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Thread: Made In China?
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01-24-2007, 12:29 PM #1Web Hosting Master
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Made In China?
What is up with nearly every product being outsourced today, I pick up a book and the print says "Made in China", cars made in America parts are being outsourced to Mexico, electronics are all being made in Taiwan or China and even to some degree assembled in Signapore, Malaysia, and Vietnam. Toys are being made in China, corporations are outsourcing American labor and tech support to China and India and we're losing jobs to illegal immigrants. Sure products are getting cheaper, we're able to get more bang for our buck but where is the quality? Nothing is made to last anymore and it gets worse and worse over time.
I don't know about everyone else but i'm getting sick of this outsourcing/globalization stuff. Is there a such thing as an American product anymore other than a Gerber, a few cars, and firearms? We're losing the market on everything. Theres really no such thing as a tv produced in America anymore (except Vizio) and who knows if they are outsourcing or not, even then they are not able to compete with Sony or other companys. American cars are not meeting the quality of Japanese cars and cannot match the efficiency of an import. Walmart is outselling GM so that shows right there we have problems since they went from 50,000 workers to 10,000 and their stocks went from 160 dollars a share to 40 dollars a share.
It's not just America that's doing this, even Japan is starting to outsource to a large degree and quality control is going down the shitter. I compared a Sony video camera I had from 1995 (Made in Japan) and it still works today, very high quality. A new camera says "Assembled in China" and it feels like a toy, scratches easily, isn't very durable and broke in less than a year.
Why is it corporations are cutting so many corners just to make a quick buck, don't they care about the customers? It ticks me off to call Linksys and get some hindu guy on the line who I can barely understand and reads from a manual like a robot. It makes me angry that people are so obsessed with quantity over quality. It's like comparing mcdonalds to a nice expensive steak house, sure you get a lot of food, a super size drink, and a large fry for a buck and 50 cents however it's killing the market because the majority want more for less.
What is everyones opinion on this?Nationhosts, LLC
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01-24-2007, 12:46 PM #2Retired Moderator
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It's all down to money. You can pay someone in China the same wage to cover a weeks work that people in the USA would want for a day, or even an hours work. As for quality of products, again, it's down to what they can get away with. Costs are lower and most products now are seen as disposable. A TV might of lasted you 10 years in the past, a lot of people I know now get a new one maybe after only 3 years.
It's often cheaper and easier to just throw something away rather than get it repaired.
And no, most companies do not care about the customers as long as they are still buying their products.
What it comes down to is are you prepared to pay what could be double the price for an American produced product. I suspect for a lot of people the answer is no.
The Western world makes money in the service industry now, the manufacturing industry is dropping off hugely. Just gonna have to get used to it!Steve
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01-24-2007, 01:07 PM #3Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by Vortex-Steve
Perfect answer and I completely agree.
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01-24-2007, 01:18 PM #4Web Hosting Master
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It's only lifting the gap between the poor and the rich. Heck your right, products are disposable to the point you just throw them away, i'm sure cell phones and computers will be like that soon. Well they already kind of are.
Almost everything American is now limited to service, and that won't last long. We are a nation of consumers, how can we survive at this rate with everything foreign owned? Heck even corporations are now becoming foreign owned so I'm curious and concerned for other American citizens. When I was in highschool I knew how hard it was to get a job in Chicago because all the illegal aliens had taken the jobs that Americans "supposedly" didn't want. What jobs are really available for Americans? We can't live a good lifestyle by asking lower pay than illegals and oversea companys. Housing and overall living costs more therefore we need a stable job.
At this point i've looked at a bunch of products in my house where they are made.
Compaq Laptop - Made in Taiwan
Compaq Battery Cell - Made and assembled in Japan
Samsung Plasma Display - Made in Korea
Philips TV - Made in Japan
Sony video camcorder (1995) Made in Japan
Pants - Made in Mexico
Socks - Made in Dominican Republic
Phone - Made in China
H&K USP handgun - Made in Germany
Western Digital 250 gig harddrive - Made in Thailand
Linksys Router - Made in China
HP Printer - Made in China
Nike Shoes - Made in China
Mitsubishi Eclipse 2000 - Made in Japan
Xbox 360 - Assembled in China
Various crafts around house - Made in China
Cheap silverware - Made in China
Expensive stainless silverware - Made in Japan
Olympus Digital Camera - Made in China
Logitech mouse and keyboard - Made in China
Microsoft Mouse - Made in China
Gerber Tool - Made in USA
Plastic Ruler - Made in China
Western Digital 250 gig SATA drive - Made in Malaysia
Western Digital caviar drive - Doesn't say
Fujitsu Harddrive - Made in Japan
I've noticed a tremendous quality control difference between different countries.
It appears the highest quality products come from Japan if they are indeed assembled and manufactured there. Normally the Japanese products appear to be quite a bit more expensive though they are made to last. Overall the durability is better. A lot of the electronics and cell phones made there are of superior quality.
American products are mixed, some are very high quality while others are not. Take into example cars. America still manufacturers a lot of weapons that are high quality but many European countries are catching up are are already ahead of America.
European products for the most part I am impressed, I believe Nokia is made in Finland? Overall a high quality phone. My handgun being made in Germany is very high quality and very well made though expensive. Cars are very well made in Europe and I would take a import from there over an American car anyday. If I had the money I'd buy a Mercedes Benz. I'm not sure what else is really made in the European countries.
Korea used to be known for low quality and cheap products however many Korean products with the exception of Daewoo are generally pretty good quality.
Taiwan pretty good experience for the most part, similar in quality to Korea though the products are a hit or miss
Hong Kong, I've only had a few products from Hong Kong, quality is a hit or miss. Most products I have received from there are generally of high quality.
Mexico, medium to low quality.
China, generally very low quality unless the factorys employee strict quality control. So much stuff is made there, the majority of it is garbage. Almost all the electronic equipment there seems to be rushed and poorly made. Cars, no experience but I have heard complaints. Most of their weapons are clones and poor quality, however cheap.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Signapore. Perhaps the lowest quality of all. Most of my Western Digital drives that are older have lasted 10 years and are still going, not sure where they are made but my Fujitsu drive has lasted 12 years. The newest Western Digital products I have had have a lifespan of about 2 years, sometimes less.
I can understand outsourcing to a degree, however it seems like most large corporations depend on outsourcing for complete survival now to make the largest profits. It's disturbing. Many engineers I know have complained about quality as well that it is not as good as it used to be. At this rate I don't think there will be a such thing as antiques for our generation. I've noticed a tremendous difference in quality by country. I don't know if this has to do with the cheap child labor overseas or if this is poor quality control in the factorys or what it is. Just an example, my Olympus camera was not cheap and Olympus is a Japanese company yet the product being made in China is not made durable at all, the frame cracked by dropping it. This wouldn't have happened with my Nikon camera (the thing is built like a rock). The software is buggy as heck on the Olympus camera as well. I am pretty sure this could be a fault of lazy corporations trying to cut costs in any way by eliminating strict quality control, as it's probably cheaper to do a 1 in 200 quality control check as opposed to 1 in every 5. I know that many Japanese companys have strict quality control, I believe it's 1 in every 3 products and then it's sent to Japan for a second quality control check before being approved for shipment to other countries.
Gateway is a prime example of poor quality control, back in 2000 when it was 1 out of every 10 gateway computers dead on arrival.
I believe America still depends on farms and meat (rather than imports) on a domestic market though that could change. I believe even software is being outsourced and many cartoons (simpsons outsources animation to Korea, King of the hill also now outsources). Hollywood appears to still be American.Last edited by NationHosts; 01-24-2007 at 01:28 PM.
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01-24-2007, 01:30 PM #5Retired Moderator
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Most of the companies you list are not American anyway, so you can't really criticize them for being manufactured overseas.
It would be good to compare some American made products and foreign products. Looking at costs and build quality to see if there really is a difference.Steve
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01-24-2007, 01:32 PM #6Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by Vortex-Steve
For the most part I can't really think of any American companys that produce in the US with the exception of Vizio (they make plasma displays cheap, unknown if they outsource or rebrand), some car companys, and I Nvidia manufacturers their cards in California. Intel now outsources to Vietnam so those are no longer made in the US and the architecture for it is designed in Israel and India. AMD is based in California and they now have factorys in Germany. ATI is Canadian based, not sure if they assemble the cards or outsource.
Heck even my number 2 pencil says Made in China.
I'm curious as to why some products don't say where they are made. I'm thinking with Globalization, there will be no such thing as a product "made in" anymore.Last edited by NationHosts; 01-24-2007 at 01:38 PM.
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01-24-2007, 01:48 PM #7Retired Moderator
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Logitech is Swiss I believe.
Car and aerospace manufacturing is about the only big things I can think is still going in the UK
The service industry, and in particular financial services, is where you make the big money. Let the other countries have manufacturing and the low wages to go along with it The only problem I can see is that a lot of people may not have the education required. Most of the big companies will want people who have been to University. If you are 50 and unemployed you are in big trouble unless you have some good knowledge to put to use.Steve
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01-24-2007, 01:53 PM #8Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by Vortex-Steve
What I'm curious about is Europe, are most of the products sold there Made in China as well or any 3rd world countries?
I'm curious if this is limited to America? My concern is that if older people were complaining about products not being made as well as they used to be in the 90's and I'm complaining today that products today for the most part are made crappy, i'm curious how bad it will be 50-100 years from now. Disposable cars made of tinfoil? Heck human life at this point are treated like a product, but at least we're made to last relatively long. (sorta)
If I recall, didn't Germany start outsourcing all their products to other countries during world war II? I think the Czech and the Jews were sabotaging the firearms since they were manufacturing them late into the war. Many of the old German firearms Israel received were sabotaged so they had to fix them, they came from Czech. I figure the Czechs hated the Germans and knew since they were being outsourced, they were willing to screw up the products for the country they were intended for.
Many of the military issued BDU's (uniforms) and boots also say they are manufactured in China.Last edited by NationHosts; 01-24-2007 at 01:58 PM.
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01-24-2007, 02:00 PM #9Web Hosting Master
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Our company is avoiding the "outsource" stuff. We require everyone that works for us to show up every morning. We know we could easily outsource most of it, but the idea is to keep people here working. We wont even outsource to others within the U.S. If you cant show up here in the morning, you dont work here.
Too bad more companies arent like that..
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01-24-2007, 02:14 PM #10Retired Moderator
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What I'm curious about is Europe, are most of the products sold there Made in China as well or any 3rd world countries?Steve
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01-24-2007, 02:36 PM #11Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by Vortex-SteveNationhosts, LLC
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01-24-2007, 02:46 PM #12Retired Moderator
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Japanese and European cars sell well here. American cars do not .Although Ford does of course sell very well, not sure where the cars are actually built though. Plus most of the models in Europe are different to those available in the USA I believe. Brand like Chevrolet are not well known over here.
I'm not aware of any Chinese car brands, although I suspect most of the parts are Chinese.
I have a feeling most people (unless they are the ones building the cars!) do not really care where they are made.Steve
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01-24-2007, 03:33 PM #13Web Hosting Evangelist
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Steve has a good handle on this. It's the global economy. I first read about it in a series of books in the 70s and 80s called Megatrends by Naisbitt. You have to remember that a lot of products available today would not be available if they were all made in the US. There aren't enough people or industries here that could produce such products and, as stated, at a price you would buy.
In a sense, many workers have been priced out of the market by the continuing increase in salaries. But that's capitalism and economics at work. A time may come when salaries will go down and some of those jobs come back. Or there will be a change in the business landscape again where US jobs will not be in the service sector as much but in something else.
One thing that's forgotten is that, instead of manufacturing products, the US is now the IT of business. Many products are initiated and designed here. iow, you can picture the US as the office but the warehouses and manufacturing plants are elsewhere. This isn't necessarily bad but your kids won't be looking for jobs in the auto industry as much as looking into computer science.
Another thing to think about is that while many people bemoan Toyota taking the lead in US sales of automobiles (or is that world sales?), Toyota has only done that in the last quarter. In the meantime, GM is tied or only slightly behind which ain't too shabby.
Not that I would want a GM car mind you. Their quality is much better but the guy in charge of all that was on CBS Sunday Morning recently and said, "We can't become as good as Toyota. We have to be better to gain back the trust we lost from the consumer." (to paraphrase)
btw, there are Chinese brands in China and I think they are importing a small number of them.IE7 is nine years behind the standards or wrong.
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01-24-2007, 04:00 PM #14Web Hosting Master
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USA Imports - commodities:
agricultural products 4.9%, industrial supplies 32.9% (crude oil 8.2%), capital goods 30.4% (computers, telecommunications equipment, motor vehicle parts, office machines, electric power machinery), consumer goods 31.8% (automobiles, clothing, medicines, furniture, toys) (2003)
>>>
this means reset of the goods are still produced in united states.
USA Exports - commodities:
Definition Field Listing
agricultural products (soybeans, fruit, corn) 9.2%, industrial supplies (organic chemicals) 26.8%, capital goods (transistors, aircraft, motor vehicle parts, computers, telecommunications equipment) 49.0%, consumer goods (automobiles, medicines) 15.0% (2003)
>>>>
US also owns trademarks of most of the technologies in use today. For example every CDMA cell phone made in any part of the world pays some royalty to ericsson as CDMA technology was developed by ericsson. US earns lots of money through trademarks and technology exports. All in all picture for united states is not so bad as some of you may think.
Yes its true to that some kind of jobs are moving away from united states because they are done elsewhere more cheap or efficient way, the people working in those fields must be finding it difficult to deal with situation like that because its not easy to switch profession as many people think. IMO, globalization is good up to certain limits but it should not spread up to the levels where it starts ruining local economies. Take an example of walmart on internet i read, where ever wallmart opens shops in small or middle size towns, local businesses get shut down because they can no longer afford to compete with Wal-Mart prices. This resulted in low earning for many people in town because their businesses was interrelated which resulted in less money circulation among locals ultimately resulting in low level of standard for all people in town.
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01-24-2007, 04:14 PM #15Web Hosting Master
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dont forget that many things that appear to be foreign are manufactured locally - like cars - toyota / honda / hyundai / nissan / mercedes / bmw all have plants in the us to build cars here.
ford and gm(opel) have plants in the rest of the world to build cars there.
sometimes pieces are built all over and then shipped for assembly locally.
you really have to look at the content of the final product and buy what you feel is a good quality / price mix for your own needs. if you think it is to cheaply built for your needs - buy a different product - if enough people do this then they will get the message and either decide they dont care or they will up their quality.
finally - with global stock markets - you can own any company you like. you can buy shares of nissan if you like. in fact americans could buy enough stock of the company that it could become an american owned company with simply a headquarters buildling in japan.
many us companys are like this already - look at all the traditional uis brands that are owned overseas now - ie burger king - etc.
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01-24-2007, 04:15 PM #16Web Hosting Master
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Originally Posted by mahinder
I agree with you about the Walmart thing.
Walmart has it's pros and cons. I live in a smaller town which strives on tourism, military, and mom and pop shops. When Walmart was first established here a lot of mom and pop shops went out of business but were quickly hired as managers (the owners of the shops). While Walmart offers everything extremely cheap it's almost like a monopoly, I mean afterall it's nearly impossible to compete with a store who's selling plasma displays at less than 1000 dollars. A lot of the products are imported in China, but I don't think cheap prices is necessarily a good thing. Your right a lot of products we wouldn't be getting if it wasn't for China, there are certain things I want cheap and other things I want to spend big bucks on.
I am willing to shell out a lot of money on electronics and computer parts because I like quality, or even food I'll spend money. But say something like supplys for school or blank cd's or supplys I want it cheap. I guess that would account as something. What I don't understand is the middle aged father with a family who goes to Walmart, buys a generic brand big screen tv for 250 bucks and expects it to be the quality of a sony 50" plasma display. There is a reason that stuff is cheap, afterall companys need to make income too. You figure it costs them much cheaper with mass production then to boost the MSRP. Walmart probably gets lower prices because they buy massive quantitys of that product therefore they can sell it cheap. It makes me wonder if a meal at mcdonalds cost about 1.50 then the meat has gotta be like 20 cents or something like that. Your average consumer never really takes that into consideration and figure the US is just so rich that we get everything cheap.
Burger King is foreign owned? Never knew that.Nationhosts, LLC
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01-24-2007, 11:12 PM #17Retired ***ulator
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A few of the transits in our area outsource to get their websites done. Sooner of later they will be outsource my work, which is web work. Reason I've returned to college to finish my deaf studies to be an ASL Interpreter and get out of the web stuff.
73's, Kim
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01-24-2007, 11:22 PM #18Web Hosting Master
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UK brand clothing company -Burbrery had a battle on decision of outsourcing their manufacturing part under **fierce market competition**
competition says everything on outsourcing these daysPeter Orga-Sales -sales@sexywing.com
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01-24-2007, 11:52 PM #19Web Hosting Master
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-Burbrery
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01-25-2007, 12:04 AM #20Web Hosting Master
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not sure though, I am not chav, so I misspelled (Burberry)
interesting article might refer to
http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogt..._labor_clo.phpPeter Orga-Sales -sales@sexywing.com
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01-25-2007, 12:37 AM #21Junior Guru
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Porn, the only true american industry left
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01-25-2007, 02:10 AM #22Web Hosting Evangelist
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On PBS, (Frontline, excellent documentaries), it was shown that Wal-Mart does NOT always have the cheapest prices. They may advertise a microwave oven that's $10 cheaper anywhere else but, right next to that, they have another microwave that's better and more tempting for you to buy. The only thing is THAT microwave may not be cheaper than other stores sell it for. You may even find that all of the other microwave ovens are cheaper or the same price somewhere else.
IE7 is nine years behind the standards or wrong.
But it works in IE!
"IE is a cancer on the web" -- Paul Thurott
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01-25-2007, 06:19 AM #23Web Hosting Guru
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Originally Posted by Nunim
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01-25-2007, 12:45 PM #24Web Hosting Master
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You are mistaken, there's more outsource in porn than anywhere else.
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01-25-2007, 12:50 PM #25Web Hosting Master
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a few years back i was thinking of buying a jetta. when i got in the car, i noticed it said "globally sourced parts" and assembled in puebla, which is in mexico.
i guess globally sourced parts is a nice way of saying cheap chinese crap. and it was funny how they said agua caliente rather than hecho en mexico.
im glad i bought a volvo that was actually made in sweden, ford is sure to change that.Last edited by Project X; 01-25-2007 at 12:57 PM.
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