing about microeconomics and thus cannot speak intelligently about the effect of a wage increase.
So far, you have not presented any valid argument except for an either / or situation.
2. You have no practical experience actually running a business much less making one profitable where you are required to manage costs
I ran a department with 12 people, including 2 supervisors, reporting to me. I answered to the Corporate Vice President. As a team, we managed an $80 million division. Our return on investment was 42%.
3. Since you lack knowledge in microeconomics, you are also apparently unfamiliar with the concept of diminishing returns. At some point, time spent devising the perfect plan is more costly than going with what you have.
This is what I mean. You just don’t understand how to run a business. If you already have a plan then why are you devising a new one? The perfect plan? That is what Managers are paid to do, not fight fires. If you go to a bank for a loan, the first thing they will ask you is for your business plan. Think about it.
4 … Each industry has its own unique set of requirements. It may very well be the case that a day delay in automobile manufacturing is costly but that is never the question that business people ask.
And that is part of your problem. You feel every situation, every business, every industry is unique. They aren’t. We have a saying for people like you. “You love you re-invent the wheel every time”. In other words, you will start an endeavor without a plan feeling that your “smarts” will overcome every adversity. That only creates confusion, errors, and wastes time. That adds up to wasted money and lost repeat business. A dollar floating out the window is a dollar floating out the window regardless of the industry.
You claim Micro Economics is all about scarcity. You are still wrong or else reading from a 50 year old text book. Try looking at Micro Economics as the “management of availability”.
Every industry has assets . The more those assets are used then the more return they will produce. If your assets sit idle, they are wasting money. It doesn’t matter if your asset is an airplane, a taxi cab, a stamping press, a multi head lathe, a computer terminal, or a kitchen stove in a restaurant. If they are not being used then your investment is not earning money. Labor is the same thing. If your employees are not being used, they are not making money. Abuse your assets and they quit working. Abuse your employees and they quit for another job.
Therefore, I am ending my part in this conversation. You appear to be simply ignorant.
Coming from someone who has shown they know so little about running a business, I can only laugh. Have a good New Year