Oh, but we can....and are. There is now a lot of manufacturing being brought back into the U.S., thank God....and for good reasons.
Just a couple of them: the rise of the middle class in China.
When China first became “manufacturer for the world”, you could pay their untold zillions of workers a chicken a month or something and they’d be cool with it. With success comes greater expectations (gee, who knew). China now has a HUGE middle class, not to mention a phenomenal number of millionaires/billionaires....and they demand more. Much more.
In short, they just ain’t as cheap as they used to be. Gee golly, who saw that coming?? (ahem...cough....Japan....cough....)
Second, laws.
How many customer service/call centers were outsourced to India? Many...most. Well guess what the geniuses who did that did NOT look into? Indian law. Their “privacy laws” are vastly different from our own. Many U.S. companies learned this the hard way and have paid a HEAVY price. Screw it; not worth the exposure....bring it back.
Those are just two small examples....there are many others.
Let’s add one more: the cost of energy in this country is dropping and will continue to drop. We are now a HUGE producer of natural gas and, thanks to fracking, oil. This reduces cost of business domestically. Why pay to ship stuff from the far corner of the globe....it’s expensive....when power is cheap here, labor is plentiful, even if at a higher rate? The economics just aren’t as “obvious” as they were a decade ago (in favor of overseas manufacturing).
I got this in my email today, and I don’t believe it. It’s possible that he’s a midget. However, I’ve traveled in China and they have their own unemployment problems. There’s a waiting list for the Army, FGS. They don’t need to employ children in heavy industry.
Not that they don’t employ child labor, but that’s usually for jobs that require fine motor skill and sharp eyesight, such as bad work and silk embroidery.
You forgot the lowest expense population ~ forced inmate labor.
This recently came to light in a message secreted in Halloween costumes .
The only things that really help their case are the lack of individual freedom, the tight binding between business and state(where you can’t really tell which is which), and the ability to efficiently dispose of opposition.
The same thing can be found in the other “cheap” countries as well - just in different forms. The only thing that China has in its favor now isn’t so much cost as much as it is having the largest pool of labor that is also the most easily controlled.
Not just candy... new Trident layers.
Sorry, I’m apparently a sucker for a commercial taglines.
The union bosses and OSHA would not approve. Unless they got a big cut of the candy !
This is the kind of thing farm boys stateside routinely do. I am impressed by how well he operated the equipment though. I had thought the Chinese mostly used wheel barrows and manual labor to do construction. I’m surprised that they have heavy equipment.
A few years back, I read an article in a business magazine about a Chinese factory owner. His company made light fixtures. He was closing his factory in China and moving it to Vietnam. Why? Because he could pay his labor in Vietnam $100 a month.
Then keep their slave-labor garbage out of our country.