The Epic Mistake About Manufacturing that's Cost Americans Millions of Jobs

a reply to: sligtlyskeptical

The incremental price increase on a Chinese widget due to shipping is peanuts when you amortize it over millions and millions of units (like what fits on a single container ship).

American retailers and manufacturers love you for thinking that, because it gives them even more justification to sell you that .03 cent Chinese widget for $4.00 and make you think you're getting a bargain!

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: Aazadan

Cooking; millions of people know how to cook. Over half the people in the phone book know how to cook. Some people don't know how to cook...and eat crap from McDoogle's as a result, then have an aneurysm.

Some people die from eating food they cooked wrong, or hack their faces off with a kitchen knife while cutting onions. (i.e. bad)

Cooking is a skill.

You seeing the theme here yet?

Yes, being good at cooking is not the same as knowing how to make edible food. Skills require being good at them, half the people in the phone book are not capable of cooking at a 5 star restaurant.

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
a reply to: Aazadan

You have a very strange (and incorrect) definition of "skill".

Look, a lots and lots of people know how to swim (i.e. shared and not exclusive). Very few people make any money at swimming. The phone book is chocked full of people who know how to swim, literally thousands of them.

Not knowing how to swim can cause you to drown (i.e. bad)

Swimming is a skill.

Define 'skill' again?

Knowing how to do something does not mean one is skilled. Skill comes from not just knowing the activity, but being in the upper echelons at performing that activity. Most people are not skilled swimmers, because most people are not as good as Michael Phelps.