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The Hidden Costs of Bargain Electronics
Fill Dirt writes "Mike Langberg of Knight-Ridder newspapers wrote an interesting article on the the hidden costs of bargain priced consumer electronics. I saw it in the Seattle Times business section with the title Can't lose with bargain DVD player, but low cost carries price ."
(from the article) " If we all stopped buying DVD players tomorrow, conditions in China would probably get worse rather than better." And this folks, is where the real issues can be glimpsed.
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
The only thing which will make a difference is legislation penalising companies which deal with off-shore producers who flout human rights.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
was a strange mix of negative comments -- horrific near-slave working conditions in China, coupled with... no S-video output? Cause if it had the S-video connection, I'd be in there!
Seriously, though, as we insist on human rights (never mind fair wages and conditions)as the basis for the entire world, not just our citizens (and not just out mid/upper classes), prices will go up. That's as it should be. We have arrived at a time of unprecedented purchasing power, and have done so at the cost of people we don't have to see or hear on a daily basis. No labour rallies in the streets or our factories, and no one (including my country, Canada) seems willing to cut ties with a powerful trade nation such as China over a little thing like human rights. As long as they're not crushing people with tanks, of course. That upsets the missus.
Yes, working conditions in China probably can be poor, even hazardous. But if the fashion industry is any indication, many of the more expensive items are made under similarly bad conditions. With electronics, often, the high price and low price items are just minor variations on the same design anyway.
And what is the alternative? Do you think the Chinese that work in those shops are going to be any happier if you don't buy their products and they are out of a job? If they had an alternative, they'd probably take it.
Europe and the US went through periods of horrendous exploitation and abysmal working conditions before workers demanded, and got, improvements. China will probably follow the same path if given a chance.
Those "hidden" costs (strange, it says made in china on it) exist on most of the electronic appliances we buy. Why should we start worrying now? Even if it had that "made in USA" sticker on it, u might still miss the little disclaimer that says "with parts from -insert poor countrie's name here-. So, even that's not certain.
I'm glad that digital stuff can reproduce media without any loss in quality due to hardware (compared to magnetic mediums).
I would go even as far as encouraging China's non proprietary video format which can be played on royalty-free hardware thus lowering the price even more.
Besides, all the big brand names in digital devices are Japanese. Isn't this outsourcing too?
Globalization of the economy has many downsides, and one small "upside"; prices.
Things get cheaper because of globalization, but how can you buy anything when you don't have a job?
I sell them at a national department store, and roughly 80% of them sold come back defective... I think you are making that up. Even if 100% of them were DOA, you wouldn't get 80% return rates--at those prices, half the people won't even bother driving back to the store. I am using a Cyberhome player (cheapest I could find) and have been happy with it. It seems to use the same drives everybody else is using and it plays everything I put into it just fine.
...is to work in a rice paddy, and make under $1 per day.
There's something to be said for buying a name-brand DVD player at a respectably high price...I mean a good model over or around $100.
While you could buy one of these cheaper DVD players, considering that it has fewer features anyway than the higher-end, and more expensive models, when it won't last long, why would you?
It reminds me of the Mac vs. PC cost debate, because Macs need less overall maintenance and therefore end up being the same cost or cheaper than competing PCs.....
So I say, go for a higher-end model from a name brand manufacturer like Sony, Philips, etc. and have something that you can enjoy for years(with much better support from the company and industry), instead of something that will work for a while and eventually break down after 6-12 months because of bad parts....that's not a nice thing to have happen.
Maybe the average joe is fine getting their electronics at WalMart or Kmart or S-Mart or whatever... but some folks (like me) still want to go somewhere there are authorities.
I mean, walk into a Future Shop and ask the minimum wage sales clerk what the difference between two $100 DVD players are and he'll spend 5 minutes studying the boxes, shrug and say "Uh. This one's better." "why?" "uh... it costs more?" or at best just read the features off the box.
I'd rather go into a "mom and pop" or specialty store. Here in Toronto, we have places like Bay-Bloor radio (or in Hamilton, East Hamilton Radio). A little more expensive perhaps, but they really know their stuff - these guys read the manuals on their lunch breaks. And they'll ask you what brand and model your TV is and if you give them a figure, explain what model is the best bang for your buck... or if you'd be willing to spend the extra $50 you could get [brand X] and why its good. Oh, you only have [brand Q] stereo? Well perhaps not this, but this other model since your stereo can't make use of [feature F]
So what's wrong with that?
I work for a company that specilizes in product design/manufacturing so MILLIONS of Americans can buy goods 3 to 4 times cheaper than they could before, because of international trade. That 4 dollar battery operated spinbrush doesn't happen through magic, it happens through manufacturing efficients, pioneering technology, brilliant engineering and low cost manufacturing. There is nothing wrong with something being not manufactured in the United States.
The real problem with what your saying is that it is devoid of any acknowledgement about the benefits of products being made outside of the USA. If China can make a DVD player cheaper and more efficientlly than in the US, then why the fuck should the USA make DVD players? Would American jobs even be possible if Americans can't be competitive with DVD players at the competitive world price because of lower cost Chinese made DVD players? It seems unreasonable that very many people in the US would spend anywhere from 20-200% more for a DVD player soley because its American made. Do you think it would be better for Americans to say no to all foreign DVD players so Americans could enjoy American made DVD players for a much higher price?
If you don't like the fact that there are no major USA branded DVD players then suck it up because I for one enjoy the ability to buy my dad a nice DVD player for under fifty dollars and so do MILLIONS of Americans (Black Friday anyone?). Maybe you'd prefer a world full of USA only goods. Start by throwing your cellphone away, your game consoles, probablly everything your computer runs on (but thankfully Microsoft Windows operating system is still a Redmond, Washington produced fabrication), not to mention clothes-food-power-creditcards-banks all financed by people & institutions from all over the world.
>Globalization of the economy has many downsides, and one small "upside"; prices.
Also one large upside: Improvement of life in developing countries by sending much needed money into their countries the old fashioned way rather than the "economic life-support" way.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Oh, come now, 80%?
I have dealt with a number of Apex players, and even have a Cyberhome player. All of them have functioned without problem.
I have no doubt that a number of them will fail, but, I would be surprised if more than 10% of the total sold are returned defective. The idea is that you get it so cheap that if it does break after awhile, you can buy another and be at the same point. Odds are that the first won't break, and I would wager that the odds of both breaking before the time a player that costs twice as much is lower.
My first question would be, is Apex that bad, or does it look bad because of the volume?
Apex gear sold like hotcakes... didn't they have about 1/3 of the DVD player market for a while? A palette of returned Apex's doesn't sound necesarily bad...
FWIW, most folks I know have various off-brand DVD players. I've heard of few, if any problems.
So the guy gives a small sum up of how capitalism works and then some vague unsubstantiated arguments that "oh well it'd just get worse" if we didn't buy cheap shit and then that's that.
I don't buy a $30 dvd player, or $119 25 inch tv or a $299 computer expecting quality, I buy it because it's cheap. My 3 year old has a $39 AMW DVD player in his room, it plays dvd's on the 8 year old 27 inch tv I put in there (well 8 years ago I bought it used from a pawn shop, no clue how old it really is) and well, that's about it, if he slides a piece of cheese in there I'm not gonna get pissed about it and he doesn't need optical outputs or S Video or composite or progressive scan or none of that jazz, he wants to see Nemo in bright orange and Spongbob in yellow and he's happy as a clam. Down in the living room it's a Panasonic progressive scan with all the trimmings on a 57" Hitachi wide screem, neither of which are the cheapest (or most expensive) in their class.
My wife's car is a nice mini van with high safety ratings leather seats, blah blah blah. She does a lot of running around and my kid is in there a lot as well, safety is a huge issue and I want them safe in a newish car that isn't likely to break down. My car is a 1997 Geo Tracker beer can on wheels, I put about 3K miles on it per year, I don't NEED a good car, I need a pos I can run to Staples in when I need some blank DVD's. If it breaks down I park it on the side of the road and call my wife on my cell to come get me.
Do I or you need to be told that "cheap stuff tends to be cheap" and furthermore do I need to be told that "working conditions in China aren't good" and that "WalMart doesn't pay employees much"? Sheesh man use a little common sense, this is why #1 I only buy the cheap shit when I have a reason for buying it (as in letting a 3 year old watch DVD's in his room) #2 I am glad I don't live in China, and #3 I'm glad I don't work at WalMart.
Still the part about the name brands and the off brands going down the same assembly line surprised me, oh wait, no it didn't, how many rebadged Lite-On CD's and BTC's marked as Creative or other "big name" brand does one need to see to realize it's often the same cheap shit under the hood?
--- www.f-theocean.com
I have an Apex DVD player. I've had it about a year, and I bought it at WAL-MART as a replacement for my $300 JVC DVD player that went belly up.
I don't care if my Apex DVD player goes belly up; I'll just buy another one, and it will STILL be cheaper than buying another "high quality" DVD player. In fact, I could buy a WHOLE BUNCH of Apex DVD players and still come out ahead.
I love my Apex DVD player. I too, noticed that it takes a few extra seconds when you start it up, but other than that (which I can live with) it's tip-top.
I know this sounds obnoxious, but I can't say it better than she can. Read Naomi Klein's "No Logo" if you want an inside look at how the export of manufacturing "aids" developing countries. She makes many technical (but important) observations about how the system is set up to take advantage but not benefit these workers and these countries.
I'll make the simpler argument: you don't support change but supporting the status quo. Employers in the west never volunteered minimum wage, child labour laws, working hour restrictions, etc, etc, etc. It had to be fought for, and these people don't have a voice in the marketplaces where their goods are being sold.
Unless you just dump it in the local landfill.
Quality mechanics are what really makes the difference between a good electronic product and crap. If you're going to buy cheap, this is where you'll feel it.
DVD players, CD players, tape decks, hard drives and VCRs all have complicated mechanics as well as complicated electronics - but it is the mechanical parts that will fail first. Compared to a spinning metal shaft or moving piece of plastic, a transistor doesn't wear out or break down at all.
He states that the personel in those stores get absolutely low wages, that the DVD players they sell are too cheap, yet he is not informing himself when he buys one without S-video (I would not think S-video is good enough, get RGB instead!) and then he "returns it for a full refund".
Now THAT I call cheap! The store already had to take a loss on it, and now he returns the whole unit, which will most likely not be sold again, and takes a refund. Of $32. Sheesh...
He also worries about patent licenses not being paid. Well, that is not a problem for the consumer, right? This is an issue between the manufacturer and the patent holder, and probably the law in China does not require the holder of a US patent to be paid by a Chinese manufacturing company.
There is a market for high-end expensive stuff, for those that are prepared to pay too much, and there is a market for this kind of things.
When you don't think so, then don't advocate a free market. It has lots of complications like this, but it seems to be the favorite of Americans.
It's cheaper in China because American workers demand higher wages since American has better facilities to build high capital goods. China doesn't build high quality cars even though it has cheap labor. You know why? Because they can't. They don't have the investment, there is no accessible infastructure and the resources simply don't exist. Yet.
The point of the matter is, China has abilities to manufacturer goods and so does the USA but each has very different competitive advantages. USA can build cars, China can not build an equally good car. China can build cheap small electronics and the USA can too but why build cheap electronic goods when the USA can build cars? By nature of today's economic model, China is better suited for making goods that the USA isn't.
Your making an assumption that anything manufactured in China is a problem because "of the near slave labor conditions, lack of labor, safety, and minimum wage laws, and China's artificial (and illegal) manipulation of its currency." Perhaps its missed by too many people that every modern and industrialized country in the world went through that sort of ordeal thirty to a hundred years ago. Maybe it can be avoided but maybe not. Plus, you have no way of knowing that your $40 DVD could have been better helping the world at large if it was made in the US. Why is it that a Chinese manufactured DVD player is the product of unfair labor practices and that a US one couldn't be unfair? Isn't it equally likely that your purcahse of a Chinese made DVD player helps that manufacturing plant and the workers with a new oppertunity to work in an industrialized economy instead of an agrigarian economy?
China may or maynot be manipulating their currency but isn't it important to note that it positivelly impacts far more American's than it does negatively? That currency benefits ALL Americans, just step into WalMart and think about that $9 toaster or $49 tv.
There is nothing wrong with 'vote with my dollars' and the social/moral speak but you can't conclusivelly say that China is causing a great malice in America. How are the lower cost goods manufactured in China, that have become more accessible to ALL Americans which effectivelly makes those Americans better off, be that bad? The things in China are nurturing this incredible enviroment for Americans, I think a few people may stick around and enjoy those benefits.
China may or maynot be manipulating their currency but isn't it important to note that it positivelly impacts far more American's than it does negatively? That currency benefits ALL Americans, just step into WalMart and think about that $9 toaster or $49 tv.
A trade deficit as massive as ours is with China is never a good thing. Sure we're getting cheap electronics a lot cheaper, but how are you going to afford that $40 DVD player if you're out of a job? And with China keeping their currency low, it makes it almost impossible to export goods into their market, even if otherwise we had a 'competitive advantage'
But the problem is that in a globla economy, production of these items is a race to the bottom. The country that can produce the items for the cheapest wins. Money moves into china because they can make it cheaper than Taiwan or Japan. Then it moves to vietnam, then somewhere else.
The way you win this battle to the bottom is by keeping your costs as low as possible. If you pay people a pittance, give them no health care, retirement, etc, then you can make things cheaper. If they unionize or otherwise try to increase your costs, you move the operation to someplace cheaper.
This is a forumla for making the rich richer and the poor poorer in the long run. That's not good for anybody.
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If this reporter had done his research he would have known BEFORE entering the store wether or not S-Video or JPEG disc would have worked or not on the Cheap-O DVD Players.
Let's take a look at the models he bought:
1) AMW-S99
http://www.a-mw.com/products/dvd/s99.htm
Nope. I don't see S-Video mentioned here.
2) Sylvania DVL 100C
http://www.funai-corp.com/02_images/dvl100c.pdf
This PDF could have told you that JPEG discs can't be played.
You get what you pay for. If you don't research the products before you buy, then it's your own fault.
Dolemite
_______________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
Globalising companies are not expanding to the third world to "send much needed money into the country". They are looking to exploit the quality-of-life and legislative differential between 1st and 3rd world countries. Corporations don't like anti-exploitation, safety laws, environmental protection laws -- it cuts potential profits.
Corporations only exist and only work towards making a profit for their owners. That is all they do. Ethics do not come into it. All ethical behaviour has to come from:
a) the people who directly control the corporation
b) the people who control the environment of the corporation (i.e. the government)
If you live in a 3rd world country, the only way your life will get better when the factory comes is if those in charge (your government, elected or not) demand support for you as a condition of building the factory.
If a government does not demand that corporation build houses, schools and hospitals as part of the factory deal, the corporation won't do it. It's not a charity. It's not an international development agency. It's a corporation. Corporations only exist to make profits for their owners.
The problem some third world countries are having is that they are run by tinpot dictators who will let the corporations rape and pillage their fertile lands as long as the corporation gives them a backhander or builds them a new mansion. I don't like to assign "blame" in these situations, because it's tricky. The corporation is only doing what corporations do best -- get the best possible deal for the cheapest price. The tinpot dictator was probably installed there by the US anyway, so the pitiful serfs are stuck with that until the US empire crumbles.
Does my bum look big in this?
I know that making sweeping generalizations based on no evidence whatsoever is a Slashdot tradition, so I take it with a grain of salt. But with worsening economic conditions in the US, it seems that we are seeing more and more resentful misinformation being repeated here. Sometimes it's India, sometimes it's China.
Well, as it happens, I *live* in China. I'm American, and I've lived and worked all over the world. And frankly speaking, when you guys talk about China, 99% of the time you sound like complete and utter morons, or worse yet, complete and utter biggoted racist morons. It depends on the post.
It seems, reading Slashdot (and other American news, too, actually, and even some European papers) that it's quite in vogue to bash China for a) illegally manipulating its currency, b) having slave-labor-like working conditions c) not respecting human rights.
I'm not even going to get into the notion of illegal currency manipulation. As annoying as not being able to freely trade RMB is for me, living here, the currency is China's and they can do whatever the hell they want with it. It always amuses me when we Americans cry "international law", given our track record. International law? What international law? See Iraq. And don't give me an BS about the IMF. We are the IMF, and given the way we're currently being raped by China economically, if we wanted to pull aid or threaten pulling aid or anything like that, we could. That we haven't simply means that it's not in our best interest at this point in time. The only thing close to interational law in the world is the UN, and we've let everyone know in no uncertain terms how much we respect it as a governing body. Or then there's the international war crimes tribunal in the hague which we refuse to support for fear that an American might be brought to trial there. But I digress.
As for slave labor, it's funny that my countrymen are so quick to forget their own history. I'm not even going to get into the actual, institutionalized slave labor that existed here. Let's look at paid workers. Back in the old days, when the US was the libertarian paradise that so many Slashdotters seem to want to go back to, we had child/slave labor, no minimum wage laws, sweat shops, no unions, etc, etc. We worked our butts off for almost no compensation and you can forget about a dental plan. Why? Because we were developing, but we called it something else -- the industrial revolution.
Rich and poor were incredibly polarized then -- the days of the rich yeoman farmer were long behind us, and great cities of the US like New York were built on the sweat of the poor and the oppression of the working class. Deny it all you want, but that's how it was.
Before some idiot starts spouting about how much more free than China the US is, take a good peek in your history books at what happened to the first union organizers in this country. Don't fool yourself, the US was then and is still a plutocracy, where the rich buy power and influence. It's sickening. Sure, we have rights, and I commend the spirit in which they were written, but ask any young African American being harassed by cops in the ghetto what sorts of rights he has.
I used to be a rich little sniveling white boy growing up in the burbs of Silicon Valley, spouting Libertarian rhetoric and talking about how any one, given enough resolve, can work his way up in this great country of ours. And then I went and checked out how the other half lives. Let me tell you, it's not pretty. And the poor are born poor and they die poor, and that's the way of it. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't been there, or at least hasn't bothered to look at the statistics. Did you know that socialist europe has more class mobility than the US?
China is dirt poor, but they are working their asses off to better themselves, just like we did. And one day, mark my words, they will be wealthy, just as we are. And the scarcity of resources on this planet will mean simply that
Money going into a country at all is a big benefit, wether it goes to workers, a corporation, or a government.
Eventually that money works its way into the hands of the workers, wether it's the company president getting themselves a new yacht built, or a politician buying a new jet.
No, and no. Trickle-down economics is a farce, and will continue to be as long as owners hoard earnings and prepare their golden parachutes in case it all falls apart. (often leaving massive debt in their wake)
I'm really sorry I can't explain Miss Klein's ideas more thoroughly; it's been awhile since I read it, but I wasn't making excuses. The use of tax-free trade zones ensure that the host country gets little for the effort, and in a bizarre twist, makes what goes on in these sweatshops a matter beyond local police control. In other words, a complete disaster.
Did a voice in the marketplace even make the slightest difference to getting companies to implement these policies?
Um, yes. Did you think the owners just got together and decided that these changes would be a good idea?
There's so many more workers in China it's only a matter of time (and very little at that compared to the US, IMHO) before workers there demand more, and decide to demand it in groups.
Well, now you're talking sense. Because an overabundance of workers in our workforce certainly translates to power for those workers. Oh wait, it doesn't. 10 workers for every job usually means that if you even hint at unhappiness with your lot, they can find others to do it without complaint.
Says to impoverished family: "Sorry, but I'll hedge my bets"
No kidding.
From the article, "Maybe, in the end, it's enough to be aware of what's happening behind the scenes as we enjoy this cornucopia of bargains."
.
This seems to be a rather apathetic and cynical closing statement. Awareness by itself can't do anything. It is not enough to simply be aware of it if someone is in need of help. I would say that while it's likely impossible to avoid products with hidden costs in the modern world, one thing that anybody can do is help support your favorite non-profit, non-governmental organization that is working on behalf of people in dire need, worldwide. Examples include:
Amnesty International , Human Rights Watch , and Oxfam International
It's no overstatement to say that if you can afford a twenty-dollar DVD player, you can afford to give twenty dollars to charity. You can donate online, with your credit/debit card, right now. So what is stopping you from helping out?
All rights reserved. All wrongs reversed.
>Globalising companies are not expanding to the third world to "send much needed money into the country"
True.
>They are looking to exploit the quality-of-life and legislative differential between 1st and 3rd world countries.
False. Why do I have to explain Chinese Labour Law to everyone here? No, Chinese law doesn't allow for 16 hour days (Article 36), 12 year old workers (Article 15), forced labour(Article 56) and 5 cents an hour (well, in general there is no minimum wage there, but it'd be a rare sight to find a 5 cent an hour worker).
They may be exploiting the quality of life there, but, as a massive choice, people there have chosen to work at factories than work on farms. The question nobody who wants to denounce globalisation ever wants to ask is Why? Why did they choose to work at a factory than work where they did before? Why? Chinese factories do not go to cities with guns and tell people to work or die. They offer a certain compensation for labour, and people choose to accept it.
>Corporations don't like anti-exploitation, safety laws, environmental protection laws -- it cuts potential profits.
True. However, as a generalisation, most people find a lot to dislike about many laws. So this is really applicable to all, not just corporations.
>Corporations only exist and only work towards making a profit for their owners. That is all they do. Ethics do not come into it.
True.
>All ethical behaviour has to come from:
>a) the people who directly control the corporation
>b) the people who control the environment of the corporation (i.e. the government)
False. You are missing c:
c) The employees working for the corporation.
The Chinese aren't the mindless automatons you may think they are. They have brains. They can reason their way out of situations they aren't happy with. There are no guns held to heads at Chinese factories.
>If you live in a 3rd world country, the only way your life will get better when the factory comes is if those in charge (your government, elected or not) demand support for you as a condition of building the factory.
Yes and no. But I'll take that and run with it:
Life certainly wasn't getting any better before the factory, so if you're suggesting it could, at all, possibly, get better because of the factory, so be it.
>If a government does not demand that corporation build houses, schools and hospitals as part of the factory deal, the corporation won't do it.
False. I'd provide a bunch more links, but I think you can clearly see what you're saying isn't true.
>It's not a charity.
True. Companies will build the hospitals, schools, etc, if they feel they can benefit from it. That's where your wallet (ie: vote) comes into play.
>The problem some third world countries are having is that they are run by tinpot dictators who will let the corporations rape and pillage their fertile lands as long as the corporation gives them a backhander or builds them a new mansion.
Now that is true, and I won't disagree.
However, only the people can fix that problem. No amount of money, wether it be a lack of it, or too much, is going to change that. If every country all of a sudden chose to quit buying Chinese tomorrow, China would not suddenly become a democracy.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
And I suppose the Native Americans were just using the continent on loan from France, right?
Oops, I guess I shouldn't have pointed that out, troll.
40% of the wealth and counting down. You are forgetting that when you consume goods made in another country, you are also investing in that country as well. Eventually, America wont be anymore wealty then the rest of the world. Yet irronically, the world as a whole will have a much better standard of living...including the US. Funny how ecconimics plays par for the course, eh?
Life is not for the lazy.
Workers are only part of the system. Money going into a country at all is a big benefit, wether it goes to workers, a corporation, or a government.
Yeah, that must be why the people in the Phillipines and Zaire/Congo enjoy such fantastic living conditions. Oh wait, that's right. Ex-presidents Marcos (Phillipines) and Mobuto (Zaire/Congo) stole all that money, spent it on (foreign) military hardware and put most of the rest in Swiss bank accounts, and none of it trickled down.
Should we be looking at some economics website for the true poop about software design, OS's, and driver compatibility questions?
No, they would probably be anecdotal, thinly analyzed, and full of obvious errors no one working in the field would ever make.
And so is most of the macroeconomics discussed here.
Just the usual leftist whining about sweatshops. When will people realise, sweatshops are how a developing economy bootstraps?
Big Biz outsources to pesthole country X, paying locals much more than they could hope to earn from any local employer, even if it is only a few dollars a month. The locals save up, gain skills, gain reputation, and soon enough X isn't anymore a pesthole but a thriving hub of business, and the locals can raise prices. See the recent discussions of rising outsource costs in India.
Globalization may "rush to the bottom" - but it quickly fills in that bottom. Making, I'll add, improvements that leftist redistribution consistently fails to do, and sweatshop-boycotts actively reverse!
So I say again: blah.
The real funny part of this discussion is that you are discussing workers forming a union in a supposedly socialist country. Which is supposed to be a "Worker's Paradise." So much for that idea. But really China isn't any more successful then any other country at implementing socialism, the wealthy still want to hold on to what they have, and the poor still can't get any of it. Employee stock options are the most successful form of communism going, and those have taken a beating lately.
There are very few products that are as recycable as automobiles.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"Work is something that many of the poorest economies around the world are desperately short on (and if the protestors had their way, there would be even less).
Unemployment is still astronomically high, by Western standards, in many of the nations with the competitive advantage of inexpensive labor. Another thing rarely considered by the protesters is that the workers in such factories are not coerced to stay. They stay because the money they earn is commensurate to the work they perform and is equal to or greater than their local alternatives."
http://capmag.com/article.asp?id=151
Eventually that money works its way into the hands of the workers, wether it's the company president getting themselves a new yacht built, or a politician buying a new jet. ;-)
I don't know if you are being serious or not (with your sarcastic face)... Assuming you are serious, with your reasoning, kings hoardings resources helped the peasents prosper. Unfortunately, that was never the case. Something that you fail to realize is that those that hoard wealth also hoard power. With these powers, the wealthy elites can pretty much keep the lower classes as quasi-slaves.
Of course it is. They're going (quickly) through the same steps that took us through the industrial revolution. Right now they're at the foothills of it, getting the short shrift.
hmmm... industrial revolution and "globalization" have nothing in common.
Did a voice in the marketplace even make the slightest difference to getting companies to implement these policies? Or, was it in fact mob rule (Unions) that did it?
Obviously you don't know history. It was worker movements that were responsible for the benefits that western societies accrued. The marketplace plays no role in these things. If anything, capitalist markets are the ones that worsen the social conditions. For instance, capitalists are against minimum wage. They are also against taxing the wealthy and the corporations at a higher rate (ie. progressive tax system). They are also against worker safety regulations. Obviously you have a skewed understanding of history. I suggest that you lay off your Ayn Rand and Adam Smit and study real history for a while...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
However, the ability to flood the market with goods produced without tariff from such vastly cheaper locations is a recent development. At some point you must question the ability of an unemployed population to purchase anything at any price rather than buying what they have produced themselves because not even the Chinese can produce a DVD player for free. The problem is that money being a store of value essentially representing labor, if a product is produced with local labor, it will be inherently affordable to that local population. Once production is shifted to locations so drastically cheaper, there is a downward pressure on the cost of labor in the local economy. Thus, those things that _can_ be imported become much more affordable, but those things that cannot, like land, housing, and by extension education and entrepreneurialism in general, quickly become too expensive for all but the wealthiest and you have a population of indentured servants.
So, sure, if you envision a United States where the wealthy support a massive underclass employed purely for mutual personal service, then allowing this to go uncontrolled is fine. I'd prefer a different future where those around me are skilled at something more than wiping my ass for me. Some things, I just don't want to outsource.
Noone forced this down our throats. We forced it down the throats of the rip-off manufacturers and retailers. They did not like it at all. We did. This happened in Britain long before the EU even existed - and (amazingly) was introduced by a right-wing govt before you rant about us pinko liberals.
Contrary to what you might think the market is not god and there are more rational ways to run a society than the mob rule of the market (or as more usually happens corporate rule...).
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USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
Of course, the same argument can be made for many things. I have the same feeling about American cars... you're likely to have a Ford or GM last 5 years.
For sure! The design is a little less "optimized" by finite element analysis than a typical Japanese car. Ever notice how a domestic car always feels heavier and more solid than a comparable Japanese model?
I blame scientific calculators, CAD and finite element analysis for the whole feeling of "they don't build 'em like they used to".
With a sliderule, you could only work to three or four significant figures. Every calculation, you'd have to round up forces and round down material strengths. As a result, your final design was always stronger and heavier than it "needed" to be.
With scientific calculators which hold 12+ sig figs in memory - CAD, Matlab, etc. even more - the design can be optimized more. Finite element analysis allows the design to be broken into millions of almost infinitely small points and the forces on each one of those points can be analyzed in minutes or hours with a computer, a job which would have taken years with a sliderule. Armed with this knowledge, the manufacturer can use (thinner, cheaper) 22 gauge sheetmetal instead of the 20 gauge you would have chosen with sliderule calculations. The net effect is that the car/washing machine/VCR/whatever is cheaper to manufacture and cheaper to ship. If it's a car, this also translates into better acceleration and better gas mileage.
But the problem is that the thinner sheetmetal and other heavily-optimized parts makes the design less forgiving of the real-world crap which occurs. A pair of jeans gets stuck under the washing machine's agitator. A videocassette gets jammed angrily into the VCR by a couple of kids who've just argued about what to watch. A guy takes his car to Home Depot and instructs the guy to put 600lbs of fertilizer bags into the trunk.
Real world abuse is not considered in the optimization process. And as a result, the machine breaks.
Now, before everyone floods me about how "my truck has been around for 40 years," let me pre-emptively defend myself: 1) trucks are a little bit different still,
Less so. Full-frame American-made rear-wheel-drive cars (like the Caprice Classic and the Crown Vic) are made of box-section steel frames while pickups are generally C-channel steel frames with comparable gauge steel. The drivetrains are generally exactly the same. Real SUVs (like the Durango/Grand Cherokee, Blazer, Explorer, etc. in contrast to the silly little toys like the RAV-4 and the CR-V) are built similarly. In fact, the only reason I'd buy an SUV is because they don't make the Caprice Classic anymore.
Having said that, if you take a wander through a wrecking yard, you might want to start looking at the cars there carefully. Take a very close look at the cars which don't have obvious accident damage - ie. the cars which were worn out. Wander around and note who built the car, the mileage and the year. Some of each will have had better owners than others. But if you take an average, you'll start to see a pattern emerging.
Whatever it is, they don't build 'em like they used to. A new VCR may sell for $59, and you might be tempted to buy the $200 model from the same brand, reasoning that it will last longer. Flip open the cassette door and point the MAG light in there before you buy it. Typically, it'll use the same mechanism as its cheaper cousin - you're spending the $141 extra for software which enables a few more features.
Washing machines? Mine's a 1954 Maytag. When the spin bearing in the bottom finally let go after 49 years of cleaning dirty underwear, I took apart the transmission to see if it was worth rebuilding. There was no appreciable wear to any of the gear surfaces, etc. So I spent a couple of hundred bucks on bearings, gaskets, hoses and seals. Most of them were perfectly fine when I swapped 'em. I could have spent $147 on the Roper
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Manufacturing output in the United States has doubled in the last twenty years. See this.
I saw it. Those weren't per-capita numbers, so they're not comparable to the previous poster's info. Here's the per-capita data:
1970: Exports $787.01; Manufacturing GDP not listed
1980: Exports $1765.65 (Wow, a 124% increase!); Manufacturing GDP $3531.29
1990: Exports $1708.44 (a 3% decrease); Manufacturing GDP $4421.84 (a 25% increase)
2000: Exports $2060.96 (a 20% increase); Manufacturing GDP $5685.41 (a 28.5% increase)
So the increases are heartening, except that during the same time period, the gap between the top quintile and the bottom quintile in income in the US grew. So the gains are concentrated with the wealthiest individuals, and those at the bottom actually lost ground.
Still, at no time in the past 20 years have we anything like doubled our on a per-capita basis. Manufacturing GDP went up 61% from 1980 to 2000, and exports went up only 17%. And, if we compared the US data to the same data for other countries, we'd probably find that globally, we're falling behind.
This is completely bogus zero-sum economics. It has no correspondence to reality.
Except that the numbers come from reality. Maybe you'd like to explain what you mean a little more? If production moving to China and India doesn't come *from* somewhere, is there some way the magic production fairies can be manufactured and bottled here in the US and sold for a profit overseas?
What are you talking about? Fewer than 5% of adult full-time workers earn minimum wage. The average blue-collar wage is $14.51/hour. For the category "machine operators, assembers, and inspectors", the average is $12.94/hour. The lowest wage occupation in this category is "laundering and dry cleaning machine operators", who still average $8.49/hour. So your comment about the minimum wage has zero relevance.
Where are your numbers from? Blue-collar traditionally doesn't include the fastest-growing segment of the working world... so-called "pink collar" or service-industry jobs. Those blue-collar workers earning an average of $14.51/hour are a shrinking population. The country's (the world's?) largest employer is Wal-Mart, not Ford. And I notice that you qualify that with "full-time," so the increasing trend toward hiring more part-time workers to avoid paying benefits conveniently ignores a lot of people. The underemployment rate is becoming as big a problem as the unemployment rate. (BTW, I don't suppose these figures include people who work two jobs at minimum wage for a total of 40 hours or more per week?)
Besides which, to show just how out-of-whack the minimum wage is, let's look at the numbers you gave:
$14.51/hour: $30,180.80/year, at full-time employment for the whole year. This isn't too bad. You can live on this in most parts of the country, though in many you wouldn't want to try to support a whole family on it.
$12.94/hour: $26,915.20/year. Still doing all right, not that much lower.
Looks like the current median home price in the US is about $160,000. With a 10% down payment (not sure how you save up more than half your annual salary for a home, but I'm being generous here) and a 5% interest rate, which is pretty doable these days, on a 30-year fixed mortgage you're paying $773/month for your home. Ok, that's about a third of your $12.94/hour wage, which is decent.
Now let's look at that $8.49/hour person. Coincidentally, $8.50/hour is the average wage for Wal-Mart employees... which possibly includes the executives, but almost certainly includes the store managers. That person is making $17,659.20, or about $1,471.60 a month. They would be paying more than half their gross pay to try to buy a home, so they're renting, which means no wealth accumulation. They can't afford the typically $150/month for an individual health plan (much less the $400 or so for a family plan), so we're paying for them to visit the emergenc
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
It seems from the article that the "hidden costs" that apply to the cheap models also apply to the expensive ones. The expensive ones are even manufactured in the same factories. So, even if one were to buy an expensive model, that extra money would just go into the pocket of the person owning the expensive label and "slave labor" would continue in China. Also, we all know that Walmart is never going to pay their employees better.
In the end, the only ones that cost more are the ones with the higher price tag. Unless everyone buys expensive ones exclusively. Even then, it is more likely that such a practice will just lead the electronics companies to spend more money on trademark litigation in order to milk their brands for all they are worth.
Low profit margins are a sign of a healthy capitalist market (as opposed to an unhealthy monopolist market) and strong competition.
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Cars are also designed for different things now. They are designed to crumple now in collisions, so the car takes the energy that would otherwise be doing awful things to your neck in a relatively low speed collisions. With the event of airbags hospitals are seeing injuries they didn't see before, simply because those sort of injuries were usually on people with fatal head injuries.
CV joints are cheap - that's just stupid. If cars are getting junked after 6 years in the area you are in then people are spending way too much on new cars. There's still Datsun 120Y cars around, and if someting that poorly made is still around now, the far more relaible cheap cars should last a few years.I can't really comment on American cars, the only ones around here are for enthusiasts - things with lots of fins, wood panelling on the side or F100 trucks. Outside the USA, if you want something for a decent price, you buy asian cars, and if you want extra quality you get something from europe - but if you get something from the USA you get the price without the quality. Fuel is cheap in the USA, which has encouraged a lot of designs that are very expensive to run outside of the USA, so why get a big chunky car when you can get a Mercedes for for less extra than you would pay for the difference in a years fuel?