economics is very complex, a) when you buy made in China you still supporting US economy, you may not supporting the american guy at the factory assembling TV's but you are supporting hundreds more jobs: stock holders, truck drivers, sales guy, gas station employees, marketing people, etc etc etc etc. There is a reason to send manufacturing overseas and that reason is to keep the american way to live alive.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Made In USA
- Thread starter ksandvik
- Start date
When you lose 100% of every dollar lost, and only keep 40-70% of every dollar earned behavior shifts. Moral issues with theft/taxation aside, money siphoned out of the private sector tends to go towards non productive uses, and is usually moved to certain fields for politically motivated reasons.
Price fixing of credit via a central bank is also the fuel that fills the bubbles that must pop.
Outsourcing and specialization is one of the greatest boons to our standard of living as a species.
I have noticed that people vote for the politician they believe supports their own financial best interests, then rationalize how this politician's plan will serve the greater good... If a political candidate said I will give everyone who makes between X amount and Y amount, $20,000 cash, everyone who makes an income within that range will vote for that candidate, and claim that the money given to them will be spent in such as way that the whole world will be better off... The problem with this is that most people look at immediate benefit, and often overlook the long term...
Politicians know this, and play on this aspect of our society
Politicians know this, and play on this aspect of our society
I have a slightly different perspective... I lost $60,000 the day Lehman crashed. I had enough in Washington Mutual to buy a new ferrari the day before it folded. Chase has taken that over, and I am getting it back (slowly). I have more reason to hate banking and political corruption then most.
Still this is the best system we have, so I am going to make the most of it. I do not have to like the current system. I just have to understand it
Well having an inflationary central bank tends to force more people into speculative investing instead of more conservative strategies. Savings rates drop all over when interest rates are fixed at such a low %.
Price fixing is bad mmkay
.
I've bought MIA basses. I've bought German basses. I've bought Japanese basses. I've bought Indonesian basses. We're moving/already at a Global Economy. We have a high standard of living then most of the world. We already have what we NEED. It's just an issue of what we WANT.
You're simply illustrating how the parasitic caste in our society makes its living
I do not think anyone doubts that a segment of our society is parasitic... The funny thing is each individual segment's perception... Those who make welfare a career will say it is business owners. Those who pay taxes will say it is those on public assistance..etc...etc...
Don't worry. FMC makes plenty of money on those Mexican and Asian basses they sell. The money ends up in our economy.
+1
most people in the societies of history depend upon people to tell them what will help them, and the short term always seems to sound best at first. However, the bigger picture of what the benefits the poor may not be what benefits us all because of unseen costs.
Wouldn't everyone love a free bass now!!!!!???? well how are we gonna pay for that. Taxes...Who pays for that? US...
Throwing out two names from the same school of libertarian thought hardly forms a foundation for your argument.
Of course. But if you're arguing that the net economic gain in this model is commensurate with a corresponding model based on domestic manufacture and export, I take issue with that. Manufacture and export form the basis of a strong (read: resilient) economy. This is basic stuff. China sells us products by the boatload, then buys bonds to keep our debt ceiling on the rise. They hold truer economic power in this case than we do, and black ink on American balance sheets doesn't render it a moot point.
The buying power of the average U.S. citizen has plummeted in the last 50 years. As poorer people, we are more reliant on foreign goods and their cheap price tags than we used to be. Arguments for outsourcing are often short-sighted and skew economic gain towards the economic upper classes. There's all kinds of economic philosophical mumbo-jumbo out there, but some basic historical anaysis of American markets will show you that the average U.S. consumer has not been well served by the outsourcing model.
This is a telling statement and, I believe, illustrative of my above point.
BS. No one is an island, we don't live in the 1800's. Tax monies are not "lost". Taxes provide our infrastucture, our education system, our military, police, fire...the list goes on. Not to mention Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that raise our quality of life as a whole. Those who propose no taxes are in reality proposing no government. Move to Mexico, to witness first hand the results of what you propose, without effective government. Carlos Slim is doing fine...the rest...well, take a look...
+1
Outsourcing has produced a nation of consumers addicted to cheap junk from China, how is that beneficial? In the meantime real wages, for most, have declined, due to the loss of well-paying manufacturing jobs, replaced by lower paying (in most cases, overpaid longshoremen notwithstanding) service jobs. In the meantime, "real" costs...taxes, healthcare, insurance, cars (to get us to our low paying service jobs) fuel...etc ...keep rising.
The USA had its most prosperous time in the 50's 60's and early 70's, before outsourcing began to take the toll on the economy that it has. Various illusions have appeared since then (most notably the housing bubble) to give the middle class the illusion of prosperity, but things have been going downhill economically, for the middle class, despite what those who supported "trickle down economics" would have you believe.
I would have loved to buy a made in America Splawn 100w tube amp, but for $2500 it was out of the question. I had to settle for a $400 made in China Peavey Windsor. Just the way it is for a lot of us.
Jeez I am so tired of this concept. People seem to think that 100% of the price of something made in China goes back to China - NOT SO!
1. The factory cost of most Chinese made products is only about 20-25% of the retail cost.
2. MOST of the profit on an item goes to the USA companies that import, distribute and sell it. MOST of the price paid for that Peavey Amp above went to Peavey and the retailer.
3. If the item was made in the USA fewer people could afford to buy one, so the American importers, distributors and retailers would be making much less money and there would be many fewer people employed in the importing, distributing and retail channels.
4. Our economy is no longer manufacturing based - it is service oriented. Ex-factory workers need to move on, get educated and move up in the global scheme of things.
By the way - our economy boomed when taxes were at their highest, so let's get off the "tax breaks for the rich" soapbox. Rich people do not share their personal wealth - they hoard it. The huge salaries paid to to corporate CEOs do not get put back into their businesses - the business has to survive and grow on it's own.
1. The factory cost of most Chinese made products is only about 20-25% of the retail cost.
2. MOST of the profit on an item goes to the USA companies that import, distribute and sell it. MOST of the price paid for that Peavey Amp above went to Peavey and the retailer.
3. If the item was made in the USA fewer people could afford to buy one, so the American importers, distributors and retailers would be making much less money and there would be many fewer people employed in the importing, distributing and retail channels.
4. Our economy is no longer manufacturing based - it is service oriented. Ex-factory workers need to move on, get educated and move up in the global scheme of things.
By the way - our economy boomed when taxes were at their highest, so let's get off the "tax breaks for the rich" soapbox. Rich people do not share their personal wealth - they hoard it. The huge salaries paid to to corporate CEOs do not get put back into their businesses - the business has to survive and grow on it's own.
I didn't make any such argument.
However, my industry is a bit different from manufacturing, as we in the fishing industry are basically in the 'hunting' business. And the quota resource available to the domestic industry is pretty much fully utilized. Domestic producers have to option to export or to sell domestically, depending on what markets will yield the best return. In this case, the exported goods probably yield less associated revenue and jobs than those sold locally.
My point was that just because a segment of the food industry deals in imported goods doesn't mean that we aren't creating jobs and revenue locally. I didn't infer anything regarding domestic manufacturing and exports vs foreign produced imported goods of the same ilk.
I read it and it definitely supports the fact that going to war only hurts (maintains) parts of the economy rather than all of us. The whole unseen science of economics is basic yet uneducated people don't generally realize.
I remember taking it in high school and then last year in college. The classes were worlds apart. I actually learned a lot in the college courses. I think college economics should be a high school mandatory class. I hear people say dumb things all the time now like "no one should be able to make more than 1 million dollars in the USA." Well then how the heck would we have companies and industry? Or "Kobe Bryant makes way too much money" but his basketball skills literally fill a huge stadium every night. He makes the Lakers a mountain of money! The science of econ is awesome.
