DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

There once was a time, long, long ago, way back in November as I recall, when the undisputed kings and queens of royalty, er, uh … members of Congress severely criticized the chief executives of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler for having the audacity to travel to their palace, er, uh … the nation’s capital in private jets to seek a handout, er, uh … bailout for the automotive industry.

Our illustrious bureaucrats, in all of their pompous splendor, publicly derided these manufacturing CEOs as piddly hypocrites who said one thing but did another. “Those types of symbolic things, they really matter. They set a tone,” declared prince, er, uh … U.S. Representative Peter Roskam (R-IL).

The Honorables on The Hill, many of whom are fighting allegations of corruption from every side, decided they were fed up with such a tone of symbolic hypocrisy. Red with envy, er, uh … anger, they determined they would set things straight.

So after much public yammering, er, uh … debate, they gave $17.4 billion to the automakers and gave each of themselves a $4,700 pay raise for an exhausting job well done. After all, what’s another $2.5 million out of the people’s pockets when the national debt stands at $10 trillion?

This well-timed, highly noble logic increases our monarchs’ salaries to a baseline of $174,000 and places them near the top 5 percent of all wage earners in the country. But wait.

Not to be outdone, the preeminents separate themselves from the little people who actually work for wages by receiving an enormously wide array of office perks, gold-plated health care and pensions that enlarge their total income far beyond a mere salary. The result? 30 percent of all the House and Senate members are now millionaires. That’s right, one of every three – and more plan to join the club soon. What an opportunity.

Speaking of opportunities, in the pages that follow you’ll find metalworkers that invested “in the loop” of latest control technologies and gained all sorts of new business. Notice how their advanced process capabilities enable them to explore new markets where they not only compete, but thrive during these tough times.

While the capital investments being examined in this issue are one means of combating this recession, we recently polled our readers and asked them to identify other recession-proof strategies that might make sense for their business. They identified several (see chart above).

Several other viable options were identified by other readers. Scott Rathburn of Haas Automation Inc. (Oxnard, CA), for instance, recommended these:

– Provide better customer service to add value and distinguish your company from the competition.

– Simplify and optimize processes.

– Improve product quality.

– Add automation to remove labor content.

– Develop new products to capture new markets.

– Work with suppliers to reduce inventory and cut costs, while ensuring their survival.

All of these ideas represent strong testimonies of how manufacturers are “walking their talk” to compete in this weakened economy. There are no handouts here for the taking. They’re doing what they say they’re going to do to serve their customers – and both sides are reaping benefits.

This is a world apart from the “do as I say, not as I do” policies of our public servants who reign high above the weakened economy. For them, handouts are a way of life. They never do anything they say they’re going to do for us – and they reap all the benefits.

Such is life under this sort of socialism, er, uh … democracy. There has been a lot of talk lately about change coming to the palace. Let’s see if the new royalty can walk the talk for real.