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/

Ayup....sucks huh?

Makes you wonder why they don't put the term "complacent" at the beginning
of every dictionary.....

Rob

--



******PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW EMAIL ADDRESS******



Please visit our (recently updated) web site:
http://www.robswoodworking.com

"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/

All too true... I'm a mid-career software engineer that's been out of work
now for two years due to nearly all technical work headed overseas to
India, Czechoslovakia, etc. How can I compete with a nation full of
billions of people who got a PhD in computer science for free and who's
willing to work for $1USD/hour?

So, now I work with my uncle-in-law-to-be, doing cabinetry, also which is
being put out of business by overseas mass-producers. All our work these
days comes from malls and such, for custom vendor stands.

On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 19:50:36 -0500, Tom Watson wrote:

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/

Gee Tom,

Maybe next time the guy who gave you the store fixture order will figure it
out that he doesn't need your high priced Murrican labor and he can get the
fixtures from China also. Think about it, we are all in this together
aren't we?

Yeah, we got a real problem with our current crop of government officials.
They are committed to making us a third world country because they can't get
close enough to the lobbyist and corporate money pits. One recent example is
in the prescription bill which congress approved. There is a provision where
the government cannot negotiate costs with any of the drug manufacturers,
sweet isn't it?

I am retired now and thank God for that everyday. I am truly saddened by
what I am seeing happening. It is not the America I grew up in where almost
anyone who wanted to work could find a decent paying job and even support a
family on one wage and still have money left over at the end of the week.

What's the answer? Maybe term limits of one term and above all, the
elimination of all special interests and lobbyists for starters. In
addition, a little compassion for your fellow Murricans, boycotting Walmart
(China's 8th largest trade partner) and Lowes (outsourcing to India some of
their back office operations) might be a step in the right direction.

Mike


"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...

On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:00:54 GMT, tmbg wrote:

All too true... I'm a mid-career software engineer that's been out of work
now for two years due to nearly all technical work headed overseas to
India, Czechoslovakia, etc. How can I compete with a nation full of
billions of people who got a PhD in computer science for free and who's
willing to work for $1USD/hour?

My wife is the HR person for a company that rents out computer
consultants. These are mostly long term contracts that involve
programmers and project managers.

A large part of her job has come to be helping folks from India deal
with getting into the country so that they can take computer jobs away
from folks like you.

The special laws that allow this sort of thing were passed by people
that we elected who claim that there are not enough qualified
'Murrican IT people and that rules needed to be relaxed to fill the
void,

What void? I don't see any void.

But the special exemptions stand.

Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.


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

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/

There aren't enough qualified "Murrican IT people....who will work for
the wage that employers now want to pay. They just forgot to complete
the sentence.

RB

Tom Watson wrote:
On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:00:54 GMT, tmbg wrote:


All too true... I'm a mid-career software engineer that's been out of work
now for two years due to nearly all technical work headed overseas to
India, Czechoslovakia, etc. How can I compete with a nation full of
billions of people who got a PhD in computer science for free and who's
willing to work for $1USD/hour?


My wife is the HR person for a company that rents out computer
consultants. These are mostly long term contracts that involve
programmers and project managers.

A large part of her job has come to be helping folks from India deal
with getting into the country so that they can take computer jobs away
from folks like you.

The special laws that allow this sort of thing were passed by people
that we elected who claim that there are not enough qualified
'Murrican IT people and that rules needed to be relaxed to fill the
void,

What void? I don't see any void.

But the special exemptions stand.

Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.


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

On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:30:50 GMT, "Mike" wrote:

Gee Tom,

Maybe next time the guy who gave you the store fixture order will figure it
out that he doesn't need your high priced Murrican labor and he can get the
fixtures from China also. Think about it, we are all in this together
aren't we?


My first question to my boss, when we were sending drawings over to
the Chinese guy, with the name of our customer printed all over them,
was - "What's to keep the Chinese guy from doing an end run around us
and going direct to our customer?"

Ya see, the Chinese guy is a store fixture manufacturer, not just a
metal fabricator.

My bosses answer was, "He doesn't sell in our market."

I'm a FNG, having only been in this job for about a month - so I
didn't complete the thought with, "Yeah, not yet."

I like my new job. I don't like the fact that my company buys from
China but the Chinese guy was the low bidder. I'm fifty-three years
old with knees that are too bad to work in the shop full time anymore.

My protest will be filed next November.

I'm just not sure how, yet.


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

Here's another little tidbit.

I ordered a Bench Dog router table from Amazon in early January. It was
supposed to be delivered by the end of January. About the 29th I got an
e-mail from Amazon saying they were sorry, but that delivery was delayed to
as late as the end of February because they could not get the tables. So I
sent an e-mail to Bench Dog asking why the delay in a soft economy. Got an
apology, was told they were peddling as fast as they can, and best wishes
that I get the table before the end of February.

Now maybe I'm wrong when I think that Bench Dog router tables are made in
U.S.A. and that the only reason that there is this sort of shipping delay is
because of inept management at their company, but I do think that and I
think it's a metaphor for the way a lot of American companies are run. Bench
Dog better hope that some Chinese factory does not decide they would like to
have their (Bench Dog's) lunch.

Oh yeah, the same situation exists if you try to order their big fence or
router table top.

- 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/

On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:41:57 -0500, RB wrote:

There aren't enough qualified "Murrican IT people....who will work for
the wage that employers now want to pay. They just forgot to complete
the sentence.


Well, that sorta goes to my buried point.

In sectors of the economy that are coming to be ruled by global pay
scales, and where we cannot compete on price and quality, we are
getting hosed.

The manager types who want a global economy, and who may have been put
through bidness school by fathers who worked with their hands, want
access to cheap labor and goods.

There is little thought for the ole neighborhood and what might be
best for it.

We are the largest consumers but we do not protect our market.

I've read enough economics and history enough to be sensitive to the
arguments against protected markets but I've lived in areas that have
been gutted both economically and spiritually by the results of an
open trade policy.

Do we want our standard of living to regress to the mean, in a global
sense?




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

Tom Watson wrote:
But the special exemptions stand.
Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.

Part of the problem is that the bums get to write the laws so that they
aren't affected. What other job gives a pension if you ever get hired,
no matter how long you stay? I've never had a job that let me vote
myself a raise, or take money from people to get the job in the first
place. Politicians are interested in taking money from anyone who
offers it and paying them back by granting favors if they get elected.
As long as that isn't seen as illegal this country will continue to go
down the tubes. Don't expect them to pass laws making it illegal.
Dave in Fairfax
--
reply-to doesn't work
use:
daveldr at att dot net
American Association of Woodturners
http://www.woodturner.org
Capital Area Woodturners
http://www.capwoodturners.org/

GRL notes:

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?

True, but we're not going to enjoy the trip downhill.

I remember when Japanese stuff was cheap, and crappy. First cigaret lighter I
bought after losing my USMC Zippo was an imitation Zippo...checked it out and
it was a U.S. beer can turned inside out and re-formed. Of course, that was
back in the days a tin can was made of steel and coated with tin and had some
material in it. It was a challenge to crush a beer can with one hand, after
chugging the beer. Today, it's not much of a challenge to crush a full beer can
with one hand.


Charlie Self
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other
way." Mark Twain
http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html

GRL notes:

Now maybe I'm wrong when I think that Bench Dog router tables are made in
U.S.A. and that the only reason that there is this sort of shipping delay is
because of inept management at their company, but I do think that and I
think it's a metaphor for the way a lot of American companies are run. Bench
Dog better hope that some Chinese factory does not decide they would like to
have their (Bench Dog's) lunch.

Two things MBAs can't plan for: success and failure. Anything in the middle,
AKA mediocrity, they're right on top of.

Charlie Self
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other
way." Mark Twain
http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html

On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 02:27:42 GMT, wrote:


Part of the problem is that the bums get to write the laws so that they
aren't affected. What other job gives a pension if you ever get hired,
no matter how long you stay? I've never had a job that let me vote
myself a raise, or take money from people to get the job in the first
place. Politicians are interested in taking money from anyone who
offers it and paying them back by granting favors if they get elected.
As long as that isn't seen as illegal this country will continue to go
down the tubes. Don't expect them to pass laws making it illegal.
Dave in Fairfax


So, run for office.

I'll send you a coupla bucks.

If I get to go to one of them big dinners and eat my fill of chicken.

Ain't it just so appropriate that low level political dinners serve
chicken?

My guess is that the menu is different on the level where the serious
money gets thrown around.


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

Tom Watson wrote:
Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.


It came to light here recently in sWisconsin that the
gub'ment agency in charge of getting people off of the
welfare rolls and back to taxable paying jobs had contracted
their phone center work to a non-gub'ment private sector
firm who then re-contracted it to a call center in India.

Ironic, ain't it?

UA100

On 06 Feb 2004 02:27:43 GMT, otforme (Charlie Self)
wrote:

GRL notes:

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?

True, but we're not going to enjoy the trip downhill.


And their trip uphill ain't gonna happen fast enough for our trip
downslope to be avoided to a degree that doesn't cause serious social
problems in this country.

When I was a small bean going to Grammar School we studied
Citizenship, wherein we learned about the interdependence of the
electorate and the elected and studied things like the "Good of the
Commonweal".

They've dropped Citizenship in favor of the study of Consumer Issues.

Makes a man want to throw up.



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

tmbg wrote:
All too true... I'm a mid-career software engineer that's been out of
work now for two years due to nearly all technical work headed
overseas to India, Czechoslovakia, etc. How can I compete with a
nation full of billions of people who got a PhD in computer science
for free and who's willing to work for $1USD/hour?

I got a B.S. in Computer Science in 1982 and have been expecting this for
years. Why? Writing software didn't used to be much different from the way
they built medival cathedrals -- lots of folks using hand tools to do jobs
that could be easily automated.

BTW, I lost my computering job as part of the .com crash and have yet to
earn more than about 40% of what I made before the crash. I feel your pain
as I feel my pain.

There used to be lots of farming jobs for people to drive teams of horses.
Tractors made those go away. Computer programming reached the same kind of
"lack of need for manual labor."

Adapt or die. Currently, I'm closer to dying... g

-- Mark

On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:54:02 -0600, Unisaw A100
wrote:

Tom Watson wrote:
Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.


It came to light here recently in sWisconsin that the
gub'ment agency in charge of getting people off of the
welfare rolls and back to taxable paying jobs had contracted
their phone center work to a non-gub'ment private sector
firm who then re-contracted it to a call center in India.

Ironic, ain't it?

UA100


I've got these magnetic salt and pepper shakers that stick together
real good so the don't lose each other (I'm not sure why that would be
important but they were a gift).

I can't read the newspaper at the kitchen table no more because the
salt and pepper shakers jump off the table onto the broadsheet.

Attracted by all the irony contained therein, I'm guessing.


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

Tom Watson wrote in
:

On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:41:57 -0500, RB wrote:

There aren't enough qualified "Murrican IT people....who will work for
the wage that employers now want to pay. They just forgot to complete
the sentence.


Well, that sorta goes to my buried point.


The answer is to throw out our current tax system and replace it totally
with import duties. I don't care who makes it, if it enters the US it
gets hit with a tax that is in relation to the ratio of wages in our
country and the other country.

Over time this tax policy will motivate companies to locate here and
hire here. If another country is at our econimic level then there is an
even playing field and the import duties would be minimal.

"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...

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.



On This Old House some time ago, they were doing some masonary with just
your old typical brick. They did mention that these bricks came from some
place in Africa. The kicker was when it was explained that the bricks were
nothing special, and they could have just as well have used bricks made any
place, 'cept these were cheaper!

Fer crying out load! Bricks! How simple can it be! Mix up some water and
mud, maybe bake 'em, far from high tech! The African bricks were likely made
by hand with wooded forms, a hand full at a time, where a supplier state
side would haxe some mechanical monster that spits 'em out hundreds at a
time. Then can you imagine shipping containers of bricks from overseas, and
getting them here cheaper than they can be made down the road a piece! You
would think that freight would kill the price differance.
Greg

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 21:13:08 -0600, "Greg O"
wrote:

Then can you imagine shipping containers of bricks from overseas, and
getting them here cheaper than they can be made down the road a piece! You
would think that freight would kill the price differance.
Greg


A twenty foot shipping container, which is more or less 20' x 8' x 8'
and is rated for 35,000 pounds costs about $4000.00 to ship from
Shanghai to a West Coast port.

Now, can you imagine how much cheaper the goods must be in order to
make shipping them cost effective?


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

I'd be willing to work for the wage that employers want to pay... if they
were willing to pay something that I could actually live on. And I'm not
even talking "oh, I can't live without $80k/yr to cover my house, three
cars, and boat", I mean, my last job I made $30k/yr, and while I would
have liked more, I could get by on $20k. I can't even get that anymore.

On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:41:57 -0500, RB wrote:

There aren't enough qualified "Murrican IT people....who will work for
the wage that employers now want to pay. They just forgot to complete
the sentence.

RB

Tom Watson wrote:
On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:00:54 GMT, tmbg wrote:


All too true... I'm a mid-career software engineer that's been out of work
now for two years due to nearly all technical work headed overseas to
India, Czechoslovakia, etc. How can I compete with a nation full of
billions of people who got a PhD in computer science for free and who's
willing to work for $1USD/hour?


My wife is the HR person for a company that rents out computer
consultants. These are mostly long term contracts that involve
programmers and project managers.

A large part of her job has come to be helping folks from India deal
with getting into the country so that they can take computer jobs away
from folks like you.

The special laws that allow this sort of thing were passed by people
that we elected who claim that there are not enough qualified
'Murrican IT people and that rules needed to be relaxed to fill the
void,

What void? I don't see any void.

But the special exemptions stand.

Throw the bums out - and put new bums in who will retract such laws.


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

Maybe I'll start studying Mandarin.

Not a bad idea, Tom, considering all those Asian countries that are
carrying our loan paper written by "borrowin' George" and his
spendthrift administration.
mahalo,
jo4hn

The answer is to throw out our current tax system and replace it totally
with import duties. I don't care who makes it, if it enters the US it
gets hit with a tax that is in relation to the ratio of wages in our
country and the other country.

Over time this tax policy will motivate companies to locate here and
hire here. If another country is at our econimic level then there is an
even playing field and the import duties would be minimal.

Apparently YOU don't work in an exporting market so you are quite willing to
get someone else fired to protect your job.

Dave Hall

In article ,
says...
On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:30:50 GMT, "Mike" wrote:

.... snip

My protest will be filed next November.

I'm just not sure how, yet.



.... and there lies the heart of the problem. For all of the anger at
Bush's approach, the other side doesn't like Bush's plan because it
doesn't go far enough and is not an all-out stated amnesty for these
folks. You don't see either side pushing to make the borders secure and
stop illegal immigrants. Neither side is pushing to stop the H-1B
problem for professional immigrants either.

Yep, where ya gonna go?


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

"GRL" wrote in message
Now maybe I'm wrong when I think that Bench Dog router tables are made in
U.S.A. and that the only reason that there is this sort of shipping delay
is
because of inept management at their company, but I do think that and I
think it's a metaphor for the way a lot of American companies are run.

You may be right, but they may have just taken off recently. I'm in the
process of buying some equipment and the lead times are way out because of a
sudden surge in sales of the suppliers. This is industrial stuff like
wrapping machines, fork lift truck, boiler accessories.

OTOH, I also bought some tooling. US price $15,000 and 8 weeks lead time
China price: $4500 and
22 days lead time.
This is for cast and machined aluminum molds. The China supplier has equal
or better quality than the half dozen US and European suppliers.

Where would you buy?

These are the scenarios we face on a regular basis.

1) Buy American. We are paying for the tooling out of our income and even
though we are going to make $10,500 less profit, we keep some jobs in
America at a machine shop 2,000 miles away from us. .

2) Buy Chinese. We save the $10,000 to put towards out profit, or to
invest into more equipment to grow our business. It will pay for the new
lighting we want installed by a local company. It will put more money into
the hands of our employees so they can live better and buy more US made
goods. It will make us a stronger company if we invest in new equipment for
the future.

Given the above choices, want to play economist or pretend you are the
President?
Ed

http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

The last time there was a change like what we're in the early
stages of was the industrial revolution where the economy
shifted from agriculture to manufacturing. In that instance,
most farmers already knew about making things and fixing
things so they already had most of the skills needed in
the "New Economy". They did have to relocate into large
towns and cities but they could find work and eventually,
in no small part because of labor unions, were able, in
a few generations, to make up a huge middle class.

In this "New Economy" there are fewer transferable skills
todays workers can use to transition into the new work
place of binary and electronic everything Being bright,
dextrous and having a great work ethic isn't going to be
enough. And despite this administration's bragging about
all the new jobs being created they fail to mention the
NET change either in jobs or salaries. We're going to
a "financial" and "service" economy where the gap between
the two will become greater and greater between the Wall
Street Boys and the K-Mart/MacDonalds folks.

At some point, when the CEO is making 5000 times what
the lowest paid worker is making, there's going to be
an attempt to make "democracy" take precident over
"the market". With luck it will be a bloodless process.

charlie b

"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...


A twenty foot shipping container, which is more or less 20' x 8' x 8'
and is rated for 35,000 pounds costs about $4000.00 to ship from
Shanghai to a West Coast port.

Now, can you imagine how much cheaper the goods must be in order to
make shipping them cost effective?



Damn near free!
Greg

"Mike" wrote in message
news:e7CUb.234130$na.377281@attbi_s04...
What's the answer? Maybe term limits of one term and above all, the
elimination of all special interests and lobbyists for starters. In
addition, a little compassion for your fellow Murricans, boycotting
Walmart
(China's 8th largest trade partner) and Lowes (outsourcing to India some
of
their back office operations) might be a step in the right direction.

The answer is a change of attitude and the controlling of greed. But, it's
never going to happen. Who would complain that they were making too much
money at a million dollars a year? Take an athlete making many times that
and always negotiating for more. If you or I were making five million a year
and it was arbitrarily reduced to a million a year, we would scream our
damned heads off. It's all about personal greed not much else. Eventually
the time will come when the money grubbers will be overwhelmed by the have
nots, but a lot is going to happen before that time.

I'm glad I'm not the only one that has thought of that. It would seem that
what everyone is pushing these days is buying low and selling high. Just be
a middleman, don't actually make anything. What happens when your customer
finds out that he doesn't need a middleman to take a cut. Buy direct. How
about when the Chinese company that is selling you this stuff finds out what
kind of markup you are putting on it and starts selling retail. He can
underprice you and cut you right out. I'm starting to think that all those
years that I spent in school (machining, drafting, electronics, computers)
were a waste. I should have gone for a law degree so I could be a politician
too. Problem is, my moral standards are just to high to be a professional
sleezeball.

"Mike" wrote in message
news:e7CUb.234130$na.377281@attbi_s04...
Gee Tom,

Maybe next time the guy who gave you the store fixture order will figure
it
out that he doesn't need your high priced Murrican labor and he can get
the
fixtures from China also. Think about it, we are all in this together
aren't we?

Yes, I do. Two things that come to my mind immediately. (1) I will not live
long enough to see China in Japans place. (3) By that time, they will figure
out how to industrialize Africa. A lot of that country would love to make a
dollar a day.

"GRL" wrote in message
...
Remember when stuff from Japan was
cheap?

Tom Watson responds:

GRL notes:

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?

True, but we're not going to enjoy the trip downhill.


And their trip uphill ain't gonna happen fast enough for our trip
downslope to be avoided to a degree that doesn't cause serious social
problems in this country.

When I was a small bean going to Grammar School we studied
Citizenship, wherein we learned about the interdependence of the
electorate and the elected and studied things like the "Good of the
Commonweal".

They've dropped Citizenship in favor of the study of Consumer Issues.

Makes a man want to throw up.

Or "shop till he drops." What a social slogan that was. Unfortunately, it's
also true. I know middle class people who use shopping for recreation. Many of
them, in fact. I used to think they were laughable, yard saling items that were
bought and never used, but find that both pathetic and frightening now. These
are hard working people, fairly bright, both with good jobs, one kid out of the
house and the other ready to go, with both having decent, if not high, incomes.
Both are in jobs that will provide secure (as secure as anything is) retirement
at a good rate, their house is almost paid for, their vehicles are in good
shape, so they shop, or at least the wife does, and the junk builds up until
yard sale time.

Weird way to buy. I shop, too, of course. But I shop for what I need or think I
need. I do not shop for recreation. In fact, I'd rather drop large rocks on my
toes than shop, so that helps keep it in line.

Charlie Self
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other
way." Mark Twain
http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html

Upscale wrote:
..

The answer is a change of attitude and the controlling of greed. But,
it's never going to happen. Who would complain that they were making
too much money at a million dollars a year? Take an athlete making
many times that and always negotiating for more. If you or I were
making five million a year and it was arbitrarily reduced to a
million a year, we would scream our damned heads off. It's all about
personal greed not much else. Eventually the time will come when the
money grubbers will be overwhelmed by the have nots, but a lot is
going to happen before that time.

You bring up a good point. I've heard many peoplecomplain about corporate
greed and how the big salary of the CEO is driving up their prices. Then
the same guy will be talking sports and the $30million contract that Pete
the Pitcher just signed nd say "he's good, he's worth it". And pay an
inflated price for Budweiser to support him.

--
Ed

http://pages.cthome.net/edhome

They speak better English than those welfare mothers?

I have more language problems (and repeats) from government affirmative
hires than the TAs at school, who are non-native speakers of American.

"Unisaw A100" wrote in message
...
It came to light here recently in sWisconsin that the
gub'ment agency in charge of getting people off of the
welfare rolls and back to taxable paying jobs had contracted
their phone center work to a non-gub'ment private sector
firm who then re-contracted it to a call center in India.

Ironic, ain't it?

These type of discussions are interesting, but they puzzle me more and more.

The U.S. spends only about 15% of it's GDP on imports. That's it. Our
economy is way too big to rely on other countries to keep it going. These
examples of lost manufacturing jobs, low labor costs, IT being moved
overseas, etc. etc. really represent a tiny part of our economic picture.
The thing is, when two different markets have differing needs for goods, it
behooves both of them to have as free a trade arrangement as possible. Each
economy has limitations on production for various reasons (capacity
differences, labor costs, raw materials availability, etc. etc.). The
supply functions are complicated, which is something everyone seems to
ignore when they bitch about things like this. Consumers in all countries
have certain demand characterstics, and the economies of each country can
consume only so much at any given time. So, the US reducing production of
textiles, yet increasing exports of something else (and I know what you're
thinking - trade deficit) can, in actuality, benefit both countries. In
large, highly-skilled economies like the US it is natural for lower-skilled
and less technological jobs to be driven down and taken up by other
countries that have that ability. At the same time, highly specialized and
technology-driven industries (applied research, basic science-driven
things - drug development, medical equipment, etc.) are actually being
driven UP (I'm talking more than just price of goods - wages, # of jobs,
etc.). So, there ARE actually trade-offs here, and not all of them are
negative. In a free market these shifts in employment from blue-collar to
white-collar are not unexpected and, on the whole, are very small. Sure, to
the men and women that work in that textile factory it sucks big time. To
the cabinetmaker trying to compete with factory-made imported furniture,
it's tough. But, it isn't anything new. Craftsman-type work has always
been that way. The really successful ones were more like artists than
merely constructors of furnishings (I think a modern-day example of this is
Tom Plamann - do you really think that guy has a hard time putting food on
the table?).

My point is, these changes in particular industrial sectors is NOT a bad
thing OVERALL. In fact, in most cases these open trade situations are
better for everyone, including you and me. As one of the other posters put
it, (paraphrasing) pushing protectionist economic policy does nothing in the
long run except likely end up in a tariff battle and leads to depressed
economic vitality for everyone.

"Charlie Self" wrote in message
...
GRL notes:

Now maybe I'm wrong when I think that Bench Dog router tables are made in
U.S.A. and that the only reason that there is this sort of shipping delay
is
because of inept management at their company, but I do think that and I
think it's a metaphor for the way a lot of American companies are run.
Bench
Dog better hope that some Chinese factory does not decide they would like
to
have their (Bench Dog's) lunch.

Two things MBAs can't plan for: success and failure. Anything in the
middle,
AKA mediocrity, they're right on top of.

Charlie Self
"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no
other
way." Mark Twain
http://hometown.aol.com/charliediy/m.../business.html

Tom:

The sad thing here is that we (Americans) don't own the containers, the
ships which hauled them, and no longer control the ports at which these
goods enter this country since Clinton gave away Long Beach to the Chinese.


"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 5 Feb 2004 21:13:08 -0600, "Greg O"
wrote:

Then can you imagine shipping containers of bricks from overseas, and
getting them here cheaper than they can be made down the road a piece!
You
would think that freight would kill the price differance.
Greg


A twenty foot shipping container, which is more or less 20' x 8' x 8'
and is rated for 35,000 pounds costs about $4000.00 to ship from
Shanghai to a West Coast port.

Now, can you imagine how much cheaper the goods must be in order to
make shipping them cost effective?


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

Charlie:

Don't mean to sound too pessimistic but there isn't much time left to fix
things. We have gone from a manufacturing economy to a service economy whose
lifetime is being shortened everyday (the medical profession will be the
next causality with more imported medical help) to a financial economy
which depends primarily on two things; cheap capital and the ability to pay.
Capital isn't going to get cheaper and our ability to pay lessens with a
shrinking job base of higher paying jobs.

We are a bankrupt nation but don't know it yet on the street. I surmise that
eventually we will look like England where they have a bunch of highly
educated people with no jobs living on the dole. The U.S., like England past
is running out of money trying to keep its empire going, only this time we
are trying to keep the game going by printing more funny money everyday and
the music will end when both China and Japan decide they don't want anymore
of our monopoly money. It ain't going to be pretty, I think we better learn
farming, forget learning Chinese.

BTW, I've spent the last 15 years before retiring from the electronics
business in the far-east and these guys really know how to play the game. We
really are simpletons when it comes to understanding history and its
effects.

"charlie b" wrote in message
...

On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 13:11:06 GMT, "Mike in Mystic"
wrote:

These type of discussions are interesting, but they puzzle me more and more.

The U.S. spends only about 15% of it's GDP on imports. That's it. Our
economy is way too big to rely on other countries to keep it going. These
examples of lost manufacturing jobs, low labor costs, IT being moved
overseas, etc. etc. really represent a tiny part of our economic picture.
The thing is, when two different markets have differing needs for goods, it
behooves both of them to have as free a trade arrangement as possible. Each
economy has limitations on production for various reasons (capacity
differences, labor costs, raw materials availability, etc. etc.). The
supply functions are complicated, which is something everyone seems to
ignore when they bitch about things like this. Consumers in all countries
have certain demand characterstics, and the economies of each country can
consume only so much at any given time. So, the US reducing production of
textiles, yet increasing exports of something else (and I know what you're
thinking - trade deficit) can, in actuality, benefit both countries. In
large, highly-skilled economies like the US it is natural for lower-skilled
and less technological jobs to be driven down and taken up by other
countries that have that ability. At the same time, highly specialized and
technology-driven industries (applied research, basic science-driven
things - drug development, medical equipment, etc.) are actually being
driven UP (I'm talking more than just price of goods - wages, # of jobs,
etc.). So, there ARE actually trade-offs here, and not all of them are
negative. In a free market these shifts in employment from blue-collar to
white-collar are not unexpected and, on the whole, are very small. Sure, to
the men and women that work in that textile factory it sucks big time. To
the cabinetmaker trying to compete with factory-made imported furniture,
it's tough. But, it isn't anything new. Craftsman-type work has always
been that way. The really successful ones were more like artists than
merely constructors of furnishings (I think a modern-day example of this is
Tom Plamann - do you really think that guy has a hard time putting food on
the table?).

My point is, these changes in particular industrial sectors is NOT a bad
thing OVERALL. In fact, in most cases these open trade situations are
better for everyone, including you and me. As one of the other posters put
it, (paraphrasing) pushing protectionist economic policy does nothing in the
long run except likely end up in a tariff battle and leads to depressed
economic vitality for everyone.

If you insist on making sense, you will not be welcome in this thread.

Few things in history give such clear cut cause and effect as the fact that
change is inevitable. Those who rail against it fail, those who adapt to it,
succeed.

--
www.e-woodshop.net
Last update: 2/05/04


"Cape Cod Bob" wrote in message

If you insist on making sense, you will not be welcome in this thread.

"Tom Watson" wrote in message
...


On Fri, 06 Feb 2004 01:00:54 GMT, tmbg wrote:

The special laws that allow this sort of thing were passed by people
that we elected who claim that there are not enough qualified
'Murrican IT people and that rules needed to be relaxed to fill the
void,

What void? I don't see any void.


Tom,

I thought you said you picked the Chinese supplier for the low price.
I'm sending software projects to India for the exact same reason.

No void involved. Just "bidness" in a Global Economy.
Did I miss your point?