I hope NO ONE misses this point.wh500special wrote: Happily, the exile for our customer was short lived since they found a way to meet the demand and they managed to maintain their quality and reputation in the process.
This is exactly what made the US great, we figured a way to reduce cost while maintaining or increasing reliability. Some where our thinking has changed we became complacent and instead of thinking up better ways of doing things we adopted the philosophy don't make waves if it is working let it alone. Naturally if nothing changes to reduce cost inflation will cause the prices to increase and we have accepted this as a fact of life. If Henry Ford had thought like this or if Edison thought like this I doubt we would have half of what we have today.
The US steel industry is an excellent example. The were huge and making a ton of money, they got fat dumb and happy. They stopped looking for ways to reduce cost or increase production. Why should they they were making a ton of money the way it was. In the mean time other countries were looking for the better ways. It is now cheaper to ship raw resources out this country to other countries have it turned into steel and shipped back as steel than it is to make it in this country. Don't think I'm right read the book, "And the Wolf Finally Came" by John Hoerr it details this happening in great detail. 680 pages of detail! And yes there were other factors but most if not all were rooted in why worry we are making a ton of money.
If you or anyone is selling product that is increasing in price each year because of inflation you will eventually go out of business, because someone is going to come along and will figure a better way. That is a fact of life.
It is a lesson our car industry is just now beginning to learn. Look at the differences in the cars in last 2 or 3 years especially Fords that figured this out quicker than the others.
