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How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

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Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#511

Post by matt-p »

rassimmoc wrote: post #481
matt-p wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would we be able to get the exact same deal we had? We are under the impression the answer is no, as whenever we try and negotiate away stuff that's in neither of our interests it gets rejected. Take this Eitas Visa for example, this is literally just sowing resentment towards the EU in the UK. It benefits nobody and is totally insane, it's just making people hate the EU. Same with not being able to use the digita…

>At the moment we're trying to give security backing for Ukraine and you're asking us to give up our fishing rights for the honour of helping secure Europe. You are not trying to secure Europe, you are trying to sell something to Europe. We would rather build capacity to make whatever you want to sell us ourselfs. I agree we should work closely together, more so after US started dancing naked around burning brides. B…

You'd rather build capacity because you think you're likely to be at war with us one day or we'd stop defending Europe? That would be the only reason to say that surely? If so I simply don't know what to say to that.

So then you won't be wanting our troops there for peace-keeping, something only ourselves and France have even offered. Nor any of our finance, we can stop giving billions a year to Ukraine as the EU want to take over?

Seriously it's ridiculously isolationist to be thinking like this. Not working with us just because we left your club is beyond mad.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#512

Post by Symbiote »

sterlind wrote: post #479
matt-p wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say that's the exact compromise he'd want, as you say he's unpredictable.

there was much ado about chlorinated chicken a few days ago. apparently the US washes chicken carcasses with chlorine to disinfect them, whereas that's illegal in the EU, which has more stringent farm cleanliness standards instead. I think there's similar issues with an arsenic compound (seriously!) being fed to chicken as some sort of antibiotic. iirc Trump did say he wanted EU to accept our livestock to reduce the…

"Chlorinated chicken" has been a discussion topic in Britain since before Brexit, when some politicians were saying it would be easy to get a deal with the USA to replace trade with the EU.

It's not something that will be forgotten easily. British people on all sides were against reducing food standards.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#513

Post by overfeed »

ebruchez wrote: post #333
overfeed wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like official Chinese propaganda Go to any top-N American University, pick a random STEM faculty and count the number of Chinese (nationality) post-grads, post-docs and faculty. Alternatively, look at the trajectory of science publications coming out of Chinese universities vs the US. Underestimating China's brain-trust is doing oneself a disservice.

I don't need to be convinced that China has lots of bright, hard-working individuals. I just want to point out that China faces immense challenges and that we should see beyond, and push back against, the propaganda. There is a massive asymmetry between China and democratic nations in this regards.

This is a fair assessment. However, I think there is propaganda or self-delusion in the west that leads some people to believe that free markets and/or democracy are preconditions for any number of desirable outcomes like creativity, economic success, product innovation, etc. That may have empirically been true against the Eastern Bloc/Soviet Union during the cold war, but is not obvious to me regarding China today. AFAICT, China has produced companies that can go to to toe with the best in the west - occasionally winning outright[1]. We can argue whether that's because of subsidies, espionage, innovation or fundamental research

1. DJI, CATL, BYD, ByteDance, HighFlyer/DeepSeek

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#514

Post by alfalfasprout »

harvey9 wrote: post #300
Herring wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What will be America’s competitive edge in that scenario? Comparative advantage means countries benefit from specializing in producing goods or services where they have the lowest relative opportunity cost - not necessarily where they're the best overall. Even if China focuses on technology (and this is far from decided), America can still thrive by specializing in other areas where its relative efficiency or uniqu…

India does well on software development partly on a volume basis. Their top end developers often want to move abroad for career development and earning potential. I would not be surprised if potus put tariffs on H1Bs

Trump is on the record extensively as being very pro H1B (probably spurned on by Musk, Zuck, and Pichai). Because many of these workers can be overworked without complaint for lower compensation than American workers.

It's never been about protecting Americans...

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#515

Post by ViktorRay »

bunderbunder wrote: post #485
tim333 wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are quite a lot of people who make money from Harry Potter apart from JKR. People running cinemas, bookshops, making the movies, running the studio tour and so on.

Right. And the more of that that happens, the better for the economy overall. The less of that that happens - implying more of it ends up in JKR's proverbial dragon hoard, not doing much good beyond being an impressive pile of wealth for the dragon to sleep on top of - the less good for the economy overall.

I don’t think your comment is accurate.

When rich people get large amounts of money they don’t hoard it like they did in Roman times.

That money either goes into the stock market or to a bank. If it’s in the stock market that money is being used in investments that further economic growth. The portion of the leftover money that’s in the bank is then lent out by the bank to others in the forms of loans and so on for purchasing houses, starting business and so on.

The idea that the pile of wealth is simply hoarded to be slept on is out of date and not representative of modern economics.

Also, as for JK Rowling specifically, she had donated a significant amount of her wealth to charity.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#516

Post by stevage »

Symbiote wrote: post #504
stevage wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find Lego especially expensive. And Lego is way more difficult to manufacture, has very exacting functional requirements and extremely good QA.

I bought a Warhammer set during Covid and was amazed at the detail, compared to the 1990s stuff I had as a kid. I can't say what's more difficult to manufacture - millions of identical bricks that snap together, or a huge range of different, detailed designs which fit snugly together but don't lock. Just the first thing on the home page: https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Deathlords-Mortarchs-Ma...

> millions of identical bricks

Clearly you are not aware of the extraordinary range of Lego pieces.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#517

Post by selfmodruntime »

rayiner wrote: post #42

Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology. Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. We need to anticipate a future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but f…

> When I was working in engineering in the early aughts, we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology

Perhaps you should have considered that like in Art, the first step to proficiency in anything really is mimicry.

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#518

Post by Earw0rm »

jdasdf wrote: post #422
pjc50 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> US will find itself in the same position the UK is in now The thing is .. there's a point here, but it's not at all tied in with physical products. People are obsessed with one side of the ledger while refusing to see the other. Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. Things where the state is unavoidably involved and having better, more decisive lead…

>Most of the stuff the UK is struggling with (transport, healthcare, energy) are "state capacity" issues. None of those are state capacity issues. Those are "State is pointing a gun at anyone who would fix them" issues. Friendly reminder that 95%+ of the UK railway system was built by private for profit companies, with state involvement being primarily limited to not preventing it from happening. All of these issues…

Those railways were built early on in urbanisation.

Do you honestly think private enterprise could raise the financial and political capital to build a new regional rail line through a major city like London or Manchester?

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#519

Post by slt2021 »

seb1204 wrote: post #509
slt2021 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why? has any immigration law been changed?

The orange dude is kind of putting people off.

yes, donny woke up the ancient racist anti-immigration, the blood & soil type crowd, but the economic benefits of immigration are still there (albeit with higher risks and higher hurdles).

I suspect this will simply make labor more expensive on top end of the talent curve

Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

#520

Post by IncreasePosts »

Symbiote wrote: post #417
stronglikedan wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Americans need to get over their view of “Asia” as being about making shoes. The vast majority of us were over that decades ago. Please catch up for the sake of all humanity.

Yesterday your vice president referred to the Chinese as "peasants".

Something like 35% of China's population works in the agriculture sector, many of whom are poor with little or no land holdings living in small villages. Is there a word for that kind of person?
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