Posted on 03/20/2016 10:38:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
There is a popular website called Uncrate, which is the 21st-century version of the old Sears, Roebuck catalogue, i.e., consumer-goods porn, a resource for stylish young men with excess liquid assets who require suggestions for ways of being relieved of that burden. On Friday, the featured product was the Vollebak Baker Miller “relaxation hoodie,” a garment in “Baker Miller Pink,” a color believed to have psychoactive qualities that, according to Uncrate, “activate your parasympathetic nervous system and calm you down.” The hoodie also features “a mesh visor, vents that encourage breathing through your nose, and asymmetrical pockets designed like slings that further help you relax.”
If you are having trouble visualizing those relaxation slings, there is an image here that makes it perfectly clear what this product really is: a high-end ($320!) powder-pink straitjacket.
Aldous Huxley was an optimist.
We Americans love our consumer goods, of course, and if the publishing market is to be believed, some nontrivial share of us take great pleasure in simply looking at consumer goods that we never intend to purchase, that indeed we cannot purchase, because they are far too expensive. The Robb Report, a periodical guide to exotic sports cars, ski chalets, and yachts, is sold at notably down-market locations such as Walmart. It’s not that those who are in the yacht-and-absurd-car market never enter a Walmart — Arnold Schwarzenegger pops in from time to time, as a marketing stunt for the products he sells therein — but, in general, billionaires buying fourth homes in Bora Bora do not do so as an impulse buy after noticing a magazine on the shelf in Walmart. Some years ago, when I was considering taking a job in St. Thomas, a local newspaper editor warned me that some people found the island’s relative lack of consumerism plenty disturbing, and that people sometimes flew to Puerto Rico just to immerse themselves in the comforting array of a shopping mall. Charlotte Amalie has come a long way since then, and online shopping wasn’t then what it is today.
But Americans have a strange love-hate relationship with our consumer goods: We love our stuff, and we hate the people who make them and sell them to us.
The populist Right’s descent into Trumpism has been accompanied by another chorus of that great daft stupid hymn of American political economy: “We Don’t Make Things Here Anymore.” That is completely untrue, of course: As measured by the Industrial Production Index, we’re producing four times as much today as we did in 1960. Our exports have been flirting with record levels for a while, and we export many times more than what we did in the 1950s or 1960s. The largest markets for our exports are also the countries from which we take most of our imports: Canada, Mexico, and China. This is no surprise.
“But when you go into Walmart, nothing says ‘Made in the USA.’ Everything says ‘Made in China’!” Some variation on that claim can be heard on every talk-radio show, in every mentally dead Donald Trump speech, and on nine-tenths of the barstools across the fruited plains. It got to be so common that a couple of years back Walmart pledged to buy an extra $250 billion in U.S.-made goods over the course of a decade. The firm immediately ran into trouble meeting that pledge. As James B. Kelleher put it in The Huffington Post, would-be Walmart suppliers faced “an experienced workforce, and other shortcomings.” That’s a very polite way of saying that the stuff they sell at Walmart isn’t the kind of stuff that Americans make. Yes, China is an absolute powerhouse in the world flip-flop market — good for them.
Question: Would you rather your grandchildren worked in a Boeing factory, or in a flip-flop factory? Would you rather be a midlevel employee at a textile mill, or at Apple? Of course there is some wage at which working in a flip-flop factory is attractive, but the median American would-be flip-flop engineer’s next-best option is a lot more attractive than that of his counterpart in Wenzhou, and, so, that’s that.
Trade deficits are a generally misunderstood phenomenon. The United States probably will always have long-term trade deficits with, say, Germany and Switzerland, because there are a lot more Americans who buy Audis and Rolexes than there are Swiss who buy Boeing airliners and high-end engineering services. Scale of course matters. If U.S. firms were to capture one-third of the German automobile market, they’d have 1 million sales per year to divide up among them. If German firms were to capture one-third of the U.S. market, they’d have about 2.5 million sales to divide among them. The impact of that 2.5 million sales on Germany’s $3.8 trillion GDP would be much larger than would the impact of 1 million sales on the U.S. GDP of $17 trillion. Switzerland’s $22 billion in annual watch exports wouldn’t make much of a blip if the revenue and jobs were divided among 319 million Americans, but it’s a pretty big deal to the 8 million Swiss: $2,750 per capita vs. the $68.97 per capita that would land in the American economy if Detroit were to displace Geneva as the world’s horology capital.
There are advantages to being a very large country such as the United States, India, or China. And there are some disadvantages, too: High-end, high-return, high-skill manufacturing by firms such as Mercedes, Zeiss, and Leica have a relatively large economic footprint in Germany compared with what similar firms have in the United States. Ericsson, the second-largest company in Sweden, could be a relatively small division of Procter & Gamble, with sales that add up to an amount comparable to Wells Fargo’s annual income-tax bill. ExxonMobil’s annual revenue is considerably more than the GDP of Denmark (all of our nouveau national socialists love the Danes!) and isn’t much short of that of Norway, where the energy business plays such an outsized role in the economy. It takes a lot to move the needle in an economy that — for all of our whining about hard times — produces about . . . one-quarter of the entire economic output of human civilization.
With a little less than 5 percent of the world’s population.
Our trade picture looks the way it does for many different reasons. One is that many people overseas like to hold U.S. dollars in vast quantities, in the public sector as reserves and in the private sector as a hedge against the public sector, which in places such as China has been historically unreliable. That means that they hold back some of the dollars they earn selling us things, in effect financing our consumption with zero-cost credit. There are domestic factors to consider, too. One is quality: There isn’t a major U.S. automobile company that makes cars as good as Audi or Mercedes at the high end or as good as Honda or Toyota at the low end. High-income Americans don’t choose Benzes over Cadillacs because the Germans are so clever, but because they are better cars. We also have work-force shortcomings: We have the best workers in the world, and lots of them, but at the same time we have a large body of low-skilled but relatively expensive workers who haven’t shown themselves eager to be trained up for new job and expanded opportunities. You could build a major manufacturing facility in Detroit or California’s Central Valley — but you’d have to import skilled workers to operate it.
The Chinese buy vast quantities of American soybeans not because we have a clever trade policy vis-à-vis tofu-making material, but because American farmers are the world’s best and most efficient producers of soybeans, so much so that it makes more sense to ship them halfway around the world than to grow them in China or in nearby countries that are, in purely agricultural terms, perfectly capable of producing soybeans. (You may not think of soybeans or cotton as a high-tech wonder of American ingenuity, but only because you don’t know much about where soybeans or cotton come from.) It isn’t Italian protectionism that inclines Americans to buy Armani suits and Gucci briefcases. The Italians really are good at that sort of thing.
And, as it turns out, lots of Americans want inexpensive flip-flops. De gustibus and all that.
In the ancient world, kings, chieftains, and emperors fought risky, bloody wars for access to goods from abroad. And yet we Americans, in the midst of all this plenty, have come to believe that the fact that all of the best stuff from around the world shows up in Pittsburgh with no real effort at all from the locals is a conspiracy against us, that somehow we are being had by having access to the cream of human creation. And so we wrap ourselves up in our pink couture stratjackets and contemplate the virtues of 18th-century mercantilism, and wonder, idly, whether it might be the case that the world really is flat after all.
— Kevin D. Williamson is roving correspondent for National Review.
Either way, cheap stuff requires cheap labor ... no matter where it is made.
I have a TV with a built-in VHS system that was probably considered "state-of-the-art" back when it was new. It still works just fine, but it's gathering dust right now while I wait for the next electronics recycling date in my town.
I’m sure everyone here remembers the first wave of Japanese cars that found their way onto America’s roadways.
They were junk. They were cheap. And we bought them by the tens of thousands because fuel prices were high and there were virtually no American made cars that could compete on fuel efficiency.
And while it has taken decades for American auto makers to finally build cars that could compete with the Japanese, it wasn’t on fuel efficiency alone, it was on quality.
Imagine that.
The Japanese were smart enough to reinvest their money in those early years into building vehicles that people trusted and became the symbol of quality and reliability.
Hyundai has followed the same business model. Their first wave of cars were complete crap. But they were cheap and we bought them just the same. Now Hyundai has some of the highest quality vehicles on the road.
Will the Chinese follow the same business model with the products they sell in America?
Not likely.
The Chinese have been selling boat loads of crap to Americans for more than a two decades and I will challenge anyone to name one Chinese brand that they can count on, much less, recognize for quality.
Most of their crap is rebranded American names/designs that have only denigrated the American names/brands they project.
They, the Chinese, work for US and they will continue to work for US as long as their government wants to play a role.
Simply based upon the fact that in America economic thinking trumps political thinking thus we are dying. Those who think only in economic terms are ever victims of those who don’t.
“America is capable of making very high quality highly durable products and we generally do”
Respectfully, beg to differ. Bought a ‘95 Ford Taurus. Unloaded it in 2001, even though it was paid off, and had every recommended maintainence item done. The fourth $500+ repair job in a year convinced me to buy a Honda, it is still in the family.
Economic thinking?
Economics, at its core, is the study of human nature.
Politics, at its core, is the arena of debated ideas.
Politics can never change human nature.
Not in the long run.
That’s true generally with techy stuff.
But a lot of products are just plain old boring useful and there is not much need to change their design. A can opener, broom, toaster.
Even with more advanced electronic stuff, like say a washing machine and dryer, I’d rather have durability and reliability than techy features like computer displays. I just want the damn thing to wash and dry my clothes. I really don’t need a lot of the gadgetry they add on that will probably disable the machine if it goes out. I’d rather have manual analog controls and know the thing is going to work for at least 10 years. My grandmother’s machine worked for at least 20 years, and if it needed fixing my grandfather could fix it.
Example: My first HP no frills copier worked for 15 years. Never had a problem with it. My latest one worked for 18 months and probably would still work except the tough display screen went out so I can’t use the controls from the machine. To replace the display is almost as much as a new printer. This simply should not be.
I also tried to by a high end toaster oven with manual controls but could not find one that not only wasn’t made in China, but that did not have fancy (unneeded) LED display panels.
Some things just need to work well and for a decent period of time. Most of the bells and whistles added just contribute to planned obsolescence.
cars seem to be an exception. That being said, I still see American cars on the road that are 50+ years old. They tend to be chevrolet vehicles. I think the government has had a hand in the decreased durability of US automobiles too. A car could easily be made to last 50
+ years but they won’t do it.
The problem with that is that people are always losing their flip-flops, leaving them at the beach or by the pool. This is why they buy cheap ones.
I was just out shooting my Ruger 22/45 with my Huntertown Arms suppressor. the pistol was made in Arizona. The suppressor was made in Indiana. Both items will outlive me. a few years ago, we got rid of some old US made appliances- washer,dryer,stove. They came with house when it was built 35 years previous. These appliances lasted about 35 years. I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of durability again in appliances again.
The Romans were thinking in political terms; i.e. eliminating a rival and controlling the Mediterranean, Carthage was thinking in economic terms; i.e. saving money. Yous definitions are wrong; (a) politics is the art and science of governance; (b) economics is the science of resource allocation where resources are scarce and wants are unlimited.
Cool history, but both were operating on purely Political terms.
This is a very old argument and one that is worth its own rap song.
But wait....
“Let’s Go!!”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTQnarzmTOc
perhaps they lose them/leave them/forget them because they’re so cheap? If they were made better, perhaps the consumer would be less inclined to lose them? Like I said though, the flip flop analogy is imperfect. I think kichenware is probably a better example of what I’m talking about. This stuff really is made to break.
“I would have to say that the situation he said is true to a certain extent in many White communities. The problem I have with him is he GENERALIZES it to every single white community without differentiating those who are truly hurting with those who are irresponsible.”
I disagree. He was very careful to differentiate between “poor white America” dependent upon welfare, addiction, and anarchy and those who are successful, educated, and contributing to society.
In effect, he is saying there is a “poor white American” ghetto with the same irresponsible behavior patterns that have destroyed the black inner cities.
His advice is the best thing for them to do is to rent a U-Haul and move. BTW, he pretty much described my background. Been there. He’s right. The only way out is moving.
American-made flip flops?
Here ya go, 88 bucks at Brooks Brothers. They’ll ship ‘em to ya overnight, order today, have ‘em by Tuesday:
“These appliances lasted about 35 years. I don’t think you’ll ever see that kind of durability again in appliances again.”
I did repairs on my washing machine over the years to keep it running. Finally broke down and bought new. In researching them there were lots of complaints on the new stuff that don’t last.
One expert said that in order to meet the “Energy Star” requirements of the U.S. government to use less electricity per hour, they use smaller motors, and the wash cycles are longer. So probably the same amount of energy to wash a load. And of course the smaller motor works harder for longer each time, and wears out much more quickly.
Between the excesses of the EPA, OSHA, labor unions and the IRS, there is plenty of blame to go around on our side.
I bought my washer/dryer from the last person who lived here. He sold it to me at a great price because he couldn't be bothered moving it out of here.
Please don't buy onto this anti American agitprop. The man is simply an anti American traitor. He has been corrupted by foreign governments to spew this crap.
Every job has a wage that will attract qualified people. Ever single one.
This ass munch gives Republicans a bad name.
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