it's not rocket science... rolling stock with some pneumatic lines, electric AC/Heat and lights.
I am surprised no one has mentioned:
1. Exchange rate anomalies. You read about a factory worker in China earning $2000 a year, who has an apartment, a motorscooter, and a microwave. He doesn't really make $2000 a year, does he?
2. The inevitable rise of wages overseas. IT guys in India are getting 30% increases if they're good. If your current company won't do that, the one across the street will make an offer. Experienced guys can make 15 or 20 lakh. Even factories in China are having to hunt for workers.
3. Problems in other countries. China? In 25 years, a third of the population will be over 60 and the rest will be 60% men and 40% women. Big trouble there. India? Socialist bureaucracy, poor infrastructure, 800 million illiterate poor people with the vote, female infanticide, militant Muslims.
4. And if a foreign country does overcome all its problems, they end up like Europe and Japan, with a declining population of rich goofoffs and a currency so valuable they can't sell any good anyway.
So count your blessings.
it's not rocket science... rolling stock with some pneumatic lines, electric AC/Heat and lights.
AMERICAN manufacturers no longer make subway cars. They are imported now, and the skills required to make them are disappearing in the United States.
Why the new subway cars suck and resemble airport shuttles.
This is a terrible example to use in an article of this sort -- and the New York Times ought to know this better than anyone simply because they can see first-hand evidence of it right outside their offices in Manhattan.
Any U.S. company that decided to manufacture subway cars would probably be out of business in a hurry, since there haven't been too many new subways built in this country in the last few decades -- and the number of new subway cars purchased for replacement by existing transit agencies is far too small to establish the economies of scale needed for a traditional assemby-line manufacturing operation.
Who is John Galt?
That does it -- I'm gonna drive my old subway car until it rusts into the ground!