US recession fears as retail sales fall

“I wonder who they donated to and how many $70 t-shirts they’re selling these days?”

Good question; could go either way (since neither party gives a hoot about this). A friend of mine worked for a large clothing company, and one problem they always had was employees stealing the labels. They were a hot commodity for people importing cheap Red Chinese garbage, and simply sewing the stolen labels on here (I’m sure quintupling their sale price).

This discussion of crappy Chinese products brings up the current discussion of outsourcing which is so hypocritical on both sides of the aisle.

They were the advocates of all these “free trade” associations such as nafta. Some will argue til they’re blue in the face that nafta is good for us, but I tend to look at in terms of its freeing up manufacturers to move jobs to other countries.

Which city would not rather keep the automobile factory in their own city than have it go to some other state? They know the truth. Any “trade” that can be done can be done anyway. Sure, we can buy cars manufactured in Tennessee, and those retailers do hire people. But, you’d STILL have those retailers even if the manufacturer were in your town.

Plus, you’d have all the jobs and spinoff jobs of the manufacturing process.

So far as slave wage merchandise made in China and elsewhere...they end up retailing it at high prices anyway, just because the market allows it.

I’d rather buy a quality product that lasts for years and pay a premium for it, than to buy a piece of junk that dies inside the first year.

You might not have liked Ross Perot, but he was right about these free trade agreements in one respect: “the giant sucking sound of jobs” being sucked out of our country.

If we don’t have manufacturing jobs for middle and low skilled workers in America, then they’re going to be on the dole in one way or another. I say we should let them work for their money in a very honorable assembly line job.

Ross Perot was absolutely right; I’m not thrilled that he gave us the Clinton presidency, but he was absolutely right. The carmakers opening in TN was caused by overpriced labor in Detroit; in addition to wages, union work rules made Detroit extremely uncompetitive (the unions successfully fought automation for years just to keep jobs).

American voters were stupid enough to believe that “free trade” would somehow result in the US being the capital of the world, but the fact is that Asia has a lot more consumers than us (note the rise of their middle class in the last few years). If you could sell to 300 million Americans or the 2 million + people between just India and Red China, where would you go? In the past those markets were avoided because the consumers had no money; now that they have our jobs they have the discretionary spending and we don’t.

Cheap Red Chinese junk does sell at a lower price, but the quality is horrible (and it is displacing American-made goods). Soon the “new normal” will be Red Chinese drill bits that are disposable, clothing that disintegrates after three washings, and such.

Thanks.

“America” saw it happening decades ago (workers saw their livelihoods evaporating, while shareholders saw their investments grow); there was simply nothing doe about it. Now what killed the blue-collar workers has ravaged white-collar workers as well (this is especially telling in the northeast), and as before nothing is done about it. Our standard of living is simply falling to meet the rising standard of living in Asia; it won’t resemble what Americans were accustomed to through the early 1990s AT ALL.

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