PDA

View Full Version : Cheap chinese made, maybe not anymore.



greg lindsey
07-08-2010, 9:37 PM
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Companies-brace-for-end-of-apf-2437567795.html?x=0just read this, thought i would share it. sorry I guess the link didnt work.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Companies-brace-for-end-of-apf-2437567795.html?x=0

Greg Peterson
07-08-2010, 9:43 PM
Don't see this as bad news.

Ken Fitzgerald
07-08-2010, 10:12 PM
I will remind everyone that this thread will be watched closely and politics...yes international politics are not allowed per the TOSs.

Montgomery Scott
07-08-2010, 10:19 PM
Anyone with half a brain saw this as a historical inevitability. The endless cycle of companies moving to the cheapest labor countries until the cost of labor increases too much and on to the next country.

Eventually economies will balance and it will be better for everyone, in theory at least.

Greg Peterson
07-08-2010, 11:40 PM
Sounds like the Chinese communist regime will be tested. Let the workers strike or force them back to the factory.

I guess the US isn't the only place where corporations have to deal with those pesky, greedy workers.

greg lindsey
07-09-2010, 1:27 AM
I didnt put this up as a polotical statement, I was thinking more on the lines of material cost for most of us, in the awards and engraving side have a increases, I tought this may shed a little light on to what was happening. If wanting to bring jobs back to the USA was a political statement... then God Bless America and put us back to work.

Brian Elfert
07-09-2010, 7:55 AM
There are still plenty of other countries to be exploited for cheap labor. Manufacturing will just move to other countries if China gets too expensive.

What I don't understand is how a manufacturer can build a plant costing millions, run it for 5 to 10 years, close it, and build another plant in some other country.

Rod Sheridan
07-09-2010, 8:21 AM
There are still plenty of other countries to be exploited for cheap labor. Manufacturing will just move to other countries if China gets too expensive.

What I don't understand is how a manufacturer can build a plant costing millions, run it for 5 to 10 years, close it, and build another plant in some other country.

That's not hard to understand Brian, the millions the corporation spends to build the plant are a small sum compared to the hundreds of millions they save by having the plant in that location.

If markets change, they build a new plant in a new area to once again spend millions, and save hundreds of millions.

As individuals we tend to have a misplaced regard for buildings. A corporation regards a building as a line item on a spreadsheet, nothing more.

Regards, Rod.

David Weaver
07-09-2010, 8:33 AM
A buddy of mine who sources heavy castings (i mean, like stuff that's 25 tons, not stuff that's 250 pounds), etc, said that they are seeing a shift to cheaper places than china for the castings. The article mentions vietnam, and that's what he mentioned - they're going to vietnam for more stuff where cheap is important and quality isn't quite so much so.

Curt Harms
07-09-2010, 9:38 AM
but part of the reason Japan, Germany and countries whose infrastructure was destroyed during WWII have prospered is they have modern plants and infrastructure. The U.S. has been using a lot of plants etc. built for the war effort and have become badly outmoded. They've been abandoned as jobs moved elsewhere. Being abandoned as obsolete is far preferable to being bombed IMO.

The question becomes will there be investment to rebuild the U.S. industrial base? There almost certainly won't be hordes of assembly line workers. There probably will be hordes of automation and robots. I was reading a web site regarding steel production and labor hrs. per ton of steel has dropped 90% since WWII. To have the same number of steel production jobs we'd have to produce 10 times as much steel. That obviously ain't happening. In 1950 you'd have lines of skilled people standing at mostly manual machine tools. Today you have 1 or 2 people tending CNC machines doing the same job. The only constant is change.

Butch Edwards
07-09-2010, 10:42 AM
it' will definately affect prices shown on newer tools, should that happen(higher wages)..like previous statedm, it was inevitable, as humans are humans, and when they see how much more $$ they can make(because other industrial countries pay a higher wage) they're on it like a Hobo on a pork chop....

get yer gear now,fellows...;)

Michael Weber
07-09-2010, 11:22 AM
it' will definately affect prices shown on newer tools, should that happen(higher wages)..like previous statedm, it was inevitable, as humans are humans, and when they see how much more $$ they can make(because other industrial countries pay a higher wage) they're on it like a Hobo on a pork chop....

get yer gear now,fellows...;)

Hobo on a pork chop:D thanks for making me smile

Pat Germain
07-09-2010, 11:40 AM
A corporation regards a building as a line item on a spreadsheet, nothing more.

Right you are, Rod. Here in Colorado Springs, Intel built a GINORMOUS campus in 2001. They completely abandonded it a couple of years ago and moved the entire operation to (drumroll...) Vietnam!

Last I heard, my local city government was looking at taking over the campus. I think they'd have a hard time filling it. Like I said, it's GINORMOUS!

Everyone wonders why so many strip malls in town sit empty while corporations build new strip malls. It's a minor expense which they view as necessary to be in the right part of town with the right floor plan at the right time.

Matt Meiser
07-09-2010, 11:55 AM
What I don't understand is how a manufacturer can build a plant costing millions, run it for 5 to 10 years, close it, and build another plant in some other country.

They don't even have to build it in another country. Its commonplace for auto suppliers to build a single-product plant near an auto assembly plant, run it for a few years while they have a contract to produce that part, and then if they don't get the contract at the next renewal they close it.

And before anyone blames the American automakers for this practice it happens with the Japanese manufacturers too.

Matt Meiser
07-09-2010, 12:06 PM
Everyone wonders why so many strip malls in town sit empty while corporations build new strip malls. It's a minor expense which they view as necessary to be in the right part of town with the right floor plan at the right time.

My theory on that: if its a greenfield site is to start requiring the owner put up a bond covering the cost of remediating the site to greenfield if the property goes vacant for more than x months within y years. So say Big-Box-Mart builds a store so you make them put up a bond guranteeing its use for 20 years. If 5 years later they build a Super-Big-Box-Mart across the street and the old Big-Box-Mart isn't repurposed within say 12 months, they have to tear it down and remediate the site. Leave it up to the marketplace to decide if the new tenant/owner has to put up the bond for the remaining 15 years or if Big Box Co has to keep it in place for the full 20 years. Then to encourage re-use or redevelopment of >20 year old properties, waive the requirement for re-use and maybe only require 50% for brownfield redevelopment.

Brian Elfert
07-09-2010, 1:53 PM
As individuals we tend to have a misplaced regard for buildings. A corporation regards a building as a line item on a spreadsheet, nothing more.


I understand buildings are nothing more than a cost to a company, but I don't quite get economics of it. Can't a modern manufacturiing plant cost in excess of $1 billion to build? If a company builds another billion dollar plant in five or six years are they really saving enough money to write off the first billion dollar facility?

There should be some disincentive from an environmental standpoint to keep building and then abandoning huge buildings.

Rod Sheridan
07-09-2010, 2:15 PM
I understand buildings are nothing more than a cost to a company, but I don't quite get economics of it. Can't a modern manufacturiing plant cost in excess of $1 billion to build? If a company builds another billion dollar plant in five or six years are they really saving enough money to write off the first billion dollar facility?

There should be some disincentive from an environmental standpoint to keep building and then abandoning huge buildings.

I agree with you, in North America we're insulated from the true life cycle costs of everything ranging from a billion dollar building to that plastic lid on your morning take out coffee.

Once you start seeing life cycle costs being added up front, it'll influence our activities.

"Yes sir, your new XYZ model automobile is $23,000 plus $3,800 for life cycle costs".

We're slowly starting to see this in NA, many items now carry a partial environmental surcharge at the retail level, such as cleaning products, lubricants, dry cells, electronics etc.

Hopefully it will increase and cover more items in the future.

Regards, Rod.

Brian Ashton
07-09-2010, 8:27 PM
I said it a couple months back that the chinese will not be the cheap manufacturers in the world within the next two business cycles... Thats why china is buying up africa at an alarming rate. That region will be the next industrial revolution. Millions that will work for a dollar a week, or less, and absolutely no human, labour or environmental laws. Sadly africa is ripe for the pickings (exploitation, rape and pillage... what ever you want to call it).

John M Wilson
07-09-2010, 10:42 PM
Having just retired from a large unnamed automotive manufacturer after 33 years, and spending the last several in Facilities Management, I can offer a little insight. The auto plant, and most other highly automated manufacturing facilities, is much more than just the building. The more highly automated, the less of the fraction that is made up by facilities, and the more of the fraction by tooling, which is often quite customized to one particular product. When that product lifecycle is complete, it is common to strip the plant from the floor to the rafters to prepare for the next product. So, it is not much of a leap, profit-wise, to save the money you would spend in removing and rearranging everything and use that toward building a new, state of the art building to house your next set of tooling. And, as several of the earlier posters noted, if there are labor or other advantages in other states/countries, that may be enough to tip the deal.

Rick Fisher
07-10-2010, 1:55 AM
Its all balance. If you make too many demands on business, you encourage them to look offshore.. We have all seen what happens when business goes offshore.

China will continue to manufacture products, so long as they need jobs. If jobs start to leave China, what will the typical Chinese worker do?

It will find its own balance .. The Chinese Government has been artificially keeping its currency undervalued, by tying it to the value of the USD.. That is changing now.. partially because of international pressure, and partially because the Chinese worker wants his dollar to buy more..

China can afford to give more to its employees, but there is a limit. That limit will be reached when it impedes new jobs, but unless there is something else to employ all those workers, the cost will be right for manufacturing..

Same thing is happening in the USA .. right now.. It got too expensive, jobs left.. it will have to get more affordable, or there will be a long term shortage of jobs... There is no other choice.

Butch Edwards
07-10-2010, 12:06 PM
Same thing is happening in the USA .. right now.. It got too expensive, jobs left.. it will have to get more affordable, or there will be a long term shortage of jobs... There is no other choice.
yes there is.... higher import tariffs on those products that went overseas. to make our USA made products lower priced( in order to compete), means to lower wages/material costs/manufacturing costs..and that's going backwards. The object is to do better financially, not worse. Unless the overall object of Globalization is to take from those that have, and pass on to the have-nots, the system is backwards. noone with any common sense can justify the practices of abandoning fairly new buildings,just to build another somewhere else. That pathetic practice has to accept it's share of the financial mess we're facing today.Altho I saw Lowes' do that very thing a few years ago. they built a larger building across the street after the market demands increased for them. I say, they should have built the first building large enough to expand, if needed. That would save a LOT of $$. Businesses and Gov'ts have to get a grip on reality, and stop the insane practices. Empty buildings don't add jobs/tax revenue/ or benefits in any way. Its' obvious to me, that it's just another legal scam.

Ken Fitzgerald
07-10-2010, 12:12 PM
As long as economics is the subject without any political innuendos, this thread will remain open.

Should politics enter the discussion posts will be edited and infractions assigned.

If it becomes to much work to keep up with the politics, the thread will be closed and/or moved from public viewing.

Just a friendly reminder folks.

Cliff Rohrabacher
07-10-2010, 12:30 PM
When I was a kid it was:
" Eat your dinner there are children in China Starving."
Now it is:
"Do your homework there are a billion Chinese doing theirs and they want your job."

greg lindsey
07-10-2010, 1:22 PM
When I was a kid it was:
" Eat your dinner there are children in China Starving."
Now it is:
"Do your homework there are a billion Chinese doing theirs and they want your job."


How true:eek: lol

Rick Fisher
07-10-2010, 2:43 PM
Import tariff's are a two way street.. when you impose them, other countries impose them on you. Without exports, there can be no imports.. so its a balance. Tariffs are also always unpopular at home. Imagine a tariff that doubled or tripled the price of a table saw, or a tax that made the price of a gallon of gasoline $8.00 ..

The "adjustment" is already happening.. Its happening through currency values falling in the short term, and unemployment in the long term. As unemployment drags on, workers become more willing. Its unkind, but true.

I liked the analogy of a glass half full or half empty.. I think we have a better life today, but have the opportunity for a worse life if we choose it.

The improvements in health care have been truly amazing, while the invention, manufacture and abuse of all sorts of illicit drugs has become daunting..

I am not sure if this post would be considered political.. if it is, I apologize..

Ken Fitzgerald
07-10-2010, 2:54 PM
Rick,

I don't see anything political with your statements.



The reason I posted that is sometimes people fail to realize that politics includes international politics too...not just national.....and we have Creekers and lurkers from around the world....... a flippant remark might be meaningless to some and considered an insult to others.

Even among the Moderator Staff, we have people from several countries and as about a diverse group in well known religions as one could reasonably expect too.

The reason we enforce the TOS's profanity clause is we have no way of stopping young impressionable children from accessing this board.

Above all we want to have civil, respectful discussions.

Rick Fisher
07-10-2010, 3:01 PM
Thanks Ken.. makes sense, standards are what make this a great site..

Pat Germain
07-10-2010, 4:33 PM
yes there is.... higher import tariffs on those products that went overseas. to make our USA made products lower priced( in order to compete).

I've never seen a situation where tariffs made anything better. They always make things worse. Tarrifs won't make domestic goods less expensive. They will make imported goods more expensive and that hurts people who import, transport, sell and maintain those goods.

It sounds nice to think the USA could just focus inward and produce everything for itself. Alas, this is no longer possible. The economy is now global, global, global and there's no going back.

Personally, I think we could follow a few examples set by Germany. They only recently became the number two, world exporter after China. German manufacturing creates many well-paying jobs. They focus on brilliant engineering, very efficient production and extremely high quality products. It's very difficult for up and coming economies to compete with all that at a lower price.

Scott Shepherd
07-10-2010, 5:59 PM
German manufacturing creates many well-paying jobs. They focus on brilliant engineering, very efficient production and extremely high quality products. It's very difficult for up and coming economies to compete with all that at a lower price.

We already do that, but we're a manufacturing country that allows idiots to run the manufacturing companies with no manufacturing backgrounds. They run them by the ledger sheet instead of by doing what's right.

I recall working at one place that had higher skilled machinist and assembly mechanics. They had a layoff, then about a month later, called most all of the people back. Senior Management (which I was part of), came in and decided that laying people off was a great idea because they didn't have to pay payroll. So the schedule came out and we saw a 1 month gap 3 months out where we had no large machine orders and the first thing out of their mouth was "We'll just lay people off that month and call them back the following month".

I spoke up and said that was one of the stupidest things I ever heard. I had to explain to these "manufacturing company VP's" that if you do that, then you'll have a situation where you've created the reputation for laying people off every time things are remotely slow. It would soil the company reputation in the market place and all the good machinists and assembly mechanics wouldn't tolerate it. They'd go find work at places that didn't lay off, so in turn, you'd end up with the only people wanting to work there would be people that couldn't keep a job anywhere else, which would mean we would go from first class people to 2nd or 3rd class and with that, quality would suffer, which would mean, in the long term, lost business and a bad reputation in the market.

But what do I know? That's typical of what's running manufacturing in this country these days. They put people in charge that have fancy degrees and no experience rather than taking people with experience and getting them educated to run the company.

I love manufacturing. It was and is my life. Just as many of you are woodworkers until you die, I'll be a machinist until I die. In my opinion, what these people are doing to US manufacturing is a criminal act.

Rick Fisher
07-10-2010, 6:37 PM
If you look at Exports per Capita.. The USA exports $3500 per person..

Germany exports over $13,000 per person..
Even France exports almost $8000 per person..

When President Obama repealed the decision to allow Mexican truck drivers to cross the border into the USA.. like Canadian truck drivers do.. Mexico responded by placing almost 90 Tariffs against US products, costing thousands of US jobs.. The alleged motivation was to protect American truck drivers, not American drivers.. Mexican drivers had already proven they where safe..

The problem is not a lack of protection when Germany exports more product each year than the USA.. The problem is inside the USA.. You can blame the management of a company, but you cannot blame the management of every company.. Germany was rubble 65 years ago..

If the USA exported only $6000 per person, still much less productive than France :) .. It would have a positive trade balance for the first time in 25 years.. Unemployment would be invisible .. dogs and cats would live in peace.. lol.

Its estimated that Corporate America has over $1 Trillion dollars in cash sitting in reserve.. Vladimir Putin just convinced California based Cisco to invest some of its $30 Billion in Russia..

So there is a Trillion dollars sitting idle to invest..
There is record unemployment.. people are ready to work..

So something else is the problem.. ??

We can make a thousand excuses.. but today, Cisco is investing in Moscow and Unemployment is 10%.. There needs to be a solution.. The solution has to cause Cisco to want to invest at home..

Pat Germain
07-10-2010, 7:19 PM
We already do that...

Well, because of all the issues you mentioned, I really don't think we do.


...we're a manufacturing country that allows idiots to run the manufacturing companies with no manufacturing backgrounds. They run them by the ledger sheet instead of by doing what's right.

Boy, do I agree with you there! And it's not just in manufacturing. It's everywhere in US industry. People are no longer promoted for skill, experience or long term vision. Rather, they are promoted for sitting tight, shutting up and towing the corporate line. They are promoted for shaving dollars and cents in every direction for short term gain.

Thus, we end up with a bunch unimaginative, unskilled penny-pinchers focused on short term savings. And the boards of directors and stockholders lap it up. :rolleyes:

Eventually, I think such strategies will implode. We saw it with GM and Chrysler. The Walt Disney Company tossed Michael Eisner and his cronies out on their mouse ears a few years ago. (Lucky for my stock, they didn't wait for backruptcy.) The House of Mouse is still far from perfect, but it's doing much better since that leadership change.

Pat Germain
07-10-2010, 7:23 PM
There needs to be a solution.. The solution has to cause Cisco to want to invest at home.

Actually, companies like Cisco over-invested in the US back in the 1990's. Remember all the talk about the "Information Superhighway"? :rolleyes: Companies like Cisco spent a lot of dough installing infrastructure that was never used. Eventually, the US economy will pick up again and all that bandwidth will come in handy. For now, it's just sitting there idle and you can get great deals on T4 lines. :)

Myk Rian
07-10-2010, 8:49 PM
I guess the US isn't the only place where corporations have to deal with those pesky, greedy workers.
It's those pesky, greedy workers that have money to spend on your pesky, greedy, companies' products. If you take the work out of the country, don't expect to sell so much here.
Sorry, but I just don't understand the thinking, Greg.

Rick Fisher
07-10-2010, 10:15 PM
Cisco is only an example.. The Russian Government gave them a 10 year tax holiday, fast-track residence and work permits for foreign professionals, even its own police force..

There is more.. In the end, Medvedev seemed to give Cisco whatever it would take, to get them to come to Moscow and create industry and jobs..

Cisco has committed $1 Billion..

Pepsi has already invested $1 Billion..

Hewlet Packard has opened only its 7th research and development lab in St. Petersburg. In addition, HP opened a factory, they expect to employ 5000 people in Russia.

Boeing has committed to $27 Billion in the next 30 years.. Titanium parts for the new dreamliner are being made in Russia.

Now who says US Business isn't creating jobs .. :o

Scott Shepherd
07-11-2010, 9:38 AM
Well, because of all the issues you mentioned, I really don't think we do.

Pat, I say "we already do that", I mean the people that CAN do it are still here. The jobs aren't, because of these idiots, but the people that can do it and have the skills and talents are still in this country, ready to bring manufacturing back.

I agree, we don't currently do it, but we currently have everything in place to make it happen. We've proven we can do it, we just need someone to believe we can and then make it happen.

Chuck Wintle
07-11-2010, 9:49 AM
Thus, we end up with a bunch unimaginative, unskilled penny-pinchers focused on short term savings. And the boards of directors and stockholders lap it up.

Pat,

The bottom line for any company are profits and the shareholders. The CEO's know that not doing this will result in being voted out of a job. Manufacturing in the US will never come back because it is simply too expensive and the american consumer won't stand for higher prices on all goods. In the end it's capitalism in action taking jobs away to asia.

Carlos Alden
07-11-2010, 9:55 AM
I said it a couple months back that the chinese will not be the cheap manufacturers in the world within the next two business cycles... Thats why china is buying up africa at an alarming rate. That region will be the next industrial revolution. Millions that will work for a dollar a week, or less, and absolutely no human, labour or environmental laws. Sadly africa is ripe for the pickings (exploitation, rape and pillage... what ever you want to call it).

China is just doing what the West has done for several hundred years, in Africa and around the globe, but the difference is that China is not moralizing and pretending to do good. The West's intentions to "save" Africa has created dependency and resentment and left them worse off than they were 50 years ago. There's a great article in a recent Atlantic magazine about China in Africa:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/05/the-next-empire/8018/

The article finishes with a quote from a local, which I think says more than we could ever speculate:

“The problem is not who is the latest buyer of our commodities,” he replied. “The problem is to determine what is Africa’s place in the future of the global economy, and up to now, we have seen very little that is new. China is taking the place of the West: they take our raw materials and they sell finished goods to the world What Africans are getting in exchange, whether it is roads or schools or finished goods, doesn’t really matter. We remain under the same old schema: our cobalt goes off to China in the form of dusty ore and returns here in the form of expensive batteries.”

Carlos

Chuck Wintle
07-11-2010, 10:00 AM
at least the chinese will have the intelligence and wherewithal to do something in africa, a talent the locals seem to sadly lack.

Scott Shepherd
07-11-2010, 10:25 AM
Manufacturing in the US will never come back because it is simply too expensive and the american consumer won't stand for higher prices on all goods. In the end it's capitalism in action taking jobs away to asia.

I completely disagree with you there Charles. I engineered the shop floor and work flow in a plant in the USA and worked in a Canadian plant on many production issues (all owned by the same people). They wanted to move production to Canada at the time because their labor rate was cheaper. I told them I'd like to see a fair comparison on the entire process rather than just seeing wages compared. They did secret time studies and found that the US plant was more productive and made more money. They asked me how it could be. I had been to the plant many times and I saw how they worked. They treated the employees like numbers and they laid them off frequently. The shop floor guys had no interest in making things more productive. If they did, then it meant less work for them, and they would be laid off. So their system was setup to have the people that do the work not care about anything.

After all the studies were done, they proved my point, that we were competitive, and then they shipped all the work up there anyway, despite all the indications that we'd now have higher cost, less quality, and slower delivery. All of those were very real and the impact was felt about 6 months into it and they started pulling work back into the US plant. After another 6 months or so, they had the great idea that Canada didn't work out for them, so they'd go to Mexico. Same thing happened. I left the company, but at this point, they have now moved on to China. So I'd ask how much revenue was wasted on moving all this work around time and time again, instead of leaving it in one place and becoming masters at producing it. They have spend millions and millions to research, explore, and setup manufacturing partners, and then they flush it down the toilet and start over.

I'm not talking about the large automotive factory that needs to retool every model year, I'm talking about the heart of manufacturing that's just people making things day in and day out, with product lines that have been around for over 50 years.

I'm not disrespecting any production people in other countries, I'm just stating the experiences I had a particular companies. I believe it's hard to compete with someone that gets rewarded for creative ideas and concepts and most of the places this work goes do not do that, however, most places in the US do reward people for thinking outside the box.

It's not the American manufacturing people that can't compete, it's the fact that people in other countries are getting their materials paid for by others. You can't tell me that the cost of material in the USA is $45, but the cost of the finished part including the material is $6 from somewhere else. It's just not possible. You can't make the material and make the part for a fraction of the cost of the material (which is coming from China anyway) in the USA.

That's not labor, that's regulations.

Pat Germain
07-11-2010, 10:50 AM
Pat,

The bottom line for any company are profits and the shareholders. The CEO's know that not doing this will result in being voted out of a job. Manufacturing in the US will never come back because it is simply too expensive and the american consumer won't stand for higher prices on all goods. In the end it's capitalism in action taking jobs away to asia.

I'm a Disney stockholder. I didn't like the way the company was being run a few years ago. And neither did many other stockholders. Eventually, the CEO and the people directly under him got the boot. And now the company is better for it.

Perhaps many Disney stockholders are little different than the average investor. We invest in Disney because we believe it to be a high quality brand which produces high quality entertainment. Cheapening that brand can only lead to a watered-down product and lower profits.

And, as I stated previously, I think manufacturing in the US can come back if we follow some of the German examples. Many families pay much more to visit a Disney theme park than a Six Flags park because they're getting higher quality entertainment. And some people will pay more for a very high quality and reliable product. Look at all the great and reasonably priced woodworking tools we have available. Yet, people still pay a premium for Festool. BMW has a very small percentage of the world car market. But it's a very profitable percentage.

Harry Hagan
07-12-2010, 9:55 AM
That's not hard to understand Brian, the millions the corporation spends to build the plant are a small sum compared to the hundreds of millions they save by having the plant in that location.

If markets change, they build a new plant in a new area to once again spend millions, and save hundreds of millions.

As individuals we tend to have a misplaced regard for buildings. A corporation regards a building as a line item on a spreadsheet, nothing more.

Regards, Rod.

The owner of a local Chinese restaurant (a Chinese immigrant who returns to his homeland frequently) told me that workers in China average about $150 in wages a MONTH. He just smiled when I asked him about a 40-hour work week, holidays, vacations and benefits.

Of course, any salaried American worker will tell you that a 40-hour work week is only a myth.

David Weaver
07-12-2010, 10:05 AM
at least the chinese will have the intelligence and wherewithal to do something in africa, a talent the locals seem to sadly lack.

What are they doing in africa? I'm out of the loop.

There are parts of africa that can be standardized, where there are stable governments.

There are plenty of other parts where the governments are so unstable that it would seem like a huge risk to do anything in those parts. I don't know how China's capital is organized, but if it's public finance instead of private, they may have more stomach for those risks.

They'll find, and they have been finding, that as nice as things look on paper, when you start dealing with other cultures, things don't magically fall into line, otherwise everyone would be as productive and precise as japanese manufacturers.

Curt Harms
07-12-2010, 10:11 AM
Cisco is only an example.. The Russian Government gave them a 10 year tax holiday, fast-track residence and work permits for foreign professionals, even its own police force..

There is more.. In the end, Medvedev seemed to give Cisco whatever it would take, to get them to come to Moscow and create industry and jobs..

Cisco has committed $1 Billion..

Pepsi has already invested $1 Billion..

Hewlet Packard has opened only its 7th research and development lab in St. Petersburg. In addition, HP opened a factory, they expect to employ 5000 people in Russia.

Boeing has committed to $27 Billion in the next 30 years.. Titanium parts for the new dreamliner are being made in Russia.

Now who says US Business isn't creating jobs .. :o

I read that in a business publication months ago. Top executives were being interviewed about jobs. They said they would be hiring......just not in the U.S.