I agree. I’m only asking the question to keep the whole discussion “real.”
We got rich rebuilding the world after WWII, but that ship has sailed. The rest of the world now competes with us. I’m just asking honest questions that a free world economy has to ask if we want to keep manufacturing here. And the answers often just don’t justify it.
That’s just the world we live in today. Americans have to compete with workers in other countries just like they did before WWII. That is a challenge when we tax the hell out of stuff made here.
It’s why I think the countries that will get the lions share of manufacturing in the future will be those that offer a product “at the door” at a reduced price - and that includes not only cost of goods but the government costs added to the price.At least, that is how it would work in totally free markets. We just don’t have the edge we used to in that area. I wish we did, but we don’t. And most of our problems are caused by our government. We simply pay too many people to NOT work. We can’t sustain that.
Wow....... My belief pretty much exactly
China, China, China......... woe is us.
But before there was Japan and then Taiwan and then South Korea and even Europe.
The plain fact is that the USA was unable to manufacture say paint brushes at a cost allowing to sell them at a competitive price. I have inside knowledge that the paint brushes manufactured by a large American company were assembled on machines produced by an Italian company. I saw them and had long discussions with the American engineer who was tasked with setting them up in the new facility built in China.
China has succeeded because they have a lot of very good and well educated people. If there were no China, manufacturing would have moved elsewhere to locate where production could produce at a competitive price.
Why for instance is there not more manufacturing in Mexico? Mexico had the same opportunity to steal American jobs but did not. Mexican manufacturing is US manufacturing moved south. The Mexicans do not have the innate talent to do it themselves whereas the Japanese and Taiwanese and CHINESE do