Posted on 05/26/2005 6:27:37 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
And by the way, the authoritarian powers that be in China, are not interested in creating a wide middle class. Why the heck would they be? Their competitive advantage is a near slave or slave work force. If salaries were allowed to improve, if China was not the world's biggest polluter (much of the smug ends up in California and we get to pay for it) why would anyone build in China to begin with? A chinese worker making 12 CENTS per hour can not afford to buy anything he is making. It's almost all export only driven.
And which of these economies do you prefer to ours?
since their primary growth sector, the $25,000 and below demographic is the one that grows the fastest
You wouldn't happen to have a link to back up this assertion, would you?
My biggest beef with Wal Mart is that when they opened their doors, I think it was in the 70's or so, they pledged to sell only American made goods (when available?).
How available are American-made goods? It is not only Wal-mart that sells Chinese-made goods. CNBC replayed its Wal-Mart documentary yesterday "The Age of Walmart" It showed one of the factories in China that make Brats dolls. The person being interviewed explained that the Brats doll made in China sells at Walmart for under $20. The same doll made in the U.S. would be priced at $60 or $70. This is what the unions have done to the U.S.A. A short-lived era after WWII where Europe and Japan were rebuilding and the U.S. manufacturing workers benefitted is now over. That was an unusual phenomenon, not the American way of life. Live with it.
The nuts hate Walmart because it's non-union. I love Walmart.
Ummm... OK.
Actually if you're running a business, you preserve it by treating employees, including yourself as the owner, as "a thing." The reason for this is that the market couldn't care less about your soul. The cold, hard facts of business dictate how much you can pay for a given level of labor. No business can afford to overpay employees for ever. Unions have done their darndest to make this happen for years, but it catches up with them sooner or later.
Free-marketers are, perhaps, athiests, but that's only because business knows no God. Its life-blood is money; that's all that will keep it alive.
You make a lot of unsupported assertions in this reply. Do you have statistics that back up your claims of wage stagnation or shrinkage in the US?
You keep talking about the conditions in China today. You're really not backing up any of what you say with hard data and I have reason to believe that you can't.
You keep confusing political and institutional China with the cultural and economic China that I am talking about. Until you understand that those should be separated, we really don't have much to talk about.
Try taking off your ideological blinders for once and try to see the potential I'm talking about. We're talking about a HUGE MARKET that is largely unexploited. Sure, they pirate our products and set up trade barriers, but do you think that this is an economic problem or a political problem? Which one do you think we'll have more success dealing with?
Yes, go read the financial statements for DollarTree or the other dollar stores. We covered them in one of my MBA courses last year, they've had record growths. The Fed says one thing, company statements tell the truth, or at least a lot closer to the truth then the Fed ever will. As for government jobs being the fastest growing sector, that has been posted here so many times you can find it rather easily.
You keep confusing political and institutional China with the cultural and economic China that I am talking about.
And there is what difference in an authoritarian state that controls the means of production? The Economy is not free in China (not that it's free here either, but China is not even close), the Party and their choosen control everything. Tiaiman Square was the last opposition to full party control, it ended with kids crushed by tanks.
We're talking about a HUGE MARKET that is largely unexploited.
And just what Made in America (not that there's that much of it left) goods will someone making $.12/hour buy? Please provide a list and don't forget the tacked on transport and tariff fees. As for your other statements, we've followed that line since Nixon and in 30 years there have been how many free elections in China?
Walmart demands a 5% cut in costs from all suppliers yearly. After a few years, most are forced to seek foreign labor to continue the cuts. So yes, Walmart is a direct contributor to outsourcing out labor.
Go look up DollarTree or DollarGeneral and look at their finance/earnings statements.
I prefer the ours that was not built on massive debt, before you Free Traders started your game. You know, the economy that was first set up by those close minded Founding Fathers.
I don't care about these stores. I'm interested in your "fact" about under $25,000 earners in America. You have a link, or did you just make it up?
That's right, there was no debt before free trade. LOL!
So, does the fact that household net-worth in America is at a record level make you happy or sad?
Funny so is debt and so is bankruptcy. Now how does that figure?
Well, you see, net-worth includes debt so I guess debt is less than assets.
So, any sources yet, besides your imagination?
This is not even a good try at addressing the question. Do you expect me to believe that because DollarTree and other discount retailters are experiencing revenue growth that it is a necessary corrolary that wage deflation is occuring. That is prima facie absurd. Likewise the growth in government jobs. I didn't quibble with the fact that government is growing and that there are probably more people employed in the public sector than ever in our history, but again, what does this say about wages? And what, if anything, does this have to do with trade with China?
Your response on China and market conditions there tells me just about everything I need to know about your knowledge of the current situation there. Bottom line . . . you don't know much.
Again, you keep ignoring my theory and keep jumping back to your own false, ill-conceived and erroneous premises. Sorry, but that just isn't cutting it. Again you keep conflating the political with the economic condition in China thereby demonstrating your lack of knowledge of current conditions there.
You have yet to demonstrate to me that you understand the point I'm making. You have yet to demonstrate to me that you can speak in anything but platitudes about a complex set of economic factors that you obviously know little about. China has a huge and complex economy and you keep boiling that down to Tiananmen Square and 12 cents an hour (you have yet to provide any basis for this assertion about wages in China). Even if I accept those as givens, what makes those facts germaine? What do they say about the potential of the market or about the current trends in the Chinese economy?
Dollar Tree and Dollar General carry a higher percentage of made in China products than does Walmart - I find far higher percentage of American made products in Walmart than I do in any of the dollar store chains, and I shop in all of them.
Walmart is not the cause of American companies like GE to be outsourcing......when I bought a new GE mixer it said right on the box "Made in China" and it didn't matter that I bought in Walmart - K-Mart, Target, JC Penney and Sears all carry the identical item - made in the identical place.
The high cost of compliance with enviro-whacko caused government regulations on manufacturing, along with the high cost of employee benefits demanded by unions and partially caused by trial lawyers are far more to blame than Walmart ever will.
Not very many. Most of what we have left are services, some auto manufacturing, most of our food and canned products, produce, books, some miscellaneous manufacturing, some major appliances, few tv's, almost no toys, clothes, cameras, I haven't done extensive research. Look on the labels of the things you buy. Made in China. Made in the Philippines. Made in Taiwan. Made in Indonesia. Made in Mexico.
It is not only Wal-mart that sells Chinese-made goods.
I know that. They are the biggest. That's why they are being targeted by some on both left and right as destroying American jobs.
CNBC replayed its Wal-Mart documentary yesterday "The Age of Walmart" It showed one of the factories in China that make Brats dolls. The person being interviewed explained that the Brats doll made in China sells at Walmart for under $20. The same doll made in the U.S. would be priced at $60 or $70.
That's due to American obsession with fads and no competition for that particular doll (which I never heard of).
This is what the unions have done to the U.S.A.
If so, only in part. Blame it all on the unions. Even the people who hate unions never seemed to have a problem buying union-made goods. It was the politicians who signed all the agreements with all the accompanying fanfare and photo ops, and most of us went along with it with nary a peep like we do almost everything else.
A short-lived era after WWII where Europe and Japan were rebuilding and the U.S. manufacturing workers benefited is now over. That was an unusual phenomenon, not the American way of life.
The unions have done a lot of good for the American worker if you think over some of the history. I have admitted there is a downside to unions, but the bottom line for me is I would support unions and American-made products rather than communist Chinese slave labor who have no rights, work heaven knows how many hours, are paid what another poster said, cannot buy the products they slave away making for us, and may not have safe workplaces.
Live with it.
Another flippant answer. I don't know about you, but I have wondered many a time what those poor people must think of us and how we live and not even being able to buy hardly any, if any, of the things they make for us. They probably scratch their heads (if they think more than a lot of Americans seem to think; they must think SOMETHING during those long hours they put in) and wonder what kind of spoiled Brats we are. They probably ask each other what some of the stuff is for. Brats dolls for spoiled American kids (a lot of them brats). Kind of ironic.
On one of the rare occasions I watched nighttime tv, I saw a segment about a mother whose little girl had not one, but the whole house filled with toys and dolls, probably all made in China. The little girl wasn't happy unless the UPS truck pulled up to her lovely house every day with a new toy to add to her collection. They all looked brand new and seldom, if ever, played with. That is probably not a normal situation in America, quite, I'll grant you that.
It bothers my conscience, that's what it does, that people have to slave like that for us. And now our workers are being turned into slaves selling us the stuff.
Doesn't it bother your conscience? Or do you just like cheap stuff no matter what it costs somebody else to get it to you?
I like cheap stuff, too, but I think about the people who produced if for me and wonder what their lives are like.
Some of that night stuff is total crackpot (tinfoilers can be happy that aluminum foil might still be made in America - haven't checked lately).
Thanks for the links. Some of that stuff is dead on if you can sift out the weird stuff.
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