Dear Editor
Dear Editor Steel George P. Brockway's "Productivity: The New Shell Game" (NL, February 8,1982), which I have only recently come upon, makes more good than bad points. There is one instance where...
...My position is that they should not be encouraged to do so, and that there are aspects of the tax law that give such encouragement...
...The big difference is that the Americans are paying $24 an hour for labor, the highest in the world, while the Germans and Japanese are paying $5 an hour or less...
...I certainly agree that U.S...
...This bromide is in a class with the observation of Moliere's doctor, who says that opium puts you to sleep because of its "dormative virtue...
...It did not create any new ones...
...U.S...
...I hope that in subsequent articles Brockway will bring out some of the facts I mention above...
...I would note that U.S...
...New York City Walter A. Sheldon No Novelty Unlike your reviewer, Matthew Stevenson, I fail to see the novelty or explanatory power of John Keegan's thesis in his Six Armies in Normandy: From D-Day to the Liberation of Paris-namely that men fight in a war because they are part of an army drawn from a larger social group ("Fighting with a Purpose," NL, September 20, 1982...
...Morristown, Pa...
...President Reagan has done more than any other recent Chief Executive to encourage productivity...
...On the contrary, if evidence becomes overwhelming and all fingers start pointing to him, in my opinion he will not rest until Begin shares his fate-forced resignation...
...After all, newspapers are not prevented from going into radio, television and other undertakings...
...I was relying on the Business Week series on ^industrializing America...
...This national productivity is obviously not improved by managing the economy in such a way that well over 12 million potential workers produce nothing at all...
...Steel or any big steel company, but fair is fair...
...Furthermore, Ariel Sharon is not the type to lei himself be sacrificed in order to save Begin's head...
...Steel's decision to take over Marathon Oil was wise, and one it should be allowed to pursue...
...Since I did not agree with the conclusions of the series, perhaps I should have questioned the premises...
...Steel has large blast furnaces and basic oxygen converters for making steel from iron, the same as the Japanese and the Germans...
...Orlando, Fla...
...Steel did not make the mistake of staying with the Bessemer process instead of switching to, as Brockway says, "whatever it was the Germans and Japanese switched to...
...Brockway brings up steel mills in order to castigate American management...
...There is one instance where it strays from the facts, however, and I am sure you will welcome a correction...
...Their workers are more literate, too...
...As for the mergers Brockway takes exception to, why should U.S...
...As the sign on President Truman's desk said: "The buck stops here...
...Steel should not be restricted from going into other lines of business...
...Yet these countries spend far less for education than we do in the United States...
...Well, sure-and a well-armed unit of the PLO, had it been fighting in the Trojan War with its high-tech Soviet weapons, could have clobbered the Greeks and changed the face of the ancient world...
...Moreover, given the present sophistication of electronic surveillance, such a large-scale operation could no longer be planned in secret...
...Steel has had good management for some time, and its current leaders are the best ever-probably the best in the industry...
...Since productivity is such a big factor in our survival, we can all benefit from the President's lectures about working harder...
...Being a metallurgist, I can assure you that U.S...
...On the question of the competition with the Japanese, I am probably closer to Schmid's view than he thinks...
...I urge Brock-way to visit German and Japanese steel mills (as well as those in South Korea), where he will see how educated and productive the workers are compared with their American counterparts...
...I have, as a matter of fact, done a couple of columns on this very subject ("America's Setting Sun," NL, June 14, 1982, and "How Our Sun May Rise Again," NL July 12-26, 1982...
...Doing so would enable our steel companies'to compete on a much fairer basis with subsidized foreign producers, who are dumping steel in the American market at prices far below those their own markets command...
...The present Administration at least has a better attitude, although it still has not enforced the antidumping laws...
...NL, November 1, 1982), but the real question is, Should the Begin Administration survive...
...Steel companies should not be hindered from doing the same-especially when the world market, for reasons beyond the industry's control, renders it impossible to turn a profit by manufacturing steel...
...No less fatuous is your reviewer's learned observation that an airborne fleet like the one that dropped the Americans over Normandy "would be hopelessly vulnerable to Exocet missiles and similar deadly weapons...
...My main point, in any case, was that the venture into Marathon Oil merely rearranged the ownership of existing productive assets...
...My general point about productivity, which I may have failed to state clearly, is that productivity per worker is a proper concern for the management of any enterprise, but productivity of the economy as a whole is the proper concern of the national government...
...Cliff Marshall...
...If Israel's Defense Minister is proved responsible for what happened in the Beirut refugee camps, Prime Minister Menachem Begin must share his guilt...
...He deserves more credit than Brockway's article gives him...
...Foreign steel mills are government subsidized, they receive favorable loan rates from their bankers, and they are not persecuted by their governments, as our steel companies have frequently been in the past...
...We badly need them to remind us of the necessity for more effort from everyone in our society who is working and doing something constructive...
...Steel be restricted from going into some other lucrative business where it can make a profit and thus give its employees, suppliers, stockholders, and all of its other constituents more security...
...Assuming his figures are correct, I am sure he does not believe that it would be either efficient or ethical to reduce the American wage scale to the Japanese level...
...Responsibility Eliahu Salpeter asks "Will Sharon Survive...
...I do not work for U.S...
...David M. Schmid George P. Brockway replies: David Schmid may be right about the productivity of American steel mills...
Vol. 66 • January 1983 • No. 2
