A few things to unpack here: Lets say a nike shoe costs $120 or so today(searching air jordans in google lists a huge number of shoes at that price point), in my mind this is quite cheap as I wanted a pair of Air Jordans in 1990 and they were the same price, $120 for kids shoes roughly 35 years ago. Adjusted for inflation thats roughly $303 USD in 2025 dollars. So basically through outsourcing manufacturing to China…
How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
681–690 of 1001 posts
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#682Earlier 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".
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#683I worked in the retail; it is the shittiest job I ever had. I was given an abnormal schedule: two days closing, one day opening, one mid shift (and I should work either Saturday or Sunday). The churn is really high: people leave even if they find a better yet shitty job. Which jobs do you want to create in US? Retail jobs or manufacturing jobs?
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#684Earlier quoted context omitted.
China will probably be the only country that solves this.
..Any country can solve it, just incentivise families. Simple things like ensuring young people have access to affordable housing and daycare. If I was at the start of my career ladder in a major urban area now, having a family would be close to the bottom of my priority list. Its not rocket science.
Most wealthy countries have already solved it: immigration.
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#685Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1, exactly. Focusing too much in the money makes you forget about the power. At a national leadership level, there isn't much power in having a local Warhammer industry, fishing is much more strategic. In broad terms, this is related to the error the USA made. Manufacturing in China was a very profitable deal for the USA. A lot of companies view labour first and foremost as expense, wealth as as the goal, and power…
This is a bit harsh: the USA didn't devalue labor in general, just manufacturing. They hired software engineers from all over the world, along with a lot of higher value engineering and product development jobs. The error the USA made was in pushing the workforce up the value chain faster than everyone could handle, and a lot of Americans got left behind. China is moving up the value chain also, they are being forced…
Not quite. It's all about labor and getting rid of the class that used to (and could have) threatened the elites.
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#686Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#687Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Fishing is less profitable for the whole UK than Warhammer. This sounded completely insane to me. I tried to look up numbers and found that Games Workshop brings in > 0.5 billion in revenue (!!), compared to all of UKs fisheries at 1 billion-ish (profit margins are, as you'd expect, pretty favorable for the plastic figurines that they don' even paint for you). Thanks for this interesting fact.
The UK ain't alone in that either. California's agricultural sector is one of the largest in the world (let alone in the US) in terms of revenue and output, in many cases providing most/all of national and even global supplies of various fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Virtually all American almonds and broccoli, 90% or more of American dates and avocados, top producer of peaches and dairy products, the list goes on. A…
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#688Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sales taxes are something people innately understand if they have spent any time in the US The way they are done in the US is maddening. You go to the counter and find the price is higher than the tag price by some random amount. It seems to vary wherever you go and depend on what you buy. A tariff might actually be better.
There's actually a really good argument in favour of that -- and in favour of paying income tax not as a direct tax (withheld from wages) but with a delay. It makes the taxes visible and painful and they will therefore (potentially) not rise as fast or as much.
But yes, that’s exactly why the American right makes taxation so cumbersome and horrible: to make people think that taxes are bad, as there’s this assumption you can have civilization without paying for it.
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#689Earlier quoted context omitted.
The joke is that Warhammer sets are expensive.
I'm kinda surprised people aren't just buying a 3D printer. I print stuff all the time. I'm not into this kind of game but if I were I wouldn't pay that much for a piece of plastic I can print at home for 3 bucks.
Note that a standard printer won't be anywhere near as nice quality as official models. You need a resin printer for that, which requires ventilation, some basic PPE, and additional labor to clean and cure the prints correctly. Not something you want to do with small children or pets in the house.
We resin print most of our models. We use FDM for blocky things like tanks and buildings, though. And some complex or very large models can't be printed (although we sometimes use alternatives for those).
Warhammer is an unusually expensive game, too. Other games like One Page Rules will sell you STLs to self-print, or charge very reasonable prices for pro-printed minis. You can buy a 2-player starter kit for OPR for about the same money as one WH40K unit.
Re: How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?
#690Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US appears to be trying to end the reserve dollars. Something that surprisingly few people have mentioned recently is that having the biggest trade deficit is the same thing as being the global reserve currency . Because they're the same thing, ending one of them also ends the other. There does seem to be some sort of cycle in play: first a slave-driver-type economy creates a whole lot of wealth, then people get…
> Something that surprisingly few people have mentioned recently is that having the biggest trade deficit is the same thing as being the global reserve currency. Can you explain this a little more? Why does having a trade deficit make your currency more valuable? My naive assumption is it would put more dollars in other countries, so they don't need them as much, making dollars less valuable.