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Re: Are you saying the US should heavily subsidize its supplies like the Chinese government does? Macharius Send a noteboard - 24/01/2012 01:06:51 PM
I am unsure what that has to do with the outsourcers contention they go overseas because America no longer produces workers with the education and skills for the demanding jobs they need done. Yet when I did manufacturing work before leaving the States all it required was a HS diploma or GED. The company was, however, in the process of building a Indonesian plant to take over a major product line our plant had been producing for years: Because the labor cost was lower.


I think it depends on the product being manufactured. The iPhone, for instance, has a huge profit margin. Snowblowers, lawnmowers, etc likely don't.

For items with a lower profit margin, the labor savings can be the difference between success or being forced to shut down entirely - especially when many/most/all of your competitors have shifted production overseas, leaving a company little choice but to follow suit just to remain competitive.

The kicker, though, is that China's competitive advantage is completely illusory since they manipulate their currency. If they stopped or even slowed their unnecessarily high rate of inflation, domestic manufacturing would have a tremendous advantage since they don't have to deal with nearly the same logistical issues (namely, having to ship across the Pacific Ocean). For that matter, the continual increase in cost of transportation (since ships run on oil) may yet make all the difference in the long run.

Regarding the education and skills argument, an American factory would have to be heavily automated to be able to compete with de facto slave labor - and that requires more advanced skills. To use an example from the article, the foreman roused 8000 workers at midnight for an unscheduled 12-hour shift. If that were in the US, they'd have to call in an automation engineering team of only several people to reprogram the assembly robots. But finding enough automation engineers to replace the millions of un-/barely-skilled Asian laborers would be... difficult, to say the least.
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That really is the bottom line. - 23/01/2012 05:24:57 AM 758 Views
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Yes. - 24/01/2012 10:19:57 AM 481 Views
Are you saying the US should heavily subsidize its supplies like the Chinese government does? - 24/01/2012 11:15:37 AM 519 Views
Re: Are you saying the US should heavily subsidize its supplies like the Chinese government does? - 24/01/2012 01:06:51 PM 552 Views
Of course not. Where did I even say anything about that? - 24/01/2012 08:10:29 PM 615 Views
You didn't say that. I'll explain the way Joel posts. - 25/01/2012 07:16:05 PM 625 Views
What a bunch of shit. - 24/01/2012 01:33:19 AM 718 Views
Huh. I would not have expected to hear that from you. - 24/01/2012 09:35:56 PM 521 Views
Really? - 24/01/2012 11:23:26 PM 577 Views

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