In article . com, Joe
wrote:

because option 3 may involve child slave labor in China and latino
sweat shops in S. America that pay labor 35 cents a day, and have no
rules and regulations that protect workers and the enviroment.

True, but now you're dealing with the cheap end of the market. The
really good stuff rarely - I hesitate to say never - comes from those
places. More likely Europe with at least as high oncosts as the USA.

As for China, I think you're *badly* underestimating the sophistication
of their manufacturing plant. Sure labour is still cheap, but they're
importing their raw materials and paying world prices for them. Their
energy costs are pretty close to international, certainly WRT oil. They
take those materials, put them through a magic process called a
'factory' and goods people want to buy emerge from the other end.

As for labour pay rates, I heard this back in the 70's and 80's about
Japan. Guess what Japan's pay scales are like these days? Compare
Toyota's car manufacturing quality and volume with GM or Ford. Why is
Toyota so successful these days, despite having a lot worse energy
budget and raw materials situation? The unpalatable answer, for you
guys, is that they can make better cars, cheaper.

China is doing the same thing.

How are we suppose to compete with that?

Umm, Joe, it's called 'investment of capital'. You don't try to compete
on a labourer for labourer basis because you're going to lose, either
economically or standard of living. You leverage your brains and
technology and automate production. That's the *only* way you're gonna
build better, cheaper.

Now we have a billion people in India going after the white collar
design jobs. How can corporate America resist a degreed engineer at
1/16th of the cost who can do the same job via the internet?

Shrug. Those guys in India are going after jobs in my areas of
expertise. I don't care, why should you? Fact is, it'll free up
resources to be used in other areas. Those areas may not be in the USA,
and they may not do your economy any good, but so sad, too bad, those
Indians need to spend money on something. Might be good for us.

And I'm all for fair trade, but if it's not dollar for dollar with the
trader then we need to fix the in-balance.

Riiiiight. Tell me how you're going to insist that China and India buy
overpriced American manufactures, then. Even software development is
going to India and anyone with half a brain would at least be looking
at Microsoft losing its near monopoly on operating systems and the
leverage it gives them to sell MS Office etc.

About the only stuff foreigners might be willing to buy are your
sophisticated military gear, at typical military prices. However,
Europe makes good stuff too, and there's a real strategic problem
selling huge and state of the art arms to potential enemies.

A real good start might be by fixing your own massive debt problem. The
fact is, you guys can't run a closed economy, it isn't an option for
you in the 21C. Therefore you can't run a real protectionist regime and
keep imports out, because if you do, so will other people do it to you,
and with the growth of China and India, I can't think offhand of
anything the USA actually makes that can't be sourced elsewhere quite
easily. You have little international economic leverage and what you
have, you're losing.

I'd care a lot more about your problems if they weren't almost 100% of
your own making. Every time I hear someone talking about fair trade, I
know I'm hearing someone who can't compete.

Barring a real and sustained environmental crash, China and India *are*
going to industrialise and their population's std of living *is* going
to rise. That means they'll have disposable income over what's needed
for subsistence. You can see this as a threat, as you do, or an
opportunity, as I do, but it's gonna happen. I really don't care if you
guys want to sit it out, but we're not going to.

BTW I use a premium priced computer from Apple Corp. Got nothing to do
with price, it's got the best o/s currently available, runs the s/ware
I need to use, is highly reliable as well as pretty, and is well made.
I used to despise Apple Corp because they had a POS of an o/s with a
nice GUI layered over it.

Why don't I use a made in China (or Malaysia etc etc) clone running
Linux or Windows? Got nothing to do with the price.....

PDW