York1 I'm deleting this... My new pandemic resolution is that I am not going to get sucked into a goofy political discussion that is completely off topic. Remind me if I break this resolution.
I'm deleting this...
My new pandemic resolution is that I am not going to get sucked into a goofy political discussion that is completely off topic.
Remind me if I break this resolution.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
I still believe that trying to change policy by targeting consumers is futile. Target stockholders, they are the reason we are in this mess. As soon as you get a few guys like Paul Hilal onboard, industry will be repatriated to these shores. Who will be the E. Hunter Harrison of Precision Scheduled Americanization?
I was stunned, absolutely stunned, when I learned that 80% of all pharmaceuticals used here in the US are made in China!
Insanity! Why don't we just junk the American armaments industry and outfit the armed forces with AK-47's and other Chinese weaponry? It makes as much sense as having our medications made on the other side of the world.
If anything positive can come from the virus, it may be an increased awareness of how vulnerable the U.S. has become to a potential enemy country.
What if this pandemic was biological? The U.S. does not produce any antibiotics. Antibiotics, or the materials to produce them, are mostly made in China. The last penicillin was made in the U.S. in 2004. We are at the mercy of a country who, at the very least, is an idealogical enemy of ours.
I hope the U.S. and Canada follow Japan.
York1 John
Getting back to Gramp's original post about "Japan paying," since I haven't seen anything elsewhere about it (No foolin', with all the 'All coronavirus, all the time!' news coverage) I'm guessing the Japanese government is advancing loans to those companies doing the pulling, since they're going to have to leave everything behind.
Oh yeah, send your tooling, dies, presses, molds, and other manufacturing machinery to China and you can kiss it goodbye! They won't give it back. This is the bind American toy train makers like Lionel, MTH, Bachmann, and others have gotten themselves into.
Part of China's situation is the same that many successful countries face.
A country with a low level of economic development thrives on out-competing others by offering low wages and few restrictions.
As success evolves, wages rise. Now the advantage they had may begin to fade, as other countries offer lower costs of production.
One ace China holds is government supported technology-pirating. For many years, the government encouraged, by lack of enforcement, Chinese companies to ignore international patents.
U.S. and Japanese companies have lost billions of dollars to this sanctioned pirating.
York1I understand completely. We have a president who lives in your side's heads. Your side can't talk about the virus, trains, or Star Trek without it being about Trump.
I never had 'sides' - I am a Republican - the real variety, the Eisehhower variety - not those that inhabit the name today.
I did not vote for Trump, that being the case, I wanted him to be a huge success to benefit the railroads and the rest of the population of the USA. That has not happened. Siding with enemies of the USA against the USA is and has been treason, no matter how you couple the cars in the Trump train.
Are you willing to try injecting bleach and UV lights as your 'salvation' ?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Here's one article I found.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2020/04/09/japan-ditches-china-in-multi-billion-dollar-coronavirus-shakeout/
Bravo York 1. Well said.
I'm on the outside looking in and can only observe but the mob seems a 'tad bit' consumed with TDS. It's amusing to watch, they are silly actually.
"Mr. President the mob is revolting"
" I'll say did you see them on ice!"
( changed it a bit ...from Mel Brooks )
York1Another issue rarely discussed is the fact that the U.S. has two obstacles: 1. Strict environmental laws. Many industrial processes have dirty by-products. Trying to clean the processes and get rid of the wastes are very expensive. China and some other Asian countries don't worry too much about those things. 2. Centralized governments. In China, land acquisition, waste disposal, wages, work hours, etc., are all basically controlled by the communist government. I don't want our government to do those things, but we also then need to realize we can't realistically compete with many products with countries that are not like ours.
1. Strict environmental laws. Many industrial processes have dirty by-products. Trying to clean the processes and get rid of the wastes are very expensive. China and some other Asian countries don't worry too much about those things.
2. Centralized governments. In China, land acquisition, waste disposal, wages, work hours, etc., are all basically controlled by the communist government.
I don't want our government to do those things, but we also then need to realize we can't realistically compete with many products with countries that are not like ours.
The present administration is trying to eliminate the past 50 years of enviornmental regulations. The adminsitration also believes it has the centralized power that dictatorial governments have.
Another issue rarely discussed is the fact that the U.S. has two obstacles:
EuclidI think we should pass a law saying that we cannot import products from communist countries.
What you actually pass is a law that says any country that wants to export to the United States must meet all the terms and conditions imposed on a domestic United States company for the same work. Including all safety requirements, government wage setasides, union 'contributions', and the wide range of saprophytic leeching that various agencies make on business. If foreign businesses continue to act without making their accounting of such costs freely open to our inspection and confirmation -- hit 'em with a tariff calculated on that basis. (Then earmark the proceeds for investment in a fund that provides directed small-business relief and incentive...)
Let the jobs go where they may. Some of those jobs will come to this country...
None of 'those jobs' will come to this country -- they will constitute unemployment, and 'all that implies', in the country of origin. Some percentage of the market may come to be served by companies or efforts in the United States, and those entities may hire people for jobs or careers, but don't pretend that the effect is 'fungible' as some of these wannabe economists seem to assume.
But they won’t be the high-paid jobs making high-quality product as was the case before the jobs left this country.
You evidently haven't studied the practical effect of various kinds of 'automation' on either the overall job market or historical 'skilled' jobs or their compensation, over the years. Particularly the last few, when there are recognized opportunities for a great many skilled jobs, but in completely different contexts and different industries than 'formerly'.
This also applies to any 'well-paid' worker who enjoyed their level of compensation based on some powerful union agreement or sequential negotiation. Even in the '70s it was increasingly practical to replace people paid $30 for assembly-line work with industrial robots; much of practical production even of low-nominal-price goods is done with programmable machinery, including much of the specialized equipment and tooling that is otherwise used to facilitate mass production. To think that eliminating Chinese, or Taiwanese, or Korean or Mexican competition will 'bring that sort of job home again' is to be trying to live with rose-colored glasses in the fifties somehow.
Our consumer market no longer demands high quality after the experience of cheap Chinese products.
This is only partially true, in addition to being needlessly pejorative in a number of significant ways. There are still plenty of places that the consumer market values and even 'demands' satisfactory quality; I well remember avoiding places like Wal-Mart in the Seventies, and still avoid places like Superlo Foods at present, because of the general concentration on cheap price and even cheaper quality. There were plenty of such cheap places patronized by 'those who value price alone' right back to the chain stores that proliferated in the United States even before WW1 ... and there were plenty of United States firms that 'built to a price' or played the creeping-featurism that the Japanese would later adopt and make a market specialty in the '80s along with embracing Demingism.
The real thing that inexpensive Chinese merchandise introduced was that acceptable levels of cheap were increasingly 'just as good' as the often-overpriced domestically-produced or branded equivalent. Even comparatively recently when you bought 'store brands' -- I'm thinking of the Pathmark 'generic label' stuff -- it was almost intentionally made to have lower quality...
Now, we shouldn't forget that America is also the land that made planned product obsolescence a 'thing' -- and not always just by changing style or perception. I'd love to go back to the '30s when every year products were better, lasted longer, had more features, and cost less. Now businesses are more savvy about where and how to 'recapture' all that perceived improvement benefit ... and if they're not, there's sure to be a Steinberg, or an Icahn, or a Soros, who will do regime change to ensure they do. Not for your benefit, of course. Just like PSR, isn't it?
That trend cannot be reversed.
Certainly not while we have organized policies working with a wild will to cut the heart out of 'middle class' earning potential, and at least by implication throw it into the putative 70% of people dependent on 'the powerful' to survive.
But I would totally disagree with the concept of us subsidizing high quality U.S. made products to make them price-attractive to our consumers who are accustomed to cheap, low quality Chinese products. That is a horrible idea (if that is what you mean).
You'll have to explain this better, or at least explain the logic by which you've 'concluded' this is necessarily so.
While I do agree in advance that it's better to 'level the playing field' by making foreigners pay the same overhead that domestic firms "have to", there are certainly places where positive incentives to make 'higher-quality' goods that are net cost-effective (i.e. available at lower consumer price, in this context), while 'putting Americans to work' in (implicitly) something better than dead-end minimum-wage jobs, will be a good idea. Both in policy and practical effect.
Gramp Paying Japanese companies to move their production facilities out of the PRC. High value goods to Japan. Lesser value to other countries. The PRC is Japan's largest trading "partner". Do you think Americans will wise up to lowest-price-at-any-cost addiction. Can railroads have an impact on this?
Paying Japanese companies to move their production facilities out of the PRC. High value goods to Japan. Lesser value to other countries. The PRC is Japan's largest trading "partner". Do you think Americans will wise up to lowest-price-at-any-cost addiction. Can railroads have an impact on this?
Are you saying Japan is paying Janpanese companies to move out of PRC? I assume that is what you mean.
We were never able to compete with China and so now we are in a trade war with them because we never accepted the truth about our inability to compete with them.
I think we should pass a law saying that we cannot import products from communist countries. Let the jobs go where they may. Some of those jobs will come to this country. But they won’t be the high paid jobs making high quality product as was the case before the jobs left this country. Our consumer market no longer demands high quality after the experience of cheap Chinese products. That trend cannot be reversed.
But I would totally disagree with the concept of us subsidizing high quality U.S. made products to make them price attractive to our consumers who are accustomed to cheap, low quality Chinese products. That is a horrible idea (if that is what you mean).
The Japanese are not the only ones. American companies have been doing this for a while.
I have a friend who is a graphic artist. He has quite a few clients who he designs labels for, that go on boxes or bottles.
This already started for him two years ago. He had to design new labels that said, "Made in Vietnam", or, "Made in Thailand", etc., instead of China.
Part of it was due to the tariffs. Part was due to the rising labor costs in China. I will assume that this virus issue will just speed this along.
Those empty shelves may very well be a smoking gun.
As far as the Japanese pulling out of China, I'm going to take a very wild guess considering my own background.
I retired a year and a half ago from a Japanese copier company. I won't say who, that's not important. Many of the electronic components in the machines, and other parts as well, were outsourced to China. The problem is, once that was done the Japanese lost any control over quality, a very bad thing in this age of increasing sophistication in electronics, and it did show in some of the end products we recieved. Also, if my company wanted to sell machines to American federal and state government organizations the electronic components HAD to be made in Japan, not China. Security concerns, you know.
That being the case, for the US and now I'm sure other countrys, why duplicate the production in two locations?
And I'm guessing other Japanese companys are having quality control issues as well.
Just a guess. I certainly don't know for sure. I'm out of the loop now.
I know that it's popular right now to blame consumers for the empty shelves in stores, with all the panic buying that I am sure did take place.
However, I've seen some store shelves remaining empty for going on 5 weeks now. I'm not sure where the breakdown is, but I'm growing more willing to suspect that at least a part of the problem, is in the supply chain. It's not unthinkable that at least a portion of this problem is due to overly long supply channels coupled with JIT inventory control methods.
I've never had any problem paying a little extra for "made in America", but have often wondered what extent manufacturers are willing to go to, to downplay the fact that their production is off shore.
I'm wondering if some of these empty shelves might be that smoking gun?
Heck, even Chinese companies are moving some production of lower value goods to SE Asia (Vietnam is often mentioned) as well as to Africa (countries like Ethopia).
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