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Foxconn Sees New Source of Cheap Labor: The United States
hackingbear writes "Foxconn is planning to build manufacturing plants in the U.S., probably in cites such as Detroit and Los Angeles. 'Since the manufacturing of Apple's products is rather complicated, the market watchers expect the rumored plants to focus on LCD TV production, which can be highly automated and easier.' Foxconn chairman Terry Guo, at a recent public event, noted that the company is planning a training program for US-based engineers, bringing them to Taiwan or China to learn the processes of product design and manufacturing."
Americans may have invented a lot of the manufacturing processes used for consumer electronics, but China and other Far Eastern countries have a big edge on us now. Let's put our egos aside and learn what we can from the Chinese.
They would do better to build their factories in flyover country, where cots of living are lower, average wage is lower, cost of utilities is lower, and all that jazz.
The central US is well connected for large freight shipments by rail.
Chinese companies are more willing to be self sufficient and train workers than American companies, who are constantly whining that the government should do it. And theyre from a communist country where the government is much more powerfull. Good job, assholes.
Unions are parasites that ruined American labor.
When your workforce is so unstable that you might be crushed at any moment by a strike, you hide behind layers of bureaucracy. The system turns to chaos.
Organized crime moves in with unions too.
Check out these unions in action:
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/busting-philly-unions-pestronk-brothers/
These are the people who killed American manufacturing.
Foxconn will be doing great, and paying probably good wages, until the union parasites appear.
Then they'll move the factory again.
After all, that's why the American companies moved in the first place.
Futurist Traditionalism
Detroit (Flint as well) is on the list, L.A. is maybe for managing offices, but the largest plant is going to be in the south. Most likely northern Alabama or possibly Louisiana. How do I know? I work in one of the State Governors office and there has been Foxconn AND Pegatron groups in and out since at least, roughly, Christmas 2011
Well, this is definitely one way to get some favorable opinions in the United States.
Ha ha hahahahahahaha... Sorry not laughing with you. Oh and your ignorance is showing, might want to put that away before you scare someone.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Everyone seems to overlook this factor when talking about stuff like this! Last time I custom ordered a laptop from Toshiba Direct, they decided to build it and ship it out of Shanghai, China without really warning me. It took 11 days to build and about 4 more to ship and my customer was PISSED! I was twice as pissed! That long of a delay is unacceptable! If I want something from anywhere in the US, I can get it in 1 day. Remember the Nintendo Wii shortage? Yeah, with a 3 week delay in build and ship time, you're going to lose millions and make all your customers mad. Oversease production and shipping is NOT fast enough for today's businesses and they will not order from another country at any price if they can avoid it. That's the real reason things need to be made here.
I was really confused until I realized there has been a mistranslation. Replace the word 'design' with the word 'copying', and then the summary makes much more sense.
If this is über-sarcasm, kudos. Otherwise I think Fouad could teach you a few things.
lucm, indeed.
But...but...you have Robocop!
I guess high priced oil is working in our favor for once. Considering the majority of their market is here, they might even be realizing consumers with money buy stuff. Who'da thunk.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
That's why you are supposed to order from Lenovo -- then it will be a better laptop, shipped from Shanghai faster.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I think he's saying that in fact Obama can, and likely will, still blame Bush for things. After all, people are still blaming Reagan and Eisenhower for the problems we have today.
So if you think Obama can no longer blame the previous administration, you are in fact ignorant.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, Sparky.
First off, it is Apple, an American company who outsourced all its production to China. It is Americans who think iPhone production is to complex for Americans.
Second, building a highly automated plant is NEVER about labor costs. It is about avoiding import duties. Assemble it in the US and it is a US product exempt from import duties and hence cheaper. If Americans were normal people it would also generate some good will, creating jobs in a down economy, that is of course terrible! How dare they insult you? This from the same Forbes that cheers all outsourcing. Damn those Chinese, how dare they outsource back to you! Next thing you know people will actually be having jobs and not leeching from the state!
You will note if you follow the articles, that it is Market Watchers (people who didn't see the crash coming) who talk about iPhone production being to complex. It ain't even for sure yet what will be produced or if the factory will come at all but hey, market watchers already know why it will be producing X and not Y. Even if they don't know what X is.
As for training... gosh... maybe they will train the Americans in English so they can choose between city or sites and not make up new words. Oh wait I forgot, training on the job. BAD. People should have all the required skills from the start or you will bitch you can't find any workers locally and have to import them or outsource.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I mean, sure, you'll have factories exploiting your cheap labor and destroying your livelihoods... but at least you don't have to worry about any of those evil unions.
On site dorms likely will be a no go in the USA or they will not be able to force people to live in them or change you so you pay drops under the min wage.
You jabber on about how unions are bad, how they destroyed this country, but you couldn't be more mistaken. The reason we became a world superpower was because of unions, not in spite of them. When the industrial revolution first made land fall, people left the farms to move into urban factories. There was no health care, no OSHA, no retirement or social security, no educational system, and no child labor laws. Workers would get chewed up by machines and that was that. No lawsuits, no nothing -- your livelihood was destroyed. Quite possibly, you later died of starvation. All of the problems that are present in China today were there at the start of our industrial revolution as well: Corruption, environmental contamination, worker abuse, long hours, low pay, and massive wealth inequity.
Then the unions came, and with it; OSHA, social security, public education, child labor laws, overtime compensation. And you know what happened then? Civilization didn't collapse. In fact, it prospered: The roaring 50s. A single man could now drive a car and live in a house he paid for, in full, and support a wive and two kids, working only 40 hours a week. It was the first generation to grow up with public education, and that literacy reflected in every area of american living; Anyone could invent something new and sell it. America became the land of opportunity. Immigrants flocked to the stars and striped by the millions. The middle class grew, and upward mobility was something just about anyone could achieve. For the first time in modern history, hard work nearly guaranteed a comfortable living. And work hard we did. When Europe was devestated by the world wars, it was american industry and ingenuity that pulled their ass out of the fire, and I'm not talking about the unparalleled capacity to produce ships, tanks, guns, and planes either. We didn't just build our own country -- we rebuilt a dozen others as well in post-war reconstruction. And after all that, you know what we did then? We went to the fucking moon.
Even Adam Smith in Wealth of Nations pointed out that one of the essential duties of government is to provide for the safety and well-being of its citizens. In other words, the work force. America's investment in its labor force resulted in economic gains far in excess of anything even the largest mega-corporations of today can match. And then it all went wrong.
It started with the Boomers. Having been given everything by their parents, they didn't understand the price paid by their predecessors. They assumed that this temporary equilibrium, this golden age, was a permanent feature of America. They felt entitled to it, instead of thankful. And when they seized power in the 70s and 80s, they cut social security, education, defunded OSHA, deregulated... and for a time, it was good. But in the shadows consumer debt piled up. The cost of an education skyrocketed, and illiteracy creeped back in. Our scientific and technological progress peaked, then rapidly deflated as the careers of scientist, engineer, inventor, were removed from public prestige and replaced with ridicule and scorn.
Today, our media holds illiterate opinions as equal to the most established of scientific truths. Our children are unable to afford an education, and we're witnessing the lowest graduation rates from all levels of education that anyone alive can remember. Our economy is in ruins, the middle class is rapidly evaporating, and the few wealthy compete amongst each other to auction off our civil infrastructure and institutions. The bridges and roadways our grandparents built with pride that enabled our economy to prosper grow increasingly deficient, falling into rivers or eating tires and vehicles. Our railway and roadway networks are so badly mangled that the idea of bringing back blimps has been floated a few times as a way of getting goods around. Our air space is managed by state of the art technology... or it was, in 1965.
No, unions made us a super power. And we're going to lose that status because we took what they gave us for granted.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Pretty much. No different than how 3 years after Bush cancelled Clinton's CRA rules 3 years after Clinton left office, Clinton's CRA rules caused the banks to implode. Because of course the banks (and other unregulated companies making up 50% of the subprime market) only lent money out because the government was there holding a gun to their head forcing them to make billions of dollars.
I'm sure Obama's supporters will start coming up with similarly ridiculously twisted mind-boggling excuses.
It was a well-known fact that Democrats are sore losers, now we discover they are also sore winners. Plus they don't got a sense of humor.
lucm, indeed.
In Holland the Big 11 (largest employers) have actually said they want the strong unions of the past decades back because although they didn't always agree, at least they could negotiate and sort things out. The big companies want "The polder model" back and preferably without the 3rd party, the government, messing things up again.
It is outside north-west Europe (England excepted) that unions seem to have such a terrible relationship, it is an English/Italian thing, to snobby to admit you are just a wage slave at the mercy of your boss and to corrupt to handle money and power. You can't compare a NW European union with an American one but then the relations between workers and bosses are totally different, Romney would not have gotten 50 of the votes in Europe, he would have been seen as the total asshole he is and be spitted out by anyone who works for a living.
You might have noted that in America, many of the working class, call themselves middle class. Here is a hint: If you live paycheck to paycheck and getting fired is going to be an economic disaster, you are working class. Lower class your economy is already a disaster even with a paycheck. Middle class is financially comfortable. And that doesn't mean you can just avoid your credit cards from being canceled each month but that if something major happens, it isn't an immediate issue, loose job, take a year to find a new one. Upper class means you are comfortable for life even if something major happens.
Quick test for Americans: Did it surprise you to find out that YOU are part of the 47% Romney considers to be a leech? Did you even dare to find out if you are in that group?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Europe's a mess. I'm sorry for not kissing your ass like a guilty American, but I've been there recently and over the last 20 years a lot has changed. Not for the better. Good luck to you all.
Back to the topic. There are valid answers and then there are truthful ones.
The truth in this is complex:
1. Some employers treated their workers like shit, especially when the workers were from ethnic groups who came into the country in such huge numbers they reduced their average value to near nothing (Irish, Mexicans).
2. Many employers treated their workers like shit because the workers, like 90% of humanity, were disorganized, lazy, slovenly, etc. and did a bad job.
3. Most employers treated their workers well for the same reason most employers do today, which is that happy people paid at market rate and overseen by decent people will in turn produce the best labor.
And then there's every total union, like the Soviet republic, where the workers were so not treated like shit that the economy fell apart.
Futurist Traditionalism
buy my Galaxy Note 10.1 before it doubles in price due to American workers. Well I was just waiting till Christmas to see if I could get my sister to get me one.
I agree, it's great that I was not born in US, got excellent education, and became an engineer.
Just imagine what all random Internet trolls would become if they didn't live in a country ruled by greedy sociopaths, with culture rooted in religious extremism and slavery.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm not sure how relevant the Wii example is, as there is quite a difference between custom orders that can't be made until ordered, and a standardized unit that can be shipped continuously. The former is more an issue of latency, and the latter is about actual production speed.
"Fucking Americans, stealing ours jobs everyday. My buddy was forced to train his American replacement. It's only a matter of time before my job is shipped overseas as well." -Random Chinese guy
After all, people are still blaming Reagan and Eisenhower for the problems we have today.
Well, Reagan more than tripled the debt in his 8 years, starting the modern trend of cutting taxes while greatly increasing spending. And Eisenhower started the Vietnam war, which destabilized Southeast Asia still to today. And You might as well blame Truman for Fukishima, as using nukes in war set back the use and safety of them as power stations.
Learn to love Alaska
If this is über-sarcasm, kudos.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Slavery here we come!
You are the exception. Most consumers (and businesses and corporations) want it CHEAP. They don't care if they can't customize it (look at Dell's downfall).
That means Wal-Mart (and Dell, and HP) orders as many stock configurations from the lowest bidder in China as they think they can sell. Oh, it's $335 USD per unit for that model? No, we want you to sell it to us for $290 USD. Oh, you don't like our terms? Ok, we'll just go to the Chinese factory next door and demand. Of course, we don't care that the unit will shit the bed in under 3 months, because our "warranty" is only good for 1 month!
(MOST) Consumers don't care about quality, they care about sales and Black Friday bargains. Corporations don't care about long-term profits, they care about short-term gain.
LA, Detroit cheap labor places???? Yeah right.
I think it's great for many reasons, but I'm wondering something.
The Forbes article links to a digitimes article. The digitimes article says, "The program will give the engineers an environment to learn the Chinese language, first-hand expereince in the manufacturing process, and a training that can be helpful after they return to the US, he added."
If the American workers will work in the US, why should they learn the Chinese language?
I wonder how much of this has to do with American labor and how much it has to do with not having thier product stopped at the border due to patent battles.
The Government (under Clinton) provided the groundwork for the subprime crisis to begin with by rewriting the CRA and reapplying it to REQUIRE a certain percentage of loans to go to those who would otherwise not qualify. Remember, the CRA was signed into law by Carter. The rules and regulations of the CRA were tweaked by successive administrations to reel it in, or in the case of Clinton, to let more line out so the artificial bubble he rode during his 2nd term was intact (by perception) when he left office. That plus the 2004 SEC allowing these banks to borrow against 30x their working capital did a number on the economy. To say the Shrub was solely responsible is just like Obama saying Shrub caused him to run up the deficit at 4x the rate Shrub did. The concepts of the subprime crisis cross party lines, because most of the regulatory response to the Progressives' mis-characterization of Wall Street "being above the law" have done and will do nothing to fix the underlying problem that government meddling in the banking system is never for the reasons stated.
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
What's yours rooted in? Xenophobia and mass murder by autocrats? Just a guess.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Foxconn has enjoyed a lot of government support from the now departing Chinese government. (Think forced internships, tax breaks, etc.) Announcing these US factories may simply be a way of telling the new Chinese government to not mess with Foxconn.
You mean Great Britain? No, France. Oh, wait... you meant Germany, surely.....
It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
China exports about 20% to the USA. A significant amount, certainly, but not "the majority" of their market. We need them more than they need us.
They need our wheat more than we need their LCD screens.
11.8 billion dollars worth so far this year. (via census.gov NAICS app)
Yeah -- it kept sane people from trying to get into the government or building empires around their person. Mildly oppressive government is far superior to ones that whores itself to the rich.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This should surprise nobody. Foxconn has developed as a large international manufacturing conglomerate, and the US has by far the largest manufacturing economy, manufacturing 1.7 trillion dollars a year, compared to China's 1.2 trillion dollars a year.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
First the article about it being the ideal destination for nerds who want to create self-driving cars, now this?
Gosh, people still buy into this stuff?
The reason why we have sub-prime is because of CDOs, so that banks can hide their poor quality loans by bundling them together, and then slicing them up into different layers with different risk profiles. They then sold these off to investors so they could rinse and repeat.
The maths behind them is all wrong and they didn't account for the fact that although you can spread the risk by bundling poor quality loans together, the distribution of the credit events is not random.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
You must have missed election night coverage on Fox News. You can always catch up on the unintentionally funny parts by watching the Daily Show though.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
They're right - who in the US today studies how to set up a production line? Who gets a degree in production engineering? Production engineering is a complex problem. Failure can occur in non-obvious ways. Mistakes can lead to a plant which looks great, produces good product, and costs too much per unit produced. Or a good plant which needs huge capital expenditures and a long shutdown to change to a different product. Apple, in their manufacturing days, made both those mistakes.
Of course, almost none of the liars' loans made by the brokers and banks fulfilled the requirements of CRA, but it makes a good story for those who want to excuse the thieves and blame it on the government.
I know one former investor who lost $3M dollars (75% of his net worth) because of what the banks did to him - and he wanted to blame it on Obama (who wasn't even in office when most of the theft occurred). I wouldn't care that much if you need your deluded beliefs, but your delusions keep the crooks out of jail and that is a shame.
When you are dancing with wolves, never limp
Taiwan has the GDP per capita of Germany, is a democracy, is not communist.
Just saying.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Ghosts With S*** Jobs. It's quite a brilliant movie.
Well I guess that's one way of getting things "MAde in America" again.
Once you mandate union membership you lose the edge for the unions to actually be beneficial for their members. In effect, you'll be trading one bad overlord for another. Corrupt union directors will want to protect and grow their empire, not put their energy in representing their members. A union should be beneficial enough for people to want to join voluntarily. Several western European countries still have a healthy union culture, without being mandatory membership. These unions generally do a pretty good job negotiating collective things and have "free" legal representation in case an individual member has trouble with their employer. Union strikes are relatively rare, but tend to be influential enough to be feared by employers. In short, it's perfectly possible to have the unions make themselves useful without mandating membership.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Historically in England, the middle class was the power wielding wealthy merchant class, and the upper class were the peerage, people with titles and hereditry land. Everyone else was lower class, or "common". In the US there has never been a solid definition of middle class, but one that is concise and reasonable is the following. The middle class own and use tools. The upper class hire people to use tools to fix their house and property, the lower class cannot afford to own tools or fix their house or property. It is a generalization and thus not 100% accurate, but it is still useful I think.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Americans are too stupid.
..so we outsourced your outsourcing so you can outsource while you outsource.
I think you'll find those countries expelled all their lunatic religious nutcases a long time ago...around 300-400 years to be exact.
I wonder where they all went ??..
Hmmmm.....
Dude, do you know how giant afrika is? Its bigger than MARS.
Its not all utterly putrid and poor.
They do get 3G there too. And airlines do fly A380s.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I don't know about LCDs, but most industrial processes need a lot of cleaning fluid. Electroplating and other coating and surface treatment processes often have to have metal contents in the effluent down in the parts per billion. There is a limit to what filtering, treatment and precipitation can achieve, and often the simplest solution (literally) is to use lots of water. (Before anybody gets uptight about nasty pollution from industry, the worst water pollution is actually the crap manufacturers put in shampoo, shower gel and the like, along with the hormones and antibiotics we and our farm animals leak out into the rivers and sewage systems).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Wobocop in a Mau suit.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Mao was a Maoist. The last Communist in Indo-China was Ho Chi Minh, and he only was a Communist because the Americans wouldn't support his proposals for a moderate socialist Government (he lived in England for a while and wanted something like the Labour Party).
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
or Alaska belongs to Russia.
Man that has to be the bargain of the millenium, hahaha, so cheap!.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I bet it is more efficient than having a second job just to pay the bills.
They're just moving their operations to the 3rd world like US firms did.
Have you been to Detroit lately?
There are parts that would give Mogadishu a run for its money. What they're going to find is that - like the actual 3rd world - they'll have to keep the local politico's happy, or the corrupt cops and admins will destroy them.
-Styopa
And Eisenhower started the Vietnam war
Good lord - this could not be more wrong. Eisenhower refused to get troops involved in SE Asia, despite intense pressure from the French who were being kicked around the place by the Viet Cong.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Didn't they report a plan to replace all the Chinese workers with robots over the next few years. If they are building it in the US and using robots it would cut down on the cost of shipping goods increasing the profits.
True, but if the government had not required it, the banks would not have made such a huge amount of low quality loans in the first place. 'Bundling' of risk, and playing shell games with the loans, were certainly key causes of the crisis. However the government is not blameless - they came up with the idea to force the creation of the loans in the first place. If they were going to meddle with lending, they should have watched more closely (regulations).
It was a well-known fact that Democrats are sore losers, now we discover they are also sore winners. Plus they don't got a sense of humor.
Not here in reality. Not really sore losers, Obama was extremely gracious in his victory speech, and non-GOP-fascists have the best comedy.
However you seem to be exhibiting classic sore loser characteristics. Project much?
Guys like you give the other side so much ammunition for their humour.
It cost more to rail a container from LA to NY than it does to ship it from China to NY. The rail networks are laid out in a way that there isn't much capacity for this 'flyover country.' Major rail lines connect LA, Chicago, Houston, and Newark. Everywhere not in close proximity to one of these cities is expensive as hell to ship to and from.
Did you see that video (How Obama Got Elected in 2008): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm1KOBMg1Y8
Many of the "informed" people who appear in the video mention the Daily Show as a source for news. So bash Fox News as much as you want, but clearly (Everything - Fox News) is not doing such a good job of informing people either. Those people don't know who is Nancy Pelosi or who controls the Congress, but they know who got 50k worth of clothes or who has a pregnant teenager. Proud, informed voters.
My first post in this thread was a joke but it is now clear that Obama is like Muhammad, if you make a single reference to him that is not a praise all the cult members go nuts. This is beyond sad because the people with an ideology and a church are supposed to be the Republicans. You people behave exactly like O'Reilly who labeled anyone who disagreed with Bush as "anti-american". Shame on you.
lucm, indeed.
THE SIMPSONS: This reminds me of when Springfield's nuclear power plant became too expensive to run, (due to wages, health care benefits, etc), so Mr. Burns outsourced the town's electricity to a low wage plant in India. Homer was sent to manage the staff there and was surprised there were no safety measures, no break rooms, no benefits... so he implemented them all even including child care! You know what happened, the staff there grew used to the good life & became more demanding and expensive so... Mr. Burns restarted the local Springfield power plant because it was cheaper HaaHaaa!
What we also need to remember is that we could triple the minimum wage and it still won't mean shit if the rate of decline of the dollar's buying power continues to increase.
A "weak" currency is not the bad thing that many people suppose. A weak currency makes buying imports more expensive but it makes selling exports more competitive. Japan's currency is very strong right now and so they are having difficulty being competitive on cars they export from Japan. A strong yen and a weak dollar makes Japanese cars more expensive. A weak dollar makes is more cost effective for companies to locate production in the US and for US companies to export abroad. Part of the problem with trading with China is that China has taken steps to keep their currency "weak" on purpose which makes their exports cost less to buy. This is 100% intentional on the part of China and is a significant factor in why goods can be made cheaply in China. (the other big factor is their cheap labor)
Regarding minimum wage, that has little to do with the relative strength or weakness of the currency. Increasing minimum wage could affect product prices but that is independent of exchange rate costs.
Yes but detroit is a shit hole of desperation and low wages
Really? Oakland County which neighbors Detroit City is one of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US.
It cost more to rail a container from LA to NY than it does to ship it from China to NY
Source? My own experience says that is nonsense. I run a manufacturing company that buys stuff from Japan and China as well as domestically. I've worked doing global sourcing from Mexico, China and India. Domestic freight is almost always cheaper and always considerably faster. Furthermore you probably aren't going to use rails to ship stuff domestically, you'll probably use a LTL or FTL truck, not a container so it is a bit of an apples to oranges comparison.
The rail networks are laid out in a way that there isn't much capacity for this 'flyover country.' Major rail lines connect LA, Chicago, Houston, and Newark
No capacity? BNSF, CSX, Union Pacific and the rest will be very surprised to hear that.
Everywhere not in close proximity to one of these cities is expensive as hell to ship to and from.
Demonstrably not true.
Second, building a highly automated plant is NEVER about labor costs.
I'm a certified cost accountant and that is complete nonsense. Decisions regarding automation are almost always about labor costs. Above a certain volume of production it (often) becomes cheaper to automate production than to hire additional labor. Classically you have a high up front tooling cost but production is much cheaper once the line is running.
It is about avoiding import duties. Assemble it in the US and it is a US product exempt from import duties and hence cheaper.
Import duties are typically less of an issue (depending on the product - there are exceptions) than exchange rate risk. Japan builds a lot of cars in the US primarily because it eliminates exchange rate risk to them. It's a form of built in hedge. The Yen is very strong right now so it is expensive to export cars made in Japan to the US. Build them in the US and this problem goes away. If the Yen was cheap relative to the Dollar they would make more cars in Japan.
Eisenhower sent the first American troops to Vietnam, resulting in the first American dead soldiers. That they were "advisors" and not "infantry" doesn't change the first death of a US military person in Vietnam was under Eisenhower. Eisenhower also encouraged and supported South Vietnam to not participate in the elections, out of fear the democratic process could elect someone Eisenhower didn't personally approve of. If Eisenhower had just said "sort it out yourself" to Vietnam, the world would have been better off.
Eisenhower materially supported the south's rebellion from the north, and Eisenhower sent the first American to be killed there. That fits my definition of "he started it".
Learn to love Alaska
Among other things, China is developing a pretty good sense of humor
we can't "fix this econonmy" (aka make the richer rich) by putting more people in factory jobs that pay very little.
keep it up america. I mean euro-america
I was replying to the poster above that was making noise about Chinese stability. I did not state or even come close to implying that Foxconn is not a Taiwanese company
indeed. its fascinating to consider that because of international law making it illegal to dump many toxins and heavy metals at sea instead we define "drinking water" to be water with less than a particular level of these substances and hence many but not all industries require vast amounts of water so they can dilute their pollutants.
there is a famous quote, "the solution to pollution is dilution."
one problem is that some animals are more sensitive than humans, and where do you really draw the line with elements like polonium. in the EU and some other countries there are elements that are not legal to put into water in any amount. It stands to reason considering the toxicity of radioactive elements which are present ores and coal.
in Canada they are finding out that salmon despite being able to live in salt water require particularly pure water for spawning, and the populations are being significantly reduced by what is classified as drinking water.
Electronics is a major user of halogens, in particular fluoride. Honeywell (the name is ironic if you think about it, a honeywell is a euphemism for a shit hole) is one of the largest suppliers of HF acid and other fluoride, in quantities that would astound you, at around 250 thousand tonnes a year. with an average abundance of ~900ppm in the earths crust, fluoride is more abundant than carbon. That doesnt change the fact that it is a cellular stressor and all living organisms have been devising means to protect them selves from it since life began. as the most electronegative element F^- is close in weight and size to OH- and so in ionic form it diffuses and mixes with water extremely well, with simple filtering it is close to impossible to separate from water because of the similarity between OH- and the F- ion.
Oxygen is extremely reactive and our entire metabolism is based around the cycling of Oxygen. Biology has devised a way of utilising one element to antagonise the effects of another. Superoxide radical is turned into the less harmful h202 by Superoxide dismutase and Glutathione which utilises sulphur in the form of cysteine.
F plays no essential role in any organism, although we have discovered that even bacteria have sensitive RNA riboswitches specifically to sense F and compensate for its damaging effects. It is interesting to hypothesise that we too may have systems to compensate for the presence of F.
One of the nucleotides Thymidine is a part of DNA and BrdU, an analogue, is often used to indicate the presence of DNA synthesis and cellular division.
The methyl in the 5 position of Thymidine is a book keeping device and distinguishes a T from a deaminated Cytosine. Spontaneous deamination of Cytosine is the most frequently occurring mutation, and is induced intentionally in white blood cells as part of the randomisation of antibodies. When Cytosine is deaminated it turns into a Uracil, these U's are excised and fresh Cytosines are inserted in a process of DNA repair that is performed continuously. If this is not done properly when the DNA is duplicated instead of a G being conjugated with the original C an A would be coded and so there would be mutation.
Because of the methyl T can be distinguished from an original C which has degraded into a U.
In RNA Uracil is used rather than Thymidine, this mechanism which provides protection against corruption is absent. Due to the cost of methylating U's to produce T and because RNA is only a temporary cache of information Uracil is sufficient.
Large amounts of T are required during DNA synthesis, which is performed quickly so as to minimise the window for disruption. Checkpoints are used to ensure all preparation has been performed before initiation of synthesis. During the checkpoint dTMP is produced from dUMP by the enzyme Thymidylate synthase.
because of the size of the bromine atom 5BromoUracil is an analogue of T and will be integrated into DNA, likewise with 5IodoUracil and the other halogens. In the case of Fluorine, it smaller size means
Government controls the economy through taxation and regulations. If the government got rid of business double taxation(((7hr is really 14 since company pays an extra 7hr))) it would probably bring back some manufacturing. Or better yet, just stop taxing business altogether since they provide the jobs and just tax personal income. Roads are built from gas sales tax, public schools through property taxes. The federal government and states really need to get rid of pension plans for government workers and just put them on SS like the rest of us. Stop with all this overseas strategic military plans the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990's, Germans are fine, Japanese are fine, even the Chinese, we don't need the u.s to start causing issues in Europe especially what happened between Georgia and Russia. Cut military spending and stop feeding the military industrial complex for crying out loud. If housing, apartment rentals, gas, electricity, water, were priced as low as they were in the 1990's people would not have to ask for higher salaries, but instead, today, we get ridiculous high prices and low income especially here in NYC(queens, brooklyn, staten island, bronx), manhattan is a special case.
I wouldn't mind making 20k-30k if living costs were down but now I need 55k-60k(also save some money) just to live in brooklyn or queens, 1 bedroom apt jump from $1100 -> $1400 no utilities included while 2 bedroom jumped from $1400 -> $1800 no utilities included, shitty basements $1100. And of course people are inflating home prices at ridiculous levels again so we might have another housing bubble in 5 - 10 years again. a shitty home build for $25k now goes for $1 million.