Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Beowulf87 on July 23, 2012 at 4:46pm

Wow...this is not what I read in their Cato Journal....

Permalink Reply by Kevin on July 23, 2012 at 5:38pm

The link is now dead.   Anyhow read this if you will.

http://reason.com/archives/2012/07/22/the-case-against-made-in-the-usa

Permalink Reply by JonEdanger on July 23, 2012 at 6:28pm

Reading.

Permalink Reply by ARK on July 23, 2012 at 6:49pm

If an article of clothing was made in the US from US grown fibers for a US company then 100% of the cost of the article of clothing would stay in the US, not just the profits.

And that cost would be considerably more. Consider the mass-market clothing that is made in America; Bill's Khakis and certain Brooks Brothers items come to mind. Very good stuff. But imagine if those were the only things American consumers had to choose from. Is it really fair to those Americans who can't afford to spend $100 on a pair of pants to deprive them of the ability to buy a pair at Wal-Mart or Old Navy for $15 or $20? 

If outsourcing gives entry into markets then where are the Fords, Dodges, and Chevys being sold in China? I don't think there are many, if any, sold there.

On the contrary, Buick is one of the most sought-after car brands in China. The current Buick models were actually designed primarily with Chinese buyers in mind (the rounded, "fat" shape; the abundance of chrome that many Americans would consider tacky). 

Consider the case of Lenovo, the PC manufacturer. It's a Chinese company that has an American headquarters in North Carolina. If you have a problem with, say, Apple products being made in China, do you have a problem with a Chinese company choosing to employ Americans in America? Would it seem silly to you if the Chinese accused Lenovo of shipping Chinese jobs overseas to America? 

Free trade and the ability to make use of resources in a lot of different places benefits all of us in ways we take for granted. It's what enables us to buy a new PC for as little as a few hundred dollars; it's what allows us to call a tech support person in India to fix that PC in the middle of the night when the rest of America is asleep. It benefits some people more than others. And some people's lives are made more difficult by it as a result, say a factory worker in Ohio who is laid off.

That's why we should want to invest in job training programs for that factory worker, and why we should want a robust, affordable public education system so that his children will have to skills and knowledge they need to do jobs that didn't exist in their father's time (in part because their father's job will not be there for them). A certain set of people in this country would be content to call the factory worker "lazy" and accuse that kind of investment in human capital of being "spreading the wealth." A better way to look at it is "sharing the gains" of free trade. 

Permalink Reply by Kevin on July 23, 2012 at 6:59pm

Aside from the comments on public education I think you're pretty much spot on.!

Permalink Reply by Shane on July 23, 2012 at 7:08pm

Think of education as a national security issue. More important than defense and the economy.

Permalink Reply by Kevin on July 23, 2012 at 7:22pm

Of course.   It's not like I think we should stop educating our kids but I'm more of a charter, private, home school type of guy.

Permalink Reply by Shane on July 23, 2012 at 7:32pm

A) That wasn't his argument.

 

B) Other than making spelling bee champions; what do those models offer which a public school doesn't?

Permalink Reply by Kevin on July 23, 2012 at 7:54pm

A. I realize that and honestly I wasn't really trying to go off topic.

B. Charter and private schools are better able to get rid of teachers that aren't performing very well or don't put as much effort in to teaching.   With private schools you have payed for a service and if you are not getting that service or it is not up to par you can choose to go elsewhere so they must work to retain customers so to speak.   With home schooling the parent is directly involved in the child's education.

c. This sub-debate is probably worthy of it's own thread.

Permalink Reply by Shane on July 23, 2012 at 8:03pm

Ok.

Permalink Reply by Shane on July 23, 2012 at 7:06pm

We're not doing too bad in the car market:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/17/autos-china-idUSL3E8CH0V9...

Permalink Reply by Native Son on July 28, 2012 at 9:50am

And that's mostly because autos in China amounts to a still developing market requiring a sophisticated manufacturing and sales/maintenance infrastructure that costs extremely large amounts of cash and time to stand up from scratch.  The use of a native manufacturing partner to facilitate an industrial and marketing infrastructure is not unknown. Also not unknown is the use of restrictive tariffs and "safety & quality inspections" of individual imported vehicles and foreign supply chains to force foreign companies out of a market.  After all, Toyota started as a local final assembly point for US duece and a half trucks.  And GM complained for years about having each civilian vehicle they brought into Japan "inspected" to death, and often rejected for minor cosmetic imperfections (Reportedly, the door edge to body panel gap was a common reason for failing an import inspection.)

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