Productivity, competitiveness, cost control, and the quality of goods and services were all largely incidental.
In towns with few or just one, prices rise, or the range and quality of goods on offer decline.
Retail sales numbers measure dollar figures, not quantity or quality of goods.
These calculations also ignore the fact that American number-crunchers have done more than their European counterparts to take into account improvements in the quality of goods and services.
Key reasons for returning to the U.S. include rising wages offshore, better quality of goods produced in the U.S., easier access to repairs and lower delivery costs, he said.
Consumers were told that, yes, prices might be a little higher than elsewhere, but they ensured reliable supplies of food, maintained the quality of Japanese goods and, of course, helped to keep everyone fully employed.
Why, then, have Chinese manufacturers not done more to improve the quality of their goods?
Without sufficient saving and investment, our stock and quality of capital goods cannot even be maintained, let alone increase.
Thanks to their disciplined, well-educated workforces, Japanese manufacturers have been able to use the kaizen approach to boost productivity continuously, even as they raise the quality of their goods and reduce costs.
Yet, we will only see wages grow and the number of jobs steadily increase for those workers if we emphasize education and training, partner-ship between labor and management, and responsibility by all for improving the quality of the goods and services we produce.
The use of hedonic quality modeling in adjusting the prices of goods and services has destroyed the concept of the CPI as a measure of out-of-pocket expenses.
FORBES: CPI Inflation Rate Calculator (Experienced vs. Reported)
The quality of private-label goods has improved, making it harder for consumers to discern any difference between a store's brand and a more expensive rival, particularly for commodities such as paper towels or milk.
The answer is that a combination of schooling and apprenticeship has proved a reliable supplier and shaper of the sort of labour German businesses need to make goods of high quality, even as similar jobs have disappeared in other rich economies.
The quantity and quality of fresh and locally produced goods, however, is a compensation.
"We've become a quality producer of high-technology goods, "Dauch says.
From Etsy to Kickstarter, you can can see the growth of high quality, small batch creation of beautiful design-centric goods.
FORBES: Can MakersRow.com Bring Manufacturing Back to America?
It also fails to take into account the rise in quality and fall in price of many goods since Mexico opened up its economy in the 1990s, argues Mr de la Calle.
This is not because the rich are gullible shoppers but rather, say the authors, because they tend to buy goods of better quality (such as organic milk), the prices of which are higher and tend to rise more quickly.
The market for automobiles, for TVs and so on is a market in which the producers deal directly with the consumers or, if indirectly, very closely, and in which the producers are incentivized to try to improve the quality and lower the cost of the goods that they are providing.
Indeed, they sometimes go further, with one of the goods taking on a money-like quality and being used as a standard of trade.
Chinese shoppers, for instance, have tended to buy diamonds in department stores because of the variety offered and the assurance of reputable, high-quality goods.
But in the case of goods that change in quality every year, it is much harder to split an increase in nominal ouput or spending between a change in volume and a change in price.
The firm is now considering ways of marketing diamonds as branded luxury goods, marked with the De Beers guarantee of quality and untainted origin (see article).
ECONOMIST: How to stop diamonds paying for nasty African wars
He also produced high-quality copperware and small amounts of furniture, ceramics and leather goods.
In China, Western companies have advantages in big-ticket items such as automobiles, luxury goods and technology products because of their quality and reputation.
FORBES: Times Have Changed: No More 'China Produces and America Consumes'
It was up to the mills of Pittsburgh and the machine shops of Cincinnati to make the innovative best-quality goods that the world demanded, and that only specific cities knew how to make.
FORBES: Can Austin, TX Become The Dubai Of The United States?
Big chains thrive because they provide goods and services of greater variety, better quality, and lower cost than would otherwise be available.
He wants Samsung to be known as a company that makes electronics goods of the same, or similar, quality to Sony's but at a lower price.
He lived in Los Angeles doing sales and marketing for LG between 1980 and 1986, when Korean goods were the butt of jokes about poor quality.
To be sure, lots of high-quality things are made in China, from sporting goods and MP3 players to luxury clothing.
应用推荐