[AT] 1970's farm equipment

[deanvp at att.net]

James,

 Every time I go shopping at the local Costco I marvel at how many
foreigners we have here in WA  I'm sure driven by the High Tech industries
like Microsoft and Amazon. It used to be the Oriental's that were
predominate. Now it seems to be East Indians. I'm sure much of our technical
knowledge is eventually ending up back in India.  However, that doesn't seem
to apply to those who work in the technical support groups we call for help.
I have completely given up on calling any kind of help line for anything.
First because they really don't know very much and secondly their accent
combined with my loss of hearing makes understanding them almost impossible.
I will work Google search until I find the answer I'm looking for. I just
went through that recently.  Some time in the past I changed from double
click to single click file opening on my mouse. Long enough ago I had
forgotten how I did it.  For me the obvious place to look was on the setup
of the mouse. Wrong.  I put up with the change far too long and finally I
had enough.  But couldn't remember how to fix it. Google came to the rescue.
In Win 10. one has to get into File Explorer, view, options, change options
to get to that setting.  How in the hell I found that the first time is
beyond me  But all is now cool again.   Simple but frustrating. 

Dean VP
Snohomish, WA 98290

-----Original Message-----
From: AT <at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com> On Behalf Of James Peck
Sent: Sunday, October 20, 2019 11:18 AM
To: Antique Tractor Email Discussion Group <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
Subject: Re: [AT] 1970's farm equipment

I worked for a GM division a little in the late sixties. The focus then was
on making all components so they ended their life at 10 years.  The items
that lasted longer were made too well.

[Henry Miller] The 1970s when efficiency experts ruled every thing with the
bean counters. Cut cost and quality were number one. The auto world had it
worse than most because they suddenly had to meet emissions rules that they
didn't really know how to do and so rube Goldberg contraptions were designed
to that standard with predictable results. 

Modern just in time is often very inefficient, but the cost savings
elsewhere make it vastly more cost effective. Consumers have also caught on
to the idea that quality is sometimes worth paying for. Where the above
doesn't apply is a race to the bottom that we can't win. China, like Taiwan
and Japan before them is starting to drop out of the game. Africa is
probably next in my opinion: Vietnam and Pakistan play a bit but they are
not large enough and to beat China and they are not far behind China into
getting out of that hole. India could win for a while, but they have a lot
of smart people who know how to make quality (training on the job in the US
or Europe) and would rather skip the cheap junk period. 

.
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