Just what the hell is "Cheap plastic crap from China"? I keep

[hedgehog]

seeing people claiming we're in economic difficulty today because so many American bought "Cheap plastic crap from China" at Wilmar.

Is it not possible that part of our problem is that corporations saw chance to manufacture goods off-shore more cheaply than here, bought the goods back here to sell at the same price and then proceeded to pocket the difference as extra profit? Under our system, managers have a fiduciary responsibility to achieve the highest profit. While the community is best served by local manufacturing, the stockholders are beset served by higher profit. In a variation of the tragedy of the commons, every company went overseas to manufacture stuff and bring it back here to sell to the employees of the other guy. Unfortunately, since all the manufacturers did the same thing, there are no more employees to buy the stuff. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people needing both jobs and stuff.

So , I maintain the problem is the system in place that awards off shore manufacturing with short term higher profits. If you maintain the problem is people buying "cheap plastic crap from China at Walmart's", tell me specifically what you mean: Hot Wheels, blouses, shoes, tupperware, what?

I think the phrase "buying cheap plastic crap from China at Walmart's" is a way of blaming the victim rahter than engaging in searching out and fixing the actual causes.

[endarkenment]

1. Remember back in the 50's and 60's when it was Japan?

And then Toyota ate GM while Honda dined on Ford and Nissan chowed down on Chrysler?

It is a diversion from the fact that we have just about finished hollowing out our economic infrastructure. Yeah, it's all that Chinese crap. That's it.

[omega minimo]

3. Try to buy ANYTHING that is not Made In China.

You'll figure it out.

[endarkenment]

4. that was my point

[Johonny]

22. funny my Chinese GF loves American Apparel

[omega minimo]

29. Yeah. Not funny.

[hfojvt]

44. I thought it was funny when I was in Deutschland in 2001

and I saw a kid with a backpack that said 'made in the USA'.

I went to a mall shoestore in 2006 or so and the shoes there were made in Thailand or Singapore or Phillipines, etc. I think I saw the same thing at Cabela's. At neither place were the shoes really inexpensive. When I bought my first Trek bicycle in 1990, it was made in Korea. The one I bought in 2003 and the one I bought in 2005 were made in China and cost the same as the 1990 model, about $300. Now the low end is in the $500s, so I am waiting for a sale. Trek, of course, is a Wisconsin company and they do make some models in America, but those tend to run over $1000.

[omega minimo]

47. Good to know about Trek.

I always get a kick out of "Hecho En China" :spray:

[Johonny]

57. I find it interesting

that the Chinese have no love of Chinese products. While I was there I learned they love American cars, European clothes... American Apparel is made in the good old USA. My Chinese GF loves it. You can find stuff made in America, even in America.

[omega minimo]

15. It appears you dismissed "all that Chinese crap" as a diversion and "same old same old"

[endarkenment]

18. It is a diversion. Blame the furryners. Call their stuff crap

Meanwhile we literally shipped our factories over to china and they are producing nearly everything we use.

[omega minimo]

21. It's not "blame the furryners." What a bizarre interpretation. It's also about EXPLOITATION of labor

-- the workers and the environment. How can you ignore that part?

"Call their stuff crap." You don't seem to get it at all.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

39. No it isn't.

I love how people here claim that every Chinese person working in a factory is somehow a kind of exploited slave laborer. I can't imagine anyone making such a claim has ever worked with the sort of people who work in Chinese factories or has any idea of the conditions under which they operate, which, outside of the textile and resource extraction industries, are actually quite good by developing world standards. Having myself worked with many people in the far east in the electronics and manufacturing sector, I'd say that their standards are reasonably good. They get adequate housing, good health care, don't work horrifically long hours, are compensated for time off for family obligations. Really, you do them a disservice by pretending that they are all slave labor. They don't see themselves as such, nor should they. But I guess it's pretty easy to cast those types of aspersions when you've not got the first damn clue of what the situation is really like over there.

[omega minimo]

43. Thank you for your generic bullshit argument. I am not "pretending they are all slave labor"

I am pointing out to the other poster that there is concern about exploitation of workers and resources. AFAIK, "blaming the furriners" is RW BS.


As you know, not all of the picture is as sunny as your propaganda version of it.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

64. It's not a generic bullshit argument.

It's based on my personal experiences of working with Chinese contract manufacturers in Shenzhen and Guangdong on the mainland, and manufacturers in Taipei, ROC. You haven't given a single particle of data to back up your claims of "exploitation of workers," even though such data is not exactly difficult to come by. The simple fact of the matter is that workers in Shenzhen and Guangdong, and especially ROC, are not subject to anything even remotely approaching "slave labor" conditions. In my experience they have always been well treated, though again I do not think this holds true for the textile or resource extraction industries, where bad labor practices are widespread.

[omega minimo]

68. "As you know, not all of the picture is as sunny as your propaganda version of it."

from my previous post. you acknowledged as much in your reply. Exploitation is a reality and a concern. Which is what I said to the other poster, who seemed not to comprehend that.

You know your experience is not the whole picture.

[Kalyke]

41. Toyota, Honda and Nissan suck ass.

And have since 1989, so I'm not quite sure what you're talking about.

The No. 1 selling vehicle every month for months is the Ford F-Series.

[endarkenment]

54. GM: bankrupt. Chrysler: bankrupt again. Ford: lucked out this time. nt.

Being proud of the fact that we buy pickups to drive to the grocery store: senseless.

[DainBramaged]

65. Keep loving those japanese cars

Know how many manufacturing plants Ford, GM and Chrysler have in japan?

Know how much (in billions of dollars) we import in japanese cars and parts each year?


Know how much (in billions of dollars) we export to japan every year?

Know how many gas guzzlers (and pickup trucks) the japanese make? Ever wonder why their CAFE average is THE SAME as the Domestic manufacturers?

The playing field is stacked against the American manufacturer AND worker.


So is your ignorance just limited to pickup trucks?

[hfojvt]

46. actually even in the 1970s and 1980s it was Japan

And in the movie Armageddon from the late 1990s, the Russian complains "Russian components, American components, all made in Taiwan!'

[omega minimo]

2. People who support that system are not "victims" -- they are participants.

The shorthand version you are questioning is simply connecting the dots at a different point in the cycle.

Yes, shareholders and global corps pocketed the profits from cheap outsourced labor and Americans had the "privilege" of enabling their own demise.

[hedgehog]

7. I am a shareholder because of my husband's 401K and pension.

A lot of people are in our position. Many states are major stockholders. As individuals, I have no control over what stocks go into our mutual fund or how the companies we own an infinitesimal part of are run. Others have raised the question. How should the UAW vote its shares in GM, to benefit the employees and their communities or to produce the highest profit?

Expand the question further. How should the Federal Reserve balance its goals of maintaining employment, preventing inflation and moderate long term credit? Which goal takes priority if the three are mutually exclusive?

As long as we blame others who are not as brilliant, far seeing and moral as ourselves (everything would be fine except that all those people bought cheap plastic crap from China at Wilmar, everything would be fine except that those people ran up debt on their credit cards), we get no closer to fixing the problem.

As shareholders, we have very little say. As voters, we have a tiny bit more. The first step is to stop the blame game and start working together.

[omega minimo]

13. Two glaring exceptions there:

If your concerns are only about your shares and even when "expanding the question further," you ignore the impacts on the exploited labor and exploited planet, that's shortsighted. It doesn't necessarily take someone "as brilliant, far seeing and moral" to figure out that if the waves of globalized greed keep spreading to new exploitable countries simultaneous with the jobs disappearing here, those chickens will come home to roost, one way or another. And they have. You can feel protected behind investment concerns, but the impacts on all of us are much more direct.

"As shareholders, we have very little say. As voters, we have a tiny bit more. The first step is to stop the blame game and start working together."

The first step is to quit pretending to be powerless and to have no effect through our choices and actions. As shareholders you CAN influence the choices made by the administrators; as individuals or groups you CAN influence via your purchase power and daily buying decisions.

If more of us did this, we wouldn't be having such a redundant discussion after all the dots have been connected and published in the news years ago.

American hubris and feeling immune to the consequences of their actions IS the problem. Even at this point. :think: Changing THAT would be a first step. Even though it's too late.

:hi:

[hedgehog]

17. I am not protected behind investment concerns if my job

vanishes and my kids can't find work.

[omega minimo]

26. That's what I said.

You can feel protected from Thinking About It behind your investment concerns, which seemed your first priority. Yes, you got the point about "much more direct."

"It doesn't necessarily take someone "as brilliant, far seeing and moral" to figure out that if the waves of globalized greed keep spreading to new exploitable countries simultaneous with the jobs disappearing here, those chickens will come home to roost, one way or another. And they have. You can feel protected behind investment concerns, but the impacts on all of us are much more direct."

Supporting outsourcing, offshoring and exploitation is the problem, not the solution. Ultimately, we're all screwed, no matter who still has a job and a 401K.

[hedgehog]

30. I didn't mean to say my investment concerns are my first priority.

I was pointing out that while managers are protecting my interest as an investor, they are destroying my life as a worker and making it increasingly impossible for me to be a consumer. Because I own such a small piece of any corporation, I do not have the means to force the managers to look at the big picture and act to my overall benefit.

[omega minimo]

33. OIC. Thank you. I would love to see purchase power organized in this case.

And some have done. People can do it in groups and individual acts also have power.

Good luck to you.

[leftstreet]

5. It's bigger than that. Cheap labor is only one component

Can you imagine what how much 'cheap plastic crap from China' would cost if the Plastic Oligarch Company had to pay actual costs for shipping, containment, maritime police protection, rail and highway maintenance, Plastic-Mart land and utility taxes, etc....

The real cost of non-subsidized Oligarch Hair Dryers would be staggering.

[Tikki]

11. Maybe we don't need hair dryers, either from Oligarch or Wal*Mart China....

Maybe that is what this is all about. And if you absolutely need something then what is wrong
with paying more for the quality that will last...Think Reuse, Recycle, Repurpose....or better
yet something you can pass on down to your children/grandchildren...& beyond.

Not much of Wal*Mart proprietary brands that will last even beyond standard expectations. The
cheap plastic crap dummies down expectations and lulls those shoppers into believing that
they are somehow living better that way.


Tikki

[sinkingfeeling]

6. I believe that phrase is about the crazed consumerism that we are all exposed to from birth in this

country. We buy stuff. Tons of stuff we don't need, but think we can't live without. America's addiction to 'shopping' has caused a large percentage of our population to charge everything, putting themselves into extreme debt. I watched a lady buying $2.31 of junk food last night and putting it on a credit card.

We're not the victims of manufacturers or ad-men. We've just allowed ourselves to believe our economy must constantly grow through increased consumption. We have allowed ourselves to be taken in by the advertising.

[hedgehog]

9. OK, what is "stuff"? Is it a larger tv, a color tv instead of black& white,

a tv instead of a radio, what?

Look at your example. You have judged that lady and found her wanting because she charged $2.31 in her credit card. For all you know, she charges everything to keep track of her spending and pays off her bill every month. Or, she borrowed a small amount at 3%, was late one day in making a payment and now finds her debt growing because her interest rate was jacked to 31.9% and there is no way in hell she'll ever pay it off. Maybe she puts her entire paycheck to paying her monthly bill and then charges what she needs.

There is a strong strain of Puritanism in this discussion. The underlying belief is that Americans are being justly punished for trying to enjoy life. They should have known that it was their lot to go to work everyday and come home to sit in a tiny apartment and stare at the walls. How dare they reach for something better!

[sinkingfeeling]

49. People rushed to buy flat screen TVs even if the colored set they've had for 3 years is still

functioning just fine. There are millions that lined up to get the latest, greatest iphone even if they had an earlier one or a working cell phone. You can call it Puritanism, but I call it common sense. You don't always need the newest or fastest or 'better' thing. I think we've given up our lives to support a culture of consumption. You claim all these things prevent people from staring at walls. What happened to community, playing games, talking face to face with your friends and neighbors, enjoying a walk, reading a book from the library, and any of a hundred other options that don't require somebody to buy something?

I still have a colored TV I bought in 1978 attached to cable. It's about 6 times bigger than a 37 inch flat screen, but it still works. I have a lot of the same furniture I got when I married in 1967 and almost all of my kitchen stuff is from my wedding. Yes, it's gold, avocado green, or burnt orange, but so what? I'm sick of HGTV telling me you need to remodel your bathrooms and kitchen every 5 to 7 years!

[peace13]

8. I'm going to redo my bathroom.

The shower curtain, rugs, curtains, curtain rods, soap dish, towel holders and toothbrush holder all made in China. The towels might come from Vietnam. Bottom line, I'm not gonna do it. The bathroom is serviceable the way it is and I will just have to get over it. I could make the curtains but if you go to Joann Fabrics, the major fabric store in the area, you could carry every bolt of fabric made in the USA out of the store in a little over an arm load. That is what I am talking about!

[hedgehog]

14. How much control did you have in the decision to manufacture things overseas?

Your choice is to live with a grungy bathroom and worn out towels or buy imported stuff. Since the last time I bought towels and sheets, the last American mills have shut down.

Contrary to popular myth, the imported stuff is not any cheaper. Two years ago, I separated American towels and sheets from foreign ones by searching out tiny labels, not by checking the prices.

The plants where my father and uncles worked were bought up and shut down back when Walmart was a small regional chain. Given the way our banking and tax laws are set up, larger companies made a profit by buying those plants, running them into the ground, then closing them when the tax benefits of doing so were greater than the profits to be made by investing in new equipment.

[peace13]

51. I had no control over the manufacturing decisions.

But I can refuse to buy from China. The point is that we don't need to have everything just so anymore. We make our own problems.

[omega minimo]

24. You can find many of those things secondhand (including new, donated) or deep discounted

At least it knocks out the mercenary profit

[Curtland1015]

10. Here ya go:

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. Americans try to blame the developing world for their problems.

Same as it ever was.

[omega minimo]

16. Huh?

:wow:

[madrchsod]

32. really?

[hedgehog]

35. As long as we claim that our jobs are gone because those

people overseas are willing to work for less, we are blaming the 3rd world.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

37. Yup.

What's utterly shocking to me is that Americans, consumers of 25% of the entire world's economic output, don't see the hypocrisy in placing blame on the people who are producing that which they consume.

[Marr]

50. Who is doing that?

I've never heard anyone make that complaint. I've heard about a thousand complaints that our government is always too willing to help our business community *exploit* the fact that foreign labor is cheap, but never a complaint about the cheapness of foreign labor in itself. That'd be like complaining that water is too wet.

[omega minimo]

61. we're blaming corporate mercenaries who fuck both ends of the process.

[napoleon_in_rags]

19. I'll rec that. Classic Nash equalibrium, isn't it?

'The only way everybody wins is if nobody goes for the blond', to quote "A beautiful mind". The only way to maintain profits is if nobody takes the most profitable path. A classic case of all individuals pursuing self interest as being detrimental to the whole.

[Romulox]

20. Americans DO NOT CARE about one another, and are kept together as a country by coercion

That is really the bottom line. Every other industrialized country on earth has had the ability to sell out its native workforce in exchange for foreign indebtedness and inferior quality (but higher quantity!) goods from China.

The only two which have done so with absolute gleeful abandon have been the US and the UK; all of our most successful trading partners (including China and Japan,) aggressively protect their domestic markets.

[CBGLuthier]

23. I would wager all of these posts in this thread

were made on computers manufactured in China.

The world belongs to them now. Hope they do better than the west did.

[omega minimo]

27. It's not All or Nothing, black and white. People have purchase choices to make every day.

[nebenaube]

25. hmmm....

managers have a fiduciary responsibility to achieve the highest profit.

Those same managers are citizens and as such have a higher duty to country.

[hedgehog]

28. If that is true, we must make the laws to steer them in that direction.

Instead of going in circles repeating the same catch phrases, we need to step outside and really look at what is happening.

Is this a zero sum game? Is China's gain our loss? Or, do we do something new to the benefit of us all? If so, what?

[high density]

31. Yes these companies are the victims of their own stupid collective decisions.

They've destroyed our economy for, as you put it, increased short term profits. Now we have rampant unemployment, depressed wages, and they wonder why nobody can afford to buy their stuff. I cannot see how we ever return to the consumer market we once had unless there are huge changes made when it comes to our trade policy, and that is not happening anytime soon. We cannot be a country that survives on only three industries: DC politics, defense, and financial services.

[omega minimo]

34. China also holds the debt. This market will be allowed to do what the global

overlords want it to do.

[hedgehog]

36. But, will the Chinese be smart enough not to kill the goose

that lays the Golden eggs?

[omega minimo]

38. It would seem so.

:thumbsup:

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

40. I can talk about guitars

which I know fairly well. The guitars made in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s (some of which I used to own before foolishly selling them) by Gibson, Epiphone, or Fender were generally well-crafted. The woods were better, the craftsmanship was better, more care was taken for quality control, and the playability was very musician friendly. There was a conscious effort to make the guitars playable and sound good and feel good.

I recently bought an archtop guitar made in China for $250 on e-bay to do a project. I wanted to take the top of this guitar off, carve my own spruce top, and put a new fretboard on it. The guitar is a piece of crap. I also own and have owned several other Chinese made guitars so I know this particular guitar was not the exception. It's taken me weeks and weeks just to get the awful plastic coating off the body. Even aircraft-strength paint remover won't take it off and I've had to just sand it off. The coating must be a quarter of an inch thick and it smothers the wood and keeps it from resonating. Whoever thought of just putting a pretty but foul coating on these guitars is certainly not a musician or someone who cares about tone in a musical instrument. And the guitar itself doesn't feel right. But then I've even tried playing on hand-carved top of the line Eastman jazz guitars made in China that sell for $2,000. They don't feel right, either. The Eastman company has made violins in China and these guitars feel like the type of instruments that would be made by a company that just wanted to convert to guitars to make more profits. They're cheaper in price than hand-crafted U.S. made guitars but they don't seem to have been made by players, for players. Japanese and Korean made guitars are generally slightly better than Chinese made guitars, but they're still not remotely competitive in terms of quality with the great U.S. made guitars of the 1950s and 1960s. I've tried a $5,000 D'Angelico copy made in the Far East. It was nice, but it doesn't even come close to the great original guitar made by the master.

I certainly don't blame the Chinese worker building these guitars on the assembly line. He or she is doing what they're told to do and making guitars the way the company wants them made. But I don't feel that these companies are fostering a feeling of committment to the quality of these instruments and retaining workers over a long haul to insure that feeling of intimacy and concern with craftsmanship the way it used to be with the great American made guitars of years gone by. I blame the companies.

[pampango]

42. The US has the largest manufacturing industry in the world. As of 2008

our manufacturing output was valued at $2.7 trillion. (If you count the EU as a country it was bigger than the US at $3.7 trillion.)

In second place was Japan at $1.25 trillion, then China in third at $1.21 trillion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_sector_composition

Much of our production is high end stuff, like aircraft, construction equipment and sophisticated products and components that most consumers never see. China's manufacturing industry, on the other hand, is geared to meeting consumer demand in the West. Even though China produces less than half the amount that the US does, most of it shows up on consumer shelves.

[omega minimo]

45. Horseshit. US exports raw materials, China manufactures, maybe the high tech products are assembled

here MAYBE. Assembling parts Made In China from our raw materials is called "manufacturing" now?

"Much of our production is high end stuff, like aircraft, construction equipment and sophisticated products and components that most consumers never see"

...aka military applications.

Why are you even trying to argue that point? :crazy: Is your Wiki wisdom including all the stuff made offshore and stamped "USA"?

"Even though China produces less than half the amount that the US does, most of it shows up on consumer shelves."

HORSEHOCKEY.

[pampango]

55. Hope you feel better now. Sometimes it helps to just vent a little.

"US exports raw materials, China manufactures..." "Assembling parts made in China from our raw materials is called "manufacturing" now." I think that assembling parts into a finished product is called manufacturing - now and in years past.

Are you claiming that China making parts from our raw materials is "manufacturing", but us making finished products with Chinese parts is not "manufacturing"? If China makes stuff using our stuff, that's manufacturing, but if we make stuff using their stuff, that's not manufacturing?

Much of our manufacturing is military applications, although there is a huge civilian aircraft industry here, too, as well as construction equipment that is not military related. Not sure if you meant to discount military related applications as domestic manufacturing. You and I may think that there should be less military manufacturing, but it exists and better done here than abroad.

If you have figures to back up your "Wiki wisdom" crack, by all means share them. If you know that China's manufacturing industry is larger than that of the US, I'm sure you have more to prove it than just the "Why are you even trying to argue that point? :crazy:" blast. Nice try, though. Ridicule does work sometimes, so it was worth a try.

If you believe that Wiki erroneously counts "all the stuff made offshore and stamped "USA"" as domestic manufacturing, please share your evidence for this. Wiki is certainly not the final word, so if you have a more authoritative source for the relative sizes of the manufacturing sectors in China and the US, I'm always open to learning something new.

[omega minimo]

59. hope you feel better blowing smoke

[pampango]

62. Nothing like a fact-filled response to convince folks. n/t

[omega minimo]

67. you're already convinced.

[endarkenment]

53. at least get the label right: industrial sector != 'manufacturing'

and your chart clearly shows the problem, our industrial sector represents 20.4% of our GDP while our service sector represents 78.6%.

The center of the world has moved westward and is now much closer to Beijing than Los Angeles.

[pampango]

56. You're right. Just trying to counter the "we don't make anything here anymore" meme.

Even in the EU manufacturing was 28.4% of their economy and services represented 69.4%. So we are even more skewed to services than Europe is.

You're also right about the center of the world moving westward (kind of like it did last century when it headed our way). There are lots of people in Asia and they are getting their economic act together.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

48. It's the stuff most of us buy. Because, it is cheap.

Go into any department store and watch people shopping. What is the first thing they do after looking at the products? Check the price.

For a mom buying t-shirts for her kids, the "Made in the USA" ones may be better quality, may last longer, than the ones "Made in China", but is she going to pay $10 to get a "patriotic" label vs $5 to get a T-shirt?

And, that goes for almost everything else. People buy based on need and price, not patriotism or, even, quality.

[tomreedtoon]

52. If you want to know, read THIS book...

Full details at this link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159420215X/ref=s9_simz_gw_s6_p14_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=175WEKXWW6NDNXP3100N&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

From Publishers Weekly
Atlantic correspondent Shell (The Hungry Gene) tackles more than just discount culture in this wide-ranging book that argues that the American drive toward bargain-hunting and low-price goods has a hidden cost in lower wages for workers and reduced quality of goods for consumers.

In other words, buying a plastic vacuum cleaner made in China by slave-labor children saves you money, but loses you a job making quality metal-case vacuums in the United States. And if you sell that plastic vacuum, you know you're selling crap instead of a quality product, so you feel like crap yourself. YOU become the cheap plastic crap you're selling.

[fascisthunter]

58. they love placing blame on the consumers

but both are actually responsible, more so those who create and sell the shit.

[onethatcares]

60. I got some slightly used Chinese drywall I'm willing to part with

at a rock bottom price, you pay shipping.

[Thothmes]

63. Its very similiar to the cheap plastic crap from Japan

we bought in the 60s.

[DainBramaged]

66. The solution is to stop buying cheap plastic crap from China

China, where human rights are not even an afterthought.

[omega minimo]

69. Aye