Posted on 02/25/2008 5:28:10 PM PST by shrinkermd
Because if it was built here, it would cost 3 times as much. But do you know where the chipset came from? Do you know where the LCD comes from? Do you know where the FLASH memory comes from? And of course where the engineering was done? Where was the value added? Here’s a hint: it’s not in stuffing PCBs and turning screws!
So here’s an honest question: if I build you a US-only 32” TV (which can be done), would you buy it for the ~$900 it would cost, knowing full well you could buy a Sony, or Samsung, or other brand at Best Buy for $300? Because it didn’t seem to work for Curtis Mathes...
That’s the way I saw it as well. Many disagreed with us. Many thought a job at WalMart was the solution to the problem that ailed us.
Funny how you never hear that little tidbit from folks like Pat Buchanan and Lou Dobbs.
You've obviously never bought a passenger jet from Boeing, a piece of heavy construction equipment from Caterpillar, a farm tractor from John Deer, or even a light truck from Toyota.
Come on up to the NW and you’ll see quite a few machine shops here... Of course, the aerospace industry still is going strong.
You happen to probably live in the rust belt. A lot of auto manufacturing - and STEEL manufacturing - went away because of high labor costs. They simply couldn’t compete.
I buy a lot of steel every year - we’re talking tons of the stuff. You can buy low carbon (1010 and 1008 grade) from the US at ~30% more than the price I pay for South Korean or Chinese steel, of the same grade. Want to double the price of everything made with that steel?
The realities are that a lot of the low end manufacturing that you’re decrying as being lost has gone the way of the buggywhip. There’s more efficient means to build better products, and you don’t need to have 1000 people earning $25/hour (once benefits are factored in) building the product.
Small town USA still survives; it’s just changed. Around Seattle, small town USA means IT/software people, living and working from home. No mills turning, it’s keyboards and drafting pads designing the mills. It’s a fundamental change in the workforce.
No different than when we went from an agricultural to industrial society. We grow more food now than we ever did, yet the percentage of people employed in farming is the smallest ever. Is that a bad thing? I don’t think so - it frees up a LOT of labor to move into other fields. Including designing and building better combines, tractors, and control systems to further increase yield per person.
I wouldnt trust the Federal Reserve on their stats....they are big pushers of anti-American liberal globalist economic policies
As many have already said...”if there is so much manufacturing....why cant I find ‘Made in the USA’ anymore”
Stuff really isnt being made in the USA...that is why
Remember we have lost millions of good manufacturing jobs. any number quoted by the Feds or free-traders will always be millions of jobs short...because they never count the jobs lost
I thought the whole idea behind NAFTA was to keep jobs from going to China, by sending them to Mexico instead. In that regard, I'd say NAFTA is a failure. The jobs all went to China anyway, well, except for dock worker jobs unloading all those container ships coming back from China, filled with goods that should have been made here in the first place.
We gave China the technology for high volume microcircuit production. We gave them the technology for manufacturing most of the compenents in the I-phone. I’d be willing to guess the LCDs come from China. I doubt we produce them anymore. The flash memory chips as well. It is not low-tech menial components the chicoms make now.
We are cutting our own throats.
Alberta, about a decade ago the United States had a GNP around 8 trillion dollars. The nearest other nation was something like 2 or 3. It’s been along time since I’ve seen them, but that’s a rough figure that will explain where I’m headed here.
Remember that European nations are something akin to states (in U.S. terms size and populations) in Europe. Their numbers couldn’t match ours. They just don’t have the populations to support that.
For that reason, our numbers swamp other nations. Trying to use our superior numbers for comparision, kindof falls out due to this inequity in size and GNPs.
That's what the free-trade folks would have us to believe, but in reality, we got plenty of folks who got a "C" in school, and well, average folks need jobs, too! Sure we want to make the high-tech stuff, but there is a need for making soap dishes, shoes, pants, kitty litter pans, coffee pots, and other ho-hum items that would gainfully employ millions of blue-collar Joes and Janes right here in the USA. BTW, I'm not a union shill, I just realize that not everybody is a prodigy software developer or an engineer or an entrepreneuer for that matter.
How bout somebody builds a super duper factory that utilizes a much greater degree of automation, and then crank those suckers out like there’s no tomorrow? THen we export them to the whole world. Kinda like we used to do 50 years ago.
I'll post this again... One of the speakers I’m doing right now for a big US client has engineering done in the US, magnets from Brazil, steel from South Korea, copper from Chile, cone and surround from Germany, spider from the US, cabinet from Columbia, and final assembly in China. Is it a Chinese-built product?
The product carries an American brand. And it's built in an American-owned factory in China. The other parts are sourced from around the world. So where's it from?
China? Well, the BOM entry for labor is about 4%. So 4% of the value of the product comes from China.
Brazil? The magnet is more, at 6% BOM cost.
South Korea? Now we're getting somewhere. Steel accounts for 11% of the BOM cost.
Chile? Only 6% of the BOM is copper. Sorry.
Germany? The cone and surround are 13%. Big part of the BOM. But still only 1/8th of the cost.
Columbia? That cabinet - with nice rosewood veneer - is 30% of the BOM cost. Big piece, but not even a third (of course, that cabinet factory is a wholly owned subsidiary of a US company).
US? Well, the spider, glues, tinsel, and royalties account for the last 30% of the BOM.
So tell me, is this a Made in China product? Because you know, it's actually assembled there and by law it has to carry a "Product of PRC" on the side. Never mind that the biggest chunk of value comes from the US, and when the consumer buys that product it drops the profit right into the US company...
Hate to tell you but, Hershey is in the process of moving to the southland, McCainville.
A friend loaned me a tool the other day. It was so old it said “Made in the USA” on it.
I would like to see what is included in the goods they are saying are manufactured here? I just don’t see it. Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania are becoming ghost towns.
I think the answer is both.
Keep in mind that total industrial production in the U.S. exceeds the industrial production of countries like China and India by a wide margin, too. China's industrial production, in fact, is less than half of what the U.S. produces even though its population is at least three times greater. On a per-capita basis, China's industrial productivity is no better than that of a Third World rat-hole.
And you know that how? Because the last time I walked through a certain factory in Indonesia, there were the chips rolling off the line. And the FLASH chips? Samsung - South Korea. LCDs? Come from South Korea as well.
The pretty case is stamped and molded in Shenzhen, but other than that...
It is not low-tech menial components the chicoms make now.
No, for the most part it is. I spend 1/3rd of my life in China, working in those factories, and I can tell you where the high-tech stuff and the low-tech stuff is done. The high-tech isn't done in China, but the low-tech definitely is...
Fed says 4.3% overall inflation with a 20% rise in energy/5% in food in the last year. That's not far off (I work in corporate mgmt for a grocery chain, our internal inflation figure for food is at 5.4-5.5% so they are pretty close to us--some items like dairy are much higher but they typically only make 5-6% of store sales)
Arccording to NIST the US is down to 16% of the world market for numerical machine controls. The US started the 1980's the world's number one machine tool builder. It is now down to a weak number 6.
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