Can you afford to take a 20% hit to your customer base? Few companies can- that's the magic number that Wal*Mart used to use to encourage manufacturers to move overseas to begin with- it was either lower their wholesale prices or lose 20% of their business as their items were yanked from Wal*Mart's shelves.
How's your plan going so far? Is this a phased approach, or are you going to go cold turkey?
I'd like to see us go cold turkey- unilaterally exit the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA, and replace them with FAIR TRADE agreements.
Hey, close yourselves off, see how much the rest of us miss you. Oh, could you unwind your colonial empire while you're at it? You know, the military bases, the gun boats, the 1/2 million enforcers you have posted around the world. Thanks.
That is the entire point. With one world standard in labor and environment, there would no longer be a need for all of that crap.
It works the same way in the US too; if I didn't have healthcare, dental, vision, and life insurances, a 401(k) plan, etc., I'd expect more hard cash too. Same goes for any lack of sick or vacation time. My various insurances limit what doctors / providers I can go to, how often I can go, if I need referrals or not.
Yep. That's exactly right. Which is the primary complaint against employer-sponsored health care and pensions.
I can see how this setup would be useful for getting started; save the money you do make, since your basic needs are met. Once you save more, you can move on to better things.
Yep- that's exactly right. Assuming of course, you're able to save the money you do make- and aren't just spending it at the company store with inflated prices.
I wasn't commenting on Ohio Arts or any other Chinese company; I don't know how good (or bad) they are to their employees. But this particular company seems to treat their employees better than others, so seems to be stepping in the right direction.
And I certainly agree with you on that- there are other Chinese manufacturing houses that treat their people far worse!
But it wouldn't work like that, as Europe wouldn't be able to do business with anyone else unless they changed their laws to match everyone else. In fact there would be no business at all unless there's a World Government.
Yep. That's exactly the point. International trade is an unacceptable national security risk- so the obvious answer is to build a single world government, so that unless the flying saucers come to get us, the only competition possible between regions is based entirely on natural resources, not on government regulation.
OK, so if an American company wanted to export to Europe, they'd have to accept 35 hour weeks, endless holidays, high minimum wages, paid overtime and huge corporation taxes?
Yep. It's called a level playing field. In other words, it ends the cheating that is currently going on in capitalism. Ideally, the entire world accepts 35 hour work weeks, endless holidays, high minimum wages, paid overtime and huge corporate taxes as part of the standard cost of doing business. In return, they get a huge consumer culture with a lot of free time & cash on their hands (in other words, OPPORTUNITY!)
There simply AREN'T any US manufactured TV sets, VCR's, DVD players, PC motherboards, etc. currently available AT ANY PRICE.
About the only consumer electronics that you might find that are still manufactured in the US would be a few brands of high-end audio equipment (Krell, Mark Levinson, etc.), and even then, I sincerely doubt that 100% of the component parts are of US origin. The semiconductors might be branded TI, Motorola, Intel, etc. but they sure as hell aren't made in the USA anymore....
True- though the original reason was due to cost. A TMS-9995 processor made in Texas cost $10, one made in Taiwan cost $.10. We could eliminate the competition from imports, but there would be a cost to that. Personally, I think it's a cost worth paying.
If it wasn't for the lodging and health care, their paycheck would need to be higher. Therefore, a part of their paycheck is not in cash. In the case of the coal mines, some small portion of the paycheck was in cash as well; the lack of choice of where to buy food was the problem. In this case, the cash portion of the paycheck doesn't cover lodging and health care, so you're stuck with what the company gives you in that arena.
Still, it's a far better deal than the workers for Ohio Arts are getting....
Only for individual debt, for business debt which is much larger the "ownership" is reversed. If you owe the bank $1000 they control you, if you owe the bank $100M you control them.
Bullshit- they can shut you down at any time and take your c-level executives and stockholders as debt slaves.
And each time the US economy has become stronger because of it
You've got a strange meaning of the word "stronger". I say it's become more dependent- more dysfunctional. More money in an economy does not make it stronger. More self-sufficiency makes an economy stronger.
Only if the chaos can be controlled. If chaos (which most systems of human interaction are) is inevitable, the best engineered systems are to understand the statistical likelihood and minimize risk as best as possible
Human interaction can be controlled and regulated- all you need to do is kill the humans that fail to comply.
As nobody would accept them, how many days do you think USA would survive?
Depends where. Rural America would dust off those old 1970s FFA projects, start making moonshine to run the cars and generators on, and continue on much as before. The urban east and west coasts would take about a week before their citizens would start moving out in search of food- probably on foot because they're too stupid to make their own fuel. The East Coast would really start hurting for electricity pretty quickly, lighting the fire under ARPA-E to actually come up with a solution to the energy problem, and you'd soon find east coast ports blocked by fleets of generator buoys.
I'd say it'd take about three years to shake out the parasites who are currently living on imports- and you'd probably also see a massive exodus of illegal immigrants as the standard of living drops.
So what happens to the trillions we owe the Chinese? How about the many trillions invested into US treasury bonds and company stocks. How about the dollar value being propped up by the oil trade ("petrodollar")?
Sell the FED central bank to the Chinese if they like the dollar so much, and replace it with something of real value- Ithaca Hours, where one hour of a Janitor's time is worth one hour of a farmer's time is worth one hour of a CEO's time.
It's the entire reason for offshore outsourcing- when a company can't meet minimum wage to stay on the shelves of Wal*Mart, or has factories that fail to meet environmental standards, we send them to Mexico or China....
Go cold turkey- and on the military part, that's entirely the point. If we're self-sufficient, then we don't need to be going on stupid pre-emptive wars and adventures elsewhere- all we need to do is protect our own borders (a hard enough task, apparently, considering how incredibly badly we've done so far at it).
Might it have actually been a war you were unfamiliar with- that is the war of management trying to lower wages by using temps to get around the union? Perhaps, just perhaps, the older union employees knew the *right way* to do things in that factory, and the "value and output" of the temp workers was not all it seemed in the long run.
Of course, far be it from the anti-union people to actually consider the long run.
We are the world's consumers. America decides the rules of who gets our hard-earned dollars. So therefore, you have the system backwards:
So you mean that for America to import oil from the Middle East, Americans would need to accept Sharia law?
Other way around- they don't accept democracy, our environmental standards, the 40 hour workweek, etc. then we simply don't import their oil. We either do without, or better yet, we develop other sources of fuel and other forms of transportation because supposedly we are the great innovators as well.
Or would it only work FOR Americans, (the most important people in the world)?
No- works perfectly well for anybody else as well- don't by from people you don't consider to be equals. Europe and America however are supposedly so advanced that we have no other equals....
Which is the cost of worker protections, yes. But on the plus side, if we could get them paid an American's living wage, imagine the market of a BILLION Americans instead of a mere 300 million. That would be a frontier that could support quite a bit of inflation.
How interesting- never mind the fact that the civilized world hasn't made lead based paint in 60 years, and the problems with lead poisoning have been known since the fall of the Roman Empire. Though I can believe it on the fish...
The problem could be fixed with unrestricted migration policies (i.e. "open borders"). The only reason those guys are content with $0.32/hr is because they are lock in, and have to get whatever their country can offer.
No, all that will do is shove a billion people into the United States, and an additional 80 million a year. Better to close the borders entirely than that.
I don't have time to look up the exact syntax for your- but your consultants do log onto the domain back at home from time to time, right? Here's what you need the script to do:
1. Stop the MSDE service, put up a msgbox asking that all other applications be closed.
2. Run a VB Script or some other program of your choosing that copies the files to a location on your network (you can always reconnect old access databases as long as you save the MSDATA directory).
3. When done, restart the MSDE service.
Sure, your consultants will hate it (it'll take a few minutes every time they log on) but it's the only real option.
I dare you to drive a 1969 Mustang, or the 1969 Pontiac Trans Am, or the infamous Pinto.
I've driven all three within the last 30 years. Aside from the Pinto- they were EXTREMELY high quality vehicles when built, many lasting to more than 400,000 miles of service.
ALL imports. Oil, manufacturing, textiles. But then again, I'm one of those who thinks that a self-sufficient America, that does not import, export, borrow, or lend, would be an excellent thing.
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Pennsylvania thought they were getting a good deal too. And it was better conditions than other American employers were offering during the Great Depression.
All the more reason I'm for Fair Trade agreements- ones where only the countries that are willing to accelerate to American labor and environmental standards get the trade. Want to do business with American consumers? Accept American laws.
Yeah, it's all the fault of the Chinese! Because we all know American companies were the pioneers of safety, and would never make unsafe products just to save a few cents.
If you look above, I clearly blame the American companies for searching for cheap labor to begin with. UNIONIZED workers, in the 1950s in America, on the other hand, took pride in making quality products- and marketed them as such.
Guess I need to provide the link to prove that Ohio Arts is using a Chinese manufacturer that only pays $.24/hr- less than half the HIGH wage that Terry Gou pays.
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Can you afford to take a 20% hit to your customer base? Few companies can- that's the magic number that Wal*Mart used to use to encourage manufacturers to move overseas to begin with- it was either lower their wholesale prices or lose 20% of their business as their items were yanked from Wal*Mart's shelves.
How's your plan going so far? Is this a phased approach, or are you going to go cold turkey?
I'd like to see us go cold turkey- unilaterally exit the WTO, NAFTA and CAFTA, and replace them with FAIR TRADE agreements.
Hey, close yourselves off, see how much the rest of us miss you. Oh, could you unwind your colonial empire while you're at it? You know, the military bases, the gun boats, the 1/2 million enforcers you have posted around the world. Thanks.
That is the entire point. With one world standard in labor and environment, there would no longer be a need for all of that crap.
It works the same way in the US too; if I didn't have healthcare, dental, vision, and life insurances, a 401(k) plan, etc., I'd expect more hard cash too. Same goes for any lack of sick or vacation time. My various insurances limit what doctors / providers I can go to, how often I can go, if I need referrals or not.
Yep. That's exactly right. Which is the primary complaint against employer-sponsored health care and pensions.
I can see how this setup would be useful for getting started; save the money you do make, since your basic needs are met. Once you save more, you can move on to better things.
Yep- that's exactly right. Assuming of course, you're able to save the money you do make- and aren't just spending it at the company store with inflated prices.
I wasn't commenting on Ohio Arts or any other Chinese company; I don't know how good (or bad) they are to their employees. But this particular company seems to treat their employees better than others, so seems to be stepping in the right direction.
And I certainly agree with you on that- there are other Chinese manufacturing houses that treat their people far worse!
But it wouldn't work like that, as Europe wouldn't be able to do business with anyone else unless they changed their laws to match everyone else. In fact there would be no business at all unless there's a World Government.
Yep. That's exactly the point. International trade is an unacceptable national security risk- so the obvious answer is to build a single world government, so that unless the flying saucers come to get us, the only competition possible between regions is based entirely on natural resources, not on government regulation.
If they're being paid American wages, then the cost will mean that no-one can afford to buy them, so they're all out of work.
Not if you cut profits at the same time.
OK, so if an American company wanted to export to Europe, they'd have to accept 35 hour weeks, endless holidays, high minimum wages, paid overtime and huge corporation taxes?
Yep. It's called a level playing field. In other words, it ends the cheating that is currently going on in capitalism. Ideally, the entire world accepts 35 hour work weeks, endless holidays, high minimum wages, paid overtime and huge corporate taxes as part of the standard cost of doing business. In return, they get a huge consumer culture with a lot of free time & cash on their hands (in other words, OPPORTUNITY!)
There simply AREN'T any US manufactured TV sets, VCR's, DVD players, PC motherboards, etc. currently available AT ANY PRICE.
About the only consumer electronics that you might find that are still manufactured in the US would be a few brands of high-end audio equipment (Krell, Mark Levinson, etc.), and even then, I sincerely doubt that 100% of the component parts are of US origin. The semiconductors might be branded TI, Motorola, Intel, etc. but they sure as hell aren't made in the USA anymore....
True- though the original reason was due to cost. A TMS-9995 processor made in Texas cost $10, one made in Taiwan cost $.10. We could eliminate the competition from imports, but there would be a cost to that. Personally, I think it's a cost worth paying.
If it wasn't for the lodging and health care, their paycheck would need to be higher. Therefore, a part of their paycheck is not in cash. In the case of the coal mines, some small portion of the paycheck was in cash as well; the lack of choice of where to buy food was the problem. In this case, the cash portion of the paycheck doesn't cover lodging and health care, so you're stuck with what the company gives you in that arena.
Still, it's a far better deal than the workers for Ohio Arts are getting....
Only for individual debt, for business debt which is much larger the "ownership" is reversed. If you owe the bank $1000 they control you, if you owe the bank $100M you control them.
Bullshit- they can shut you down at any time and take your c-level executives and stockholders as debt slaves.
And each time the US economy has become stronger because of it
You've got a strange meaning of the word "stronger". I say it's become more dependent- more dysfunctional. More money in an economy does not make it stronger. More self-sufficiency makes an economy stronger.
Only if the chaos can be controlled. If chaos (which most systems of human interaction are) is inevitable, the best engineered systems are to understand the statistical likelihood and minimize risk as best as possible
Human interaction can be controlled and regulated- all you need to do is kill the humans that fail to comply.
As nobody would accept them, how many days do you think USA would survive?
Depends where. Rural America would dust off those old 1970s FFA projects, start making moonshine to run the cars and generators on, and continue on much as before. The urban east and west coasts would take about a week before their citizens would start moving out in search of food- probably on foot because they're too stupid to make their own fuel. The East Coast would really start hurting for electricity pretty quickly, lighting the fire under ARPA-E to actually come up with a solution to the energy problem, and you'd soon find east coast ports blocked by fleets of generator buoys.
I'd say it'd take about three years to shake out the parasites who are currently living on imports- and you'd probably also see a massive exodus of illegal immigrants as the standard of living drops.
So what happens to the trillions we owe the Chinese? How about the many trillions invested into US treasury bonds and company stocks. How about the dollar value being propped up by the oil trade ("petrodollar")?
Sell the FED central bank to the Chinese if they like the dollar so much, and replace it with something of real value- Ithaca Hours, where one hour of a Janitor's time is worth one hour of a farmer's time is worth one hour of a CEO's time.
Do you guys actually have any of those left?
It's the entire reason for offshore outsourcing- when a company can't meet minimum wage to stay on the shelves of Wal*Mart, or has factories that fail to meet environmental standards, we send them to Mexico or China....
Go cold turkey- and on the military part, that's entirely the point. If we're self-sufficient, then we don't need to be going on stupid pre-emptive wars and adventures elsewhere- all we need to do is protect our own borders (a hard enough task, apparently, considering how incredibly badly we've done so far at it).
Might it have actually been a war you were unfamiliar with- that is the war of management trying to lower wages by using temps to get around the union? Perhaps, just perhaps, the older union employees knew the *right way* to do things in that factory, and the "value and output" of the temp workers was not all it seemed in the long run.
Of course, far be it from the anti-union people to actually consider the long run.
We are the world's consumers. America decides the rules of who gets our hard-earned dollars. So therefore, you have the system backwards:
So you mean that for America to import oil from the Middle East, Americans would need to accept Sharia law?
Other way around- they don't accept democracy, our environmental standards, the 40 hour workweek, etc. then we simply don't import their oil. We either do without, or better yet, we develop other sources of fuel and other forms of transportation because supposedly we are the great innovators as well.
Or would it only work FOR Americans, (the most important people in the world)?
No- works perfectly well for anybody else as well- don't by from people you don't consider to be equals. Europe and America however are supposedly so advanced that we have no other equals....
Which is the cost of worker protections, yes. But on the plus side, if we could get them paid an American's living wage, imagine the market of a BILLION Americans instead of a mere 300 million. That would be a frontier that could support quite a bit of inflation.
How interesting- never mind the fact that the civilized world hasn't made lead based paint in 60 years, and the problems with lead poisoning have been known since the fall of the Roman Empire. Though I can believe it on the fish...
The problem could be fixed with unrestricted migration policies (i.e. "open borders"). The only reason those guys are content with $0.32/hr is because they are lock in, and have to get whatever their country can offer.
No, all that will do is shove a billion people into the United States, and an additional 80 million a year. Better to close the borders entirely than that.
I don't have time to look up the exact syntax for your- but your consultants do log onto the domain back at home from time to time, right? Here's what you need the script to do:
1. Stop the MSDE service, put up a msgbox asking that all other applications be closed.
2. Run a VB Script or some other program of your choosing that copies the files to a location on your network (you can always reconnect old access databases as long as you save the MSDATA directory).
3. When done, restart the MSDE service.
Sure, your consultants will hate it (it'll take a few minutes every time they log on) but it's the only real option.
I dare you to drive a 1969 Mustang, or the 1969 Pontiac Trans Am, or the infamous Pinto.
I've driven all three within the last 30 years. Aside from the Pinto- they were EXTREMELY high quality vehicles when built, many lasting to more than 400,000 miles of service.
ALL imports. Oil, manufacturing, textiles. But then again, I'm one of those who thinks that a self-sufficient America, that does not import, export, borrow, or lend, would be an excellent thing.
And yet a union-built 1967 American muscle car is often still on the road- where 1980 Japanese imports are rusting through.
Sorry- your obvious propaganda from management does not fit reality.
You justify it by telling your stock holders they don't want compete against the ghost shift.
And they care why? HTC, the MiniOne, and other iClones will never match the marketing power of Apple.
Conditions in the Coal Mines of Pennsylvania thought they were getting a good deal too. And it was better conditions than other American employers were offering during the Great Depression.
All the more reason I'm for Fair Trade agreements- ones where only the countries that are willing to accelerate to American labor and environmental standards get the trade. Want to do business with American consumers? Accept American laws.
Yeah, it's all the fault of the Chinese! Because we all know American companies were the pioneers of safety, and would never make unsafe products just to save a few cents.
If you look above, I clearly blame the American companies for searching for cheap labor to begin with. UNIONIZED workers, in the 1950s in America, on the other hand, took pride in making quality products- and marketed them as such.
Guess I need to provide the link to prove that Ohio Arts is using a Chinese manufacturer that only pays $.24/hr- less than half the HIGH wage that Terry Gou pays.
Not that Terry Gou is any great shakes either.