Old McDonald’s is under siege these days. Demonstrators at the Oakbrook headquarters for $15 per hour minimum wage. Flagging sales. Franchisees are unhappy with the company. The stock is sinking. Burger King, of all competitors, is gaining share with fried chicken french fries advertised by talking roosters. The world doesn’t like McDonald’s at the moment so they fired the last CEO, who had just gotten his feet wet in the job. Do they deserve a break today? I doubt it. I visited a McDonald’s today to buy a biscuit and coffee, something I very rarely do, but I was in…
Author: Lloyd Graff
For a century public education was the channel for students to access knowledge that would enhance their lives in many ways. It was the path to middle class lives for tens of millions, the Americanizer for immigrants, the building block of successful democracy. But today the conventional model of top down primary and high school education is rightfully doubted by many in America. The doubt cuts across race, educational background and economic status. Public education with calcified Boards of Education, unionized teachers, politicized curriculums are doubted. With the doubt comes a determined counterattack from those who currently control most of…
It was refreshing to read about U.S. home prices rising 7.4% over the prices of one year earlier. Of metro areas, 22% showed double digit increases. The median family home price was $205,000 versus $191,000 one year earlier. Homes are selling at an annual rate of 5,000,000. But not where I live. I get to watch the best and worst of times as I observe the moribund market for the large beautiful homes in my village of Olympia Fields, Illinois, and compare it to my daughter’s neighborhood of small 60-year-old homes in Palo Alto, California, the center of Silicon Valley…
Mitch Liss of Edsal Manufacturing, who I interviewed at length for TMW five years ago, is moving his shelving manufacturing company out of Chicago to beautiful Gary, Indiana. I was shocked when I saw the announcement because Liss is a lifelong Chicagoan, whose employees came largely from the city. But Gary provided incentives. Chicago taxes were brutal, and Liss needed room for expansion, which Chicago made prohibitively expensive. If you hit business people in the nose long enough they will eventually walk out of the ring. ****** I spent a lot of time at the recent Columbus PMTS Show talking…
The economic numbers these days indicate a relatively weak first quarter of business in the U.S. The indicators I see in the machine tool business verify this, except automotive still seems strong. The strength of the American dollar and the weakness in oil and gas account for much of the slack in manufacturing. At the recent Precision Machining Technology Show (PMTS) in Columbus, Ohio, I talked with several European machining firms who are searching for business here. Their reasoning is that the shift in the dollar over the last several months gives them the opening they have been waiting for…
With the NFL draft taking place today and the NBA playoffs in full swing, I’d like to broach the topic of whether pro athletes make too much money. If Jameis Winston, the number 1 overall draft pick, signs with Tampa Bay and the team wins seven games next season with him slinging the ball, how much is he worth to the team? He will likely sign a three or four year guaranteed contract, with a club option for one more year. Tampa Bay will risk the future health of the franchise on a 21-year-old immature athlete. Winston will get financial…
Just got back from the Precision Machining Technology Show (PMTS) in Columbus, Ohio, organized by the Precision Machined Products Association (PMPA). I collected a lot of scuttlebutt and impressions. I’ll share a few that bubble to the top for me. ******* The PMPA is a small but surprisingly useful and effective trade organization. It has active members who share information and help out fellow members with valuable, hard won knowledge. The Columbus show has grown into a nice magnet for folks involved with machining. It is not an extravaganza like IMTS, but for the tens of thousands who attended, filling…
Yesterday, April 16, was the day Jews call Yom Ha’Shoah, the day to remember the Holocaust. The Holocaust has shaped my life, which may sound odd for an American born in Chicago who never lived through the horror. My parents did not experience it either, and we never talked about it at home. But I became emotionally involved with the horrific killing of Jews and Gypsies and homosexuals and political complainers by the Nazis in high school, from movies, books and television. I internalized the images of bodies piled up like cordwood and emaciated living corpses in striped uniforms walking…
I have been reading so much lately about income inequality in the United States, how poor young people of color are doomed to unemployment or french frying at best, and if kids don’t hear 30 million words by the time they are three their opportunity to thrive is all but dead. The do-gooders want to remedy matters with tuition waivers and government assistance and a variety of other schemes. I’ll admit it, the game is rigged for so many people in our country. And then there is Marco Rubio running for President, and he might just win. His future didn’t…
Baseball is more than just a game for me. It is woven into the fabric of my life. When I was about to be wheeled into heart surgery 6.5 years ago my entire immediate family regaled me with “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for encouragement before being pushed into the operating room. When Harry Caray, the great Cubs announcer, died, Noah and I journeyed to Wrigley Field to place baseball memorabilia at his makeshift memorial. As Garrett Morris used to say on Saturday Night Live, “Baseball’s been berra berra good to me.” A couple days ago I had…