Surplus-management Books

I'd like to see this book be updated so that it addresses current conditions, as it is now quite dated. Many of the premises have not come to pass, although some have. The global economy is booming, but how is the U.S. economy really doing considering the savings rate in the U.S. was below 0 last year and the trade deficit is so large? Unemployment in the U.S. is down, but what is the nature of the jobs workers in the U.S. are doing now, in comparison to the nature of those jobs when the book was first written? What predictions have come to pass and which ones have not come to pass?

Whats wrong with Amazon how could they put review by this person - " John W. Runyan III "Too much time on my hands " in spotlight. It's clearly evident he is one of those people who have some small town mentality, come with a preconceived opinion which will never change and probably didnt read the book and wrote a review.

By the way talking of indian programmers, I am a development manager and work with lots of them. They are helping our economy in many ways. I seen that most americans do not go to school, do not have strong mathematical background, do not have strong analytical skills, this is where the indians are useful. Most of them I see have their Master's degree and often have strong engineering backgrounds. If you are a programmer you would know how useful these skills can be. In my experience americans are generally good with the quality-assurance, management level or business side of work. Leave the hard-core intense programming to the foreigners, they seem to do it better.

I have ready many books about globalization and its effects, but Alan Tonelson's "The Race to the Bottom: Why a Worldwide Worker Surplus and Uncontrolled Free Trade are Sinking American Living Standards" is the ONLY book to explain the truth behind globalization. If the US public understood just simple facts, like the difference between producer goods and consumer goods, it would be clear why the US has the most massive trade deficit in history; and the US public would demand that congress act to stop the fast track legislation given to the president. (This is being carried out now by Bush, but was negotiated under Clinton. In other words, both parties are complicit in the destruction of the US middle class.)

As Tonelson says, "Current globalization policies have plunged the great majority of U.S. workers into a great worldwide race to the bottom, into a no-win scramble for work and livelihoods with hundreds of millions of their already impoverished counterparts across the globe. In addition, by sapping the earnings power of U.S. consumers, who are almost single-handedly propping up the world economy despite their sagging earnings, continuing this race could all too easily bring the global financial house of cards tumbling down."

Tonelson doesn't merely make a statement like this, he proves it with expert economic analysis that he explains clearly to the lay public.

Read this book and act on it, before the U.S. middle-class is further eroded.

Tonelson has done an excellent job of empirically demonstrating the irreparable harm being done to the American industrial manufacturing sector, resulting from the pseudo-free trade argument that currently masquerades by the name of globalization.The entire globalization argument rests on an appeal to absolute advantage(for example,American firms should locate their factories and production facilities where labor costs are the lowest).Free trade is based on comparative advantage,not absolute advantage.American firms are free to locate production facilities in foreign countries as long as the output produced from these facilities is used to supply the foreign market.The output can't be shipped back to the home market without violating the basic rules of comparative advantage.Any requirement by a foreign country that ,in order for American firms to locate production facilities in that country,the American firms must hand over or share their technological breakthroughs,inventions,patents,or innovations involves a direct violation of the theory of trade between counties based on the existing comparative advantages that exist in both countries industries.Unfortunately,Tonelson does not spell this out clearly,although his discussions on pp.97-98 demonstate that the correct definition of comparatve advantage has been replaced by one that has no connection to the meaning of the term as used by Adam Smith or David Ricardo.I have deducted one star for this omission.

Kaleem 9984....LOL....THIS dudes a hypocrit! First of all...a foreigner (who's probably an Indian programmer) is not a impartial reviewer. I am a programmer and work with numerous foreigners...BTW they are not as talented as rumor has it. They frequently lie on their resumes to get into positions and...as evidenced by the exporation of NUMEROUS PROGRAMMING jobs back to India...they are not loyal to this country or any corporation that hired them on the H1b visa (a political bill that was fronted by american corporations). This book however...is right on target.

Kaleem should speak in terms of the substance of the book..and not of other reviewers who may differ from his opinion. I believe, as many americans, that we should no longer import items from other countries...we don't need them.

I recently read two books written by Phillip Slater. This one and A New Strategy for Continuous Improvement. In both, Slater's primary focus is on what to do and how to do it. He thinks sequentially and, in this volume, suggests seven actions for materials resource planning (MRO) and indirect inventory reduction. There are no head-snapping revelations, nor does Slater claim to offer.

The format of this book allows the reader to record in designated areas within the narrative her or his responses when completing a series of exercises. For example, on page 29, Slater asks his reader to identify how the five myths of inventory reduction may be impacting her or his organization's inventory reduction efforts. That is an excellent issue to address and is relevant to the given context, so it will generate more useful information than will the request on page 49 when Slater asks his reader to list "issues" (any kind?) concerning her or his company, a location/division, and the date(s) to which the issues refer. The precision and clarity of exercise design vary throughout the narrative.

Although this is a book that an individual can read and benefit from, its greatest value will be derived (in my opinion) only if several members of a team read it, complete the exercises, and then share their responses. The ultimate objective should be a single document that can then serve as a game plan when the team proceeds to implementation ("taking action"), which Slater discusses in the final chapter. The material is sound and carefully organized. The exercises will permit readers to interact with the material in an orderly way. To accommodate inevitable revisions, I suggest that the exercises be completed with a #2 pencil, one with a sturdy eraser.

I have rated this book higher than his other book, A New Strategy for Continuous Improvement, because it has more substance but again wish he had developed his core concepts in much greater depth (the narrative is only 151 pages in length, with wide spacing between paragraphs, followed by four appendices) and had he included several real-world (as opposed to hypothetical) examples to illustrate some of his key points. As is, this is a hybrid volume (part "manual" as he frequently refers to it, part workbook) that provides a basic introduction to an important business subject. If and when revised for a second edition, this document could and should offer more substance (i.e. value), given its cost of purchase.

Those in need of broader and deeper coverage of inventory management are urged to check out David J. Piasecki's Inventory Accuracy: People, Processes, & Technology, Best Practice in Inventory Management (Second Edition), Inventory Management and Production Planning and Scheduling (3rd Edition) co-authored by Edward A. Silver, David F. Pyke, and Rein Peterson, and Paul Bernard's Integrated Inventory Management.

The CDROM is essentially a dump of the information found on government websites such as SBA, SEC, etc.

The information is voluminous so if you have a slow modem, there may be some value in purchasing the info on the CDROM for the sake of having it consolidated in one place. You will learn little new if you have already been to the websites.

Also, some of the links on the CDROM do not work properly. You open the page in Adobe Acrobat and receive and error message saying the page has to be opened in a browser. You open the page in a browser and you get a message saying the page has to be opened in Adobe Acrobat.

That kind of foolishness more or less sums up the value of the CDROM from my perspective.

Save yourself a lot of money and time ... just visit your local NonProfit Resource Center. These CD's are direct burns from government websites with a cheap case and covers. I got them and returned them the same day.

This disc contains pdf files downloaded from government web pages. Save yourself the money and go to the SBA, GSA, SEC web pages yourself and look up the information that is relevant to you.

Not only is all of this info available online, but the CD gives you a collection of non-indexed, gigantically HUGE Acrobat PDF files, some about 100MB in size. Navigating a 5MB text PDF is painfully slow - try 100 MB. Finding what you're seeking is practically impossible, and navigating PDFs of that size takes an eternity. Even a fast machine takes a couple minutes just to load the files into Acrobat, never mind doing searches, etc.

If they had broken up the files and named them logically (instead of titles like A1, B1, etc.), and provided some kind of indexing application or document that would point you to specifically what you wanted, then, yes, it might be handy to have. Otherwise, go online, and find answers 100 times more quickly. This is a ridiculously poorly done CD-ROM in this day and age. Big waste of $, in my opinion. If you have a slower/older computer without much memory, you'd REALLY want to avoid this thing like the plague.

I got the grant that I needed to start my own busniess. It is great

I have to give the company that compiled it a thumbs up for the packaging, anything beyond that gets a 1 out of 5.This item is basically a CD with internet websites on it that you have to spend weeks and months researching it yourself, no real research was ever done on their part other than provide internet sites to the government agencies that provide financial assistance. I recommend this product for people who don?t have access to the internet.

This disk is very broad and really doesn't give insite to receiving grant money. It also wasn't very easy to navigate though. I have found way more useful information from simply searching on the internet.

Ive been writing grants for some years now and thought that I could make my life easier by purchasing the CD set. When I recieved the 2004 Guide to Federal Grants, I was immensely disappointed. Instead of creating a useful, cross referenced CD, they simply took webpages and their links and transferred them directly into PDF format. I could have done the exact same thing using Google and Adobe Acrobat. There are no cross-references, no additional information into grants, and tabs were not even written into the PDF to assist with nagivation. Instead, they recommend that you use the "search" feature available with Adobe Reader. It is NOT worth paying their asking price, go to your local NonProfit Resource Center instead or just do a Google search for Federal NonProfit Grant Sites.

Don't waste your money, this CD set is just a bunch of static pages from government web sites that can just as easily accessed by any search engine. I am returning this post haste.

I would love to give this ZERO stars if I could!

I had bought this cd in the hopes that I might find some grants that I could not find anywhere else. Instead, this cd had an Adobe document with a list of the 16,000+ grants, loans etc. The contents of the cd itself on took up perhaps 1/10(if that much!) of the actual cd.

On top of that, the contents of the document were those of a website I had visited days before! ...

I would love to give this ZERO stars if I could!

I had bought this cd in the hopes that I might find some grants that I could not find anywhere else. Instead, this cd had an Adobe document with a list of the 16,000+ grants, loans etc. The contents of the cd itself on took up perhaps 1/10(if that much!) of the actual cd.

On top of that, the contents of the document were those of a website I had visited days before! That site is [URL] if anyone wants to find it.

Just so anyone out there wants to inquire, save your money and visit the web site instead. Don't be a fool like I was and find out the hard way.

You live and learn I suppose.

One of the reviewers's mentioned the URL where the contents are. where can I find the contents on the web? What is the URL?

I thought this was a book, not a CD-ROM only! Here I was waiting for a book that was never coming. This merchandise should not be in the "book" section of Amazon. This information is available on the web for free (I wanted a bounded hard copy)...