Monthly Archives: April 2012

April 30, 2012—SnyderTalk Editorial: It’s Time for the New York Times to Face Reality

Old Posts

Welcome to SnyderTalk!

________________________________________

It’s Time for the New York Times to Face Reality

To fully appreciate what I’m about to say, you need to watch this YouTube video: click here.

More than anything that I’ve seen or read thus far, this video demonstrates what’s wrong at the New York Times.  Generally speaking, the executives at the Times are being forced to face reality and employees at the Times including columnists don’t understand reality.   The fact that Times columnists don’t understand the real world has been evident for a long time in their articles, but their willingness to go public with their fears about proposed pension plan changes proves it beyond any reasonable doubt.

Specifically, Times executives are taking steps to make sure that the paper survives over the long-term.  They must make changes to their pension plan, or the company will go bankrupt in due course and cease to exist.  That’s the same problem that General Motors faced, and GM would have gone bankrupt without a government bailout that it received as a part of President Obama’s stimulus package.

The president is touting the fact that he saved the auto industry, but that’s not true.  He saved GM, not the auto industry.  The survival of the auto industry was never in doubt, but unless GM makes mammoth changes in the way that it operates, it still won’t make it.  Like the Times, GM made promises to its employees that it could not keep.  The company promised to pay them a specific amount of money each month in retirement if they worked for a certain number of years, and in addition, it promised to pay their healthcare costs or a big portion of those costs until they died.

That’s called a defined benefits pension plan.  It doesn’t work in the current environment because people live longer now than they did when those promises were made, and the cost of living and the cost of medical care are increasing faster than the executives at GM and the Times even thought possible when they negotiated the labor contracts that are the immediate concern of today’s employees.

I’m not suggesting or implying that the executives at GM and the Times in a bygone era intentionally made promises that they knew they could not keep, but I am saying this: their assumptions about the competitive landscapes in their industries, life expectancies, and the cost of living in general were way off the mark.  As a result, today’s executives must bring their pension plans in line with reality or they will face insolvency.  That’s called prudent management.

The solution that’s been proposed at the Times is called a defined contributions pension plan.  That means that the company is promising to contribute a certain amount of money each month to the pension accounts of its employees, and the employees will assume responsibility for determining how that money is invested.  If the employees invest wisely in a diversified portfolio made up of stocks, bonds, and real estate, they will actually be better off during retirement under the new plan than they would have been under the old plan.  Even more, since those pension accounts are not dependent on the company’s long-term viability, the employees will not live out their golden years wondering if future generations of Times executives will destroy the company and their income stream during retirement in the process.

That’s exactly what happened at GM, Ford, and Chrysler.  Following World War II, U.S. auto manufacturers were the only producers of automobiles for the global market.  German and Japanese auto manufacturers had been destroyed during the war, and it took them a couple of decades to get back on their feet.  During the 20-year period between 1945 and 1965, U.S. automakers could make any promise to their employees that they wanted, and it didn’t matter since they could simply pass on the costs of those promises to their customers.

The automobile market started changing quickly in the mid-1960s as Toyota, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW, for example, started selling cars that were better and less expensive than comparable cars produced by U.S. auto manufacturers.  The rate of change accelerated during the First Arab Oil Embargo in 1973, and things came to a head during what is commonly known as the Second Arab Oil Embargo in 1979.  At that point, the resistance that U.S. car buyers had to purchasing automobiles from Japanese and German producers, our enemies during WWII, had subsided, and the quality and price issues took center stage in their minds.

Both Ford and Chrysler looked bankruptcy squarely in the eye during the early 1980s.  Chrysler needed a U.S. government loan guarantee to survive, and Ford made radical changes from top to bottom in order to stay alive and compete in the increasingly competitive global market.  GM was the only one of the Big Three that was able to carry on through that period without making major changes even though a complete overhaul was desperately needed even then.

Ford had improved its operations so much by the time the Great Recession of 2008 hit that it was able to get by without government assistance, but that cataclysmic event was GM’s last straw.  By that time, GM had no choice but to change, die, or seek government relief.  Unfortunately for the company and for U.S. taxpayers, the company’s executives chose the third option.  I say “unfortunately” because an automaker that produces a car like the Chevy Volt still hasn’t learned its lesson, and if GM doesn’t change its ways, in due course it will go bankrupt.  No amount of government support can prevent that from happening over the long-term if the company continues producing cars that people refuse to buy because they cost too much and they are not good enough.

Every industry is being forced to come to grips with the new reality, not just the auto industry and the newspaper industry.  The airline industry, for example, has been grappling with the paradigm shift for many years, and AMR, the parent company of American Airlines, is going through bankruptcy right now because it failed to adjust and its costs are still too high — labor and pension plan costs in particular.  The U.S. government can’t afford to bail out every firm in every industry that is experiencing significant change and even trying is counterproductive.

That brings me back to the New York Times.  The company’s flagship brand, the print edition, is experiencing circulation and advertising revenue declines.  Revenue from internet subscribers, although helpful, doesn’t address the underlying problems at the company: perceived inferior quality content and excessively high costs.

When Times executives signed the original labor contract the vestige of which is in dispute today, it was a totally different world.  There was no American Thinker, for example, producing better content and making it available over the internet for free.  Stated simply, there are not enough buyers who are willing to pay the price for the Times’ inferior content to support the company’s cost structure.  Ignoring that fact won’t make the company’s problems go away.  In fact, pretending that their world hasn’t changed will lead to bankruptcy, unemployment lines for current employees, and really hard times for retirees.

This SnyderTalk editorial first appeared in American Thinker on April 27, 2012.

To see other SnyderTalk editorials, click here.

________________________________________

________________________________________

Thomas Jefferson

“For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

________________________________________

Email Distribution List:

I have created an email distribution list that I use to notify people when I post a new SnyderTalk.  If you would like to be on that list, send your email address to nhsny@yahoo.com, and put “add me to your distribution list” in the subject line.  If you know others who are interested in SnyderTalk content, tell them to send me their email address, and I’ll put them on the list.

________________________________________

Lamentations 1: 5-6

Her adversaries have become her masters, her enemies prosper; for Yahweh has caused her grief because of the multitude of her transgressions; her little ones have gone away as captives before the adversary.  All her majesty has departed from the daughter of Zion; her princes have become like deer that have found no pasture; and they have fled without strength before the pursuer.

________________________________________

His Name is Yahweh explains why the Name of God, Yahweh, is so important.  It’s available in eBook format and in paperback.

  • God also said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob—has sent me to you.’ This [Yahweh] is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3: 15)
  • “Therefore behold, I am going to make them know—this time I will make them know My power and My might; and they shall know that My name is Yahweh.” (Jeremiah 16: 21)
  • “Behold, the days are coming,” declares Yahweh, “when I will raise up for David a righteous Branch; and He will reign as king and act wisely and do justice and righteousness in the land.  In His days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely; and this is His name by which He will be called, ‘Yahweh our righteousness.’” (Jeremiah 23: 5-6)

________________________________________

#####

#####

________________________________________

Hosea 4: 6

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.

________________________________________

Stand! is a suspense novel that exposes the lies, corruption, and greed underlying the theory that man-made CO2 emissions are responsible for global warming.  Professor Wes Carlyle and Karen Sterling, his research collaborator, carefully scan the audience for their would-be attacker—a member of the enviro-gestapo who has been following them for days.  Wes spots his man in the back of the room leaning against the wall.  Suddenly, another man in the audience steps forward and moves toward Karen at a menacing pace.  With a vicious stroke, he swings a billy club at her head.  Click here to order the eBook.  Click here to order the paperback.

________________________________________

________________________________________

#####

Top 5 diggtm articles yesterday:

#####

________________________________________

#####

________________________________________

________________________________________

________________________________________

#####

________________________________________

What Will You Do with the Rest of Your Life? deals with a question that every Christian has to consider: what should I do with my life?  Click here to order the eBook.  Click here to order the paperback.

________________________________________

#####

Business:

World:

United States:

Opinions:

#####

________________________________________

Blessings in the Book of Revelation is a book that you need to read, especially now.  There are blessings throughout the Scriptures but Revelation is the only book in the Bible actually containing a specific blessing for reading it. It’s repeated twice, once at the beginning and again at the end. This is the reason that I believe Revelation should be the first step toward studying biblical prophecy. Though not easy to do, Revelation can be broken down and understood by anyone, not just the academic elite. So, Revelation’s blessings are for everyone.  Click here to order the eBook.  Click here to order the paperback.

________________________________________

http://www.washingtonpost.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://www.tehrantimes.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

Falsely Accused is a true story about a young woman who was accused of committing a double homicide.  It’s about a travesty of justice, and it reveals Yahweh intervening in the life of a believer to rescue her from danger in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.  Everyone will enjoy the book, but young people in particular need to read it because the mistakes made that led to the problem could have been avoided.  They were the kinds of mistakes that young people are prone to make.  As they say, forewarned is forearmed.  Click here to order the eBook.  Click here to order the paperback.

________________________________________

http://www.americanthinker.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://frontpagemag.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://www.weeklystandard.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

If you haven’t been there already, you should take the opportunity to visit Natural Healthcare Store.  Each product selected for sale at Natural Healthcare Store undergoes rigorous research to make sure that it is the highest quality at an affordable price.

Natural Healthcare Store carries skin care, hair care, and oral care products.  Be sure to check out the Dead Sea products imported from Israel and support the Israeli economy with your purchases.  Natural Healthcare Store carries makeup, deodorant, and detoxification products.  It also carries supplements, weight loss products, and loose leaf tea.  Rounding out its product mix, Natural Healthcare Store carries natural household cleaning products.

Katie and I believe strongly in healthy living, and we use the products.  We’re proud to say that our daughter Melanie owns the store.

________________________________________

http://www.bbc.co.uk/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://rt.com/news/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://pjmedia.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

#####

#####

________________________________________

http://clickhere.igetpaidtodrinkcoffee.com/

“The scales at my doctor’s office said I weighed 201 when I began drinking the B-Skinny coffee. Today, four weeks later, my scales said I weigh 188. I love this stuff.” Pat Parks

________________________________________

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/

#####

#####

________________________________________

If You Voted for Obama in 2008 to Prove You’re Not a Racist, You Need to Vote for Someone Else in 2012 to Prove You’re Not an Idiot explains why voters in the United States need to elect someone besides Barack Obama to lead them.  Whoever is elected President of the United States in 2012 will have to contend with the monumental problems that Obama’s misguided policies have caused both at home and abroad.  One thing is certain, though.  It should not be Barack Obama.  Click here to order the eBook.  Click here to order the paperback.