Joe Kaeser Quotes
Siemens is a job machine.
Kaeser, Joe. Interview. Reuters, 2017.
They lost. Sweden had a combination of a high standard of living, a very robust and effective social safety net and a high marginal income tax rate. For Swedes who do not work, life is far better than for employed people in most other countries. For those who work, they pay a large proportion of their earnings as taxes. So the very hard worker is left with comparatively little advantage over non workers. Conservatives have always warned that this is a formula for economic stagnation as few people will work. The reality in Sweden and a few other nations, is that the vast majority of the Swedes choose to work—but they work not to survive, but for reasons which range from interest in their work, the social interaction of the workplace, the desire to create things and make a difference in society. Even in America there are many who work who do not need the money and are motivated by non-monetary factors.
We never have sat down and thought through the new technologies and worked out any way to ameliorate the ‘creative destruction’ that new technology almost always produces. Mrs. Roosevelt was way ahead of most other politicians for almost a century.
We think of jobs being eliminated when technology is employed as a modern problem. But here, in 1936, automation was eliminating jobs rapidly. One fascinating difference is that Mrs. Roosevelt observes that the laborers jobs are eliminated and the high school and college graduates can run the enterprise. 75 years after this quotation, the jobs of the high school graduates were being eliminated and some higher education was necessary for most jobs. As technology improves, the workers who are necessary require more and more education.
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. Before the Russian Revolution large factories did not have to be very efficient as the labor was paid so little. After the Revolution, the workers were paid more and the inefficient procedures became even more disorganized with the workers in control for the first time without any management experience. At the same time, the small privately owned manufacturing businesses were making a profit with no help from the government. This was an embarrassment that the Communists eventually solved by shutting down the private businesses that were such an embarrassment. Russian manufacturing was never world class and efficient under the Soviets even after the post Revolution crises.
Joe Kaeser GCME is the current CEO of Siemens AG, Berlin & Munich, a role he has been in since August 1, 2013.
