RadioBanter - View Single Post

March 6th 04, 01:48 PM

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
.com...
"Bill Sohl" wrote in message
news:cCl1c.31439$hm4.7910

In the long run, those currently
cheap off shore labor markets will self adjust upwards.

Maybe. And if so, might they not find themselves in the same boat?

It's already happened.

Among others big-name Jap manufacturers like Sony, Honda, Toshiba,
etc. have been shoveling jobs into southeast Asia at a huge rate for
years and now they're moving into China at an astonishing rate too.
The Japanese unemployment rates are much worse than ours as a result.
It's even more of a kick in the butt for them because it's happening
in a society in which full employement has historically been a major
component of their culture.

Yep. The salarymen aren't happy.

We even got a piece of that action. There's a plant in Westmoreland, PA that
was built by Chrysler in the 1970s but never used. So VW bought it and
assembled cars there (I had two of them). Then VW moved the assembly plant to
Mexico for the cheaper labor and the plant was sold to Sony, who made CRTs in
it. (CRT manufacture requires a lot of energy so it's cheaper to make them here
than Japan. Now CRTs are being phased out....

Fifteen years ago moving manufacturing to Singapore was the hot
ticket. So everybody did. The singaporean economy skyrocketed, their
per capita wealth became the global model. Now the hot ticket is
getting the hell outta Singapore because manufacturing there costs too
much.

Bingo. Or, more like "game over"

Remember NAFTA? Jobs moved to Mexico - now they're moving to China. That's why
computer prices keep dropping.

I don't know of any country that grew prosperous on a service economy
alone.

That's because there is no such thing as a "service economy", the term
and the concept are oxymorons.

Jumbo shrimp, tight slacks, nondairy creamer,. My point exactly.

Economics 101: There are only three
ways a nation can generate wealth: (1) Dig valuable minerals out of
it's ground (2) Grow, catch or raise crops and critters (3) Enhance
the value of the outputs from (1) and (2) via manufacturing. Anything
else is just passing the same bucks around in circles until they peter
out. As exemplified by our balance of trade deficit.

Our deficit is even worse than that because it's the active transference of
capital away from this economy.

73 de Jim, N2EY