Posted on 12/31/2006 6:25:30 AM PST by A. Pole
AMERICAN manufacturers no longer make subway cars. They are imported now, and the skills required to make them are disappearing in the United States. Similarly, imports are an ever-bigger source of refrigerators, household furnishings, auto and aircraft parts, machine tools and a host of everyday consumer products much in demand in America, but increasingly not made here.
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the experts shifted the emphasis from production to design and innovation. Let others produce what Americans think up.
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But over the long run, can invention and design be separated from production? That question is rarely asked today. The debate instead centers on the loss of well-paying factory jobs and on the swelling trade deficit in manufactured goods. When the linkage does come up, the answer is surprisingly affirmative: Yes, invention and production are intertwined.
"Most innovation does not come from some disembodied laboratory," said Stephen S. Cohen, co-director of the Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy at the University of California, Berkeley. "In order to innovate in what you make, you have to be pretty good at making it — and we are losing that ability."
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Franklin J. Vargo, the association’s vice president for international economic affairs, sounds even more concerned than Mr. Cohen. "If manufacturing production declines in the United States," he said, "at some point we will go below critical mass and then the center of innovation will shift outside the country and that will really begin a decline in our living standards."
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"It is hard to imagine," Mr. Tonelson said, "how an international economy can remain successful if it jettisons its most technologically advanced components."
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(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"I got you beat. I quit watching TV completely. I hate commercials. If I want to watch something, I watch a DVD. Now I have satellite radio. so I never have to hear them."
Much of what I watch is on DVD, but my wife likes watching cable, so we still have it. On cable, I primarily tend to watch the History and Military channels and maybe, just maybe the local news.
And how is that any different than how things were 30 years ago?
Exactly...Chinese labor may be a lower cost producer, but machines are the lowest cost producer.
Good luck with that...I think you'll find that if someone doesn't want to deal with you, there's nothing you can do to stop them...I don't see how it could end any other way.
Those opportunities are open to all that want to pursue them - here or abroad.
It's not YOUR job! Ask any of your Freetobe traitor buddies, they'll set you straight. Besides, all you have to do is, (queue up the Freetobe Traitor canned response), just get another job. Blackbird.
Wow right back at you. Apparently you don't know what makes things more costly to manufacture in the United States. It's called a middle class wage. And it's called taxes and regulations, bud. Our government taxes all production, income, both personal and corporate, all capital gain, and thereby punbishes savings and investments, while the dogmatists temporarily in charge refuse to acknowledge the trade war taxation that China and its Pacific fellow-travellers impose on our trade goods and their currency manipulations to stay cheaper...and we let their stuff into our country... without any appropriate countervailing tariffs.
Net result: U.S.-based production is taxed by the U.S. Foreign production isn't. And it gets a free ride into the U.S. at Customs. Where would you manufacture, Bud?
And, unless you're being facetious... you're more than guilty of aiding and abetting those making that decsion by blithely continuing your anti-American pogrom against Americans who actually work. Because you begrudge them a middle class wage. You begrudge them their constitutional rights to freedom of association. You begrudge them their constitutional rights to petition their government to redress grievances.
Your whole screen name is a misnomer.
Your anti-unionism, which is rife among the 'bots has cost us the last election...and it will go much worse the next go-round because you still haven't learned your lession.
And, oh, btw, the Communist Party in China is imposing its form of "unions" on U.S. firms there. Which simply means that they won't be allowed to strike...i.e., until the Communist Party is good and ready to destroy the U.S. companies if they won't play ball. So much for unions being the basis for your spurious competitiveness differential.
Indeed. Time after time we are seeing defective manufactures imported for retail...but the retailers can't get accomodation for their concerns.
One Big Box Retailer had its Xmas shipments of flat-screen plasma televisions from China suffer over 39% DOA. But, hey, those prices sure looked great.
Japan and Germany have surpluses but their economic growth sucks. And Germany has unemployment near 9%. Are you sure you want that for America?
I agree with this, but I get the feeling that you believe there was no inflation or deflation under the gold standard. Is that what you believe?
Bravo.
Free trade works every time it's tried.
Will trade make China less likely to make war on us?
I think so. It makes them dependent on us as a customer. Why would someone destroy their customer?
I believe the radical trade protectionism of the 30's not only contributed to the Great Depression, but also set the stage for WWII.
Great Britain had a good trade going with her American Colonies...what went wrong?
They stopped "free" trade and replaced it with controlled and taxed trade. Read up on the Boston Tea Party. We went to war precisely to reinstate "free" trade.
Or, in the case of our local Bolsheviks, the canned response is "just sit on your butt and complain about it."
That is correct, in fact they had to ship the goods only to Britain..
"I know for a fact that a router Sears used to sell for $79.00..."
...Funny you should mention this...I just bought one of these for that price. It works great btw...
Wow, thanks for that bit of insight. Here I thought we were experiencing a trade deficit of $800 billion dollars per year.
Sorry, but the facts don't support your arguements.
Cost of goods was $7.15. The profit margin is 1000%, which is beyond "userous".
It works great btw...
Yep, they do carry good stuff. I have their table saw, jointer, and a host of other tools.
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