Has all retail turned into WalMart ( made in China )
 

I took this at work ( A big box hardware store ) the other day. Note that the thing is made in USA of " global components ".
http://i877.photobucket.com/albums/a...tmadeinusa.jpg
What the hell does that mean ? I'm thinking that means it's made by some child in China and shipped here to the USA where a low paid 'merican screws on the top piece and puts it in the box with the big US flag on the box.
I stock the shelves at work and see thousands of products made in China, and several of them using this " made in USA of global components " labeling.
There is even a US flag being sold that is made in China.

I don't have anything against China, but don't want to support child / slave like labor.
So I avoid shopping at WalMart and such, but in the end, is every big box store in America doing the exact same thing as WalMart ?

Is WalMart any more evil than the rest of the bunch, or were they just the first ones to screw it all up for us ?

Chinese workers are starting to get paid higher as the standards of living rise and the cost of living goes along with it.

Which is why Chinese companies are starting to open up factories in the rest of Asia.

Just wait. Eventually you can stock stuff made in Mongolia, Burma and North Korea.

China setting up sweat shops in other countries... progress!

Not every end product we buy is made in one whole country. We still make a lot of parts and ship them elsewhere for final production. The iphone and their other products are a great example.

Labor is still expensive in this country and as other developing countries come of age the same thing happens and they out source to cheaper labor areas.

Much like how Korea is divided so is China. Part is capitalist, part is the other thing. :D

It could mean a lot of things. For instance, to build that thing - whatever it is, you probably need some nuts & bolts. Do you hunt around looking for a US nut-and-bolt maker, or do you just order the necessary sizes from your wholesale hardware supplier? Likewise the wheels: most manufacturers would order them from a catalog. Same with all the other fittings. So at a guess, the design, parts stamping, and assembly was done in the US, and the standard hardware came from wherever the wholesaler orders from.

Nor can I really see how WalMart &c really screwed up things. Seems to me that most of us are a good bit better off being able to buy whatever we need at reasonable prices. Take for instance Harbor Freight as an extreme case: before they started importing things from China, the ordinary guy (that is, someone not in a particular trade) would have had a hard time finding a lot of the tools they carry, and they'd be priced out of reach.

Good point. It kind of helps the transfer of wealth.

A. So a noob with a car problem take it to the shop and pay big bucks to them to fix it and adjusts his budget to pay it off.

B. So a noob goes to HF, buys a tool kit, then goes to advance auto to buy the part, looks online to find DIY instructions and fixes car self. Now has tools to play with and more money in his pocket. :thumbup:

I guess the questions is this, which is more important or makes a bigger impact on the economy?

The dealer and mechanic, Joe Smoe and Craftmans, MAC, SNAPON, tools or Joe Smoe and HF tools?

Cd, is that a paint sprayer? Which would you rather see? Joe Smoe pay a contractor to paint a room, Joe being able to afford the pain sprayer and paint it himself?

I buy a lot of tools that end up being single use for jobs I need done. Many tools I resell for half to 75% their original cost too. :eek:

Does that make them fourth world countries?

Considering China is well on its way to becoming the richest country in the world, I think that would make us second world (out here in what used to be the "third world")... about level with the US of A. :D

Funny thing... many Chinese car companies have similar marketing lines... sure, the cars are made in China, but they're made with global components.

I suppose they're aware of how crappy Chinese-built brake master cylinders are, that carrying real Bosch equipment on their vehicles is a legitimate come-on for buyers. :D

The limiting case would be designed in the USA and totally manufactured off-shore.

David Brin makes the case that the transfer of manufacturing to China has lifted vast numbers of people out of poverty. They should thank us.

That's undoubtedly true. Same case with business process outsourcing to here and India... though less directly than manufacturing jobs... since BPO work requires a College degree.

How were things in the 1950s when a lot of items were made in the US ? Have things really improved ? Do people really have more money than they did back then ?
If enough Joe Smoes buy a paint sprayer and do it themselves, the paint contractor goes out of business.

As far as the distribution of wealth, it seems to me that eventhough part of the money saved by buying imported goods goes back into the US economy, most likely the items purchased with those savings go to buy more things made outside the US.

And about that distribution of wealth : In regards to giving the poor in other countries a job - correct me if i'm wrong, but i would imagine that only a few people in other countries benefit financially through the use of imports, but what about the larger majority that work there a@@es off for low wages ?
Are we really helping them by buying imports, or merely helping the top few become wealthier ?

Again, correct me if i am wrong ( i didn't research this stuff like you guys did ) but I'm sure you are familiar with the Wired article on Apple using slave labor to build its' products. Is it really a good thing to support that ?
These people ( the workers ) were suicidal and they had to put up netting on the roof to keep the suicides down.

Is buying the cheaper products really worth supporting that ?

I am tying this on an Apple computer. I bought it before i knew of the slave labor. I bought it thinking it had a higher 'green' score because of its' energy consumption.
I buy everything cheap ( except this damned overpriced Apple ) - so most likely stuff made overseas.

I'm a hypocrite, yes.

I still see a problem though, and i wish there was a solution.

One solution would be to buy used. Mac Mini's hold their value really well.

The money stays in your neighborhood, and all the bad karma rubbed off on the previous owner. :) In this location the choices are Nextstep Recycling, Mactonic and the Goodwill Used Computer Store.

Apart from the philosophical question of whether having more money really improves quality of life (and there's research saying that beyond a certain point - about $70K IIRC) it really doesn't), I think it's pretty darned obvious that people in general really do have more money (and/or material goods) these days.

But the "Made In USA" thing is really sidestepping the issue. First, there's the Harbor Freight thing: US companies easily could have made all that stuff (pre-China) and sold it to average Joes, but they chose not to. Second, the main reason that a lot of this stuff is made in China (or other 3rd/4th world places) is that Chinese are cheaper than robots.

No, because the people disposed to hire painting contractors would do so anyway. It's Joe with the sprayer doing his painting faster than he would with brushes & rollers. As for instance my Harbor Freight engine crane: did not having one ever stop me from pulling an engine when I wanted to, or make me take the job to a mechanic? No, it just saves me from finding a shade tree or roof beam stout enough to bear the load - if I guessed right :-)

I don't think Wired has the slightest idea what slave labor really is.

The heat-ac blower motor in the sentra is a replacement, Seimens marked as well as made in China, much noisier than the original even though the housing is spotless (cleaned by me preventatively). Last night I turned the switch to high speed and it blew the fuse. I've already replaced the blower fan speed switch and found the high setting
had overheated and melted the plastic housing.

It's my belief that the cheap chinese made motor caused a chain reaction of overloaded and therefore failed components that probably would have never failed otherwise. I see this as a significant factor in the numebr of future repairs that may not have been necessary had there placement parts been of better quality.

My advice to all of you is to check the OE price of parts before buying the cheapest, especially those parts that require a considerable amount of labor to replace. The consequences of a single poor quality part causing a catastrophic failure, like a melted wiring harness after overamping a fuse to keep the defective blower motor working, could cost you a car.

In Virginia you would have no legal remedy against the seller of said part other than replacement. I got tired of replacing the chinese blower motor resistor in the Ranger, bet a factory Ford part would have lasted more than 3 months regardless of the lifetime warranty on the chinese part.

Man I would hate to do an 8 hour heater core replacement and have that new core fail then next day, then they cheerfully hand me the exact same warranty part.

Bought a cheap harbor freight hydraulic floor jack that worked maybe 15 times then blew a seal. Another electric grinder that failed running and you could not turn it off except by unplugging it! They asked me when I returned it what was wrong with it?
Told them you could not turn it off, unless you pulled the plug. Gave me another one and it has worked fine for several hours.

regards
mech

Chicken or egg. Did Monsato cause farmer suicides in India? Nope. Those farmers were already killing themselves before Monsato. Unfortunately, Monsato's involvement didn't really help any, so they're still killing themselves.

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Do those companies giving out low wages for long working hours cause their workers to be financially stressed and suicidal? No. Those workers were poor before getting a factory job. They're grossly underpaid by our standards, but they're richer than they were before.

"Slave labor" is unpaid labor, from which you cannot escape. Tens of thousands of workers voluntarily sign on to this "slave labor" because it pays better than their alternatives.

In Apple's case, at least they're honest enough to admit there was a problem that needs rectifying. Now think about the hundreds (thousands?) of other companies producing stuff in China who don't give a flying fig?

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In the end, it may not matter. You pump so much money into the local economy, and you raise the standards and cost of living... which means either you pay the workers more or they go to someone who does... otherwise they can't survive.

These sweatshops may look dire to western eyes, but they're funding an economic revolution that is uplifting the entire population.

And once they're comfortably middle class... the jobs will go elsewhere. :D

Yes, that's exactly my point :-) I, as a typical do-it-yourselfer, don't need (and for most of my life couldn't afford, even if I could find where to buy most of them) a shop-quality engine hoist, floor jack, drill press, &c that I can use day after day for years, because I might use any individual tool a few times a year, or maybe not for several years.

Just as - to carry the WalMart analogy a bit further - I don't need clothes with designer labels and prices to match, or shoes with a 'swoosh' on the side. Not that I buy much there myself, as I tend to get most of my clothes from REI & similar places, but the principle's the same. And I think you'll find that much of the expensive brand-name stuff is made in China too, like as not in the same factories.

Thanks for posting that.

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/12/reasons-to-be-cheerful.html

The original designation of "worlds"

1st world - developed capitalist countries
2nd world - developed communist (socialist) countries
3rd world - undeveloped countries no matter what form their government is.

I thought it was a binary characterization: THEM vs. US.

http://www.greenpeace.org/eastasia/G...hild-wires.jpg

Thank you, now I am not in poverty

Actually we aren't more wealthy, by most standards ALL people across the world have become poorer as population has gone up but not poorer in the traditional way.

How is wealth measured?

1. Land and "real" non-trinket style possessions. Most people across the world have ended up with smaller footprints, while houses in the US have increased in size the land they sit upon generally has not.
a) Another measure of wealth is how much income goes toward owning a plot or a home, by that measure 3 years hard labor to the king in the middle ages was a better deal than most houses today.

2. Freedom of movement - a wash from 1950 to today but certain areas are much worse and actually true mobility among americans has gone down in strange ways among certain people. (around here they keep taking the buses away so there is zero public transport)

3. Small possessions - this has "improved" in QTY over the years, we are swimming in things and this is where we are wrong, we should not have this crap.
a) In the old days people all over the world had less stuff, stuff was smaller and more of it was made by themselves or locally. The positive of this was that much less waste was tolerated, things were more valuable, were kept and used and rebuilt. Nothing was disposable, everything would be repurposed and re-used until it was scrap which would usually again get re-used for some other purpose.

4. Last but also least is real income - the mode of real income has gone up on paper across the world, food is generally more available than it was many years ago and starvation has been reduced worldwide. Sadly this is a mixed bag and doesn't actually mean we are better off,
we have traded our health, environment, certain freedoms for having things and having the appearance of money to then have certain necessities become dramatically more expensive and items that should be priceless like the environment mostly become more universally damaged, though again locally some areas are better but many others are much worse. Human/animal waste has been substituted with "other" more permanent types of waste in many areas of the world.
Poverty with a few durable lifelong valuables has been substituted for poverty with less mobility, industrial pollution, degraded environment less ability to "live" off the land and high levels of a different type of work hour than traditional.

Is having more stuff but a more crowded degraded environment, with some massive waste land zones, poor but more plentiful foods but less access to traditional food, more wealthy?

I don't know but it is what we have.

RE: Land:

In monetary terms, given the huge difference in land prices between urban areas and extra-urban areas... a lot of poor, landless people in the cities out here in the third world actually do make enough every year to buy land in rural areas.

They don't, because rural land is worthless. Farming on a small scale does not bring you enough money to afford the trappings of modern life, or the ability to afford modern health care and other amenities.

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Shocking to you, those images may be... but guess what? Our governments relocate those urban poor back to the provinces... give them plots of land to till and hoe... and within a year, they're back in the city, picking through garbage, living in shanties and begging on the streets.

Why?

Because picking trash for recycling pays much more money than harvesting rice. And it pays faster, too.

Because they don't want to live the idyllic lifestyle of loincloth-clad rainforest tribesmen who die in their twenties and thirties.

And because they've been there, done that, and, as bad as life on the urban fringe may be, their alternatives are much worse.

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This is NOT to say that their living situation is anywhere close to ideal or even acceptable.

This is to say that they find themselves in this niche of human ecology simply because this horrible environment can actually support life, so people migrate to it to live.

Developed socialist country? Well, that does accurately describe the United States, right? :D

Only in the minds of the right-wing news commentators. No truly socialist country would tolerate what passes for medical care in the United States.

And while the media consider the United States a 'democracy', it actually started out as a Union, until the schism in the 1860s. Or a Constitutional Republic.

As for rag picking, it's important work. The local electronics recycler is overwhelmed, and they have to rely on work-release from the local jail for their 'volunteers'.

I don't know about that. Seems that a good many rulers of such countries seek medical care in the US when they're seriously ill. And for some reason the foreign medical workers who catch the Ebola virus get flown to the US, instead of being treated in the countries they were working in.

I think what you're complaining about is not the quality of available medical care, but the fact that (at least sometimes) you can't use the government to force other people to pay for what you want.

It was more an observation than a complaint.

An observation about the quality of available care, and how it skews along the same curve as wealth. The one percent will eventually become a different sub-species, longer lived, more intelligent (one would hope) and with hot-swappable spare organs.

From your perspective you see the hand of the government. From mine it's the energy wasted by the layer of insurance between the provider and recipient.

A doctor used to be a guy that lived down the street, you knew him and he would make house visits and you could afford it.

Now he doesn't have the time to do proper diagnosis and is part of a network.

From effectiveness, yes we have hospitals that are respected around the world but we also have others that are terrible, statistics like infant mortality, disease rates and most any other metric shows we are worse than even places like Cuba.

The mortality rate from various procedures is all over the map depending on what hospital you walk into.

For example where my father went heart surgery had about a 20% mortality rate, literally down the street that hospital is around double that rate.

This is why if we want to have the "Healthcare System That Nixon Built" we need to perhaps have ratings and start rolling back some of the liability shelters and using other methods to motivate (sort of like japan where if you aren't cured you don't pay) Also hospitals that don't do many procedures of a certain type should not be doing those procedures at all, you need experience and have to make a method to deal with areas where there is none.

Right now our system pushes a large volume of unnecessary crap while we have large black holes in care in certain areas of the country.

Quite a worthless system compared to other parts of the world "where your healthcare experience is if anything more predictable"

A stunt is not a system.

You're pointing out that we had the Apollo program and the Space Shuttle and using them to support the position that the US has a great transportation system. Putting a man on the moon doesn't help someone who can barely afford bus fare, just like a research hospital working on an ebola vaccine doesn't help children living a block away from it.

And how much medical research is entirely privately funded?

Why doesn't it? Unless you're absolutely certain that the Ebola virus is going to politely stay in Africa.

As to the rest, that's a question of economic philosophy, not quality of medical care. But I could note that there are really two distinct kinds of medicine. There's what you probably think of as medicine, treating individual patients who are sick or injured. Then there's the whole spectrum of public health, the goal of which is to keep people from needing medical care in the first place. Developing vaccines, whether for Ebola, polio, or measles, reducing smoking, figuring out what actually causes illnesses, etc. Cost-effective, available to the public either free or at little cost, if they choose to use it.


Hard to say exactly about entirely, since many projects receive a mix of public & private funding. But per Google, something like 60% is private.

Ebola is a mixed bag to say the least and is definately overblown, many people are plain immune to it and the focus on prevention is being lost over trying to treat.
Africa is a hotbed for Ebola due to diet and lack of standard practice treatment, likewise the US could become a hotbed for the same reason, diabetics for example are 10x more likely to contract and die than someone who is otherwise healthy without other medical issues.

The US exceeds at fixing broken bones or doing a heart surgery but we fail and are almost dead last in prevention and treatment of symptoms. Our medical system seems to be paralised and incapable of treating the most simplistic of lifelong conditions that lead to death, such as heart disease, diabetes and immune conditions (from allergies) such as crohns.

They push drugs at conditions that are at best degenerative with treatment as opposed to telling the hard truth and focusing on lifestyle changes, but we as a country want to do things that kill us and our medical system seems to be behind the curve at least 20 years on diet (save a couple pockets). Causing improper information to get passed out as gospal.

Be carefull how you read that data, many private loans are publicly guaranteed but technically lended "privately"
With default rates as high as 40% on these loans and most hospitals being tax exempt in most areas one can only guess on the true public burden.

Medical care that's available to visiting heads of state but isn't available to the people who live in the same city doesn't count as being available. That's not an economic philosophy question, it's a question of what is representative of the system.

One of the things I have been wondering about is whether or not it makes that much of a difference if I shop at WalMart or some of the other 'big box' stores.
Both sell the same product, made in the same factory, employing the same workers, originating from the exact same location. ( ex - China )
By shopping at WalMart, what difference is made ?
I realize a portion of the sale goes to the owners of WalMart, versus the other guys, but what else ?

What alternatives are there ?

I bought some canvases online and looked for something made in the US. What i got were several poorly constructed canvases made in California. The fit and finish was so bad that I had to apply a 1/4 " thick texture and use them for abstract art.
Had i been able to see them in real life, versus online, I would have shopped elsewhere.

I know - make my own canvases, right ? It's on my to- do list.

Who's 'they'? The medical system tells the public about this, over and over and over, but most people just don't listen, and choose not to follow that advice. Doctors can't stand over their patients with guns, and force them to exercise, eat sensibly, and do all those other lifestyle things that keep you healthy.

FWIW, the US does seem, in some respects, to be ahead of many other countries that have government-provided medical care, Smoking rates, for instance.

How did loans & hospitals get in here? The figure is for medical research, which is funded by government research grants, grants from private charities &c, drug companies hoping to make a profit...

Why do you think the medical care isn't available? I think it is, to anyone who can pay for it. And that's the economic philosophy: that people get what they're able & willing to pay for, whether it's a mansion, private jet, Rolex, or whatever.

In terms of my father the diabetic trainer he was assigned had him eating foods that would cause his disease to go out of control.

He could not eat the way prescribed or his glucose was 300+ continuously.

The diabetic trainer prescribed potatoes, sugary fruits and items with a lot of sugar & starch and other foods that he cannot eat. For him he is VERY diabetic and eating the 200 grams of carbohydrate in the diet would not work.

So saying people don't listen can be a misnomer, sometimes what the experts believes in terms of nutrician is flawed.

As for hospitals I was generalizing, the fact is ALL business in this country get a strong public backing, usually with private loans that are guaranteed by the government. Locally most of our "empty" brand new mini malls are tax exempt unless they get filled and were built using private loans guaranteed by the city.

This practice transcends all levels of government and from what I can see usually does not work.

Costco vs Walmart.

Before a pill goes in my mouth there has to be agreement between myself, the doctor and the pharmacy of my choice. The most obstructionist, glitchy and obtuse is the pharmacy. They sit between me and the doctor and can't track changes in dosage (down at least). The good news is that they only tried to push an unprescribed medication on me once.

Single-payer health care - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That's odd. I remember an awful lot about death panels, rationing, and long waits if everyone had the chance to get medical care. Or did you mean available to anyone who has been able to get the government to subsidize their use of it? That's not economic philosophy, it's tax policy. Really, the question is who has the power to force the government to subsidize their own personal expenses?

Making medical expenses tax deductible isn't just a government subsidy, it makes those costs higher for people at the lower end. People who can't just say "it's covered, do it." People who have to pay out of pocket and maybe, if everything goes well, manage to get some of that back with their tax return. Then market forces like large insurers demanding discounts force list prices artificially high, prices that only people without insurance will ever see.

I thoroughly enjoy being in the financial position to have my medical expenses subsidized by the government. I thoroughly enjoy waving an HSA card at things that aren't "covered" but are deductible. Why should I pay for prescriptions and whatnot with real money when I can do it with this wonderful card that used pretax money? It's great- I have enough money to get some awesome benefits from the government. People who don't make that much money don't deserve government help with their expenses, I guess.

I also enjoy my mortgage interest being deductible. I'm paying about what I was in rent, but I'm going to own it outright and Washington's subsidizing that. What I don't enjoy is people pretending that the government isn't spending money on their personal expenses. Because it is.

When I worked with the White Bird Free Clinic in the early 70s, their motto was "health care is a right not a privilege'. (still is, they're still around)

Is education and public safety also the equivalent of a Rolex?

Diabetic trainer? That's something like a personal fitness trainer?

So this is one person, right? And we all know that not every individual in any particular line of work is competent.

No, I mean available to anyone who is willing & able to pay for it.

Works that way in many, if not all, countries with socialized medicine. As for instance in Britian: you can* either get things 'free' through the NHS or whatever, and endure possible waits, rationing, poorer quality care, &c, or you can pay to go private.

*Or could, about 15 years ago. Don't really know what it's like today.

Which merely demonstrates that they are socialists. As I said, economic philosophy :-)

From my present perspective, I would describe it as social anarchism. Certainly not a cooperative.

The only reason they are still around is they were co-oped by The Man. Now they have a crisis intervention service, called Cahoots, with a white Sprinter van with floodlights on the sides and a two way radio.

Edit: The only thing I was involved in that I would call socialism was the U. S. Army.

No comment on education and public safety?

I have been looking into employee rights lately, and I was shocked to find just how little protection we are given under law.

For instance, in Texas an employer is not required to even give you a break or a lunch.
Additionally, employers can make you work any hours , - and any job - they desire, and you must comply.

( ex. If hired as a manager, you can still be forced to work as a janitor if he gets sick. )

An employer can terminate you for any reason, and at any time.

A fellow i work with got married and had to work on his honeymoon. He requested time off over two weeks in advance.
This is legal as well.

My employer makes me work 2-4 hours per day more than my other co-workers, and I have to cut my time the remaining days ( no overtime )

My employers tactic for getting you to quit is to cut you down to part time and screw around with your schedule, till you finally quit.
They don't have to pay unemployment then.

They will frequently cut people down to just a few ( 3-4 ? ) hours a week and have the person come in at odd times.
For example, have the person close, then come in the next morning, so that the person does not get enough sleep.
The employee is also forced to work outside in the hot sun, versus inside the store in the A/C.

What a shame that there are less employee rights.