Classe move to China

Rarl -- wrong!!! This is NOT about racism. The issue is about American jobs, plain and simple. Oh . . . as to racism, let me remind you that American society is made up of different types, stripes, colors and whatever.

I care when I see empty and decaying factories in my home town. I care when a friend, neighbor, or colleague gets laid off because his/her job has moved offshore -- anywhere. I care when I see what was once nice neighborhoods, decay because the people have moved away or live at subsistence levels.

I repeat what I said above. Even if the stuff we buy is a few bucks cheaper, if at the cost of American jobs, the trend is that large swathes of our society are being left behind. So, what good is it if a TV is made a few bucks cheaper overseas, if the target market is becoming impoverished --and it is, who is going to buy all this cheap jung anyway??

Fundsgon is onto something here. The next big market is China and they have tariffs (like we used to have from Washington until Reagan) that would make importation obscenely expensive. For a predatory, profit driven board of directors, its a smart move. They now have feet in both countries. American companies are no different.

And yes, Rarl, this all smacks of xenophobia: it helps keep one's attention diverted from the real shenanigans that truly deserve our scrutiny.

It does matter as Elizabeth said.

As a Canadian I go out of my way to buy North American made products as our economies are finely weaved into one another.

One should ask the question in these boardrooms where the final desicion is made to go overseas is this short sighted for the next few years or as the Japanese do the next few decades of economics.
Now who will be able to afford the products and will sales decline due to a reduced gainfully employed population. To meet profit quotas and costs will prices be reduced to sell by volume or will quality parts be replaced by inferior ones to reduce costs and inflate profits.
Me thinks in the long run they will find when they pulled the trigger their pistol was still holstered leaving a gaping hole in their own foot. Do they really beleive that once all these companies are moved and established and vested that the workers there will not seek to be paid a better wage and better living conditions while making expensive products for the westerner's.

Cheers

And I'd like to point out something that always pops up in discussions like this and that is our buying of foreign products is not the reason why our jobs have gone overseas but is, instead, a result of our jobs going overseas. I'd gladly pay 5-10% more for something made in the States in order to keep jobs here. More money in my fellow citizens pocket means more purchases made, more taxes paid, more skin in the game for everyone. What drives an economy is what's in the consumer's pocket, not how big a tax cut some oligarch gets.

We're told WE are too expensive to hire is the reason for going overseas but the cost of transporting it back is almost a wash. It's the externalities (health, safety, environmental costs) that drives those that value profit above all else overseas. Not content with soaring profits (we've never had better performance than in the last decade) the lords and masters of our economy want obscene profits. So, they moved over 45,000 factories overseas and purged an average of 750,000 jobs a month from 2000 to 2008. This was all planned and executed while we argued over gays, abortion, guns and religion.

America is no longer considered a viable market when obscene profits are the order of the day. That market is China. A billion customers can't be wrong.

Nonoise- Boards of Directors are supposed to be profit driven- you make profit sound like a moral disease. In my opinion, profits are not the problem...the pursuit of profit/self-interest without an underpinning of ethics and empathy is the real issue. Ethics do not have to come from religion- but they must be taught, and too few of us understand that the constant pursuit of pleasure, riches and entertainment blind us to more important things.

Just my opinion, but again, not all businesses are evil, not all capitalists exploit others, etc. Life is gray, not black and white.