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 ...
I wouldn't count on it. Considering they have taken the life span of a pair of Fruit of the Loom's down t about ten washings, I don't think I'd be too optimistic about the quality of what would come off their auto assembly lines. (:
I've heard differing accounts of this event. But knowing Mr. Buckley and his manner, it strains credulity to believe he would vocally turn out anyone in such a public fashion - even someone as famously difficult as Ms. Rand. She really was a tortured soul - so right about so much, and yet so desperately clueless about human nature. Bill was right about God. And she was right about the State.
Our national Trade Policy is inherently broad in scope, and it requires an equally broad brush to highlight those aspects that are detrimental to average Americans.
Nice try, but no cigar. Our "national trade policy", as such, is a mishmash of legislation resulting from congressional favoritism (MFN status) and outright vote-buying (commodity price supports and import quotas). Its breadth is not the problem - its purpose - is. In attempting to benefit some classes of Americans at the expense of others, trade regulations frequently hurt our consumers by limiting choice, artificially raising prices or limiting supplies, and (ultimately) by restricting competition.
American consumers benefit greatly by having access to inexpensive Chinese goods. They may purchase these or not, dependent on quality and the availability of alternatives. Consumers do not benefit, however, from price supports that make American goods noncompetitive but buy the votes of sugar producers in Florida or corn growers in Iowa.
self ping
Yet, you attempt to restrict my remarks to individuals, criticizing discussion of these special interest groups as a "broad brush".
You can't have it both ways, andy.
The end result of human labor is transported and stored all the time. A car rolls off the assembly line and can be stored. Wheat is harvest and transported and stored. Even after flipping hambergers, the flipper gets paid in currency which can be transported and stored.
When you have a musician, his labor creates the music. Music can be recorded, put on the shelf and sold, but the author cannot. And believe what you want, the musician is much closer to his art that his employer from the music company.
Workers are human beings and the labor is one of highest activities of human beings. Trying to change labor into commodity is wrong, whether it is the labor of the employee or the labor of the employer (who performs the managerial/entrepreneurial labor).
The reason money was invented was to represent a store of value for things and human labor and to allow easy transportation of value.
Are you against money commoditizing things ? Are you against money ?
I am not against money. I think money is a great tool to facilitate exchange and to optimize the production, but not the ultimate measure of value.
For many people the market and money has great hypnotizing power, they get blinded to the real world and their fellow men.
When the tool becomes an idol, sooner or later it will end in a disaster.
What is a computer program?
It is not labor. You can copy zip/winzip compression programs, but the labor was of Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler. They created the program.
Once again, that's a mischaracterization. Please read what the words actually mean rather than what you think they are going to say. I in no way attempted to restrict your comments to individuals. I did not even argue that your classifications were overly broad (althought I might have made that argument solely in the context of using your labels as a pure means of social identification). What I did express was that your choice of classifications was meaningless in a dynamic service-driven market economy where owners are consumers are producers are investors are workers.
what a pile of bullsheet, US made cars, except ford products, are as good as anything, $ per $ as anything made anywhere...
I'm quite capable of identifying convoluted gibberish when I see it.
Read and understand this: "Take a hike."
Car ping.
It's called capitalism which all good Freepers salute when they hear. People get to decide how to spend their own money.
"You know I have heard this argument before...Still GM is located in this country. The money comes back home"
Don't forget, these are publicly traded companies. The money "comes back home" to wherever any particular investor lives - and that may not be the US.
I believe the US plants of foreign manufacturers (particularly the northern ones, like Honda in Marysville OH) actuall ARE UAW shops. No?
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