Amazing Forbes article on manufacturing: "Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle In the USA"

[yllus]

Yup. That is why i support abolishing the stock market. Although i fear im alone in my battle. It really serves no real purpose that cant be done in better ways.

I'd potentially be for banning high frequency trading and speculation on commodities, but the stock market is a pretty useful tool. I'm up for hearing what these better ways you speak of are, though.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

So without all these cost cutting measure, would the kindle still be priced at $115? If the kindle was priced at $300 would be better off because of it? Another question that is probably quite tough to answer.

As always, you have to consider both the front-end costs and the invisible back-end costs. If the prices for goods and services increased by 20% while American wages increased by 30% with a decrease in unemployment and underemployment and a decrease in necessary government welfare spending, then, yes, we very well might be better off.

In fact, our nation thrived for decades back in the Fifties and Sixties when most goods and services were produced domestically, back when we had a trade surplus and not a trade deficit. It was even possible for a single breadwinner to support a wife and kids and a house on a mere high school education.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

These are a couple of the worst articles I've ever read. Not surprising that he's 1) an old fart and 2) a lawyer who thinks you can change global macroeconomics with laws/protectionism.

We might not be able to change global macroeconomics, but we can change the American economy.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

the only side ANYBODY is in is their own.
from the CEO at the very top, to the investors, all the way down to the lowly janitor.
i guess that's human nature. nobody cares about the greater good.

It's the job of our politicians to "care about the greater good" and to act as stewards and protectors of the U.S. economy and the American standard of living. They have failed miserably and arguably committed outright treason.

 

[werepossum]

Our standards and the agencies that enforce them may be ineffective, but they are onerous.

I live in a small rural area. But you've probably read about us. We have a small manufacturer that was raided by swat teams from the EPA (or the like) and shut down. The tip they acted on came from a disgruntled former employee and never proven true.

I could go on, but that should suffice.

Fern

True, but occasionally that's a good thing. Georgia had a crematorium that wasn't - guy had a thing for dead bodies and kept them laying around. He bought no vaults, no cremation coffins, hadn't even had gas for a couple years because he hadn't paid his bill. Several people reported him. A couple had even stumbled upon decaying bodies. Some of the bodies were being dumped into a lake from which several people drew drinking water. They never got anywhere with local law enforcement because his family was locally very powerful politically - classic big frog in a small pond. Then someone was advised to contact the EPA. They swept in and suddenly the sheriff got very serious about investigating him. He eventually plead guilty in an agreement to spare his parents (actual owners of the crematorium) from prosecution and went to prison. The EPA is prone to over-reacting and over-reaching, but where there are actual violations it can be a very useful tool too.

As always, you have to consider both the front-end costs and the invisible back-end costs. If the prices for goods and services increased by 20% while American wages increased by 30% with a decrease in unemployment and underemployment and a decrease in necessary government welfare spending, then, yes, we very well might be better off.

In fact, our nation thrived for decades back in the Fifties and Sixties when most goods and services were produced domestically, back when we had a trade surplus and not a trade deficit. It was even possible for a single breadwinner to support a wife and kids and a house on a mere high school education.

Well said. If Kindles cost three times as much but more Americans could afford them, that would be a good thing.

 

[bfdd]

It's the job of our politicians to "care about the greater good" and to act as stewards and protectors of the U.S. economy and the American standard of living. They have failed miserably and arguably committed outright treason.

I completely agree, to bad so many of our brothers and sisters are to busy bickering about what color t-shirt they're going to wear to even notice.

 

[Michael]

While you are making the $300 Kindle, I'll make a $200 Nook that does the same thing. I wonder who will win that fight? In countries that can't afford a $300 Kindle and that will compete with the USA. We can always go back to the "good old days" after WW2 when America was the most developed and strongest industrial power. Don't forget to bomb the developing world back to the stone age and don't let them climb out of poverty and disease. Let's just keep the USA #1 and let no one else get anything. Steal the oil from those Arabs, for example, why should they get the benefit?

I find comments like "obolish the stock market" and other similar views in this thread frightenly naive.

Michael

 

[Infohawk]

While you are making the $300 Kindle, I'll make a $200 Nook that does the same thing. I wonder who will win that fight? In countries that can't afford a $300 Kindle and that will compete with the USA. We can always go back to the "good old days" after WW2 when America was the most developed and strongest industrial power. Don't forget to bomb the developing world back to the stone age and don't let them climb out of poverty and disease. Let's just keep the USA #1 and let no one else get anything. Steal the oil from those Arabs, for example, why should they get the benefit?

I find comments like "obolish the stock market" and other similar views in this thread frightenly naive.

Michael

The west developed by creating strong domestic markets. Third world countries can do the same thing instead of manipulating currencies, stealing IP and competing with slave wages.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

This is an aside, but does anyone here actually own a Kindle and is reading a book on a Kindle a better experience than physically turning pages? I don't have any experience with it, but I'd much rather have a physical book than an eye-straining screen.

 

[Michael]

I have been using ereaders since Peanut Press on the Palm Pilot. It is not the same as holding a paper book. The new e-ink screens are close (Kindle uses such a screen), but still not the same. Phones and Tablets (the other main ereader devices) actually are harder on the eyes than a Kindle. If you have enough light to read a book, you have enough to read a Kindle.

What makes the biggest difference for me is that I travel a lot and books are big. I am a big reader and books really pile up. I already carry an iphone, so no extra weight to carry many books. I just moved to China and I bought 2 more Kindles for my kids before we moved (my wife had one). The Kindles let us buy books from Amazon.com easily in Asia where access to English books is greatly rescricted.

Michael

 

[Michael]

The west developed by creating strong domestic markets. Third world countries can do the same thing instead of manipulating currencies, stealing IP and competing with slave wages.

They compete with the wages paid in their country. Korea and Taiwan are not stealing and are not manipulating currencies (all countries "manipulate their currencies, btw).

The fact is, the USA is in a world market and burying your head in the sand about it won't make that world market go away.

Michael

 

[Cerb]

This is an aside, but does anyone here actually own a Kindle and is reading a book on a Kindle a better experience than physically turning pages? I don't have any experience with it, but I'd much rather have a physical book than an eye-straining screen.

The whole point is that the screen is not eye-straining. What makes a book reader is the display (the Nook Color being an eye-straining exception). The lack of significant cost differences between paper books and small downloaded files is what gets me about them. The display looks almost exactly like a plastic card (like the kind health insurance companies always seem to use for membership cards), and doesn't cause eye strain.

 

[soulcougher73]

I'd potentially be for banning high frequency trading and speculation on commodities, but the stock market is a pretty useful tool. I'm up for hearing what these better ways you speak of are, though.

Well one of the big draws of the stock market is as a tool for investment into companies to get more money to expand etc. Banks can do that with loans as they do for many businesses and people now. No need to allow people to do that with a stock market. If the bank doesnt like the business plan or doesnt see a growth opportunity they wont loan you the money. If said company comes to them with a good business plan for growth than the bank can loan them the money if they so choose.

I just think we could do without the stock market and be just fine. It creates more problems than is solves with the greed it breeds.

 

[QuantumPion]

The problem isn't that manufactuering and labor costs in Asia are too low. The problem is excessive government regulation, bureaucracy, and lawsuits have made American manufacturing and labor too expensive.

 

[yllus]

Well one of the big draws of the stock market is as a tool for investment into companies to get more money to expand etc. Banks can do that with loans as they do for many businesses and people now. No need to allow people to do that with a stock market. If the bank doesnt like the business plan or doesnt see a growth opportunity they wont loan you the money. If said company comes to them with a good business plan for growth than the bank can loan them the money if they so choose.

I just think we could do without the stock market and be just fine. It creates more problems than is solves with the greed it breeds.

Banks are powerful enough as it is without assigning them the sole ability to create, destroy, grow or shrink all businesses in the country. Getting a loans is already obstacle #1 in order to expand or go full time; we don't need to make it exponentially harder. And why should banks be the ultimate arbiter on whether a company is worthy of a loan anyways?

You'd also be consolidating ownership of wealth into far fewer hands by taking away the common man's ability to buy a slice of a company. You'd remove a method for the common man to diversify their risk on how they can grow their wealth. And we'd lose a crucial tool for understanding what the wealth and direction of corporations are without a wide open marketplace where everyone can voice an opinion by putting a buy or sell offer forward.

Greed will exist with our without the invent of the stock market. It actually serves a lot of good by making the wheelings and dealings of finance relatively open and accessible to the public. We just need to pull it back from the "exists solely to make money" place it's currently gone to.

 

[GoPackGo]

They compete with the wages paid in their country. Korea and Taiwan are not stealing and are not manipulating currencies (all countries "manipulate their currencies, btw).

The fact is, the USA is in a world market and burying your head in the sand about it won't make that world market go away.

Michael

We are not a world market...we are world who now buys things, especially high-tech from Asian countries. What happens when China, who is selling things "cheap" now, decides to raise the price?

China is thinking long term...world market and manufacturing domination....the elite have 100's of millions of poor to sacrifice to achieve their goal.

 

[sm625]

The short term quarterly growth over all else paradigm is largely responsible for this. How do you fix it? Raise tax rates on short term capital gains. Raise the top marginal tax rates. Profit taking is discouraged and reinvestment is encouraged. This forces long term thinking. The people in power now will not accept this. That is one of the great reasons why we will have a long depression. All these people who care not for facts or reason or debate... they all need to "pass on" before we can have a real recovery that involves the things I just mentioned. Wars help pass them on all the much faster. That is why I say war is inevitable. The baby boomers who run the show today are really a sad generation of americans who have flushed this country down the toilet, and I for one will be glad if and when a generation of sanity replaces them. Unfortunately my generation seems to know next to nothing about anything, which means they will be victims to the same banker propaganda that led to this "low tax low investment" environment. Low taxes mean nothing if all it does is cause profit taking and mindless consumption. It is obviously better to have higher taxes which forces people to reinvest and hire instead of taking profits and consuming. This stuff is so simple that it boggles the mind, yet the bankers and the bilderbergers and the CFR have such a stranglehold over our culture that no one even actually analyzes the "low tax" propaganda that the top 0.1% love so much. Everyone just blindly accepts it without realizing that it is just a mentality that was bought and paid for to serve the elite. All we get is an endless stream of "low tax ownership society" garbage propaganda and endless raping of the country by the rich.

 

[TheSlamma]

The problem isn't that manufactuering and labor costs in Asia are too low. The problem is excessive government regulation, bureaucracy, and lawsuits have made American manufacturing and labor too expensive.

Well damn, having 4 feet of foam on a river down stream from a papermill was kind of getting to be a bitch.

While I do agree there are many regulations that have gone too far, conservatives seriously seem to think that corporations will be driven by the free market to make ethical decisions and it's simply not true.

 

[QuantumPion]

Well damn, having 4 feet of foam on a river down stream from a papermill was kind of getting to be a bitch.

While I do agree there are many regulations that have gone too far, conservatives seriously seem to think that corporations will be driven by the free market to make ethical decisions and it's simply not true.

There is a middle ground between no regulation and total government control of every aspect of the economy.

 

[soulcougher73]

Banks are powerful enough as it is without assigning them the sole ability to create, destroy, grow or shrink all businesses in the country. Getting a loans is already obstacle #1 in order to expand or go full time; we don't need to make it exponentially harder. And why should banks be the ultimate arbiter on whether a company is worthy of a loan anyways?

You'd also be consolidating ownership of wealth into far fewer hands by taking away the common man's ability to buy a slice of a company. You'd remove a method for the common man to diversify their risk on how they can grow their wealth. And we'd lose a crucial tool for understanding what the wealth and direction of corporations are without a wide open marketplace where everyone can voice an opinion by putting a buy or sell offer forward.

Greed will exist with our without the invent of the stock market. It actually serves a lot of good by making the wheelings and dealings of finance relatively open and accessible to the public. We just need to pull it back from the "exists solely to make money" place it's currently gone to.

The problem i see with people investing in a company is this company full of real people is now just a number to someone. They really dont care about the company. They just care about the numbers. And will bail on said company at the drop of a hat. All people care about is if the stock goes up regardless of what the company had to do in order for that to happen. Thus the CEO who might normally run a company ethically and morally is now at the whim of stock holders to cut cost etc so they can get richer. It breeds greed from everyone involved.

Maybe banks are not the sole answer to this, but their has to be a better way than the stock market as is. I personally blame the stock market for all the US's problems when it comes to corporations and employment in the past 40 years or so. The stock market took away any loyalty a company had to its employees since they were now not a person but a $ amount. And in turn now employees have no loyalty towards a company and also chase after the almight dollar.

Its really a sad world weve created.

 

[Ausm]

I'd potentially be for banning high frequency trading and speculation on commodities, but the stock market is a pretty useful tool. I'm up for hearing what these better ways you speak of are, though.

This X 100!

 

[Macamus Prime]

The problem is excessive government regulation, bureaucracy, and lawsuits have made American manufacturing and labor too expensive.

Is your solution to remove most regulation, bureaucracy and the ability to sue when a manufacturer is at fault? What do you think happens in China, since manufacturers do not face the same "challenges" there as they do in the US?

Let me guess, leave it up to the good intentioned companies to regulate themselves. Of course! We all know how well that works,...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/12/11/us-china-reforms-cancer-idUSTRE4BA0KZ20081211

Well,.. it is just 1 in 50. And "cancer village" sounds so quaint!!

 

[QuantumPion]

Is your solution to remove most regulation, bureaucracy and the ability to sue when a manufacturer is at fault? What do you think happens in China, since manufacturers do not face the same "challenges" there as they do in the US?

Let me guess, leave it up to the good intentioned companies to regulate themselves. Of course! We all know how well that works,...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/12/11/us-china-reforms-cancer-idUSTRE4BA0KZ20081211

Well,.. it is just 1 in 50. And "cancer village" sounds so quaint!!

No, it is not, strawman.

 

[momeNt]

No, it is not, strawman.

You'll never catch that strawman though, he's flying down that slipper slope!

 

[bfdd]

what's funny is he talks about china's lack of regulations, yet they've put people to death for shady business practices like loading products full of lead and what not. so while they might not regulate up front, they definitely get the point across afterwards. I doubt you'll see as many businessmen choosing the same route.