To: i-node who wrote (956661 ) 8/14/2016 9:38:24 PM From: combjelly Read Replies (4) | Respond to of 1575615 No, he wasn't stupid. I think that has been well established.You do realize that if you give people more mone so they can buy cars, you will ALWAYS spend more on additional labor costs than you could make on the additional cars, right? That isn't obvious at all. Henry's major innovations had to do with economies of scale in mass production. Most cars of the time were individually made with lots of hand labor. Ford changed that. Now the thing is, for mass production to be economical, you have to make things in large numbers and sell them . The larger the numbers, the cheaper the cost per unit. So anything that drives up production, drives down the unit cost. What you say might be true if you are at or near peak production. But if you aren't, well... The factories were built. So the fixed costs were already in place. Of the variable costs, employees could be added and extra shifts run to maximize the value of the fixed costs. Materials cost less with higher volumes purchased within limits. So driving volume makes sense. In addition, the available evidence indicates that he firmly believed that by paying employees more would drive the economy higher, resulting in more sales. He apparently reacted to the stock market crash by increasing wages. When that failed, he blamed the results on the other manufacturers cutting wages to maximize or protect profits instead of raising them to maximize sales. He probably had a point. For someone who claims to understand economics and business, you seem to lack understanding of basic facts. Or economics. Or technology. Or, well a large number of things. Oh. I forgot. You think you can just produce stuff and markets will magically appear. That people without money will buy stuff. That unicorns and fairy dust drive economies.