That is not taken for granted in a city and a state numbed by companies that closed obsolete plants and sent tens of thousands of high-paying auto jobs to the South and overseas.
The two key concerns are how to insure that taxpayers in sewer districts with modern treatment plants will not be subsidizing costs of upgrading obsolete plants in other districts?
Explicitly following the example of its American ally, E.I. du Pont de Nemours, Nobel Industries centralized its administrative structure, created functional departments, closed down 44 older factories, sold off obsolete plants and equipment, and invested in up-to-date machines.
In these cases, the utility book value of nuclear or technologically obsolete plants and equipment exceeds market value.
Depreciation has fallen from 10.2% of corporate gross product in 1991 to 9.4% last year, as corporate America took big writeoffs of obsolete plant and equipment in the early Nineties.
Yes, there will be additional pollution abatement costs that will undoubtedly be reflected in some obsolete plant shutdowns, temporary job dislocation, and slightly higher electricity bills.
Heavy industry (i.e., shipbuilding, steelworks, and oil refining) has become obsolete; however, plants were modernized to produce automotive parts, chemicals, electronics, tobacco, paper, and foodstuffs.
It is also part of an effort by private interests and municipalities along the Hudson, stretching from Yonkers to Troy, to reclaim waterfronts long blocked by obsolete industrial plants that once relied on water transportation to bring in raw materials and ship out finished goods.
The write-off is being taken to address obsolete assets, plant reductions, inventory valuations, offshore facilities and interests in overseas joint ventures.
By going online too aggressively, the music industry could anger its existing retailers and make its investment in compact disc plants obsolete.
But worker ownership also destroys companies in the end because it always leads to inadequate capital formation, inadequate investment in research and development, and stubborn resistance to abandonment of outmoded, unproductive, and obsolete products, processes, plants, jobs, and work rules.
