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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 14, 2007 15:19:26 GMT -6
I found a great chart from the Economy In Crisis site showing the amount of money American consumers spend on imports. It shows numbers for both 2004 and 2005. In every category, the amount spent on imports increased from 2004 to 2005. This is also the "increased" amount of money not spent on American goods, and the $-value of the demand loss for American production and American labor. Below is a copy of the chart from Economy In CrisisPercentage of US Consumption Spent on Foreign Imported GoodsNote the 20% increase in imports of computer equipment (almost $5 million), the 11% increase in importation of communication equipment (about $8.5 million), and the $8.5 million increase in importation of auto parts. And this is only over 1 year. What caused an increase in importation of auto parts? Would Bill Gates say this is because of a "shortage of skilled workers"? That must be it. It must be because those laid-off Delphi auto parts workers forgot how to make auto parts. Yeah, that's it. Now I understand. Apparently a lot of American workers have simply "forgotten" how to do jobs they've spent most of their lives doing. At least that's what Bill Gates would say. And we just know Gates wouldn't lie about something like this, would he?
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Post by rjfliberal07 on Apr 14, 2007 23:33:25 GMT -6
Bill Gates is a piece of Traitorous American Crap! I think we should outsource his job to say Bangalore, India with a generous salary of 50,000 a year to head Microsoft. No Options, Stock or other juicy perks either. Then we can see him change his tune. All those billions he got at the expense of many outsourced workers would then be evenly distributed back to those same workers whose lives were ruined with layoffs. Anyway though, when I shop, it's so dang hard to buy any American made products. Even buying other first world or non- slave labor products is very difficult to do. It is like a vicious cycle where soon even people who want to buy American products cannot. I used to like checking out neat electronic stuff until all these sweatshop-made imports got dumped on our shore en-masse. I am thinking about getting a PS3 but I don't want to buy it now. Instead, I will wait until it gets relatively cheap enough that my purchase won't help Sony's bottom line much. If I have to buy something that I know is not Made in USA, I wait until it is priced so low that I don't really help these companies bottom lines much. Clearance items and thrift stores are a great avenue to take to get deeply discounted goods that in many cases are still in good quality or barely even used.
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Post by blueneck on Apr 15, 2007 6:29:18 GMT -6
rjfliberal07 - I use a similar strategy as well. But even at the deeply discounted prices, these importers still make big profit because the stuff is soooo cheap.
I try to buy US whenever I can and agree it becomes more and more dificult. I have a hierarchy of country of origin in my buying decisions, in pretty much this order - US, Canada, Europe, Japan, Mexico, then lastly china - and only if there are no other choices.
I recently went to the "big box" home improvement store ( because the local places are long gone) to buy a certain type of hand tool. I first picked up a chinese made ones, and they were actually acceptable quality. I then saw a US made one, and after the shock wore off that it was US, and appreciated the more solid quality "feel" to it, I noticed it was also priced 2 dollars less than the chinese junk. So either with transport etc added in the chinese product was a little more, or the store was just making a bigger margin on it banking that most people would automaticaly assume the chinese one would be cheaper and not look further. No brainer which tool I bought.
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Post by blueneck on Apr 15, 2007 10:36:32 GMT -6
They are all learning how to stock shelves and ring up at the checkstand at the big box mart or flipping hamburgers now, thats how they forgot how to make auto parts.
And the auto engineers and technicians are installing cable and fixing copiers these days.
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Apr 16, 2007 14:01:22 GMT -6
They are all learning how to stock shelves and ring up at the checkstand at the big box mart or flipping hamburgers now, thats how they forgot how to make auto parts. And the auto engineers and technicians are installing cable and fixing copiers these days. Or they're learning how to sell real estate, or how to originate subprime mortgages to unqualified borrowers, or how to provide phony "credit repair" services. Maybe they're even helping to create new financial "innovations." These are certainly some real "productive" endeavors.
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