Ok. VW then if you prefer. It's still not a 'luxury' or 'quality' brand, it's a mass market car. The UK car industry which you seemed to think was just Jaguar is in fact almost entirely Japanese manufacturers, and again they're making mass market vehicles here - nothing to do with luxury products - everything to do with low unit costs.
This may be hard for you to understand but if I say something is high, and you say it's dropping that is actually not proof that it isn't high. A thing can be high and simultaneously dropping, such as Nokia's market share. It's a complex concept though and I appreciate you may have trouble with it. In a similar fashion something can be low but rising, this isn't relevant to the topic at hand but it may help you in future life.
Yes Italian productivity is dropping, it has been since Euro accession back in the 95, because wage inflation hasn't adjusted to the new reality that they can no longer keep depreciating their currency. However, in spite of that, the level of industry in the economy is relatively high at 25% compared to 18% for the UK, 22% for the USA, 24% for France, and 24% for Spain. Germany is higher of course at 30%, but remember that the number for Italy is nationwide and the North-South gap is vast. (Figures from the CIA- world factbook)
So even with their dropping productivity they're still high enough that the Northern clusters are able to compete in some industries - those where their productivity was highest. And yes - it's dropping across all sectors (wage inflation and euro membership is economy wide), but that still means that things that started high, are higher than things that started low. Is that clear? Should I use smaller words?
You appear to have confused economic decline and sex with underage prostitutes.
I bow to your ability to link obscure academic papers that don't even prove your point
See this is the reason I did not join this site as stated in my first post. I'm not sure you even believe what you are saying you just want a feeling of being superior, it isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about your ego.
Vw's are premium and mass market in much the same way as an Apple iPhone is. This would be a strange forum to say you can't be both. Yes unusual but not impossible. VW also own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti which are certainly high end. They make their cheaper brands (built on the same platforms as the premium cars) in cheaper countries. Skoda for example build in the Czech Republic, China and India.
German built VW's (and Audi's) are sold at a much higher price than Opel or Ford cars. Here is just one article that describes a VW as a premium vehicle.
"?We?ve long argued that VW?s number one goal is not profit maximisation, but rather full employment in its home state of Lower Saxony, but it seems as if VW is not only able to fulfil its employment obligations to its controlling state shareholder, but also report near best-in-industry profitability"
"VW was the only German (auto) company not to cut headcount in the recession. VW has labour productivity in its German plants that is about half what its international volume brand peers achieve. VW continues to carry many vanity projects that divert resources and or lose money like Bugatti and Phaeton, but it doesn?t seem to matter,? Warburton said."
VW a state controlled enterprise that achieves full employment in a developed economy with high wages in factories that have half the productivity of volume rivals, all whilst maintaining near best in industry profitability.
This is really some achievement and knocks your ill formed argument out of the water.
You say that UK car production is almost all Japanese production. Jaguar/Land Rover are owned by Indians, MG is owned by the Chinese. BMW build all the Mini's here in Oxford and also own Rolls Royce. Aston Martin are British owned and VW own Bentley. Virtually all of those are premium brands!. Even the Nissan factory is building the new expensively priced Leaf electric car. You are speaking without bothering to find out the real facts.
Italian labour productivity per person employed in 2009 was worse than Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway within Europe and far worse than the United States. They look okay productively in Europe even though productivity declined because the whole Eurozone contracted so badly. Even Fiat are moaning about Italian productivity.
Are you saying Italy joined the Euro in 1995?, the currency didn't exist till 1999 and they agreed to join it in 1992 via the Maastricht Treaty. In any case the size of manufacturing in their economy could point to their failure to grow their service sectors in line with other nations. The UK for example has built its entire economy on the financial services sector since the 1980's and this has been responsible for most of the GDP growth since that time.
The only thing that the size of the Italian manufacturing industry as a percentage of GDP shows is that they have failed to diversify in a changing world. When combined with the productivity decline all you have done is offer an explanation for their lack of growth not proof of their manufacturing prowess.
Also to quote the Economist on Berlusconi:
"His poll ratings are falling relentlessly, largely because of Italy?s economic stagnation. On June 12th-13th he suffered his third and most significant political defeat in less than a month, when he lost a clutch of referendums."
Actually as even the BBC hint, it's not primarily down to wages and a Reuters article on the same subject makes it clear. The decision by Foxconn to site a plant in Brazil is more related to high import tariffs in Brazil and Mercosur.
Apple's cheapest iPad, for example, retails for about $860 in Brazil, versus $400 in the United States.
Now I would argue that Brazil and the rest of Mercosur lose more from those import tariffs than they will gain, but that's a different discussion.
I was responding on the argument that was made earlier in the thread that Apple could not set up again in the US without decades of investment first, showing that Foxconn seemingly can do things fast.
The primary reason for manufacturing in Brazil is of course accessing the market but also it makes sense to diversify production incase there are any wage/currency shocks in China or god forbid a Japan style disaster.
To the commenter who said Foxconn are nowhere in Brazil the article states:
Meanwhile, Brazil's science and technology minister Aloizio Mercadante said if discussions and negotiations go smoothly, Foxconn is planning to begin assembling iPads at its plants in Brazil as early as this year.
That doesn't seem like nowhere but who knows. Seems a fast timescale doesn't it.
EDIT: Anyhow it is 2.30am here so I am off to sleep. I am definitely going back to being a lurker on this. Too many intransigent ego's for me.
DOUBLE EDIT: How many unnecessary insults will be in this reply coming. It has taken 20 minutes so far so my guess is 7. Sheesh.
If you really want more manufacturing in the US, then lobby for more employment deregulation, including any special legal privileges granted to unions.
But, in the end, this is the dynamic that happens. There are a wide array of jobs in the US that don't fall into the categories of "flipping burgers" (which are entry level jobs for teenagers) and high-tech doctorate jobs in hi-tech and bio-tech. Most of the people I work with are all pretty middle class. We all earn middle class wage and live in middle class homes. None of us manufacture anything. There are also tons of people working in manufacturing in the US, they are just manufacturing much higher value things than the stuff we outsource to places like China and Malaysia.
What we need is for the government to get out of the way of business and the economy will grow and create tons of jobs. But most of these will not be the jobs from yesteryear...and that's probably going to be okay.
Get real, one of the major reasons that the USA is an economic basket case is because the government is run by business [and by association the military (huge business)]. So, how can the government leave itself along.
Get real, one of the major reasons that the USA is an economic basket case is because the government is run by business [and by association the military (huge business)]. So, how can the government leave itself along.
Good going! You're part of the way there. Keep going and you'll unravel the rest of it.
Vw's are premium and mass market in much the same way as an Apple iPhone is. This would be a strange forum to say you can't be both.
I would argue that BMW are the premium mass market equivalent of Apple. VW as a marque are more mass market, less premium. Consider the VW Golf, at around 16k it doesn't sell in the UK for appreciably more than an equivalent hatchback from Purgeot - the 308 is also 16k. VW doesn't enjoy a special pricing position across all its models, but it is profitable as incidentally is much of the rest of the european car - Renault, Purgeot maybe even Fiat in a good year with a stiff breeze behind it.
Car makers haven't tended to build cars in China to export to Europe, they built them in cheap EU members. In fact looking at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/sta..._in_motor_cars is very interesting. It's old data (2008) but I don't have time right now to drill into their database for the recent numbers.
Even as Europe exports its cars primarily to wealthy markets they also import their cars primarily from wealthy markets. The bulk of our mass-market vehicles are built within the trading block, though they have obviously moved around within it - in much the same way that US production has migrated from Detroit to the South. This is why the Japanese makers built so much manufacturing capacity in the UK.
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You say that UK car production is almost all Japanese production. Jaguar/Land Rover are owned by Indians, MG is owned by the Chinese. BMW build all the Mini's here in Oxford and also own Rolls Royce. Aston Martin are British owned and VW own Bentley. Virtually all of those are premium brands!. Even the Nissan factory is building the new expensively priced Leaf electric car. You are speaking without bothering to find out the real facts.
Current Japanese manufacturing within the uk is around 850k units which is more than all the other makers put together. Given how much of the employment in the industry is spread out among component manufacturers that's about the best proxy that we could find of importance from an employment perspective. Are others making more money in the UK? Perhaps, but since you are discussing moving manufacturing to high cost countries it's really employment that matters surely?
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Italian labour productivity per person employed in 2009 was worse than Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway within Europe and far worse than the United States.
Averaged across the whole country it's terrible, Il Mezzogiorno isn't a place you'd want to make anything, even though wages there are lower. When I made my comment about Italian productivity I was referring to Northern Italian productivity in clusters like the Veneto - which as an avid reader of the economist I'm sure you know are far more similar to German levels.
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Are you saying Italy joined the Euro in 1995?, the currency didn't exist till 1999 and they agreed to join it in 1992 via the Maastricht Treaty.
Yes, I typoed there but even in 1995 it was already in the ERM, so the same forces applied. Lira/ECU was 2073 in Jan 1995 and 1942 by Dec 1998 - so actually stronger -ie. by the mid 90s the Italians had stopped depreciating their currency.
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In any case the size of manufacturing in their economy could point to their failure to grow their service sectors in line with other nations.
The UK for example has built its entire economy on the financial services sector since the 1980's and this has been responsible for most of the GDP growth since that time.
Il Sorpasso famously took place in 1987, so at least until the early 90s Italy was growing faster than the UK - which would indicate that it was not just a failure to grow services but an active ability to grow manufacturing.
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If you had paid attention to the news in the last week you would have known all this.
It's comments like that which make me think that
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. I'm not sure you even believe what you are saying you just want a feeling of being superior, it isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about your ego.
The point that I was trying to make before you dropped a thousand links on everything I said was that industrial clusters can remain viable in rich economies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all manufacturing can be easily moved back to them. Cars and aerospace are both great examples of highly sophisticated industrial products that are manufactured in the west - often at the cost of considerable state backing whether German style cheap finance, UK style development loans for Rolls Royce or US style military program padding for Boeing.
Trying to create a new consumer electronics cluster in the USA from scratch would be extremely expensive, and likely unsuccessful - it makes far more sense to build on the clusters that america already has.
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DOUBLE EDIT: How many unnecessary insults will be in this reply coming. It has taken 20 minutes so far so my guess is 7. Sheesh
I realize that you think you're some terribly injured party being unfairly insulted and sneered at by a horrible egotist but I strongly recommend that you consider your own postings. My first post quoting you may have attacked your positions but it in no way insulted you. You began snarking with comments like 'But of course I bow to your economic mastery.' - and so I repayed you in kind by snarking right back. I'm quite comfortable with such tactics, or I'm quite happy with a reasoned discussion based on the facts - but if you want the latter you have to actually stick to it.
People always say we need to bring manufacturing jobs back to the US and others say we need to concentrate on high level design and engineering and outsource the factory work to China.
One thing to keep in mind is that although relations with China may be very pleasant at this time, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We could very easily find ourselves in a political disagreement with China which might leave us in a conflict with absolutely no manufacturing capability here in the states in order to defend ourselves. Things can change overnight in the political world, however it takes years to ramp up high tech manufacturing. Therefore I would suggest that from a national security perspective we need to keep manufacturing alive in the US.
What everyone needs to realize is today's economy is based on credit and is global.
This means that developed nations, like the US, can no longer afford to keep manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are for developing nations only, not developed nations. This is how they will grow their market, improve their human and worker rights laws, and basically catch up to us in these regards. We are a great distance from the heady times of WWII, where we could manufacture bombs and bullets to create wealth and grab that American Middle Class Dream.
As a developed nation, we should only be concerned about jobs that can't be outsourced. Inventions and Scientific, Creative fields, Computers and Technology, Financial and Legal fields, as well as retail, food services and Education. These are the areas we need to be focused on. Americans need to give up the ghost that is manufacturing. Manufacturing is how we made it this far, but it is now the rest of the world's turn to use manufacturing to achieve their middle class dream.
The benefits to us are increasingly apparent. You may not like it that the Maytag plant closed down, but the upside is $1 kitchen items and $2 electronics. I'm happy for this trade and I think you should be too.
One thing to keep in mind is that although relations with China may be very pleasant at this time, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We could very easily find ourselves in a political disagreement with China which might leave us in a conflict with absolutely no manufacturing capability here in the states in order to defend ourselves. Things can change overnight in the political world, however it takes years to ramp up high tech manufacturing. Therefore I would suggest that from a national security perspective we need to keep manufacturing alive in the US.
Actually the reason why we won't hit the catastrophic scenario is precisely because we are so entangled together. They need us as much as we need them. Globalization of the economy means developed (and developing) nations are far less likely to fight each other. If we go isolationist, as you suggest, it becomes much easier for confrontations to happen.
Our entanglements produce a better scenario. Foxconn employs alot of people right? Hundreds of thousands, and their business comes primarily from American companies like Apple. If Foxconn mistreats their employees (as has happened) this creates a political situation back in the US and Apple can lose business. This forces our American companies to put pressure on a company like Foxconn to improve worker quality of life and pay, which will in turn cause China to embrace human and equal rights sooner. The pressure comes economically and through market forces, rather than from governments which simply resist each other's political requests.
In this way economic globalization is a very humanitarian thing, it's a rising tide that can lift all boats. It avoids WW3. It may mean that the US is hurt a bit in the short term, as we end up having to wrap our heads around this new idea, accept that manufacturing is not ever, ever coming back, but it will in the end create a more peaceful and humanitarian world which is what I think we all want.
Actually the reason why we won't hit the catastrophic scenario is precisely because we are so entangled together. They need us as much as we need them. Globalization of the economy means developed (and developing) nations are far less likely to fight each other. If we go isolationist, as you suggest, it becomes much easier for confrontations to happen.
Our entanglements produce a better scenario. Foxconn employs alot of people right? Hundreds of thousands, and their business comes primarily from American companies like Apple. If Foxconn mistreats their employees (as has happened) this creates a political situation back in the US and Apple can lose business. This forces our American companies to put pressure on a company like Foxconn to improve worker quality of life and pay, which will in turn cause China to embrace human and equal rights sooner. The pressure comes economically and through market forces, rather than from governments which simply resist each other's political requests.
In this way economic globalization is a very humanitarian thing, it's a rising tide that can lift all boats. It avoids WW3. It may mean that the US is hurt a bit in the short term, as we end up having to wrap our heads around this new idea, accept that manufacturing is not ever, ever coming back, but it will in the end create a more peaceful and humanitarian world which is what I think we all want.
So your idea is to create a better world by slowing raping the planet and taking advantage of the poor guy, wherever he may be, until even he has a few rights? Sounds pretty freaking screwed up to me. That's most positive sounding Republican big businesses spin I've ever heard.
Don;t forget unemployment is ridiculously up and we're trillions in debt with no jobs coming back...
So your idea is to create a better world by slowing raping the planet and taking advantage of the poor guy, wherever he may be, until even he has a few rights? Sounds pretty freaking screwed up to me. That's most positive sounding Republican big businesses spin I've ever heard.
Don;t forget unemployment is ridiculously up and we're trillions in debt with no jobs coming back...
Ok where to start...
First off, this isn't 'my idea'. Secondly, the poor guys (you mean the poor Chinese worker?) is perhaps slowly but in a very real way acquiring more income and a better life than he's had before. Is this growth process perfect? No, far from it. It's akin to our own industrial revolution, we had to go through some growing pains as we phased in concepts like the 40 hour work week and phased out child labor. But for them it's happening at a more rapid pace, what has taken us over 100 years they will do in 20 or 30 and this is in large part because of our external market and political pressure on them to fix issues.
Thirdly, I don't see how he has less rights. He's acquiring more rights if anything, as worker rights that are more in line with American standards become adopted at places like Foxconn. It is not perfect, but they are on a path to do better than the poor farming families that they came from.
I'm disappointed by your accusation that this is some kind of Republican big business spin. I'll admit my own politics are perhaps an odd mix of Liberal and Libertarian viewpoints, but I think you need to consider the source here. I voted for Obama in 08 and will gladly vote for him again in '12, and I agree with him on 80% of his actions and policies. That would make me very not Republican.
What I do have is a pragmatic sense of what it will take for the United States to achieve a 21st century economy. It is humanitarian of us to give up manufacturing and allow developing economies to assume that mantle, as it helps our citizens with inexpensive goods and helps their societies achieve financial freedom and democracy. Wouldn't you rather see them achieve rights and freedom through trade and market forces rather than at the barrel of a gun? I definitely would. This is not a US centric view, it is not an America-first view. It's a global view that thinks about where the human race might be in 2 or 3 centuries of growth and development.
Trying to hold onto manufacturing with an iron grip is not the solution to our financial problems. Yes the debt is nuts and it's not good for us, I would never dispute that. But the forced entanglements all nations share now does keep us involved and trading with each other. The system is founded on credit and trust among nations and institutions. It's in everyone's interest to keep that going.
There is one way to curtail unemployment in this country and get blue collar jobs happening again: We need a major, government driven initiative to move to a green economy. Refit buildings with high tech equipment and efficiency, install bullet trains around the country, begin developing and building suborbital flight systems. Begin the investments and work now to make carbon fiber and space elevators a reality. Have a real space initiative. Build and install a national electric car grid.
There's a bunch of these sorts of things we could do in the US that can't be outsourced that could put people to work physically making things for decades to come. But there's no way Obama (as much as he might want to) could get this sort of initiative through congress as long as the deficit-obsessed obstructionist Republicans are in charge. The choice is actually very simple for people, do they want to solve the jobs problem or do they want to solve the debt and deficit? It's not possible to do both right now, one will come at the cost of the other. I say solve the jobs issue now and worry about the debt later, but I realize this probably won't happen as it's politically unpopular.
Comments
Ok. VW then if you prefer. It's still not a 'luxury' or 'quality' brand, it's a mass market car. The UK car industry which you seemed to think was just Jaguar is in fact almost entirely Japanese manufacturers, and again they're making mass market vehicles here - nothing to do with luxury products - everything to do with low unit costs.
This may be hard for you to understand but if I say something is high, and you say it's dropping that is actually not proof that it isn't high. A thing can be high and simultaneously dropping, such as Nokia's market share. It's a complex concept though and I appreciate you may have trouble with it. In a similar fashion something can be low but rising, this isn't relevant to the topic at hand but it may help you in future life.
Yes Italian productivity is dropping, it has been since Euro accession back in the 95, because wage inflation hasn't adjusted to the new reality that they can no longer keep depreciating their currency. However, in spite of that, the level of industry in the economy is relatively high at 25% compared to 18% for the UK, 22% for the USA, 24% for France, and 24% for Spain. Germany is higher of course at 30%, but remember that the number for Italy is nationwide and the North-South gap is vast. (Figures from the CIA- world factbook)
So even with their dropping productivity they're still high enough that the Northern clusters are able to compete in some industries - those where their productivity was highest. And yes - it's dropping across all sectors (wage inflation and euro membership is economy wide), but that still means that things that started high, are higher than things that started low. Is that clear? Should I use smaller words?
You appear to have confused economic decline and sex with underage prostitutes.
I bow to your ability to link obscure academic papers that don't even prove your point
See this is the reason I did not join this site as stated in my first post. I'm not sure you even believe what you are saying you just want a feeling of being superior, it isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about your ego.
Vw's are premium and mass market in much the same way as an Apple iPhone is. This would be a strange forum to say you can't be both. Yes unusual but not impossible. VW also own Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini and Bugatti which are certainly high end. They make their cheaper brands (built on the same platforms as the premium cars) in cheaper countries. Skoda for example build in the Czech Republic, China and India.
German built VW's (and Audi's) are sold at a much higher price than Opel or Ford cars. Here is just one article that describes a VW as a premium vehicle.
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/volkswagen-world/news/161
VW sell virtually the same cars under different brands. The German made premium brands have higher prices which offset the increased wage costs.
Read the following:
http://www.wintonsworld.com/cars/car...W-Quarter.html
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"?We?ve long argued that VW?s number one goal is not profit maximisation, but rather full employment in its home state of Lower Saxony, but it seems as if VW is not only able to fulfil its employment obligations to its controlling state shareholder, but also report near best-in-industry profitability"
"VW was the only German (auto) company not to cut headcount in the recession. VW has labour productivity in its German plants that is about half what its international volume brand peers achieve. VW continues to carry many vanity projects that divert resources and or lose money like Bugatti and Phaeton, but it doesn?t seem to matter,? Warburton said."
VW a state controlled enterprise that achieves full employment in a developed economy with high wages in factories that have half the productivity of volume rivals, all whilst maintaining near best in industry profitability.
This is really some achievement and knocks your ill formed argument out of the water.
You say that UK car production is almost all Japanese production. Jaguar/Land Rover are owned by Indians, MG is owned by the Chinese. BMW build all the Mini's here in Oxford and also own Rolls Royce. Aston Martin are British owned and VW own Bentley. Virtually all of those are premium brands!. Even the Nissan factory is building the new expensively priced Leaf electric car. You are speaking without bothering to find out the real facts.
Italian labour productivity per person employed in 2009 was worse than Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway within Europe and far worse than the United States. They look okay productively in Europe even though productivity declined because the whole Eurozone contracted so badly. Even Fiat are moaning about Italian productivity.
http://www.rpmgo.com/fiat-unhappy-wi...-productivity/
Are you saying Italy joined the Euro in 1995?, the currency didn't exist till 1999 and they agreed to join it in 1992 via the Maastricht Treaty. In any case the size of manufacturing in their economy could point to their failure to grow their service sectors in line with other nations. The UK for example has built its entire economy on the financial services sector since the 1980's and this has been responsible for most of the GDP growth since that time.
The only thing that the size of the Italian manufacturing industry as a percentage of GDP shows is that they have failed to diversify in a changing world. When combined with the productivity decline all you have done is offer an explanation for their lack of growth not proof of their manufacturing prowess.
Also to quote the Economist on Berlusconi:
"His poll ratings are falling relentlessly, largely because of Italy?s economic stagnation. On June 12th-13th he suffered his third and most significant political defeat in less than a month, when he lost a clutch of referendums."
http://www.economist.com/node/188367...36706&fsrc=rss
If you had paid attention to the news in the last week you would have known all this.
Actually as even the BBC hint, it's not primarily down to wages and a Reuters article on the same subject makes it clear. The decision by Foxconn to site a plant in Brazil is more related to high import tariffs in Brazil and Mercosur.
Apple's cheapest iPad, for example, retails for about $860 in Brazil, versus $400 in the United States.
Now I would argue that Brazil and the rest of Mercosur lose more from those import tariffs than they will gain, but that's a different discussion.
I was responding on the argument that was made earlier in the thread that Apple could not set up again in the US without decades of investment first, showing that Foxconn seemingly can do things fast.
The primary reason for manufacturing in Brazil is of course accessing the market but also it makes sense to diversify production incase there are any wage/currency shocks in China or god forbid a Japan style disaster.
To the commenter who said Foxconn are nowhere in Brazil the article states:
Meanwhile, Brazil's science and technology minister Aloizio Mercadante said if discussions and negotiations go smoothly, Foxconn is planning to begin assembling iPads at its plants in Brazil as early as this year.
That doesn't seem like nowhere but who knows. Seems a fast timescale doesn't it.
EDIT: Anyhow it is 2.30am here so I am off to sleep. I am definitely going back to being a lurker on this. Too many intransigent ego's for me.
DOUBLE EDIT: How many unnecessary insults will be in this reply coming. It has taken 20 minutes so far so my guess is 7. Sheesh.
If you really want more manufacturing in the US, then lobby for more employment deregulation, including any special legal privileges granted to unions.
But, in the end, this is the dynamic that happens. There are a wide array of jobs in the US that don't fall into the categories of "flipping burgers" (which are entry level jobs for teenagers) and high-tech doctorate jobs in hi-tech and bio-tech. Most of the people I work with are all pretty middle class. We all earn middle class wage and live in middle class homes. None of us manufacture anything. There are also tons of people working in manufacturing in the US, they are just manufacturing much higher value things than the stuff we outsource to places like China and Malaysia.
What we need is for the government to get out of the way of business and the economy will grow and create tons of jobs. But most of these will not be the jobs from yesteryear...and that's probably going to be okay.
Get real, one of the major reasons that the USA is an economic basket case is because the government is run by business [and by association the military (huge business)]. So, how can the government leave itself along.
Get real, one of the major reasons that the USA is an economic basket case is because the government is run by business [and by association the military (huge business)]. So, how can the government leave itself along.
Good going! You're part of the way there. Keep going and you'll unravel the rest of it.
They are forgetting about the companies Goodwill and intangible assets, some of which are sometimes larger than the tangible assets themselves.
Only factoring tangible assets isnt giving you the full picture here. Business consolidations dont work that way.
Shame.
Vw's are premium and mass market in much the same way as an Apple iPhone is. This would be a strange forum to say you can't be both.
I would argue that BMW are the premium mass market equivalent of Apple. VW as a marque are more mass market, less premium. Consider the VW Golf, at around 16k it doesn't sell in the UK for appreciably more than an equivalent hatchback from Purgeot - the 308 is also 16k. VW doesn't enjoy a special pricing position across all its models, but it is profitable as incidentally is much of the rest of the european car - Renault, Purgeot maybe even Fiat in a good year with a stiff breeze behind it.
Car makers haven't tended to build cars in China to export to Europe, they built them in cheap EU members. In fact looking at http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/sta..._in_motor_cars is very interesting. It's old data (2008) but I don't have time right now to drill into their database for the recent numbers.
Even as Europe exports its cars primarily to wealthy markets they also import their cars primarily from wealthy markets. The bulk of our mass-market vehicles are built within the trading block, though they have obviously moved around within it - in much the same way that US production has migrated from Detroit to the South. This is why the Japanese makers built so much manufacturing capacity in the UK.
You say that UK car production is almost all Japanese production. Jaguar/Land Rover are owned by Indians, MG is owned by the Chinese. BMW build all the Mini's here in Oxford and also own Rolls Royce. Aston Martin are British owned and VW own Bentley. Virtually all of those are premium brands!. Even the Nissan factory is building the new expensively priced Leaf electric car. You are speaking without bothering to find out the real facts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automot...011_to_present
Current Japanese manufacturing within the uk is around 850k units which is more than all the other makers put together. Given how much of the employment in the industry is spread out among component manufacturers that's about the best proxy that we could find of importance from an employment perspective. Are others making more money in the UK? Perhaps, but since you are discussing moving manufacturing to high cost countries it's really employment that matters surely?
Italian labour productivity per person employed in 2009 was worse than Belgium, Ireland, France, Luxembourg, Austria and Norway within Europe and far worse than the United States.
Averaged across the whole country it's terrible, Il Mezzogiorno isn't a place you'd want to make anything, even though wages there are lower. When I made my comment about Italian productivity I was referring to Northern Italian productivity in clusters like the Veneto - which as an avid reader of the economist I'm sure you know are far more similar to German levels.
Are you saying Italy joined the Euro in 1995?, the currency didn't exist till 1999 and they agreed to join it in 1992 via the Maastricht Treaty.
Yes, I typoed there but even in 1995 it was already in the ERM, so the same forces applied. Lira/ECU was 2073 in Jan 1995 and 1942 by Dec 1998 - so actually stronger -ie. by the mid 90s the Italians had stopped depreciating their currency.
In any case the size of manufacturing in their economy could point to their failure to grow their service sectors in line with other nations.
The UK for example has built its entire economy on the financial services sector since the 1980's and this has been responsible for most of the GDP growth since that time.
Il Sorpasso famously took place in 1987, so at least until the early 90s Italy was growing faster than the UK - which would indicate that it was not just a failure to grow services but an active ability to grow manufacturing.
If you had paid attention to the news in the last week you would have known all this.
It's comments like that which make me think that
. I'm not sure you even believe what you are saying you just want a feeling of being superior, it isn't about sharing knowledge, it is about your ego.
The point that I was trying to make before you dropped a thousand links on everything I said was that industrial clusters can remain viable in rich economies, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all manufacturing can be easily moved back to them. Cars and aerospace are both great examples of highly sophisticated industrial products that are manufactured in the west - often at the cost of considerable state backing whether German style cheap finance, UK style development loans for Rolls Royce or US style military program padding for Boeing.
Trying to create a new consumer electronics cluster in the USA from scratch would be extremely expensive, and likely unsuccessful - it makes far more sense to build on the clusters that america already has.
DOUBLE EDIT: How many unnecessary insults will be in this reply coming. It has taken 20 minutes so far so my guess is 7. Sheesh
I realize that you think you're some terribly injured party being unfairly insulted and sneered at by a horrible egotist but I strongly recommend that you consider your own postings. My first post quoting you may have attacked your positions but it in no way insulted you. You began snarking with comments like 'But of course I bow to your economic mastery.' - and so I repayed you in kind by snarking right back. I'm quite comfortable with such tactics, or I'm quite happy with a reasoned discussion based on the facts - but if you want the latter you have to actually stick to it.
I know the focus is on Apple in this article. But I find it interesting that Samsung's liquidity is also huge
Note the chart shows Apple's cash and equivalents while the other companies show their enterprise value, not their liquidity.
...and buy Messi from Barcelona and give him to Man Utd for free!
You mean buy Man Utd, sell all the good players and watch them get relegated.
MARS, Bitches!
iColony FTW!
They could send everyone in the U.S a check for $222.
Not a check, an Apple Store gift voucher!
One thing to keep in mind is that although relations with China may be very pleasant at this time, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We could very easily find ourselves in a political disagreement with China which might leave us in a conflict with absolutely no manufacturing capability here in the states in order to defend ourselves. Things can change overnight in the political world, however it takes years to ramp up high tech manufacturing. Therefore I would suggest that from a national security perspective we need to keep manufacturing alive in the US.
This means that developed nations, like the US, can no longer afford to keep manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing jobs are for developing nations only, not developed nations. This is how they will grow their market, improve their human and worker rights laws, and basically catch up to us in these regards. We are a great distance from the heady times of WWII, where we could manufacture bombs and bullets to create wealth and grab that American Middle Class Dream.
As a developed nation, we should only be concerned about jobs that can't be outsourced. Inventions and Scientific, Creative fields, Computers and Technology, Financial and Legal fields, as well as retail, food services and Education. These are the areas we need to be focused on. Americans need to give up the ghost that is manufacturing. Manufacturing is how we made it this far, but it is now the rest of the world's turn to use manufacturing to achieve their middle class dream.
The benefits to us are increasingly apparent. You may not like it that the Maytag plant closed down, but the upside is $1 kitchen items and $2 electronics. I'm happy for this trade and I think you should be too.
One thing to keep in mind is that although relations with China may be very pleasant at this time, you never know what will happen tomorrow. We could very easily find ourselves in a political disagreement with China which might leave us in a conflict with absolutely no manufacturing capability here in the states in order to defend ourselves. Things can change overnight in the political world, however it takes years to ramp up high tech manufacturing. Therefore I would suggest that from a national security perspective we need to keep manufacturing alive in the US.
Actually the reason why we won't hit the catastrophic scenario is precisely because we are so entangled together. They need us as much as we need them. Globalization of the economy means developed (and developing) nations are far less likely to fight each other. If we go isolationist, as you suggest, it becomes much easier for confrontations to happen.
Our entanglements produce a better scenario. Foxconn employs alot of people right? Hundreds of thousands, and their business comes primarily from American companies like Apple. If Foxconn mistreats their employees (as has happened) this creates a political situation back in the US and Apple can lose business. This forces our American companies to put pressure on a company like Foxconn to improve worker quality of life and pay, which will in turn cause China to embrace human and equal rights sooner. The pressure comes economically and through market forces, rather than from governments which simply resist each other's political requests.
In this way economic globalization is a very humanitarian thing, it's a rising tide that can lift all boats. It avoids WW3. It may mean that the US is hurt a bit in the short term, as we end up having to wrap our heads around this new idea, accept that manufacturing is not ever, ever coming back, but it will in the end create a more peaceful and humanitarian world which is what I think we all want.
Actually the reason why we won't hit the catastrophic scenario is precisely because we are so entangled together. They need us as much as we need them. Globalization of the economy means developed (and developing) nations are far less likely to fight each other. If we go isolationist, as you suggest, it becomes much easier for confrontations to happen.
Our entanglements produce a better scenario. Foxconn employs alot of people right? Hundreds of thousands, and their business comes primarily from American companies like Apple. If Foxconn mistreats their employees (as has happened) this creates a political situation back in the US and Apple can lose business. This forces our American companies to put pressure on a company like Foxconn to improve worker quality of life and pay, which will in turn cause China to embrace human and equal rights sooner. The pressure comes economically and through market forces, rather than from governments which simply resist each other's political requests.
In this way economic globalization is a very humanitarian thing, it's a rising tide that can lift all boats. It avoids WW3. It may mean that the US is hurt a bit in the short term, as we end up having to wrap our heads around this new idea, accept that manufacturing is not ever, ever coming back, but it will in the end create a more peaceful and humanitarian world which is what I think we all want.
So your idea is to create a better world by slowing raping the planet and taking advantage of the poor guy, wherever he may be, until even he has a few rights? Sounds pretty freaking screwed up to me. That's most positive sounding Republican big businesses spin I've ever heard.
Don;t forget unemployment is ridiculously up and we're trillions in debt with no jobs coming back...
So your idea is to create a better world by slowing raping the planet and taking advantage of the poor guy, wherever he may be, until even he has a few rights? Sounds pretty freaking screwed up to me. That's most positive sounding Republican big businesses spin I've ever heard.
Don;t forget unemployment is ridiculously up and we're trillions in debt with no jobs coming back...
Ok where to start...
First off, this isn't 'my idea'. Secondly, the poor guys (you mean the poor Chinese worker?) is perhaps slowly but in a very real way acquiring more income and a better life than he's had before. Is this growth process perfect? No, far from it. It's akin to our own industrial revolution, we had to go through some growing pains as we phased in concepts like the 40 hour work week and phased out child labor. But for them it's happening at a more rapid pace, what has taken us over 100 years they will do in 20 or 30 and this is in large part because of our external market and political pressure on them to fix issues.
Thirdly, I don't see how he has less rights. He's acquiring more rights if anything, as worker rights that are more in line with American standards become adopted at places like Foxconn. It is not perfect, but they are on a path to do better than the poor farming families that they came from.
I'm disappointed by your accusation that this is some kind of Republican big business spin. I'll admit my own politics are perhaps an odd mix of Liberal and Libertarian viewpoints, but I think you need to consider the source here. I voted for Obama in 08 and will gladly vote for him again in '12, and I agree with him on 80% of his actions and policies. That would make me very not Republican.
What I do have is a pragmatic sense of what it will take for the United States to achieve a 21st century economy. It is humanitarian of us to give up manufacturing and allow developing economies to assume that mantle, as it helps our citizens with inexpensive goods and helps their societies achieve financial freedom and democracy. Wouldn't you rather see them achieve rights and freedom through trade and market forces rather than at the barrel of a gun? I definitely would. This is not a US centric view, it is not an America-first view. It's a global view that thinks about where the human race might be in 2 or 3 centuries of growth and development.
Trying to hold onto manufacturing with an iron grip is not the solution to our financial problems. Yes the debt is nuts and it's not good for us, I would never dispute that. But the forced entanglements all nations share now does keep us involved and trading with each other. The system is founded on credit and trust among nations and institutions. It's in everyone's interest to keep that going.
There is one way to curtail unemployment in this country and get blue collar jobs happening again: We need a major, government driven initiative to move to a green economy. Refit buildings with high tech equipment and efficiency, install bullet trains around the country, begin developing and building suborbital flight systems. Begin the investments and work now to make carbon fiber and space elevators a reality. Have a real space initiative. Build and install a national electric car grid.
There's a bunch of these sorts of things we could do in the US that can't be outsourced that could put people to work physically making things for decades to come. But there's no way Obama (as much as he might want to) could get this sort of initiative through congress as long as the deficit-obsessed obstructionist Republicans are in charge. The choice is actually very simple for people, do they want to solve the jobs problem or do they want to solve the debt and deficit? It's not possible to do both right now, one will come at the cost of the other. I say solve the jobs issue now and worry about the debt later, but I realize this probably won't happen as it's politically unpopular.
Ok where to start...
First off, this isn't 'my idea'.
Can we trust you about that? You might in fact be Dr Henry Kissinger.
*listens hard for a mumbling german accent*
...
I voted for Obama in 08 and will gladly vote for him again in '12,
Ok, ok, I get the message! You are in fact not Dr Henry Kissinger
Can we trust you about that? You might in fact be Dr Henry Kissinger.
*listens hard for a mumbling german accent*
Ok, ok, I get the message! You are in fact not Dr Henry Kissinger
I LOL'd, thank you