DVD Player Maker's Margins just $1

callipygian-showsyst writes "This news.com story tells how Chinese DVD player manufacturers are only making $1 margins per player! The story says that 'Commoditization is hitting China's DVD player manufacturers hard, according to researcher iSuppli, Between January and May, the average selling price of a DVD player exported out of the Guangdong province came to $40.80, leaving just about $1 in profit margins for the manufacturers.' You wonder if other business, like low-end PCs hardware, are in similar trouble."

Comments

Re:Its all about volume

[DarkOx]

The world is not the same as it was when these things were tried. When "Free Trade" was developed as a concept it was assumed that the factors of production were imobile. Most businesses were about manufactured goods. To build a car you had to have steel, to make the steel you had to have iron ore. Consequently the car got built where the iron ore was. Today we can ship thousands of tons of raw metal across the globe at a misicule cost. The expensive thing is laybor of construction. The other reality is that with an increasingly service economy things like call centers and people who read X-rays can be overseas as well. Surgery will soon be done by robots controlled by doctors on the other side of the globe. What the hell is left for people to do here in the US or Western Europe then? Simply continue to mortgague our collective futures by running up incredible foriegn owned deficits. Federal debt is no problem when its owed to the citizens of that nation but it will burry us eventally if it continues to flow abroad. Modern tech has made it possible to produce noplace near the resources of production, no you couple that with a degree of political stability the world has never before know and you have the makeings of economic ruin. We need to try some sort of modern forms of protectionism to keep up with new tech or in all seriousness start some more bigger wars, that pit world powers against each other rather then just us agains Afganistan. We need a new Sovient Union or WW3, or we need to put an end to deficit trading with tarifs. Take your pick. Either way in the short term I am sure our quality of life will go down a little bit. Its better then repeating the great depression in 30 years though.

Re:Wonderful

[j-pimp]

(Position statement: I lean towards the tax option, or a mandatory health insurance, as with mandatory car insurance.)
Why would anyone demand mandatory health insurance in the same sense of mandatory car insurance. As an employer it might make sense to require my employees to be insured, but as a society I don't give a damn if my neighbor has health insurance. The only car insurance that is mandatory by state law (at least in NY, IANAL) is liability insurance. Now if you are suggesting I should be required to insure myself against people sending me their medical bills, your obvisiously in favor of ambulance chasing.