> 4) In 2008, 1.2 billion cellphones were sold > worldwide. How many of them were manufactured > inside the United States? Zero.
Cell phones are a great example. Many people can go to a provider and sign up for a service plan and walk out the door with a free phone. The reason for this is that they're fairly inexpensive and the cost (low as it is) is captured in the price of the contract over the long term. If that same phone had been manufactured in the United States it would have cost a lot more. For the cellular providers, offering a free phone (or a reduced-price phone, as is the case with an iPhone from AT&T) with the package is great from a marketing standpoint. No cellular provider is going to take a stand on where the phone is manufactured and only sell/include US-produced phones because the other providers would eat their lunch. This same story plays out over tens of thousands of products. Not only are many products cheaper to manufacture overseas, but the quality is as good as or better than what we can produce here. As consumers, our society wants lots of goods at the lowest possible prices (hence, Wal-Mart). At the same time we want high-paying jobs with great benefits, health care, etc. As large-scale, quality, manufacturing has become possible in places like China, it makes perfect sense from an economic standpoint to have our goods manufactured there instead of here. So what about all of those people who were once paid to do manufacturing in the United States? They need to move on and find work in other fields. They need to be retrained and get educated in other fields with more promising futures. I agree, the US is losing out on manufacturing. Instead of a rallying cry for "buy American" we need a rallying cry for "go back to school." Unfortunately many educational institutions are also in it for the money rather than the betterment of the country, so not only can people not afford to go to school, but they are crippled with debt if they decide to push through and finance their education. In my opinion, education is where the next great revolution needs to take place. It needs to be cheaper and more widely available. That is the only way we will be able to continue to compete at all in our emerging global economy. As an aside, as the quality of life in places like China improves and they develop a form of "middle class" in their own culture, those people will also begin to want more things and will demand higher wages which will cause prices to increase, and there may come a time when the cost of manufacturing plus shipping reaches a point where it would be cheaper to simply manufacture locally again, but I do not think that will happen any time soon, so educating the upcoming workforce to not rely on manufacturing will be key, in my opinion. -Justin ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:328668 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
