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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?

#821

Post by weberer »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #378
tweetle_beetle wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting Wikipedia's source, Forbes estimated her donations were $120 million to date in 2012. However, she co-founded her own charity in 2005, of which she is the president, and I suspect most of it has been donated in that direction. Personally, I'm always dubious of the rich and famous genuinely finding unmet cases for charitable organisations. Especially when they've made a fortune outsourcing being morally dubiou…

During feudalism the rich donated a far larger percent of their assets. The trend has been that the rich donate a smaller percent since then

Are you counting tithes as donations?

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

#822

Post by philjohn »

gadders wrote: post #800
philjohn wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem - brexit meant something different to everyone who voted for it ... and the reality was never going to match up because we have binding agreements like the GFA which meant Northern Ireland was always going to have to be treated differently than mainland UK.

Well, only if you think the IRA/Sinn Fein should set UK foreign policy. We could have implemented an (EU-requested) north/south border in Ireland. Or not implemented one at all.

The signatories to the GFA include the US as well - if you want to rip up the GFA to install a hard border you have to own the second order effects of that.

Or decide that Brexit was never going to work the way those who peddled it said it would.

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

#823

Post by usef- »

refurb wrote: post #797
vitorgrs wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a Australian study tracker, and I think things got way closer now... https://www.aspi.org.au/report/aspis-two-decade-critical-tec...

That doesn’t pass the sniff test. China leads in 57 of 64 technologies but the US leads in only 7? It ranks China far ahead of the US on aircraft engines, of which, China can’t even produce its own right now. What?

That section is talking about risk — saying that they're now producing a lot more research around novel engines than the US. It's not saying that their own engines are ahead yet, just that risk is high given current progress.

(and they are now producing their own engines, as seen on their new fighters, though they aren't believed to be ahead yet.)

They do lead in many areas now. They have a lot of engineers, hands-on manufacturing heft at scale (inc. a lot of internal competition), and a government that has been pumping and subsidising physical industries for many years.

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

#824

Post by mapt »

pjc50 wrote: post #102
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…

> 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…

> The UK stepped on its own rake because it was obsessed with tiny, already vanished industries like fishing.

[US-wise] Coal and cereal grain agriculture automation have also seen ~98% drops in employment while raising production levels. The industry doesn't have to disappear monetarily for the jobs to be gone.

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

#825

Post by philjohn »

callamdelaney wrote: post #814
philjohn wrote: post #718

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not the "policy of this country" you need to actually read how things work, what bodies have what power, and who is doing what. The sentencing council is an independant body, they are not the government, and the government has said "no, that's not right" so they're passing a bill to stop the new guidelines coming into effect: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-introduce-l...

It's the policy of this country, it doesn't matter who sets it. It doesn't matter if it's set by parliament. It doens't matter if it's set by an independent body. The fact is that you will receive a harsher sentence for being a white male than you will if you belong to any other group. That is the policy. The Conservative government thought that was the right thing to do. Apparently the new government 'will' introduc…

Again, you're just regurgitating what Reform talking heads are saying.

You probably didn't even realise that the sentencing guidelines were put on hold on the 31st of March.

Got any proof that the fall in white admission to university is down to discrimination, and not the relative poorer showing of the native population compared to first and second generation immigrants who put a higher premium on doing well at school?

Also can you respond with some of the "non whites only" job postings?

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

#826

Post by jajko »

rayiner wrote: post #710
watwut wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump has zero to do with previous level of US hegemony. He represents what large part of Americans are - for internal reasons that have nothing to do with geopolitics.

> Trump has zero to do with previous level of US hegemony. > He represents what large part of Americans are - for internal reasons that have nothing to do with geopolitics. No, it's all about geopolitics. Perhaps the most thorough analysis of the 2024 election concluded that Trump won 18-25 year old men (white + non-white). Trump did better among younger men than men 75+. Trump also won young white women. (See: https…

So the knee-jerk reaction is to knock it all down and speed up things while making literally every human in the world hate you?

Thats dumb to be polite but not surprising when considering where it comes from. Republicans simply can't admit their candidate is incompetent pos, superior ego thing or something. The incompetent part is what matters in this specific discussion, way worse than first term which was tampered by more reasonable people delegating actual tasks.

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

#827

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Reminded me of the folk-comedy duo Flight of the Concords' song "Issues (Think about it)”:

> They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers.

> But what's the real cost?

> 'Cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper.

> Why are we still paying so much for sneakers

> When you got them made by little slave kids

> What are your overheads?

https://youtu.be/GimzSBVQUDo

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

#828

Post by mapt »

lmpdev wrote: post #608
eyko wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth considering that certain industries (fisheries and agriculture for instance) are subsidised. It's in our national interest to maintain production capacity, so profits are the least of our concerns. Both the UK and the EU's agricultural sectors are heavily subsidised mainly for this reason. It's cheaper to import than to produce locally, especially with our environmental standards and targets, but we n…

That’s the biggest thing I took away from the whole Boeing corporate disaster You need to maintain at least a minimum amount of internal competency in almost all areas If you completely give away a capability to other countries (in this case, fishing knowledge and labour) it is much harder to bring back than just coughing up the money Those sectors you let die might not matter right now, but they might matter later.…

> If you completely give away a capability to other countries (in this case, fishing knowledge and labour) it is much harder to bring back than just coughing up the money

I feel like money is overwhelmingly how we denominate value, effort, and agency in our society. Almost every time somebody says "You can't just throw money at the problem", they are arguing that we shouldn't even try that, contrary to all established reasoning about how society works.

There are diminishing returns to funding, but the people who use this expression are typically at a tiny fraction of where we would expect to hit them.

If you want to have a fishing industry because fish are your idealized heritage, then choose to subsidize it heavily either to continue to exist, and/or to expand it into waters and economies of scale where you can still fish profitably. Like the Japanese and the Chinese do, respectively.

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

#829

Post by mapt »

pjc50 wrote: post #785
lmpdev wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the biggest thing I took away from the whole Boeing corporate disaster You need to maintain at least a minimum amount of internal competency in almost all areas If you completely give away a capability to other countries (in this case, fishing knowledge and labour) it is much harder to bring back than just coughing up the money Those sectors you let die might not matter right now, but they might matter later.…

Perhaps. But does a subsidized industry retain competence, or retain incompetence? After all, if you're making a profit no matter what, what incentive is there to do well? Many of the EU farming and fishing subsidies are to NOT produce anything.

That often depends on the structure of the subsidy.

"We will pay you 5 euros per kg of fish sold in supermarkets to consumers" is different from "We will pay you 500,000 euros a year to keep fishing".

There is a very reasonable argument in fisheries starting at least a century ago (and locally long before that), that we're looking at a partially renewable good - that it would be easy to cause an unsustainable population collapse with unrestricted harvesting, and so you should try and intervene in the market to sustain fish populations and stabilize harvests. Subsidies intended to do this are distinct from subsidies intended to keep fishermen employed fishing.

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

#830

Post by watwut »

beeflet wrote: post #762
const_cast wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the manufacturing is currently being done by people making much less than US minimum wage, I’d have to say retail! People forget why manufacturing was moved out of the US. Manufacturing jobs sucked major ass. Then they sucked less ass, when unions started gaining power. Then the companies saw their employees had prosperity, said “fuck you”, and left. We’ve crippled unions to such an absurd degree that the reali…

Because of tarrifs, demand for local manufacturing increases and manufacturing wages will be greater than they are currently abroad due to newly constrained supply. Okay, then we'll have unions then. I don't see what the issue is here. I have heard this reasoning several times, even in person, it seems to misunderstand the action of protectionism in the first place. You can't have an industrial economy if workers don…

> Okay, then we'll have unions then. I don't see what the issue is here.

America wont have unions nor consumer protections. For that matter, it wont investigate crypto scams either and will accept industrial pollutions to save factory owners money. Meaning, workforce will be less healthy due to impact on air they themselves are breathing.

There is no planned change to create protections for low level employees, but there are many changes allowing owners to do whatever. Once competition ranks up, they will be forced to pollute and mistreat workers or go out of business.

>it is better for society spiritually in the long term to have the majority of society focused on producing something real rather than just having an endless network of fake jobs as a means of wealth distribution.

OK, you want to sacrifice health of some for "spiritual benefit" of others. But those jobs will be as fake as healthier jobs those people have now.

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