191–200 of 235 posts
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Producing our own food is not exciting either, but would you like to live in a place that produces no food and has to import 100% of what is needed to survive? This is the same thing here. Manufacturing is not a sexy activity anymore, but it is necessary, as long as we still live in a physical (non-virtual) world.
Singapore?
I read the article and skimmed the full study and was left scratching my head: - What exactly do they mean by 'Competitiveness'? - Why so much focus on labour costs, when manufacturing cost is increasingly driven by large capital investments (especially in China, where low interest rates and government encouragement have expanded capital investments for years) - Why all the talk about R&D expenditure. Is that really…
The focus on labour cost is, I believe, because China have been suppressing it's own currency to stay competitive. But it's just a guess as I am only reading through the article and the study as we speak.
Had been.
China's currency is facing pressure to depreciate nowadays, and the Chinese government is having a hard choice between propping the value of CNY and preserving its reserves of dollars.
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Seattle is this way. Washington state has an airplane factory in the woods and a car fiber (BMW) plant out in the desert. In the city you can find businesses to build anything.
The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s. That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.
I am late to this discussion, but James Fallows wrote China Airborn, a book about precisely this topic! The answer is complicated—if it weren't, he'd not bother writing a whole book about it—but the short answer is that so far China's not succeeded.
China does lots of stuff well and deserves credit for it but is not the indomitable powerhouse sometimes suggested in the media (e.g. http://www.marketplace.org/2015/12/10/world/why-cant-china-m..., although I don't know if this piece or others like it are for real).
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The problem with digikey (in my mind, as a hobbyist) is that you don't actually know the total until after the order has shipped.
This is a problem with shipping with Fedex too. There are a bunch of variable charges that aren't finalized until after the shipment has been delivered. In practice it is rarely and issue and using post paid labels instead of prepaid shipping labels is a better system for most businesses anyways. Is the order cost variable with digikey because the shipping weight is not known or is there another reason?
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You'd be surprised how negligible the environmental impact of shipping compared to production is. As an extreme example, it's cheaper in terms of CO2e emissions to produce and ship lamb from New Zealand to the United Kingdom than produce it in the UK.
How is that possible?
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For a lot of things, I'm not sure it saves people enough money to notice. Production isn't the entire price of a product - you also have things like transportation, retail markup, R&D, advertising, etc. Let's say that there's a $3.50 product that costs $1.50 to produce, and a company can save 10% of production costs by producing it in China (even with lower wages you don't tend to have huge savings when things like t…
A notable example of electronics that is not made in China is the Raspberry PI which is made in the UK, in Pencoed, Wales, formerly the heart of the coal mining industry. http://www.sonypencoed.co.uk/news/2016/03/01/latest-raspberr... They haven't always been able to make it in the UK, but as the computer became more popular, the economics have worked out. But the driver for this has been the fact that the organizati…
For instance just walking through an electronics store, there are fridges, air conditioners, washing machines, room heaters etc with large "Made In Japan" logos.
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The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s. That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.
China has been trying to improve their commercial air industry, but engines have been a problem, both for their airliners and their military jets.
http://www.popsci.com/china-will-resurrect-worlds-largest-pl...:
> The second stage of the project will involve the complete transfer of technology, including the 23 ton thrust Progress D-18T turbofan engines, to China, for licensed production of a modernized version in Sichuan Province.
I read the article and skimmed the full study and was left scratching my head: - What exactly do they mean by 'Competitiveness'? - Why so much focus on labour costs, when manufacturing cost is increasingly driven by large capital investments (especially in China, where low interest rates and government encouragement have expanded capital investments for years) - Why all the talk about R&D expenditure. Is that really…
1) Less GDP growth than the 6.5% prediction.
2) Less consumption growth as a fraction of GDP (hence deepening imbalances and higher corporate debt levels).
3) Massive wealth/income transfers to the household sector to allow for a rise in consumption.
You're right that without #3 it's pretty unlikely that consumption will rise as much as that article claims.
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This is a problem with shipping with Fedex too. There are a bunch of variable charges that aren't finalized until after the shipment has been delivered. In practice it is rarely and issue and using post paid labels instead of prepaid shipping labels is a better system for most businesses anyways. Is the order cost variable with digikey because the shipping weight is not known or is there another reason?
Digi-key, Mouser should have retails office location in Silicon Valley where anyone can order on-line and pickup in person when notified the order is ready via email/txt.