"Carl Byrns" wrote in message
...


OSHA and EPA regulations combined amount to around 8% of manufacturing
cost
in the US. The wage differential between high-quality workers in China
and
high-quality workers in the US runs around 96%.

So you have an 8% solution here to a 96% problem.



Lawyers, bureaucrats, and socialists will be the death of this nation.

If anything kills manufacturing in the US, it will be doctrinaire,
conservative free-trade economics.

I disagree. If anything kills manufacturing in the US, it will be
union workers pricing themselves out of the market. Locally, we had a
very established business where the rank and file struck for higher
wages, despite knowing the employer was already fighting off a
diminshing market and offshore competition. You already know the
results- the business folded and the tooling went to- China.

With a good Chinese worker making $0.80/hr., and with productivity in their
better export-oriented plants and shops running perhaps 2/3 of ours, there
was no other possible outcome, Carl. The business would have chiseled them
down as far as they could, pocketed whatever they could, and then gone to
China anyway in a few years. That's happened in several industries over the
last 5-10 years. The forces that would make it necessary to go to China
because you're paying $20/hr. wages are the same forces that would make it
necessary if you were paying $10/hr. wages.

You have to ask yourself why this is happening. If NAFTA and China trade are
supposed to leave the high-end jobs in the US (they're even supposed to
*increase* the number of high-end manufacturing jobs in the US, according to
their supporters), why have average manufacturing wages, adjusted for
inflation, declined by 7.6% in the US over the last 25 years or so? There's
a pattern, and there are numbers, and they fly right in the face of the
free-trade doctrine.


Just last week, a large factory announced that it was closing- idling
1200 workers. The jobs are going not to China, but to Singapore.
It's hard to feel sorry for these workers- they were getting big bucks
and bennies for assembly line work and they wouldn't consider even a
small pay cut to stay employed.

How much would the next "small pay cut" be? Where is this headed? China and
Singapore are improving their productivity at a scorching rate. We ship
entire factories over there now, along with managers and trainers, and they
often wind up duplicating the productivity of the former US operations, or
nearly so, in less than a year. So, how far down are you willing to let
wages go to compete with them? Maybe $2.50/hr?


GM is setting up car factories in China. GM says they are building for
the Chinese market only, but I wonder...

There's no need to wonder. Shanghai-GM's CEO said explicitly a few months
ago that they plan to be competing on the world market (read, "exporting
cars to the US") within five years. Right now it costs more to build a
complete car in China than in the US or even in Japan. But not for much
longer.

Go down to your Chevy dealer in a couple of months and take a look at the
engine in the new Equinox SUV. It's made in China, complete. They're
starting to ship them to Canada this month, to be installed in the SUV's and
shipped to the US.

Are you ready for that? Do you have any experience as a hospital orderly? It
looks like a good job for the coming years. g

--
Ed Huntress
(remove "3" from email address for email reply)