C G wrote:

USENET READER wrote:



C G wrote:


USENET READER wrote:

I am starting a DYI home-improvement project and I notice that
few power or hand tools are made in the USA. Even most of the
Craftsman brand tools are made in the USA. Some are made in
Taiwan (a democracy I have no problem doing business with) and
Red China (perhaps I should call them Fascist China, a country
where the factories are owned by the state and staffed with
slave labor).




Are you stuck in the '80s? Most Chinese companies have been
privatized.



And who owns these private companies? Mostly it is
well-connected members of the ChiCom party - so for all intents
and purposes, it is still owned by those who run the government.



Still stuck in the '80s. The ownership has been changing for
quite a while now, but I would not have expected you to be
informed enough to know this.



No actually - your head is up your ass. Can you tell me who owns
the private companies if not the party elite? They just
privatized these factories and now they split the profits not with
the workers, but with their American investors. So you tell me
how while it has changed in shape, the end result isn't really
different?



Seems it's your head up your own ass. China's got a thriving stock
market and ownership is shifting to individuals. I wouldn't have
expected you to know this, it bursts your bubble of ignorance.



Bullshit - you can say that there is a stockmarket and that is
supposed to mean that your average rank and file Chinese citizen can
own stock? that is such bullshit - that whole thing is set up to
attract foreign investment capital and to also make it easier to
reward the party bigwigs. Their system is more fascist than
free-market capitalism. They could still take it all back and leave
their overseas investors hanging - what you gonna do when they do
that? Sue them?



You've just proven you do not know what the hell you are talking
about. The average citizen DOES OWN STOCK. Give up, you obviously
are clueless about this subject.



The average citizen in China doesn't own stock. Do you know what the
per capita or average income level is in China? There are like 1.5
billion people over there. Can you show a cite where you an prove
that the average chinese citizen owns stock??


You don't know what the **** you are talking about, why don't you just
shut up idiot. I know many average chinese citizens. They own stock.
The ability of the average Chinese person to live cheap and save would
put most Americans to shame.

You know these citizens from where? You go over to China? What is the
per capita income in China? You are so ****ing full of shit- it's not
like they make American wages and live in poverty by choice.

China is getting rich on the imbalance of trade with the USA and from US
investments, not from slave-labor chinese workers buying stock. The
imbalance of trade ends up enriching the ChiCom officials and their US
Investors, and they end up owning more and more of US debt - they really
can't do anything else with all that money!

Doucheboy - why don't you come up with some numbers to prove your point
- what percentage of Chinese workers own stock, what is the per capita
income of those workers, and what percentage of their income do they
invest in the Chinese stock market? Or do you mean Chinese people
living and investing in the US market?

And do I want to live in ****ing squallor in the US just to make you
feel happy and superior - and to make some rich puke even richer?

Sorry dingleberry - my famly came from Italy and Slovakia, and those
days of anyone from my family dancing on the end of a string for the Man
while living on some feudal manor and owing my soul to the Company
Store are ****ing over - you hear me? You and the rest of you rich
cocksuckers had better realize that your $7.00 rent a cops aren't gonna
protect you from the masses when we get ****ed and rise up to come after
you behind the walls of your gated community. And if you don't live
behind those gates - why the **** are you standing up for those rich
pukes anyway?



According to the news sources I have, even though the companies are
being privatized, the new owners are still the party elite and their
overseas business partners. Employee or other non-management stock
ownership is being held to 20% or less. So how the **** can you say
that the average Chinese citizen owns stock? Prove it - show me a cite!


Because I have many friends in China. I've done better than read a few
news articles, I've lived there.

Right - did you move to china before or after your cousin pulled the
wrench out of the door of his car? What city and province did you live
in and why were you there in the first place. Because where you lived -
if you did live there - certainly colored your perspective of what is an
average Chinese person. If you lived in a big city, you might have been
living with a shitload of Chinese people, but they were far from average
- they were the top of the economic pile in China.




Almost everything in Harbor Freight (except for the
reconditioned DeWalt tools) is from China. The stuff is
garbage and usually dies after a short period of time.
Grinders and drills come with extra electric motor brushes
which almost always get lost by the time you need them - and
you will. HF always tries to sell you an extended warranty
program, and most people I know don't buy them - even though
for all intents and purposes, if you buy the EW, you can bring
back the tool and swap it for a new one anytime the older one
doesn't work. So other than the time you lose always gong to
HF to exchange tools, that does seem like a good deal. How
can American companies compete with that?



They can't as long as American consumers puy the cheapest
product they can find. IMO, Harbor Freight should not even be
in business, but as long as people keep buying the junk,
they'll survive.



It's a vicious cycle - people's wages don't keep up with
inflation, so they either look for cheaper stuff or they have no
other choice. And when a store finds it is stocked with goods
no one can afford to buy, they go with cheaper stuff to stay in
business. It's everyone's fault, but mostly with big business
for going overseas in the first place.



The problem didn't start with wages, it started with American
consumers wanting the cheapest possible price, with little regard
for quality. Look at shop tools. When companies like Grizzly
came on the scene, people endorsed their products because they
were a few bucks cheaper than someone like Delta.



Part of American workers wanting cheaper goods is them not getting
paid enough to afford higher quality goods. Remember that fascist
Henry Ford? Instead of lowering wages, he gave his workers more,
realizing that if he paid them more they could afford to buy the
cars he was making. Today a Wal Mart worker - if they pay rent,
make care payments on a cheap car, pay for their own medica
insurance, etc - they can't afford to shop in Wal Mart to buy all
their family's needs. They can do that if they go on the dole -
food stamps (which some of them qualify for even if they work
fulll time) and if they put off regular health care and use the
emergency room for chronic health care needs.



I'm not arguing against many not getting paid enough. However, for
many, it's just wanting (not necessarily needing) as much stuff as
possible. Even people who could afford better often choose cheap
import over better quality.


And when you are trying to compete with some other contractor
who hires Mexican illegals, you gotta try and cut your costs as
much as you can.



Yes, you do.



WHy not get the government to come and haul the illegals away and
bust the contractor breaking the law? Thay way he won't be
competing illegally with you.

A conttractor who is breaking the law like that is the equivalent
of someone who cuts costs by stealing stuff to sell, or buying
stolen property.. Should you compete with someone who steals or
buys stolen goods by doing the same thing? Or shouldn't you
insist that other employers not have an unfair advantage by
obeying the laws?



No argument from me.


If the government enforced it's immigration laws, fined or
arrested employers for hiring illegals, shipped the illegals
back over the border, and sealed the border up with higher walls
that couldn't be cut through or climbed over.



No disagreement here. For the past 4 years I've been working to
help someone from another country come here legally. It ****es
me off that the government makes all kinds of exceptions for
illegals, and that so many people look the other way so they can
take advantage of the cheap labor that illegals represent.


But I was talking to two buddies of mine and then mentioned
something about the construction trades which made me wonder
if any more tools are going to be made in the USA?



There are some, but do you and your friends try to find them?
Are you willing to pay a higher price to buy them?



Actually - yes I am - but it is a lot of work trying to find
American made tools.


One guy works as a stone mason and he is finding it harder and
harder to find American made tools of his trade in the
stores. The Chinese-made crap (his words) are cheaply made,
don't hold up to continued professional work, rivets pop,
everything rusts unless you soak it in oil (which is not good
for the mortar or cement, mason's hoes break after one use, etc.



That's what happens when you buy the lowest cost tool.



If that's all the stores sell, you either buy it or you don't work.



It's all the stores sell because years ago people voted, with
their money, for cheap imports. It also happened because in many
cases, the American products were overpriced junk.



Why was the American stuff overpriced junk - was it the rank and
file worker who decided to come to work and make crap regardless
of what the bosses told them to make, or was it management who had
them build the crap because there wasn't anything else available?



Some of it was the workers, some was the management.



Sorry - most of it was management trying to do stuff on the cheap
and then cutting their own throats. American workers are some of
the most productive workers in the world, if their managerment gets
their heads out of their asses!




Some American workers are productive, others will do as little as
possible to get by. Same with management. You continue to try to
place the blame on one group, but that's just not the case.



Sorry - labor doesn't decide what to produce and how to produce it -
that is management's job. I place the blame on the crap on the market
with management.


Management decides what to build, labor decides whether they will do it
well or not. Some choose to be sloppy.

And who should put quality control on the assembly line to catch that
shit? Management should have but didn't.




Sure - when the Japanese made better stuff for the same money, you
bought the better stuff. You didn't want to throw your money away
- you got more value for your money. Then when American goods
caught up in quality, the Japanese moved there factories to
Thailand or other cheaper countries, and then eventually Amerfcan
companies couldn't compete on the price of the goods and also on
the return on investments. So don't go blaming the consumers only
- greedy investors who want 40% return on investments are to blame
too!



I didn't blame consumers only, but I think they are more to blame
than business and investors. You seem to be trying to blame
investors and business only.



Nope - sorry - in the USA the consumers have been getting the shaft
for years. How do you blame someone who has lost their job, or who
has not gotten a pay raise for years, or in fact has had to take
less money, from having to make the difficult choice to buy some
cheaper goods in order to pay for medicine, a visit to the docs,
etc. After all - the cheaper goods wouldn't have been there for the
consumer to buy had the business owners not made them first.




Again, you are trying to blame the business instead of the
individual. There are many factors at work, not just the business
trying to sell cheap products. Many people have chosen cheap, low
quality, not for the reasons you state, but just because it's cheaper
and they can have more toys than if they had bought a better quality
item.



Many didn't have a choice.


And MANY, MANY, MANY more DO HAVE A CHOICE, and choose cheap.



Sorry - very very very very very few people actually have a choice on
what to buy these days - they aren't the buyers for the stores and don't
have a say on what goes on the shelves.

Do you think that customers tell Wal-Mart what to put on the shelves to
sell? **** no - Wal-Mart tells vendors what they will buy an item for,
and in fact tells them to move the production over to China in order to
make it cheaper. GE did that too with many of the vendors who supplied
parts for GE consumer products. When a company like Wal-Mart moves close
to one in four of a growing number of products sold in the country, the
customer has damn little to say about where things are made, expecially
when the loss of those jobs forces people to buy cheaper stuff to make
their money last longer. It's a race to the bottom.