Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
EVERY so often, you hear grotesquely wealthy American chief executives announce in sanctimonious tones the intention to use their accumulated hundreds of millions, or billions, “to lift people out of poverty.”
Now, this is a stereotypical liberal kvetch, without offering any genuine feasible solutions. Wanh, okay, so what would Theroux propose? Is this better than the opposite?? Seriously. Should the rich piggies NOT do this?
Many of the comments are smarter than anything he thinks here. If only it were this easy. Walmart consumers do not drive this? In fact the NYT-picked or otherwise screened comments are way more sophisticated than anything Theroux says. Just one mere example:
The invention and deployment of efficiencies and mechanization of production have always been a part of the economic picture. Technological growth has always taken away jobs, whether from harvesting wheat with a sickle to the McCormick Harvester or from hand welding to robot welding. Adoption of available technology has always been necessary to and stay competitive. And so it is with paying labor costs. A noncompetitive business goes out of business. Business people who want to pay a good local wage for production find we cannot do that and stay in business. This is not a theoretical excuse for globalization. The efficiencies of globalization have occurred as incremental steps over a long period of time.
Ding! "...The strategy of getting rich on cheap labor in foreign countries while offering a sop to America’s poor with charity seems to me a wicked form of indirection..."
This observation is undoubtedly true, but unfortunately the "strategy" is required in today's world-wide market configuration if a manufacturer intends to stay in business. For many products, there simply is no way to pay US labor scale and compete with overseas labor. The marketplace (that would be us consumers- look in your mirror) long ago voted for Walmart and cheap. Cheap = overseas. Once the first manufacturer in any given competitive line of goods moves overseas, it's "game over" for that particular industry segment.
Actually, there is more quiet "reshoring" going on than folks are generally aware of. Partly it is a quality control issue. Relatedly, some very large corporations maintain a mirror-image factory stateside for quality control, and to trouble-shoot, and for R&D. The Economist (mag) had a special section on reshoring about a year ago. The economist (person) Vaclav Smil has done some interesting work in this area. If Apple reshored all of its operations, paid a good wage, nice bennies, etc., it would still make more than 50% profit on every gadget it sold. When is enough enough?
(I know I should now provide some links. Will see if I am moved to do so in next few days.)
Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? is an interesting read on life in US versus life in "socialist welfare European states."
For those interested, Vaclav Smil, Made in the U.S.A.: The Rise and Retreat of American Manufacturing (MIT, 2013). So the Economist special section would be from 2013 as well.
He has some interesting things to say about the airline industry as well -- in US and other countries.
Comments
Many of the comments are smarter than anything he thinks here. If only it were this easy. Walmart consumers do not drive this? In fact the NYT-picked or otherwise screened comments are way more sophisticated than anything Theroux says. Just one mere example:
The invention and deployment of efficiencies and mechanization of production have always been a part of the economic picture. Technological growth has always taken away jobs, whether from harvesting wheat with a sickle to the McCormick Harvester or from hand welding to robot welding. Adoption of available technology has always been necessary to and stay competitive. And so it is with paying labor costs. A noncompetitive business goes out of business. Business people who want to pay a good local wage for production find we cannot do that and stay in business. This is not a theoretical excuse for globalization. The efficiencies of globalization have occurred as incremental steps over a long period of time.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
"...The strategy of getting rich on cheap labor in foreign countries while offering a sop to America’s poor with charity seems to me a wicked form of indirection..."
This observation is undoubtedly true, but unfortunately the "strategy" is required in today's world-wide market configuration if a manufacturer intends to stay in business. For many products, there simply is no way to pay US labor scale and compete with overseas labor. The marketplace (that would be us consumers- look in your mirror) long ago voted for Walmart and cheap. Cheap = overseas. Once the first manufacturer in any given competitive line of goods moves overseas, it's "game over" for that particular industry segment.
Partly it is a quality control issue. Relatedly, some very large corporations maintain a mirror-image factory stateside for quality control, and to trouble-shoot, and for R&D.
The Economist (mag) had a special section on reshoring about a year ago. The economist (person) Vaclav Smil has done some interesting work in this area. If Apple reshored all of its operations, paid a good wage, nice bennies, etc., it would still make more than 50% profit on every gadget it sold.
When is enough enough?
(I know I should now provide some links. Will see if I am moved to do so in next few days.)
Thomas Geoghegan's Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? is an interesting read on life in US versus life in "socialist welfare European states."
He has some interesting things to say about the airline industry as well -- in US and other countries.
Certainly: "any given competitive line of goods" obviously must include quality- if it's not comparable, then it's not competitive.