Downsizing of America

The Downsizing of America is a fact filled investigative report telling the story of why millions of Americans are losing good jobs and why they are right to worry about the future

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a substantial number of U.S. companies announced major restructuring and downsizing. But we don't know exactly what changes in the U.S. and global economy triggered this phenomenon. Little research has been done on the underlying causes of downsizing. Did companies actually reduce the size of their workforces, or did they simply change the composition of their workforces by firing some kinds of workers and hiring others? Downsizing in America, one of the most comprehensive analyses of the subject to date, confronts all these questions, exploring three main issues: the extent to which firms actually downsized, the factors that triggered changes in firm size, and the consequences of downsizing. The authors show that much of the conventional wisdom regarding the spate of downsizing in the 1980s and 1990s is inaccurate. Nearly half of the large firms that announced major layoffs subsequently increased their workforce by more than 10 percent within two or three years. The only arena in which downsizing predominated appears to be the manufacturing sector-less than 20 percent of the U.S. workforce. Downsizing in America offers a range of compelling hypotheses to account for adoption of downsizing as an accepted business practice. In the short run, many companies experiencing difficulties due to decreased sales, cash flow problems, or declining securities prices reduced their workforces temporarily, expanding them again when business conditions improved. The most significant trigger leading to long-term downsizing was the rapid change in technology. Companies rid themselves of their least skilled workers and subsequently hired employees who were better prepared to work with new technology, which in some sectors reduced the size of firm at which production is most efficient. Baumol, Blinder, and Wolff also reveal what they call the dirty little secret of downsizing: it is profitable in part because it holds down wages. Downsizing in America shows that reducing employee rolls increased profits, since downsizing firms spent less money on wages relative to output, but it did not increase productivity. Nor did unions impede downsizing. The authors show that unionized industries were actually more likely to downsize in order to eliminate expensive union labor. In sum, downsizing transferred income from labor to capital-from workers to owners

In this trenchant analysis of American society, Thomas Naylor and William Willimon take an unabashed stance against the belief that "bigger is better" and contend that there is a price to be paid for our uncritical affirmation of bigness.

The Idea For The Downsizing Of America Originated The Day That American President George W. Bush Declared The Second Iraqi War Over. By Then The World Was In Turmoil Mainly Because Bush Had Made War On Terror Official American Foreign Policy. The Original Plan Of The Work Was A Straightforward Narrative Analysis Of How, From The Sunny Prospects Of 1989, When The Soviet Empire Collapsed And Communism In The Ussr Started Crumbling, The World Had Evolved To The Straits It Was In, With The Usa Opposed By Its Traditional Allies, The Un In Crisis, And Terrorism Rampant The World Over. America Had Become Overtly Imperialistic But, As Events Soon Showed, It Wasn'T Hacking It. So What Had Fundamentally Gone Wrong? The Second Iraqi War Was Of Course A Reckless Adventure. If In Decades Of Repressive Military Occupation, Israel Had Only Managed To Make Palestinian And Arab Resistance And Hostility More Intense And Deadly, What Could 140,000 American Soldiers Do In A Violent And Divided Country Of 25 Million Inhabitants? But There Was Something Else Amiss. America Was Not Supposed To Be Invading Other States On Its Own Without International Sanction. It Didn'T Take A Profound Analysis To Realize That The Exceptionalism Of America Was A Concoction Of Americans Themselves. Even So, Was It Valid? Was Bush Merely An Aberration? Were Vice-President Cheney And Defense Secretary Rumsfeld Figures In A Nightmare Landscape? In Sum, A Book That Began As A Brief History Of The Topsy-Turvy Contemporary World, Turned Into An Exploration Of The Thesis Of American Exceptionalism. It Retained Its Narrative Structure And The Basic 1989-To-Now Time Frame, But It Expanded Considerably On Significant Features Of American History: Its Foreign Policy, Its Politics, And Its Intelligence Services, Among Others. In Doing So, The Downsizing Of America Presents A Picture Of A Multipolar World Where Cultural Relativism (And No Longer Purely Western Values) Are The Norm And, In Particular, It Proposes The Self-Evident Yet Controversial Contention That America Is One Among Other Powers, Bigger And Stronger, But In Realistic Historical Terms Not Better In Any Sense Of The Word.

A former Army officer and Gulf War veteran takes a critical look at the adverse effects of downsizing on the U.S. Army. Though executed with compassion and precision, downsizing undermines morale and threatens the Army at its core. David McCormick demonstrates how the Army's experience in downsizing is instructive for all organizations--government, corporate, and nonprofit alike.