39 ms·

John Deere Dismissing 15% of Workforce

58 points by msisk6 2y ago

the_real_cher 2y ago
Are there any measures that show objectively how the middle class is being destroyed? seeing layoff after layoff after layoff over the past few years, yet theyre selling the economy as GREAT because theres a ton more low paid jobs and part time jobs.
- BoredPositron 2y ago
  TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD -- FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS - Disco Elysium
- talldayo 2y ago
  In this case, John Deere has skated by with incredibly exploitative business practices for years. Their insular repair scheme has led to an over-hiring of official licensed support engineers that shouldn't persist in a competitive market. This is a broader trend in the US economy that will self-correct as regulators become less recalcitrant.
  - _3u10 2y ago
    Finally, those mechanics were getting paid too much. I’m glad someone is shutting down this practice so their wages can be lowered.
    - talldayo 2y ago
      The mechanics are not independents, in this case. They are specifically trained, retained and dispatched by John Deere, for paying John Deere customers. These are salaried people that are more or less employed as part of a scheme to prevent price-competitive repair from existing, not mom-and-pop wholesalers fixing a radiator.
- _3u10 2y ago
  Yes, go into numbeo and look at the purchasing power indexes. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp?displayColumn=5 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp?d... For example I live in Asuncion, Paraguay where the median wage is $420/month. Vancouver, Canada has a purchasing power index that is 220% as high. Eg. The average person in Vancouver makes as much as a Paraguayan making $840/month living in Asuncion. You could also compare NY to Cali, Colombia where NY has a score of 100 (by definition) and Cali has a score of 48. So the average Colombian is 1/2 as wealthy as the average New Yorker, or 1/3 the average Austinite with a score of 170. The American middle class is doing amazingly well by moving to where they are exporting everyone’s jobs to. They double their income by not paying taxes anymore, and then compound that with a 1/3rd cost of living.
- SideQuark 2y ago
  > Are there any measures that show objectively how the middle class is being destroyed? If by destroyed, you mean shrinking from 61% in 1971 to 51% of households now, then yes, there is data for that. But that 10% decline was ~8% moving into above middle class and ~2% moving below middle class. So yes, the middle class shrunk, because more people got richer. I'd also hardly call it destroyed - more like the % of people in various age groups has shifted, and people stay in education longer (meaning a higher % below middle), but those people over a lifetime will likely also become above middle class. When you do the simple math that in 1970 about 25% of 18-24 were in college, and that % is now around 50%, and you factor that in, you can compute (or check Census/BLS reports for the same) to see outside people staying in school longer, the middle class is shrinking due to people getting richer. I guess things aren't at negative as you imply. https://www.newsweek.com/america-middle-class-shrinking-1913772 https://www.newsweek.com/america-middle-class-shrinking-1913...
  - samarthr1 2y ago
    I would expect that a more charitable reading of GP would say that people from the lower class have not come in the middle class as much as they had earlier? At any rate, imo for stability to exist, every generation must _feel_ better off than the previous on average.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - _3u10 2y ago
      The world was stable for a loooong time with no noticeable increase in standard of living.
    - the_real_cher 2y ago
      Yeah this is exactly what Im asking to be honest. Thanks for clarifying this. How difficult is it to escape the lower class.
      - SideQuark 2y ago
JaimeThompson 2y ago
I'm guessing that few, if any, of the leadership will lose their jobs in this event. It's also very likely the current leadership will receive additional compensation to keep themselves in their current position since they are so knowledgeable and skilled.
- strict9 2y ago
  Those in leadership positions are usually offered bonuses for successfully executing key initiatives such as cost cutting: >The manufacturer is also moving skid steer and compact track loader manufacturing units from Dubuque, Iowa, to Mexico to curb its manufacturing costs.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  out of curiosity, is there a different outcome you would prefer? I can appreciate snark and irony, but many of the comments here are of the same vein. I think the expectation of more money = reward for behavior, less money = punishment is a flawed expectation. I dont see any correlation to that, I dont see any reason why there should be a correlation to that, I’m familiar with the mentality but prosperity preaching is a form of control not an economic theory.
  - nine_zeros 2y ago
    > out of curiosity, is there a different outcome you would prefer? I am not OP but yes - I would prefer a different outcome - specifically a cut in compensation for the CEO, the executive and upper management assigned to execute this plan. Sink with the ship philosophy. I recognize this cannot be accomplished with current corporate structures but there is a reason why calls for unionization are rising.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - talldayo 2y ago
    The FTC had been bordering on suing John Deere for years now. They (the executives) knew they were acting illegally, and persisted with the intent of turning a quick buck. The FTC really ought to make an example out of them; subpeona JD for all meeting minutes related to discussing their repair pricing. Anyone caught consciously promoting a pricing scheme they know is illegal should constitute a white-collar crime with upwards of a decade-long prison sentence. I'm absolutely tired of pretending like there's simply nothing we can do to discourage this behavior. Wake up the regulators and make the companies like John Deere regret trying to abuse the market.
ajross 2y ago
> As a depressed farm economy continues to roll on Interestingly this is one of those things that gets spun as bad no matter which side of the argument you find yourself on. The effect here is deflation in food prices. Here's a story from Feburary talking about the effect, but not making the connection: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-farm-income-set-biggest-plunge-18-years-prices-cool-way-off-2024-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-farm-income-s... There was a HUGE SPIKE in farm income in 2021-22 to the tune of like 60% owing to the pandemic effects on prices (mostly due to transport and not agriculture per se, as I understand it). It was level in 2023 and is now crashing back to something approximating a baseline level. Everyone complained like crazy about this and we had all those doomsday articles about inflation. Now it's reversing, and... it's still bad. Economics discussion can't win, pessimism rules. As far as John Deere, it just looks to me like they staffed up too hard over the boom and are having to correct.
- jordanb 2y ago
  It's not necessary that lower farm income results in lower prices at the supermarket. For instance, the price of a chicken at the chicken farm is completely disconnected from the price of a chicken at the supermarket by the Tyson/JBS monopoly. Food distribution is currently consolidating and rolling-up rapidly (ex: the Albertsons/Kroger merger). The result will be low farm income and high supermarket prices.
  - ajross 2y ago
    It's clearly not "completely" disconnected, otherwise there would be zero volatility in supermarket prices. But again a price is a price not matter what layer of the market it sits at, and all prices are subject to market conditions. Freaking out about some subsampling of them as being "real" in/de/stag/whateverflation in an attempt to shoehorn whatever noisy data you have into a signal that confirms your priors just leads to the kind of nonsense logic that produced the analysis I quoted above.
    - tuatoru 2y ago
      > It's clearly not "completely" disconnected, otherwise there would be zero volatility in supermarket prices. I understood that supermarkets are always changing prices semirandomly, so that consumers never really know what the price "should" be.
yieldcrv 2y ago
surprisingly little movement in the stock afterhours, is it halted pending news?
itomato 2y ago
What is the correlation with their choice to use curved windshields and otherwise stifle right to repair?
- SideQuark 2y ago
  Zero. Unless you can rationalize that into causing a large drop in ag markets (which is much more likely the results of trade wars, resulting govt bailouts for farmers, and the resulting issues that always fallout from such ham-handed trade wars).
- mattgrice 2y ago
  john deere cab windows have been curved since at least 1975 with the sound-gard cab
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mupuff1234 2y ago
And all while CEO salaries just seem to go higher and higher.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  You have to give CEOs extreme compensation in order to reward them for their great work. Plus, those yachts and fourth homes aren't going to buy themselves.
nickpeterson 2y ago
I’m sure the CEO will write a nice Deere John letter to employees.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- petermcneeley 2y ago
  underrated comment.

58 points by msisk6 2y ago

Are there any measures that show objectively how the middle class is being destroyed? seeing layoff after layoff after layoff over the past few years, yet theyre selling the economy as GREAT because theres a ton more low paid jobs and part time jobs.

BoredPositron 2y ago
TRUE LOVE IS POSSIBLE ONLY IN THE NEXT WORLD -- FOR NEW PEOPLE IT IS TOO LATE FOR US WREAK HAVOC ON THE MIDDLE CLASS - Disco Elysium
talldayo 2y ago
In this case, John Deere has skated by with incredibly exploitative business practices for years. Their insular repair scheme has led to an over-hiring of official licensed support engineers that shouldn't persist in a competitive market. This is a broader trend in the US economy that will self-correct as regulators become less recalcitrant.
- _3u10 2y ago
  Finally, those mechanics were getting paid too much. I’m glad someone is shutting down this practice so their wages can be lowered.
  - talldayo 2y ago
    The mechanics are not independents, in this case. They are specifically trained, retained and dispatched by John Deere, for paying John Deere customers. These are salaried people that are more or less employed as part of a scheme to prevent price-competitive repair from existing, not mom-and-pop wholesalers fixing a radiator.
_3u10 2y ago
Yes, go into numbeo and look at the purchasing power indexes. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp?displayColumn=5 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/rankings_current.jsp?d... For example I live in Asuncion, Paraguay where the median wage is $420/month. Vancouver, Canada has a purchasing power index that is 220% as high. Eg. The average person in Vancouver makes as much as a Paraguayan making $840/month living in Asuncion. You could also compare NY to Cali, Colombia where NY has a score of 100 (by definition) and Cali has a score of 48. So the average Colombian is 1/2 as wealthy as the average New Yorker, or 1/3 the average Austinite with a score of 170. The American middle class is doing amazingly well by moving to where they are exporting everyone’s jobs to. They double their income by not paying taxes anymore, and then compound that with a 1/3rd cost of living.
SideQuark 2y ago
> Are there any measures that show objectively how the middle class is being destroyed? If by destroyed, you mean shrinking from 61% in 1971 to 51% of households now, then yes, there is data for that. But that 10% decline was ~8% moving into above middle class and ~2% moving below middle class. So yes, the middle class shrunk, because more people got richer. I'd also hardly call it destroyed - more like the % of people in various age groups has shifted, and people stay in education longer (meaning a higher % below middle), but those people over a lifetime will likely also become above middle class. When you do the simple math that in 1970 about 25% of 18-24 were in college, and that % is now around 50%, and you factor that in, you can compute (or check Census/BLS reports for the same) to see outside people staying in school longer, the middle class is shrinking due to people getting richer. I guess things aren't at negative as you imply. https://www.newsweek.com/america-middle-class-shrinking-1913772 https://www.newsweek.com/america-middle-class-shrinking-1913...
- samarthr1 2y ago
  I would expect that a more charitable reading of GP would say that people from the lower class have not come in the middle class as much as they had earlier? At any rate, imo for stability to exist, every generation must _feel_ better off than the previous on average.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - _3u10 2y ago
    The world was stable for a loooong time with no noticeable increase in standard of living.
  - the_real_cher 2y ago
    Yeah this is exactly what Im asking to be honest. Thanks for clarifying this. How difficult is it to escape the lower class.
    - SideQuark 2y ago

JaimeThompson 2y ago

I'm guessing that few, if any, of the leadership will lose their jobs in this event. It's also very likely the current leadership will receive additional compensation to keep themselves in their current position since they are so knowledgeable and skilled.

strict9 2y ago
Those in leadership positions are usually offered bonuses for successfully executing key initiatives such as cost cutting: >The manufacturer is also moving skid steer and compact track loader manufacturing units from Dubuque, Iowa, to Mexico to curb its manufacturing costs.
yieldcrv 2y ago
out of curiosity, is there a different outcome you would prefer? I can appreciate snark and irony, but many of the comments here are of the same vein. I think the expectation of more money = reward for behavior, less money = punishment is a flawed expectation. I dont see any correlation to that, I dont see any reason why there should be a correlation to that, I’m familiar with the mentality but prosperity preaching is a form of control not an economic theory.
- nine_zeros 2y ago
  > out of curiosity, is there a different outcome you would prefer? I am not OP but yes - I would prefer a different outcome - specifically a cut in compensation for the CEO, the executive and upper management assigned to execute this plan. Sink with the ship philosophy. I recognize this cannot be accomplished with current corporate structures but there is a reason why calls for unionization are rising.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- talldayo 2y ago
  The FTC had been bordering on suing John Deere for years now. They (the executives) knew they were acting illegally, and persisted with the intent of turning a quick buck. The FTC really ought to make an example out of them; subpeona JD for all meeting minutes related to discussing their repair pricing. Anyone caught consciously promoting a pricing scheme they know is illegal should constitute a white-collar crime with upwards of a decade-long prison sentence. I'm absolutely tired of pretending like there's simply nothing we can do to discourage this behavior. Wake up the regulators and make the companies like John Deere regret trying to abuse the market.

ajross 2y ago

> As a depressed farm economy continues to roll on Interestingly this is one of those things that gets spun as bad no matter which side of the argument you find yourself on. The effect here is deflation in food prices. Here's a story from Feburary talking about the effect, but not making the connection: https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-farm-income-set-biggest-plunge-18-years-prices-cool-way-off-2024-02-14/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-farm-income-s... There was a HUGE SPIKE in farm income in 2021-22 to the tune of like 60% owing to the pandemic effects on prices (mostly due to transport and not agriculture per se, as I understand it). It was level in 2023 and is now crashing back to something approximating a baseline level. Everyone complained like crazy about this and we had all those doomsday articles about inflation. Now it's reversing, and... it's still bad. Economics discussion can't win, pessimism rules. As far as John Deere, it just looks to me like they staffed up too hard over the boom and are having to correct.

jordanb 2y ago
It's not necessary that lower farm income results in lower prices at the supermarket. For instance, the price of a chicken at the chicken farm is completely disconnected from the price of a chicken at the supermarket by the Tyson/JBS monopoly. Food distribution is currently consolidating and rolling-up rapidly (ex: the Albertsons/Kroger merger). The result will be low farm income and high supermarket prices.
- ajross 2y ago
  It's clearly not "completely" disconnected, otherwise there would be zero volatility in supermarket prices. But again a price is a price not matter what layer of the market it sits at, and all prices are subject to market conditions. Freaking out about some subsampling of them as being "real" in/de/stag/whateverflation in an attempt to shoehorn whatever noisy data you have into a signal that confirms your priors just leads to the kind of nonsense logic that produced the analysis I quoted above.
  - tuatoru 2y ago
    > It's clearly not "completely" disconnected, otherwise there would be zero volatility in supermarket prices. I understood that supermarkets are always changing prices semirandomly, so that consumers never really know what the price "should" be.

yieldcrv 2y ago

surprisingly little movement in the stock afterhours, is it halted pending news?

itomato 2y ago

What is the correlation with their choice to use curved windshields and otherwise stifle right to repair?

SideQuark 2y ago
Zero. Unless you can rationalize that into causing a large drop in ag markets (which is much more likely the results of trade wars, resulting govt bailouts for farmers, and the resulting issues that always fallout from such ham-handed trade wars).
mattgrice 2y ago
john deere cab windows have been curved since at least 1975 with the sound-gard cab

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

mupuff1234 2y ago

And all while CEO salaries just seem to go higher and higher.

ryandrake 2y ago
You have to give CEOs extreme compensation in order to reward them for their great work. Plus, those yachts and fourth homes aren't going to buy themselves.

nickpeterson 2y ago

I’m sure the CEO will write a nice Deere John letter to employees.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
petermcneeley 2y ago
underrated comment.