From: Convoy Magazine (convoymagazine@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Mar 16 2005 - 13:03:40 PST
(NB this post has the words "Mil-veh" in it ;-)
> At 10:40 AM -0500 3/16/05, Larry Tighe wrote:
> >Don't blame China! We BUY their products because
> the unions have made production too expensive in the
> U.S.
And therein lies the solution and problem..
WE, the N Am (Brit/ANZAC) consumer can make a
difference for or against our economie(s) by our
purchasing power.
We buy the cheap offshore stuff to save a few (short
term) dollars, which of course has a long term effect.
As a domestic industry sales decline, less to
re-invest in equipment upgrades, leads to lowered
efficiency, higher overhead, lower profits, and
becomes a downward spiralling circle.
As industries close in "our" countries, we lose even
the option of buying domestic as the plants and
industries close one by one. This reduces competition,
and will in the long run, increase prices as Asia
suppliers have the field to themselves.
I personally do not think all or even much of the
blame should be levelled at the unions however for
higher consumer costs. The principle "culprit" is our
lifestyle..we live better than most Chinese/Asians,
and we expect that good lifestyle, and that costs!
We could lower wages to be "competitive" with
China/Asia, but are we prepared to ride bicycles
instead of our nice cars? and give up hobbies like our
heritage military-vehicles so we,like most of the
workers in Asia, can concentrate on the priority of
feeding our families with meagre wages, while working
in poor and unsafe conditions in highly polluting
industries?
We live well, and that costs!
My own personal policy is that I am prepared to pay
more for domestic products and indeed consistently
seek them out, and ask clerks, restaurants etc for
them.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:41:23 PDT