It's a real dilemma. Losing manufacturing jobs because you can't compete on
price and you have no quality edge sucks, no doubt. But if you do import
controls with a major trading partner then the other guy retaliates and does
the same thing to you and you put some of your own people out of work while
raising prices for your own people. Plus the other guy may get bitchey and
feel utterly unconstrained to sell bad things to people who want to use them
to do bad things to you...or your friends. Or you get yourself a nice trade
war going as everybody joins in the protectionism and you end up with a
worldwide economic melt-down.

The light at the end of the tunnel is that really low labor rates cannot
last as a country develops economically. Remember when stuff from Japan was
cheap?

Don't know what the solution is, but I'm sure there are plenty of things
that can be done to make things worse.

--

- GRL

"It's good to want things."

Steve Barr (philosopher, poet, humorist, chemist,
Visual Basic programmer)
"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...
Today I was making up Purchase Orders for fabricated steel parts to go
into a store fixture project that I'm working on.

I had sent out a half dozen Requests For Quote to five 'Murrican
suppliers and one to a fella over in China. The guy in China was
recommended to the company that I work for as a cheap and reliable
source for fabricated metal parts.

One of the 'Murrican suppliers is just on the other side of the wall
from where our offices are (He's the guy with the welder that makes my
computer screen jump when it fires off).

The least involved piece that I sent out for quote came back at $6.05
from the low bidder - that is the low bidder who was a "Murrican.

The guy in China quoted a price that would make it $0.87, when the
shipping fees were added that would get the pieces to our warehouse.
You don't even want to know what the price was without shipping.

Lest you think that the guy in China is a stinkpot operation that
cranks out easy to do stuff with slave labor - all the complicated
stuff was similarly below the nearest 'Murrican bidder and the guys
quotes came in on the best looking computerized format of any of the
bidders, quoting weights, volumes and shipping costs and quoting a
firm leadtime (to the day) as opposed to the "three to six weeks" of
the 'Murricans.

Guess who I was writing out the Purchase Order to?

Yeah, it's bidness but it's damned sad.

It seems to me that the guys we've come to let be in charge of this
country have decided that we will be a nation of managers, paper
pushers and the kind of professionals who support bidness type stuff.

What are we going to do with all of our guys who work in factories, if
this continues?

Will economics drive them into an underclass that we will pay, through
welfare, to keep them from revolting - for a while?

What will we do when we have to manufacture defense items but no
longer have the ability?

Somebody done gave away the store.

I'm paying careful attention to this election. I don't see much in
the way of raw talent that will make for much of a change.

Same guys. Same attitudes. Same relation to money.

Maybe I'll start studying Mandarin.


Thomas J. Watson - Cabinetmaker (ret.)
(Real Email is tjwatson1ATcomcastDOTnet)
http://home.comcast.net/~tjwatson1/