Is $1M the new benchmark for retirement savings?

[disneysteve]

So a neighbor is a lifetime Boeing Employee (so far). Want to hear a terrible and sad story? Anyway about 20 years ago Boeing was frustrated with their manufactoring line. They called up Toyota and asked if they could send the manufactoring managers and experienced workers to show them how to properly run the line. After all Toyota had helped the big 3 automakers how to run their lines better. And the big 3 automakers apparently took it to heart and leaned into it. The biggest thing about "toyota way" is allowing anyone at anytime to "stop the line" in production becase something is wrong. That the lowest man on the line can pull the cord and stop the line. It's a matter of pride in quality control.

Anyway Toyota came and showed boeing how to do this. But boeing decided it wasn't worth it. Hence the missing door plug. The just pushed out airplanes instead of being allowed to stop the line.

A big part of profit probably comes from culture in running the company. They make profits from being good.

Exactly. That illustrates what I said. If you put quality first, profit follows, but that doesn't work the other way around.

[Randomsaver]

So a neighbor is a lifetime Boeing Employee (so far). Want to hear a terrible and sad story? Anyway about 20 years ago Boeing was frustrated with their manufactoring line. They called up Toyota and asked if they could send the manufactoring managers and experienced workers to show them how to properly run the line. After all Toyota had helped the big 3 automakers how to run their lines better. And the big 3 automakers apparently took it to heart and leaned into it. The biggest thing about "toyota way" is allowing anyone at anytime to "stop the line" in production becase something is wrong. That the lowest man on the line can pull the cord and stop the line. It's a matter of pride in quality control.

Anyway Toyota came and showed boeing how to do this. But boeing decided it wasn't worth it. Hence the missing door plug. The just pushed out airplanes instead of being allowed to stop the line.

A big part of profit probably comes from culture in running the company. They make profits from being good.

I enjoyed reading this. Thanks!

[LivingAlmostLarge]

My "guess" is it has to do with trade and access to supply chains. You can build Toyota pickups cheaper in Mexico and the US than you can in Japan with Chicken Tax, without NAFTA, and having to send the product across the ocean to sell it. It's worth noting Toyota and many other foreign makers have factories in the US, Mexico and Canada. Mexico is a huge source of parts/components and partial assemblies for completion in US factories as well.

The impoverished southern US has long been exploited for cheap, anti-union Labor. Mexico has been leveraged for the same, plus lax labor laws, and environmental regulations. Canada, for the exchange rate advantage, and to build cars domestically for Canada. Foreign car companies also use US plants for exporting their cars globally.

IMO, we're not producing more millionaires by getting more Americans working in factories. It hasn't transformed the South and never will. Our economy has moved beyond producing widgets.

Toyota plant is in Kentucky? Yep they build the plants in the south, but a lot of parts are made in mexico and canada and then the assembly is in the us. With the free trade agreement parts and goods go back and forth.

[disneysteve]

Toyota plant is in Kentucky? Yep they build the plants in the south, but a lot of parts are made in mexico and canada and then the assembly is in the us. With the free trade agreement parts and goods go back and forth.

We live in a global economy. Trying to deny that is a fool's errand. Manufacturing is NEVER coming back to this country. It literally can't. There are no domestic sources of a great many raw materials needed to make many of today's common products. They must be imported, even if the final product assembly occurs in the US.

[Fishindude77]

Manufacturing never left the US. A lot of the cheap, labor intense manufacturing did but there is still a huge manufacturing base in this country and output is higher than ever due to efficiencies and automation.
Automotive remains very strong in the US as we buy a great many of the worlds automobiles and they aren't cheap to ship across the globe. Nearly every foreign owned brand has plants in the US to take advantage of this.

I don't think we want all the hand labor, production line stuff that used to be here. It doesn't pay all that great and we couldn't staff the workforce anyway. We want the good, high paying stuff.

[disneysteve]

Manufacturing never left the US. A lot of the cheap, labor intense manufacturing did but there is still a huge manufacturing base in this country and output is higher than ever due to efficiencies and automation.
Automotive remains very strong in the US as we buy a great many of the worlds automobiles and they aren't cheap to ship across the globe. Nearly every foreign owned brand has plants in the US to take advantage of this.

I don't think we want all the hand labor, production line stuff that used to be here. It doesn't pay all that great and we couldn't staff the workforce anyway. We want the good, high paying stuff.

Agreed. Plenty of items are made here, though many are made with foreign parts or materials that simply aren't available domestically. For example, try building a cell phone from scratch without sourcing foreign materials.

As I've posted before, there is not a single car that is 100% made in the US. I think Tesla is the closest with about 87% BUT the way the law is written, parts designated as "American" include things coming from Canada (I'm not sure if Mexico counts in that also but Canada definitely does). So it's very likely that at least some of that 87% isn't actually from the US.