What's your opinion about items made in China?

I think most governments (except for Cuba) understands that. It's just finding the balance between cheap and easy Chinese imports without destroying the job market that's the issue, right?

 

It's a chicken and egg situation.

Also think about the workers and China's economy if the US (and many countries after it probably) were to adopt total isolationism. It's be horrible and the workers in China would get treated and paid even less.

 

this is very true in my opinion and image how much prices would go up for just air conditioners and engagement rings? i dont know about where you live but in indiana we have 0 diamonds haha

and what about gas/fuel? if you think the USA can produce enough fuel/oil to run itself you'd be crazy

think about it a little bit more than just "mcdonalds made me fat"

 

The USofA do have enough fuel/oil to run itself. They only import it so in the near future that the Middle East would gone dry of oil, the USofA would have an untapped resources for itself and for future monopoly of it.

The question of in China made products, is how do they arrive in our countries? If most countries' problem is competition with Chinese goods, then those countries should stop getting China products and produce them in their country. If the people have no source of China goods, the people will be forced to buy their countries products.

We should use our own products. That is the problem with Colonial mentality in countries colonized by other powers. They prefer those products than those they make.

 

Let me post a article that probably will change your vision about chinese made products and/or "everywhere else" chinese-build products:

http://www.nlcnet.org/reports?id=0034

And the "famous" motto:

"China. We do everything, absolutely everything to be a "1st world" country."

 

That article only presented the state of affairs for a single factory, and as soon as I started reading the second paragraph I could tell it was absolutely filled with bias ("boo hoo, communist second-/third-world country doesn't conform to the rich man's standards").

The job may be tough, but it's simple. The conditions may be a poor, but food and board are provided, presumably at a lower cost than that available outside the facility. Furthermore, the workers do indeed have an income, it's just horribly low by first-world standards.

The article goes on to state that US trade with China results in a dangerously high deficit. However, where's the context? How much does the US profit from other trade partnerships, and how much is its economy damaged by issues utterly unrelated to Chinese importation? There's an utter lack of perspective.

 

Rich men standards? Even here("3rd-world" country also) we have higher standards and profit better. A normal "minimum sallary worker" profits way more than 2000 US$/year.

 

The term "third-world" is flexible. Just look at Africa.

 

It would cost far too much for the British government (not to mention commercial companies) to begin making the goods we import from China here in Britain. The reason that Chinese goods are so inexpensive is because of the pittance that the workers are paid (if they're lucky) and the virtually non-existent worker-exploitation laws. The fact that the minimum wage must be paid combined with all the other policies that we have here in Britain (safe working conditions, fair working hours et cetera) would mean that it would be impossible to make goods that could be sold at anywhere near as low a price as those that we import.
This coupled with the fact that most commercial companies have their wares manufactured in China would mean that a ban on imported goods from there would result in a lack of the products that consumers buy and are taxed for; resulting in less tax revenue. I'm not aware of a massive amount of British jobs being lost due to goods being made in China; it's been that way for a very long time. A company will always do whatever it can to keep prices down, even if that means exploiting people. They aren't allowed to exploit people like that here, so they do so elsewhere; consumers benefit from cheaper products.

 

minimum wage was the worst thing that happened in the 90's
i had a good career set up in engineering then in comes minimum wage, the labourers get decent money and they cant afford to give the qualified people what they deserved. £10 an hour is about the best you can hope for if your been realistic. take tax off it and its not a lot, you probably cant afford an average mortgage on just that wage.
who cares about some scruffy thief that never went to school? they should be getting £1 an hour making stuff in some dangerous rat infested factory so we dont have to import.

 

Isolationism for them is forced because they are surrounded by noncommunist nations. And plus the other nations would be afraid to openly go against the U.S.

 

Yeah, but if you're one of the labourers you would benefit. It's about a more equal distribution of wealth.

They would be earning less than a pound an hour, and there would need to be hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of them. It's not just the massive ammount of cheap labour that allows China to churn out cheap items; it's other things as well, such as their (the Chinese Communist Party) complete disregard for environmental safety (dumping toxic chemicals in rivers rather than paying to dispose of them properly) and more obscure things like their disregard for patents and copyrights ($65.00 fake-Iphones and such that are openly sold).

 

The US have been easing up about importing stuff from Cuba, there's some stuff you probably don't know about being imported (I think a certain brand of oranges are being imported with a couple other things). I wish I can find a source, but I've seen it on a documentary about Cuba and US relations.

Also the US is the only country to have an embargo on Cuba, Canada imports coffee from them, I know that for sure.

 

they should have gone to school then and worked hard, i have zero sympathy for people that dont help themselves and expect to get benefits and an easy life.

maybe the chinese government is on to something, screw human rights lets put the country as a whole first.
what about the peole that dont work as slaves? whats their life like? what percentage of the working population work as slaves?

 

Having a job that isn't very well paid or isn't very high up the ladder doesn't mean that an individual is lazy or poorly educated. People have reasons for not attending school for other than laziness.

Working a job at all means, that at the very least, they're making some small effort in life; it would be very easy to abuse the benefit system here and not work at all. A crappy job may just be a way that someone is paying their way through college, or is the only job that a single parent has time to do.

The horrific crimes that are commited on the Chinese people aren't justified by a booming economy (IMO), if China took care of its citizens the way that a decent society would; it would be nowhere near as wealthy.

I don't have any statistics, but the term "slave" doesn't exactly fit; the people working in those hell-hole factories are being paid (and usually given accommodation and food - of a very low quality). The fact that the Chinese government may do whatever it pleases to its people and is focused on improving the economy, no matter what the cost is to its people, means that any Chinese citizen that isn't hugely important to the government is liable to be forced into doing pretty much anything they (the Chinese government) want.

The government also have foreign companies that have products made/assembled in China in a stranglehold; they threaten to cease the production of their goods if the company speaks out against the government of China.

 

...Isn't that the same philosophy used by the Third Reich?

 

A means to the end.

It's what was said a lot about Staline's Soviet Union.

What a blast that was, wasn't it?

 

I wasn't 100% serious. (i very rarely am)
It was mostly just ideas i have about my own countrys failings and i also think most of what we hear about china is one sided.
of course were going to hear about the slave labour but we wont hear of the good things because they dont make a good story

 

Slavery did build the Southern United States, but I've got empathy so I'm going to agree with Upton Sinclair that dangerous working conditions and wage slavery are unpleasant.