On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 04:18:16 GMT, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:

That's exactly what I've run into with Congress. They're so afraid that the
facts will lead them to a protectionist answer, or to an admission that
they're willing to just let our manufacturing go to hell, that they're
falling all over themselves to avoid either. Pressed from both sides,
they've squirted out in the direction of least resistance. Quite a few of
them have now become "fair traders," who focus on 5% solutions to 95%
problems. A fair-trader often is a former free-trader who doesn't quite get
it yet. "Fair trade" is a comfortable answer because they know that it's an
endless debate that will keep them from ever having to face squarely the
consequences of trying to compete with a country that makes decent products
while paying 80 cent/hour wages.

Ed Huntress


Ed, I've been following this and picking up a lot, I'll admit that a
lot of this is simply over my head, and I don't want to ask a bunch of
stupid questions, but I keep hearing this 80 cent/hour wages thing
and it gets me thinking.

1. What part of the cost of our products are due to taxes? Everyone
has heard the old "Companies don't pay taxes, the people who buy their
products (and I assume services) do". Are our products actually that
much more expensive than theirs mainly because of differences in labor
costs? How much of labor costs are actually taxes? Seems I don't get
to spend what they claimed to have paid me... That lump that gets
withheld, is there a percent of the 80 cents that gets held (or taxed
later), or should I actually compare that 80 cents to 2/3 of my wages.

2. what does this 80 cnets an hour buy in china? I know I could look
up stats for most of this stuff, but I don't know what the numbers
published take into account and I know you have researced thsi stuff
enough to have a good understanding of real situations and not just
comparing published numbers. I know 80 cents an hour wouldn't buy
much here. Does insurance cost as much in china? Do people even have
it? What does healthcare cost? How do they support the elderly? Do
they jsut do like we did here years back and take care of things the
best you can at home and try to stay in good health so youdon't die
any earlier than you need to?

3. When we say manufacturing jobs what positions are we talking
about? Just the actual semi-skilled laborors? Do they have the same
distribution of wages for other positions within the manufacturing
sector? Would a design engineer (that's me.) be makiing say $1.77 an
hour or is it a different distribution.

Here's my non qualitative ramble: I worked for a company that made
electric forklifts (Yeah, got laid off, long story, times kinda seem
to suck right now) and we used these big heavy right angle gearboxes
as final drives. These were our design and we had them made in the us
for quite a while. Then we went to china. It just seems like
something is wrong in the world when heavy gearbox that could be made
in town is cheaper to get made halfway around the world , put in a
boat (or for quick turnaround an airplane) and shipped to us here.
Our plant has moved operations to chicago where it is an assembly only
plant. (we used to make nearly everythign in house, they wanted to
get away from that......) for a while they were having frames and
mast weldments made in Mexico, but they had trouble with quality and
are now getting them from eastern europian countries. This just blows
me away that relatively simple welded frames (I did a lot of design
work on them, including a complete redesign to reduce cost) for heavy
forklifts (the frames can be better than 10,000 lb, when you are
building a forklift you make everything beefy, it's all counterweight.
). Are cheaper to have built in eastern europe and shipped to us
then make them right here in the middle of the country where steel is
relatively cheap and shipping costs are low. It seems to me that
something is very wrong to make this make sense. If you suggested
that his would happen to someone back in the forties I'm guessign
they'd outright laugh at you. I'm thinking it's not China, feels like
it's us and a lot of other countries are taking advantage of our
stupidity.

Dave