Even though the label may say MADE IN CHINA, that doesn't mean all the money goes there.

Here's an interesting report that some may find hard to believe (myself included); it says that even though nearly every damn thing we buy at the stores nowadays has a MADE IN CHINA label slapped across it, most of the money from our purchases of those products actually stays inside the USA.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/dbc1e2382d0f.jpg[/atsimg]

Everything’s Made in China? Not Quite.

An analysis just released by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concludes that most of what Americans spend on consumer goods, electronics, clothing, sneakers and the like, stays in America. Surprisingly little comes from China after all. Say the authors:

Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures (PCE) in 2010…Chinese imports make up only a small share of total U.S. consumer spending…

Athough globalization is widely recognized these days, the U.S. economy actually remains relatively closed. The vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States is produced here. In 2010, imports were about 16% of U.S. GDP. Imports from China amounted to 2.5% of GDP.

About 55% of the amount spent on goods made in China stays in the U.S. as well, in the form of transportation costs, wholesale and retail marketing expenses, and labor. Put another way, $276 billion was spent in 2010 on consumer goods labeled “Made in China” compared to the total consumer spending of $10.2 trillion, and $153 billion of that stayed in the United States.

The New American


It says that only a small portion of our purchase price goes directly toward the cost of production in China; the rest goes to truck drivers who deliver the goods, the local store that sells the goods and the American corporations who put their names on those goods.

Does this mean that MADE IN CHINA products aren't really stealing money away from American workers or is this the government's way of putting a positive spin on our economy going down the tubes because we don't produce anything here at home anymore?

I still have trouble understanding what exactly free trade is.
Interesting thread

reply to post by FortAnthem


It sounds like propaganda to me to keep Americans from realizing that our nation is getting into a big hole thanks to outsourcing and free trade.

Well yeah, it'd be ignorant to say China doesn't create any jobs, but they hit us where it really hurts. Manufacturing.

Of course China is not benefiting from this. Western capitalists pay Chinese factories very low to produce their goods, and the Chinese pay their workers next to nothing. The wealth created benefits only the western capitalists.

It is a kind of loophole for capitalists to get around paying people decent wages to keep up with prices, that are not changing to reflect this new lower cost of manufacturing. It just means they can pay workers less money, and take a larger profit for themselves. Less pay + less jobs + prices still high = you do the maths.

The people on both sides, China and western workers, are being hurt by this arrangement, either no jobs or very low paid jobs.

This will force western workers to accept even lower wages themselves in the future. We are being royally screwed. No wonder people are rioting, there will be worse to come. What they are doing to the economy is not sustainable. Chinese workers are already striking and demanding more. This will lead to nothing but trouble for the worlds economy.

(Aug.15) -- China's image as a place where workers will meekly put up with long hours, low pay and lousy working conditions might need updating. And as that changes, so too might the legendary low price of Chinese products.

www.aolnews.com...

And it's all about producing crap we don't need just because someone is willing to purchase it. We could be producing for our needs, instead of someone else's greed.

features.peta.org...

I just felt like inserting this about China. China is responsible for ongoing animal cruelties, to the extend were animals are being skinned alive, beaten to death by blunt objects/brute force.

50% of the Fur globally is MADE IN CHINA, that's a fact.

Support Peta in attempts at stopping animal cruelties world wide, by signing an online petition.

reply to post by FortAnthem


I haven't looked into it deep enough at the moment, however an earlier thread spoke of people buying goods online from America because of the low dollar. This brings to mind that the British Empire was for much of it's existence was an Entrepot

Entrepôts were especially relevant in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period, when mercantile shipping flourished between Europe and its colonial empires in the Americas and Asia. For example, demand for spices in Europe, coupled with the long trade routes necessary for their delivery, led to a much higher market price than the original buying price. However, traders often did not want to travel the whole route, and thus used the entrepôts on the way to sell their goods. However, this also led to even more attractive profits for those who persevered to travel the entire route. [1] An example of such an early-modern entrepôt is the 17th-century Amsterdam Entrepôt

This benefits the merchant class rather than the populace. Even though to add and maintain the sources for that Entrepot the tax payers had to pay for a huge military budget in order to benefit "Free Enterprise", sound familiar?

Originally posted by cyberjedi
features.peta.org...

I just felt like inserting this about China. China is responsible for ongoing animal cruelties, to the extend were animals are being skinned alive, beaten to death by blunt objects/brute force.

50% of the Fur globally is MADE IN CHINA, that's a fact.

Support Peta in attempts at stopping animal cruelties world wide, by signing an online petition.

How about we worry about human lives first, cool?

reply to post by BlackStar99


No thanks.

We sent out workers to purchase American flags for the 4th of July for our (American) company. To fly these flags for the observation of the Independence Day, and all that it represents.

The employees came back with U.S. flags made in * China*....now there's just something really, really wrong about that, especially given the current global economic situation w/ the Asians, and what-not.

Oh, and it's label, not lable, and perhaps not all the money goes there anymore, but more than enough does between unfair trade with Asia, NAFTA, etc. Our fed. reserve is bad enough, but the US can't win when it practices / condones agreements with other countries who manipulate their currencies even more.

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Originally posted by marg6043
reply to post by FortAnthem

 

It sounds like propaganda to me to keep Americans from realizing that our nation is getting into a big hole thanks to outsourcing and free trade.

I think you hit the nail on the head right there.

When I first read this article, I started to think that we weren't as screwed as everybody says we are. Then I got to thinking; if a nation of consumers doesn't produce anything, where are they getting all the money to buy all that crap?

For the last few decades, we made up for our lower wages and buying power by borrowing money from the banks. Americans, deluded into thinking that they still had the buying power they were accustomed to ran up their credit card balances to record new levels. It was impossible for the country to sustain this level of consumption forever and the banks finally collapsed under the weight of all the unsecured borrowing and consumption.

America and the world are now faced with a new reality in which they must actually produce something besides fiat currency in order to sustain themselves. The Fed tries to keep up the old illusions by pumping more currency into the system but, with the banks unwilling and/ or unable to bring lending up to their old levels, the whole facade is due to fall apart soon.

If the country doesn't come to the realization that it needs to produce real products to compete in the world economy, we're doomed to fall apart worse than Greece and soon.


reply to post by BurningSpearess

Oh, and it's label, not lable,

So THAT explains why nobody's starred or flagged this thread; they were all offended by the misspelling in the title.

I fixed it now so everything should be good now.

Originally posted by BlackStar99

Originally posted by cyberjedi
features.peta.org...

I just felt like inserting this about China. China is responsible for ongoing animal cruelties, to the extend were animals are being skinned alive, beaten to death by blunt objects/brute force.

50% of the Fur globally is MADE IN CHINA, that's a fact.

Support Peta in attempts at stopping animal cruelties world wide, by signing an online petition.

How about we worry about human lives first, cool?

Not cool at all. Someone always comes up with this argument like it is supposed to negate the animal cruelty. BS. People are great but I will not wait until every government treats its citizens properly before I speak for animals that cannot utter a word in their own defense.
That is a convoluted and useless argument. If you forbid animal cruelty and punished nations with sanctions that perpetuated it - do you really think those same nations are going to get by or continue with human abuses without outcry from the world? Where is the petition? I want to sign it.
From now on to me, anything that says MADE IN CHINA may as well have a swastika on it. I don't care to pay the truckers or the companies that buy from and do business with CHINA whether they are "American" or not.

Sorry.
I got as far as Federal Reserve Bank and I new they'd be lying.

reply to post by newcovenant


www.endbearfarming.org...

You can sign this petition, that would make a contribution to help stop Bear Farming in China. Every little bit helps!

Originally posted by cyberjedi
reply to post by newcovenant

 

www.endbearfarming.org...

You can sign this petition, that would make a contribution to help stop Bear Farming in China. Every little bit helps!

Thanks for that. Signed and I'll circulate it too. Appreciate it very much.

Meanwhile if we waited for men to solve their battles
and end their abuses to each other before protecting those even more unspoken for and less worthy,
there will not be one animal left.

reply to post by cyberjedi


That's okay. The Elite don't care about you, too.

I hate PETA. Mmm...fur...

Originally posted by marg6043
It sounds like propaganda to me to keep Americans from realizing that our nation is getting into a big hole thanks to outsourcing and free trade.

Basically. It leaves out the obvious and crucial point. This money does not at all go to the bottom 90%+ of Americans because they are increasingly cut out of the loop.

Before, the consumer economy in the US worked because workers made money and could buy things. Now they've cut out the part where the workers get money, and so we are circling the drain. The crazy thing is, we've got a decade or two left of this same basic pattern playing out if we don't change course.

These days if you own a company that has outsourced its production to China, you are saving a lot on labor, have barely lowered your prices, and thus are making record profits.

So you can read this story as that the FED has noticed the calls for the return of some sensible tariffs, and the American System in general, so that we don't have to compete with slave labor, and if the people began to demand those or other such policies it would pose a significant problem for the globalist agenda.

Originally posted by 11andrew34
Before, the consumer economy in the US worked because workers made money and could buy things.

More like the American public borrowed their way into oblivion for the last 70 years.

reply to post by Violater1

Sorry.
I got as far as Federal Reserve Bank and I new they'd be lying

I was wondering when someone would pick up on that. It set off alarm bells in my head to as soon as I read the article.

What surprised me is that The New American presented such an uncritical article on this report. They are usually much more suspicious of anything that the government or the Fed puts out, ready to point out the fallacies in their reasoning but, in this story, they presented the report as is, with no criticism.

I guess everybody's starved for good economic news nowadays; sometimes enough to let our guard down and not look deeper into the story.

Originally posted by eldard

Originally posted by 11andrew34
Before, the consumer economy in the US worked because workers made money and could buy things.

More like the American public borrowed their way into oblivion for the last 70 years.

Oh yes blame the public. It has nothing to do with a system that conditions us to produce, and consume, for the greed of the few at the expense of the many. It has nothing to do with a system that creates artificial scarcity in order to keep prices high, and coerces people to take loans they can't really afford in order to buy that house they have been conditioned to think is life's goal. It has nothing to do with greedy capitalists who want profits now, and screw the future. It has nothing to do with the increasing cost of war to keep the oil in the ground keeping it artificially scarce and expensive. We pay for the war, and we pay for them to make profit.

costofwar.com...

Oh yes it's all our own fault.