Posted on 06/11/2005 6:46:30 AM PDT by voletti
Korean cars gave Detroit fits in the late '90s by undercutting domestic small cars on price and outdoing them on quality -- then moving up into other segments. Autos from China could provide more lower-cost competition for the Big Three at a time when GM and Ford Motor Co. (F ) are already reeling. That could cost them, along with Chrysler (DCX ), more market share and prod them to move more of their own production offshore.
How fast can the Chinese gear up? The way things are going, it won't take 20 years to match Toyota Motor Corp. (TM ) quality levels, as it did for the Koreans. And with Chinese auto assembly workers earning $2 an hour -- vs. $22 in Korea and nearly $60 in the U.S. for wages and benefits -- it may not be long before China has the wherewithal to start selling competitively priced cars overseas. "The Chinese are probably five or six years away from being able to sell a competent low-end car," says auto analyst Maryann N. Keller.
The Chinese government is putting its heft behind the export push -- subsidizing the export drive of such local players as Chery and giving the likes of Honda big incentives. Beijing also is nudging foreign auto makers to divert investment into export production so local partners can become familiar with managing foreign-exchange risk and global supply chains. It's also pushing domestic companies such as Chery, Geely Auto, Brilliance China Automotive (CBA ), and Shanghai Automotive Industry to develop their own brands overseas.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Your picture of Capitalists is flawed--you ascribe the virtues of the IDEAL capitalist to all of them.
Wrong guess, my man. The human condition guaran-frickin-tees that some "capitalists" will be nasty little creatures, and encounter great success due to this.
Similarly, some 'workers' will be thieves.
Were the world as clean as your post indicates, this thread would only have 4 ripostes.
I drove a Thunderbird back in the mid-eighties and into the nineties. It had 250K miles on it when the speedometer gave out.
I might still be driving it, but a young mother leaning over her seat to scold kids whacked me and totaled the car out. ;o)
Seems to be a lot of that goin' around! ;o)
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You called???
Outstanding insight.
Rand=Worship of Capital, Marx=Worship of State.
Each chooses an alternative god and consequently derogates man.
It was for good reason that Bill Buckley threw Rand out of civilized conservative circles.
That's probably true, although the overall Chinese economy will be bigger than ours sometime before 2050. It's just that they have far more people.
Speaking of people, China has determined that the rural regions of China can only sustain a population of 100 million. There are 500 million there now.
Over the next 15 years, they plan to relocate 400 million people from rural China into expanded megacities giving them an almost unlimited supply of cheap labor.
They are going to be very difficult to compete with. Ironically, the thing that could slow them down is political reform. Democracy is messy. Fascist planning and enforcement is far more efficient assuming the correct economic decisions are made.
True enough but if the GDP/capita is increasing (and it is) and the unemployment is stable (and it is) than you simply cannot argue that, on the average, things are not getting better for average Americans. That doesn't help the poor guy who loses his job in Michigan. He is probably going to have to move to Alabama or lower his standard of living. That is sad. But it is a fact.
Like I said, it is the price we pay for progress and economic growth. Countries that have interfered with the natural destruction/renewal of free capitalism and tried to replace it with a managed economy have universally failed with great human suffering and loss of life. We don't need it.
Detroit News also states that each autoworker job has another 7 jobs attached--as you stated--in retail selling, servicing--not to mention supplying auto companies with parts and services (CPA, legal, etc.)
So GM's annoucement of -25,000 jobs is really -175,000 jobs nationally.
You may claim that some tree is your father. Please don't claim the same for the rest of us.
Your inability to see humans as distinct from trees is a clear indicator that one should not take your "thoughts" seriously.
And the same applies to Walter Williams, by the way...
...financed by debt, not saved capital.
That's a REALLY big difference.
At this point, the US consumer is borrowing most of their expenditures.
And the debt is held by PRChina and Japan--so it's "vendor financing."
Yup.
And if you believe the line of crap that the Fortune 100 sold to GWBush, all that "capitalism" stuff going on in China will suddenly make the country into a nice democratic republic.
Only a few years from now...just you wait...it's coming...right on the horizon....hundreds of millions of consumers...largetst market in the Universe...
Yes. www.constitutionparty.com
Exactly... No profits, no jobs.. Companies exsist for one reason and that is to provide a service. It is not a social welfare agency....
No, Willie, you're missing the point. There is no "versus". All people have rights. Laborers are not just laborers. They are investors, consumers, and not infrequently, business owners themselves. Your construct of "capitalists" and "laborers" describes a mercantile, proto-capitalist society where rule of law and property rights have not yet taken hold - sort of like China, don't you think?
Corporations exist as legal entities to allow business creators to pool their resources while, yes - limiting their liability. If my business fails and I can no longer afford to hire you or pay back your investment in my business, that does not give you the right to the keys to my private car. Risk is...risky. Reward is for those who take it.
No kidding - you mean people aren't perfect? Of course they are not. More importantly, though, and more to my point - people are not perfectable, either. The perfectability of man and society is the central conceit of every nasty, destructive ideology in human history. It is Socialism's North Star.
Capitalism is not perfect, nor is it perfectable - it just happens to ensure the best possible life for all people, who, as I keep reminding you all, are not segmented into warring tribes of "capitalists" and "laborers". Get out of the 19th century, man. Your average worker today is richer than the average business owner 100 years ago. He or she is also a consumer, an investor (a stakeholder), and a property owner.
It is the rule of law - fairly applied according to objective principles that will protect people from each other's excesses and wrongdoings. The fact that our laws and our courts have gone off the rails is a political, not an economic problem.
Bill Buckley did nothing of the sort. She got herself disinvited to the Conservative movement by being personally insufferable - argumentative, didactic, and profoundly anti-religious. Buckley supports now (and supported then) the free market as a means of economic organization no less than Rand. However, the founder of National Review, like Kilpatrick, Chambers, and others of the same generation, recognized that that human needs had dimensions exteral to commerce, spirituality chiefly among them. Love of Freedom does not constitute "Capital worship". There are many other things to love, and most people (passe Ms. Rand) choose to love them also.
While I don't subscribe to it, I respect your view of nature, but I fear that the youth may confuse it with Druidism. I would guess that you aren't an animist, and your beliefs protect you from the depredations of paganism and other similar superstitions.
I have always been a loyal "buy American" guy. My thanks for this has been crappy cars. It doesn't matter if you are buying luxury or economy American cars don't compete in any sectors.
We are in the market for a new car right now and have not looked at any from an American car company. I have looked at several made in the USA by foreign companies.
GDP is, of course, strictly a quantitative measure and tells absolutely nothing about the nature of the "products".
The new buildings in my area (and in areas I travel through) are for the most part hospitals, clinics, schools or school expansions, and government buildings. The boarded up buildings are former mfg or wholesaling operations.
Furthermore, when billion dollar industries such as pornography, pet supplies, nursing homes, fast foods, high end real estate, etc. are considered then the "strength" trend of our nation appears troubling to say the least. It's also instructive to examine the makeup, let alone the quantity, of our measly exports.
Finally, what the GDP (or GNP before it) said yesterday, says today, and will say tomorrow about the economic status of "the average American" is purely inferential.
IMHO, you'd be well advised to set aside the government statistics and trust your eyes and good intellect.
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