From the Associated Press today, on Wal-Mart, the infamous mega-business that led the charge to undersell all American dry goods and have everything shipped to China:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. remains atop the Fortune 500 list even as it struggled to keep its U.S. customers coming in the door.
The world’s largest retailer held onto the top spot for the second year in a row thanks to gains at its international stores.
Fortune Magazine, which ranked companies based on revenue for 2010, released its annual list on Thursday. It was filled with examples of how rising fuel prices are affecting the economy. Wal-Mart was followed by the three largest American oil companies: Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips.
Fortune said that America’s top companies profited by boosting productivity and cutting jobs.
They helped tank the economy and destroy middle class earning power. Now let’s cheer for them to do it everywhere else.
The Global Assembly Line is a misnomer for a dystopian, complex jumble of production that uses any number of countries and its citizens. Environmentalists are already aware that the price tag on most mass global consumer products already fails to factor in the true ecological cost (“natural capital”) of the product.
From elements in mobile phones to leather in trainers, all are habitually “subsidised” by the environment. Furthermore, with electronics, ethical arguments have tended to focus on the end of the chain, where consumer behaviour conspires with Moore’s Law (the amount of computing power that can be bought for a certain amount of money doubles every 18 months) and planned obsolescence to create mountains of e-waste.
In the world of consumer electronics, the pressure to work overtime appears to have been caused by the sheer popularity of new products. Whipped into a frenzy by marketing and favourable product reviews, we consumers shriek for the latest gadgetry and the factories must oblige.
It’s worth reading the testimonies that tell us what life as a “techno-serf” is really like. A clue: it’s totally at odds with the liberating, blue-sky, wireless possibilities offered by the sleek phones and laptops. The words: “Twelve hours of work = standard” and: “One year and I’m dead” were recently found in the notebook of a young man who had been working for a famous electronics brand in South Chungcheong province before he took his own life. We are beginning to hear of intense worker despondency and depression. It’s really about time we listened. These stories help to blunt the usual retorts of: “It gives them jobs” or: “They are just having their industrial revolution now.”
Good news, lads! Good news! If you had a button you could push to blow up the iKit as it went into his mouth you’d use it.
While the popular music industry in this country worked hard at guaranteeing it had no friends as it came to an end, it really didn’t deserve Steve Jobs and Apple.
My friend, the drummer in the band, is an iPod addict.
Me, I’d hit a new one with a hammer for a copy of the daily newspaper or a taco at Rick’s.
In preparation for the May show I went to Guitar Center in Pasadena for a power adapter. Of course, all are made in China. There’s no choice in the matter.
While there I browsed distortion pedals.
Virtually all of them were Chinese-made things, all old American designs, some priced so ridiculously low it’s obvious people are literally dieing to make them and get them here. The company doing this most effectively is Deltalab. It markets guitar effects pedals for an average price of $39 at GC.
That’s human misery and rip off non-living wage condensed in a small painted metal box, inefficiently shipped across the Pacific in a huge container transport, for the sake of the bottom line and the outsourced economy.
It was impossible to stomach buying anything like it no matter how attractive to the over-leveraged purse.
So I wound up buying a used Fulltone OCD. It was made in America. SoCal, too.
Here’s an ABC News clip from a New Hampshire town hall meeting in which the Republican, a Tea Party man by the name of Frank Guinta, gets a mildly hard time from his constituents. I say mild because by the standards of rudeness and disruption, its gentle. Guinta, after all, isn’t even close to being bottled.
Guinta — who looks every bit the overstuffed buffoon who doesn’t even know all the particulars of the legislation he’s defending — can’t take it. He calls for peace after an old white coot stands up, delivers a very brief rant about the president, and is decisively booed.
At that point another man begins to speak (it comes near the end of the segment):
Guinta: If we could refrain from booing…
Man: No!
You’ve asked the people that we cooperate and we all be nice. But you were swept into office by people who really weren’t nice and you didn’t
lift a finger to say, “Hey, let’s chill.” And these people were carrying guns. So it’s a little late for you to condescend …”
And here one sees in action the almost total failure of the president and the Democratic Party. So incapable of framing any powerful arguments. or just afraid to do so, against the prevailing stories leading up to 2010, their political base became dispirited, didn’t get out, and the extremists were put in office. And now there’s palpable regret.
As a resident of California, I can view it with a little detachment if only because the GOP is dead meat in the state. And it’s not that way becaus of anything the opposition did but because Republicans basically convinced almost the entire Latino population that it was a mortal enemy. And that was a fairly accurate judgment.
So let’s not get along. Not now, not soon.
If the President would choose to argue as pointedly as the man in the seats at the Guinta town hall, things could change. But he won’t. And because of that, 2012 will be a repeat of 2010.
Lately the inflationistas have seized on rising oil prices as evidence in their favor, even though — as Mr. Bernanke himself pointed out — these prices have nothing to do with Fed policy. The way oil prices are coloring the discussion led the economist Tim Duy to suggest, sarcastically, that basic Fed policy is now to do nothing about unemployment “because some people in the Middle East are seeking democracy.???
But I’d put it differently. I’d say that the Fed’s policy is to do nothing about unemployment because Ron Paul is now the chairman of the House subcommittee on monetary policy.
The Claw … was an evil villain of Asian ancestry — a distant cousin to Bond’s “Dr. No.??? The Claw was so called because one of his hands was missing, a la Captain Hook. In its place, as I recall, was a powerful shoehorn-shaped magnet. (There you go — two strikes already, both disability and ethnic stereotyping.) The Claw spoke English with a heavy accent, which was a good part of the joke. Picture Smart holding him off at gunpoint. Smart would turn to his sidekick, the lovely Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon), and say with a squinted brow, something like: “Well, 99, I see it’s our old nemesis, the Craw.???
Before 99 could respond, the villain would break in, growling: “No, not da Craw — da Craw!???
This doesn’t get at all of it, which in its ethnic stereotyping for the sake of humor is now taboo.
Anyway, the Claw story line also features Harry Hoo, a Chinese detective who worked with Maxwell Smart. Hoo is just another absurd take on Charlie Chan, and in my tune, you can hear the character — played by someone named Joey Forman, saying in a bad accent, “We meet again Mr. Craw!”
Here are a couple of videos of economist Dean Baker explaining things recently. Think of him as one of the few other guys like Paul Krugman, or vice versa.
In the first segment, near the end he discusses one remedy for the trade imbalance with China. The dollar is over-valued, he informs. If you remedy that, then the trade imbalance has a chance to shift. It doesn’t fix the abandonment of non-military manufacturing and how that would have to be reconstituted but it’s a lot better than idiotic suggestions to impose tariffs after the horse has been out of the barn for years.
In other matters some pundits and Dems think it means something for the President that at town hall meetings, in a place like Hazleton, PA, older people have gotten up to call out their GOP rep crazies.
Pennsylvania, freshman Lou Barletta was rebuked by a 64-year-old woman who wanted to know why he backed “a plan that will destroy Medicare.” (“I won’t destroy Medicare,” Barletta responded. “Medicare is going to be destroyed by itself.”)
Setting aside the fact for a moment that Democrats have never shown any facility for sustaining an argument against extreme right GOP policies with regards to the old white voter demographic, this is still the hinterland of Pennsylvania, fer cryin’ out loud.
Except in Dauphin County, where African Americans live, and State College — where the lib’ral perfessors and students live — nobody’s going to be voting for Obama in 2012. The GOP mostly thinks he’s not an American and yesterday will make no difference. Except for Philly, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Hershey and State College, it’s finished there.
Following continued attacks by anti-hunting groups to ban traditional ammunition (ammunition containing lead-core components) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, Representative Lou Barletta (R-Pennsylvania-11) became an original co-sponsor of bipartisan legislation (H.R. 1558) to clarify the longstanding exemption of ammunition and ammunition components under the act. The Hunting, Fishing and Recreational Shooting Sports Protection Act is being championed by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the trade association for the firearms, ammunition, hunting and shooting sports industry. The act also calls for lead fishing tackle, similarly under attack from anti-hunting groups, to be exempt from the TSCA.
“We applaud and thank Rep. Barletta for co-sponsoring this common-sense measure,” said NSSF President and CEO Stephen L. Sanetti. “This bill will continue to ensure that America’s hunters and shooters can choose for themselves the best ammunition to use, instead of unnecessarily mandating the universal use of expensive alternatives.”
“The economic growth of America’s firearms and ammunition industry continues to be a bright spot in our country’s still ailing economy,” continued Keane. “Passing this important legislation will help to ensure that our industry, which is responsible for more than 183,000 well-paying jobs and has an economic impact of more than $27.8 billion annually, continues to shine.”
The argument was to ban old lead shotgun pellets because of hunters who don’t collect their kills because they’re too stumblebum. The kill is then carrion and when it gets eaten by scavengers, the lead pellets also take down the animals that eat it. Two for the price of one, so to speak.
What we have seen, he said, is “a massive shift in capability from the U.S. to China. What we have done is traded jobs for profit. The jobs have moved to China. The capability erodes in the U.S. and grows in China. That’s very destructive. That is a big reason why the U.S. is becoming more and more polarized between a small, very rich class and an eroding middle class. The people who get the profits are very different from the people who lost the wages.”
That’s very destructive. Ya don’t say!
Recommendation: Instead of sending drones to Libya, bomb GE.
The Empire’s Dog Feces — section, “America’s best-est places to work!”
Not long ago, Kyle Maxwell had a bright idea. The 25-year-old effects artist thought DreamWorks Animation needed a panini machine in its cafeteria, so he e-mailed CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, a legendary Hollywood mogul whose credits include Shrek, Kung-Fu Panda, and Megamind. At the next company-wide meeting, Katzenberg publicly thanked Maxwell for his suggestion and ordered that it be done.
Within the week, DreamWorkers were chowing down on bespoke paninis, and Maxwell had acquired a mover-and-shaker rep to go with his computer-animation chops. “Now I get all kinds of weird e-mail from people at DreamWorks,” says Maxwell. “They’re like, ‘Hey, can you get us a new staircase?'”
Bespoke paninis. If you had a button you could push to destroy the person who came up with that expression, you’d use it without a moment’s hesitation.
Zappos, Las Vegas:
The online apparel and footwear retailer famously includes “Create fun and a little weirdness” on its list of core values. Applicants are carefully screened to make sure they can cut it in a corporate culture where rules are few, professional titles include “cruise director,” and colleagues frequently stage spontaneous parades down cubicle row.
This quirky zeitgeist appears to have survived Amazon.com’s 2009 acquisition of Zappos. Job interviews still take place in rooms with zany themes, including Cher’s Dressing Room and an Oprah-style talk show set where candidates sit on a couch next to their HR host. Standard interview questions include “On a scale of 1 to 10, how weird would you say you are?”
There’s no right answer to that question, says recruiting manager Christa Foley, 37. “We’re looking for people who don’t take themselves too seriously,” she adds. “Somebody who gets into an argument with us about the definition of ‘weird’ will probably not be able to handle a parade with cowbells.”
Perks include free lunches, 25¢ vending machines (all proceeds go to charity), and a full-time life coach on staff. And customer service is a religion at Zappos: All new hires are required to work in a call center during their first month on staff, even if their jobs don’t involve customer interaction.
If you patronizes these people you not only hasten the decline but also encourage morons.
The horizontal axis starts at 1991. The vertical axis tops out at just below three hundred billion dollars for 2010, the number that results after you subtract US exports to China from the stuff we buy from that country.
As far as the US middle class is concerned, this country makes virtually nothing non-military but cars, SUVs, wine, beer, prostitutes and high end goods for the plutocracy. Everything that was made here was shipped off by US multi-nationals to China. And that business took off during the Bush administration, slowing only momentarily in 2001 as a consequence of 9/11.
Readers will note it stumbled again in 2008-09 as a consequence of the Great Recession. Wall Street blew up the world economy and demand plummeted on main street in the face of mass layoffs.
If you stare at the graph long enough (a larger version is here), you must virtually arrive at the conclusion that it’s not fixable.
The bottom has been ripped out of the US boat. Full stop. And our leaders and businessmen, through a combination of greed, inaction and malfeasance did the job on us. China was just the enabler.
Look at the slope on the line. There’s no coming back from this level of disaster in our lifetime. What this means for the middle class is obvious.
The President and the ruling class’s pundits, as well as the apologists for the plutocracy, continually make assertions that the US must be retrained for manufacturing jobs of the future.
This is all bullshit. No one in China hired by US multi-nationals needs retraining in any plants making stuff for Apple, Boeing, or Fender and Gibson guitars.
It is, rather, a fob argument used to place the blame for economic evisceration on the alleged failings of the general populace.
The graph makes clear that the US sells minimally to China. Statistically, its insignificant in terms of the larger picture, so any additional arguments on opening up their markets, or the Chinese government allowing its currency to float freely, seem pretty much more bullshit aimed at covering up the underlying calamity.
We sell China some cars and SUVs, one supposes, perhaps meat, booze and some novelty candies.
The graph does not show US arms manufacturing. Outside of cars and jet engines, which are going away fast too as Boeing and GE continue to outsource overseas, weapons (as an exercise in socialism for the benefit of the corporate sector), are the only things this country now gives the world in terms of material goods.
This graph, however, published last year by the New York Times, does make a nice bookend to mine.
This was the “reprise” to China Toilet Blooz on US of Fail. Fashioned as a Captain Beefheart-like tune, the video is of Tom Friedman getting hit with a cream pie, overlain with his standard miscellaneous hogwash on the imagined virtues of China, other than cheap labor. In this particular case, as if it’s participating in some green revolution centered around plastics, to fight global warming.
The quotes were taken from a column in which he dug up one US businessman, who operated “plastic mines” in China, the poor man lamenting on how much he’d like to have jobs here but the US guvmint and people just won’t support him.
Lyrics:
I bought a new toilet
It was made in China
That’s were all the jobs went
Nothing could be finer
You buy that toilet
It was made in China
Crap in a hole!
Crap in a hole!
Crap in a hole!
Buy a bag of lime
They still make that here
This is what makes Donald Trump’s recent claims about fixing jobs lost to China so laughable.
Trump proposes adding a 25 percent tariff to Chinese goods. Since China makes everything the middle class uses as daily sundries, there are no options to “buy American” left here.
Such a step would immediately be felt as a big price hike aimed straight at the US middle class. It would be debilitating and would probably cause an immediate decrease in demand, putting even more people out of work. Of course, the economic contraction caused by this would also cause layoffs in China in the manufacturing sector.
But it would almost assuredly again tank the US economy, or the part of it still based on middle class consumer demand and not Wall Street financial products.
So, how about the jobs left, those in retail, selling all the Chinese-made goods we used to make.
“Suppose an alternative history in which big-box stores, Wal-Mart and others, were unionized,??? he says. “You could easily imagine that you could have a large number of service-sector workers who were, if not like autoworkers, like manufacturing-sector union workers in the golden age of private-sector unions.???
But that’s impossible now. It doesn’t fit with the plutocracy.
Good news, lads! Good news! If we go to war with China, there’ll be no more of these for awhile.
Laugh out loud feature piece by Bill Gertz in today’s Washington Times here.
Yet another in the popular theme of China’s growing military, listing its allegedly puissant cruise missiles, its patrolling of nearby seas, and one decrepit half-finished aircraft carrier, said to be almost ready to go, bought from the ex-Commies, the Varyag.
Breakout graph from admiral of the Pacific theatre, describing the nature of the threat:
“If I were asked what biggest challenge I face as the Pacific Command commander, I would tell you it’s the relationship between the United States and China, in order to advance that relationship to ultimately become a constructive partnership, if that’s possible,??? he said.
The admiral obviously doesn’t get out much, perhaps having only servants doing the shopping.
When all the goods in American stores are from China “constructive partnership” doesn’t really describe any present or potentially future relationship.
Here’s how it is — “Joined at the hip like Siamese twins.”
So let’s have a brief thought exercise, imagining the implausible, a shooting war breaking out between the US and China.
What happens, other than the military actions?
All goods from China cease. The middle class sees all US stores run out of stock of sundries. Wal-Mart, Target, everything like them, BestBiuy, all hardware stores, all consumer electronic stores, Bed/Bath & Beyond, sporting goods stores — all crash and go bankrupt. Unemployment becomes truly massive, a new recession to make the Great Recession look small ensues. People watch video of the bombers methodically destroying China’s military for a month. The military is the only place where employment is stable. After two months, television watching stops too as cable is disconnected for non-payment.
Fender Musical Instruments and Gibson are put out of business. The value of old, even mostly crap, instruments skyrockets. Old classic rockers enjoy revival as they are one of the only groups of musicians who can still go out and entertain locally.
In the next election, every incumbent is voted out of office.
With the flow of exports to the US and everywhere else cut off, massive unemployment in China ensues. Caught between the US military and rioting in the streets, the Chinese government destabilizes. All it’s new military hardware is destroyed in detail. This takes four to six weeks.
The war ends. The world is dragged into a great depression, having lost what’s left of the buying power of the US and almost all its sundries and electronics manufacturing in the short term.
Happily, Apple goes out of business as manufacturing for all its iKit ceases and demand subsequently plummets for what’s left because of bankruptcy in the US working class.
Used vinyl becomes very valuable. Fights break out in pawn shops as people scramble for old semi-functional turntables. What stock is left goes for thousands of dollars per item. Garages are ransacked nationwide.
The new “retro” novelty products can no longer be bought, either, because they were all made in China.
Wal-Mart, apparently bummed that it’s slightly losing its race to the bottom to Target after the Great Recession blasted demand in the US, is vowing to bring even more goods to its stores.
If you read the fine print, that means more Chinese goods. Not a differentiation in quality, just M-O-R-E. Along with a plan to, like Target, go for an even bigger portion of the national food stamps outlay by increasing groceries.
The thinking, like at Target is — well, people still have to eat. And the government will help pay for a lot of that.
After alienating customers by culling too many products from shelves, Wal-Mart is bringing the variety back by adding 8,500 items to stores.
Flags will appear next to the revived brands later this month that say, “It’s back.”
“We’re bringing back products and brands [our customers] want,” said Mac Naughton. The retailer has already boosted variety in pasta, snacks and beverages and plans to roll out more products in household goods such as paper towels, toilet paper and laundry detergent.
Later this year, Wal-Mart plans to expand the mix in electronics, clothing, sporting goods and outdoor product categories.
Mac Naughton said the company is exploring other categories including auto and office supplies and home appliances.
“Dollar stores [which sell even cheaper stuff made in China] weren’t considered a threat by Wal-Mart, but recently they’ve successfully taken on their giant competitor, particularly during the recession,” it continues.
“Among the products returning to Wal-Mart shelves … mayonnaise and Febreze and Glade trigger handle products.”
You can cover up the stink in your cramped apartment even more cheaply. Bound to coax a few extra bob out of the perishers, here and there. That there’s a real innovative change to bring ’em in droves, lemme tell ya.
We should all wish Wal-Mart continued heartburn now that it’s tasting the fruit of its wildly successful campaign to destroy US domestic manufacturing and reduce labor to penury in favor of the bottom line.
The answer has always been obvious to me. But through inaction we are living the wrong one.
This post comes out of simple inspiration from a trip to Guitar Center yesterday.
The US invented rock and roll. It had Leo Fender, the inventor of the first widely used electric guitar, the Telecaster. And the founder of Fender Electric Instrument Manufacturing, subsequently Fender Musical Instruments, the quintessentially American company founded on innovation in affordable products that gave joy to everyone.
And then you have General Dynamics Lands Systems.
The fundamentally American mega-corporate ogre, a company that makes the M1 Abrams tank and other armored fighting vehicles, most definitely not for giving joy to anyone except the mentally ill who get erections over military gear and the CEO of, well, GDLS.
Unlike the guitar, for use in endless war, selling to tyrannical regimes in the Middle East acting as toadies, and for continuing the rigged exercise of big corporate socialism.
Anyway, most of the merchandise, by weight, in the Guitar Center showroom in Pasadena is make in China although it conspicuously stills carries the names of famous American brands.
My friend needed a small 2-speaker PA system and power amplifier for his studio. And so we went into the live sound showroom at GC to look at PA speakers and power amps. After a number of minutes he’d narrowed his choices to Yamaha and Peavey merchandise.
He wanted to know where they were made. So I suggested turning them over and looking at the base plates where the speaker cables plug in.
The Yamaha was offshored from Japan to sweat shop labor in Indonesia. The Peavey — a famous American brand — was offshored to China.
“Which is better,” he asked me. He knows “China Toilet Blooz” by heart now.
I laughed and shrugged. So he picked the Yamaha because it looked better.
Peavey was a company founded in Meridian, Mississippi by Hartley Peavey. Peavey had worked for Fender and when it was bought by CBS and expanded to some detriment of its still very much American-made product line in the early Seventies, he left to form his own company and successfully exploited the perceived drop in quality.
In the years after Peavey established its name as a solid substitute of American-made guitars and amplifiers.
Now this is all gone.
The American manufacturers of rock and roll equipment have all offshored to China.
What remains in the US is essentially custom shop business. The American-made items are ten times or more the expense of the same models made in China. And the former are reserved largely for people with major label music contracts and that part of the upper middle and plutocrat class which dabbles in guitar playing. For them, the expensive American made guitar is a status symbol for a gilded age.
All down the line in the Guitar Center showroom, all the famous American-made guitar lines are now produced in China. Gretsch, like Fender, divided into two tiers. The famous big semi-hollow body guitars popularized in Nashville and Memphis, played by the inventors of rock and roll — the guys in the bands backing Elvis and Gene Vincent — are made in China. If you want to pay ten times or more for one, the premium models are still made here.
The Epiphone Casino, popularized by John Lennon and pictured here — now made offshore.
The middle class jobs and factories that produced those instruments which made the sound that went worldwide are gone. And this country, and the rest of the world, isn’t better for it. It was profit driven decision-making in a race to the bottom. And it destroyed tradition and a proud legacy in something the made the whole world a brighter place. You could be proud of working in a factory that made guitars and amplifiers for everybody in the USA.
And what jobs have we protected at all costs? You know the answer.
Tanks, rockets, missiles, bombs, jet aircraft, mines, tear gas rounds, and fighting ships.
All guaranteed by the US taxpaying middle class and inviolable.
U.S. ships delivered the 87th of 140 planned Abrams tanks to the Iraqi Army’s 9th Division earlier this month. The delivery is part of a $2.16 billion deal to ship the tanks and necessary logistics support vehicles to Iraq.
Built by General Dynamics Land Systems, the first M1A1s arrived in September. The deliveries are scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, when U.S. forces finish their pullout in December, [LTG Robert] Cone [USF-I] said in February before he returned to Fort Hood, Texas.
——-
The necessary parts have arrived in Iraq, but the country’s rudimentary logistics system cannot deliver the parts to military units yet. Iraq’s Army warehouses in Taji remain stocked, but the parts rarely reach the units. One Iraqi mechanic said he only receives parts for his Humvees twice a year.
“They have to figure this out, or we’re just going to end up with a bunch of 60-ton paperweights sitting out here,” [LTC David] Beachman [senior advisor] said.
Protect the manufacturing jobs for premium tanks for an army of Iraqi stumblebums. Yeah!
But protect the manufacturing jobs for non-military things — an everyman’s musical instrument — that arguably had a much larger and finer impact on the world? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Leo Fender died in 1991. If he were alive today he’d turn white.
The idea that the country of guitars and rock and roll would devolve into the country of computer-networked armored fighting vehicles and smart bombs is as disgusting as it is astonishing. Think about the state of affairs and you don’t know whether to shit or go blind.
With regards to tank sales to Iraq, J. at Armchair delivers a thought puckishly delivered as if pinched from a recent Dale Carnegie correspondence course: “But hey, if this model works for Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, why stop now? What a great way to win friends and influence enemies.”
One could put it a different way. We influenced people worldwide and much more to the nation’s credit with the electric guitar than the M1 Abrams tank. The former, not the latter, is one of the reasons people liked us.
Alert reader C. tips the blog to a manufacturing story on China. Even that country’s workers may slowly get the ‘benefits’ of being serfs for US masters of the universe.
When millions of workers didn’t return to their southern China factory jobs after Lunar New Year holidays, a turning point was reached for foreign manufacturers scraping by with slim profit margins.
Companies were already under pressure from rising raw material costs, restive workers and lower payments for exports because of a stronger Chinese currency. Despite hiking wages, labor shortages kept getting worse as workers increasingly spurned the often repetitive and unskilled jobs that helped earn China its reputation as the world’s low-cost factory floor.
At one of those factories in an industrial suburb of the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, a worker uses a sewing machine to stitch together black padding for an orthopedic foot brace. Across the aisle from her, others snip loose threads off disposable cushions for operating tables.
At the end of the shop floor, a young woman glues velcro squares to an elastic strip used to hold an ice bag over an injured leg, churning one out every few seconds using a large machine press.
Later this year, these jobs will be gone as Guangzhou Fortunique’s American owner, Charles Hubbs, moves a large chunk of production to Southeast Asia.
“I don’t know of any factory in China that can absorb both the raw material prices we have, the labor issues we’ve been looking at and the renminbi,” China’s strengthening currency, said Hubbs. The currency is also known as the yuan.
He’s joining a wave of export manufacturers, big and small, that are moving from China’s coastal manufacturing regions to cheaper inland provinces or out of the country altogether, in a clear sign that southern China’s days as a low-cost manufacturing powerhouse are numbered.
Seems that making cheap stuff in China for a pittance for the crumbling middle class on food stamps in the US sucks also for a lot of Chinese workers.
Never fear! American businessmen move their offshore manufacturing to the poorer and more desperate Chinese interior.
Even the makers of Apple master-of-all-music-and-phone kit are looking for better sweat shops:
Foxconn Technology Group — the world’s biggest contract electronics manufacturer with customers including Apple Inc., Sony Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co. — is planning to gradually cut its workforce of 400,000 in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen by a quarter and move the bulk of manufacturing inland.
The article concludes really cheap labor in China is slowly becoming less cheap. In ten year or more, the country’s competitive advantage here, it alleges, will be gone.
Long before that the US economy will have been permanently wrecked.
“Could it be that the thrill is gone?” asks reader C., perhaps rhetorically.
