Word: offsets
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Explosion in View. Optimists in rebuttal argue that the soft spots are temporary and offset by other factors. Since January, the average factory work week has been increasing-historically a tip-off that increased hiring is at hand. The decline in consumer spending and home building is more than made up for by increased Government spending and the rise in industrial construction. Other cheerful signs...
Productive Proof. Unlike U.S. businessmen, foreign industrialists generally do not see automation primarily as a means of beating labor costs. In Japan the incentives are to offset a lack of skills that makes quality control difficult or to compensate for the high cost of imported raw materials. European firms are often spurred on by labor shortages to find means of increasing production without additional manpower. Nonetheless, the net effect in both Europe and Asia is a labor saving that shows up in productivity gains that, in most cases, outstrip the U.S. rate of increase. While U.S. manufacturing productivity has risen...
...both the development and widespread application of automation. (Against 12,000 computers in action in the U.S.. Britain has only 600.) Most foreign industrialists concede that the U.S. will probably stay ahead for years to come, but doubt that the U.S. lead will be big enough to offset the combination of foreign automation and lower foreign wages. As consolation, some foreign businessmen argue that high labor costs alone will not necessarily make U.S. exports noncompetitive. Says British Industrial Consultant L. Lamdon Goodman: "Price isn't everything. Quality, design, prestige and timing of new products are equally important...
...moving smaller producers, who now hold 13% of the market: Anaconda Aluminum, Harvey Aluminum and Ormet Corp., a subsidiary of Olin Mathieson. At the same time, the plastics industry has developed new products to compete with aluminum in pleasure boats, packaging and auto trim. And steel has started to offset aluminum's inroads by bringing out lighter, tougher and cheaper alloys and tin plates...
Last month alone, 30,415 East Germans escaped to West Berlin, one-third of them workers badly needed by labor-short East German industry and transport. Presumably to offset these losses, the Communists began making trouble for the 52,000 East Germans who, by subway and elevated, daily commute to jobs in West Berlin. No published order exists prohibiting East Germans from working in West Berlin, but East German army and police last week summarily began hauling East Germans off their commuter trains even before they reached the East Berlin sector on their way to the Western half...