On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:57:43 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:46:07 -0400, Tom Francis - SWSports
wrote:

It seems that the Chinese are ahead of us almost in every area

It's more complicated than that. Are they really ahead of us in tire
manufacturing technology or do they have lower costs due to cheap
labor plus low standards for environmental pollution and worker
safety? I suspect it's more the latter. If so, is that the kind of
competition that we really want to be advocating?

It's part of it certainly and an important part - inexpensive labor
and almost no need to control pollution because of their "third world"
status while we strangle our economy by passing "cap and trade" which
will hamstring what little industry we have left, raise the cost of
energy by 200% (by some estimates even higher) and place another
hidden tax on the already overburdened taxpayer.

I read somewhere recently where China and India are adding one new
coal fired electric generation facility per day. Our proposed cap and
trade bill and the savings in so-called green house gas emissions
won't even make a blip in the amount of emissions produced by China
and India never mind other developing countries.

Why are we doing this to ourselves? Why can't we compete - really
compete - with technology? While I don't view China as having
complete technical mastery, they are getting there as are the India
and Pakistan. I find it hard to believe that we can't build factories
to make tires efficiently and at relatively the same cost using sound
management practices and technology.