Posted on 06/11/2005 6:46:30 AM PDT by voletti
Korean cars gave Detroit fits in the late '90s by undercutting domestic small cars on price and outdoing them on quality -- then moving up into other segments. Autos from China could provide more lower-cost competition for the Big Three at a time when GM and Ford Motor Co. (F ) are already reeling. That could cost them, along with Chrysler (DCX ), more market share and prod them to move more of their own production offshore.
How fast can the Chinese gear up? The way things are going, it won't take 20 years to match Toyota Motor Corp. (TM ) quality levels, as it did for the Koreans. And with Chinese auto assembly workers earning $2 an hour -- vs. $22 in Korea and nearly $60 in the U.S. for wages and benefits -- it may not be long before China has the wherewithal to start selling competitively priced cars overseas. "The Chinese are probably five or six years away from being able to sell a competent low-end car," says auto analyst Maryann N. Keller.
The Chinese government is putting its heft behind the export push -- subsidizing the export drive of such local players as Chery and giving the likes of Honda big incentives. Beijing also is nudging foreign auto makers to divert investment into export production so local partners can become familiar with managing foreign-exchange risk and global supply chains. It's also pushing domestic companies such as Chery, Geely Auto, Brilliance China Automotive (CBA ), and Shanghai Automotive Industry to develop their own brands overseas.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Trees don't have souls.
And according to the Socialists, neither do you.
Yes, there's a lot of that to go around.
hmm buy american if you can. even whole foods who blathers on about local farmers buys massive amounts of produce from south america
the 96 cavalier had seven recalls. you got lucky!
You're getting warmer by talking economics! All that activity stimulating the economy! And the jobs...
State-Capitalism, Market-Socialism or just plain 'ol totalitarianism - take your pick.
The flag is still red but the elites (BTW they still call themselves Communists) love the color of money...
Thank you"A.Pole"
Well said.
Look I'm not trying to start a fight and I'm not smug. I'm just being realistic.
I saw a recent study where they did an analysis of how long it would take the Chinese to catch up to the U.S. in terms of productivity and standard of living and GDP per capita and stuff like that. The answer was that even with the astronomical growth rate of the Chinese economy it would take well over 100 years. And that was based on the assumption that the growth rate is sustainable which it isn't.
Yes jobs are evaporating to India and SE Asia but the economy is still growing at 2-3% (like it pretty much always has) and the jobless rate is about 5% (like it pretty much always is) so you cannot argue that we are turning into a nation of hamburger flippers and bed pans. It is simply not true.
Capitalist societies require that some businesses and ventures will fail so that the best will succeed. If we make a conscious decision to interfere with that process we will all suffer in the long run. It's the old buggy whip story. You cannot protect workers in buggy whip factories forever once the automobile is invented. The demand for the product fall to zero and those people have to find other work. Some of the the sons and daughters of the sons and daughters of those buggy whip workers are now setting in front of CAD machines designing GPS displays for American automobiles.
Change is just the price we pay for progress. People will be displaced and they will have to adapt. That is painful but in the long run it is the reason this is the greatest country on God's green earth.
"There was a time when buying an American car meant all of the part in the car were American made also.
Nafta changed all of that. So Amercian car components are imported from every place on the planet."
Detroit was incorporating large quantities and percentages of foriegn-made parts well before NAFTA. You can say that is harmful if you like, but it is wrong to blame NAFTA.
The human labor is not a material object which can be transported and stored. If the living trees had to be directly involved in the process of production as aware beings they would be special!
In your analogy the lumber is analogical to the parts of human body. So maybe you had in mind the transplants? Certainly not the labor.
Actually they do. The notion of the soul is misunderstood in in last few generations.
Every living being has a soul. You can make it more tangible by pondering on the old definition of death as separation of soul and body. The dead tree is soulless. Or in other example - your soul is everything in you what is not you body. The other name for soul is psyche/subjectivity/me (like in psychology).
There are three basic types of souls - rational like the ones of men, aware but irrational like the ones of animal, and vegetative like the ones of plants.
Since the life and soul is a special gift from God, there are moral rules extended to living animals and maybe even to plants.
But you are right in feeling that Redcloak's analogy is not appropriate - the lumber is corresponds to the human body parts and not to the personal activity which constitutes the labor.
No, I'm stating that our Constitution is as ignored and obsolete as the Liberty Bell. Like the bell it is a sentimental but neglected symbol of the greatest political experiment in history.
These countries are well on their way to owning us. Given the Globalist mindset the only competitive thing we can do we are doing, i.e. opening our borders to an influx of cheap labor in order to accelerate the decline of American wages.
PS
Note that these represent most of the growth industries in our once proud nation. The remaining one is health care and that will be unionized sooner than you probably think.
Similar "eat s*&^ and die" sentiments are due to Ford Motor, Briggs & Stratton, and Chrysler.
They put plants over there and got ripped off.
boo hoo. Too bad, so sad.
American Motors had the worst IR of any US automaker, and in its Kenosha (WI) operation, it was shocking. Eventually AMC wound up with 1 UAW steward for every 10 direct-labor people...and every 2 weeks there was another newspaper report featuring the UAW Local's president....
Then AMC went away and Chrysler entered the scene. Chrysler told the union: look--we say what we mean and we mean what we say. Do the same for us.
Poof!! No more IR problems.
Of course, a couple of years' un- or under-employment also had an impact on the labor union folks.
But GM? They're hopeless. After the SUV's and the Corvette, which GM product line is 'top of the class?'
None. Nobody wants to buy their product.
But all you hear is that "it's the UAW's fault." In the real world, some things ARE the UAW's fault--but not lack of design/engineering imagination...
It's a commonplace in manufacturing that unless the design-engineers work VERY closely with the manufacturing and production management/engineers, there WILL be problems with the product.
That may be the case with the FoMoCo 500.
Having said that, I've driven Chrysler, GM, and FoMoCo products WAY past 150K miles and 10 years--then the wear-parts start, ah, wearing.
Currently have 2 FoMoCo's--one 15 years old, one 5. Both over 85K on the clock. Replace only small wear-parts.
No other problems.
Correct.
China is now an excellent example of fascism--with ruling families.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.