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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?

#831
post #508
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…

It’s not rational at all. It’s nostalgia. I wonder how deeply connected all this politics of nostalgia is to the fact that birth rates have been declining for decades and populations are older. Given the older population and the country’s history as a bygone empire I bet nostalgia is thicker in England than the US, but US side there sure is a lot of it. A lot of MAGA is about making the country the way it was when bo…

There's some excellent non-edgy comedy out there, such as   and

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

#832
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…

>> future where China is equal to America on a per capita basis, but four times bigger

That is an environmental apocalypse best avoided as early as possible.

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

#833
post #393

Earlier 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.

Resin prints are production quality, but a messy/toxic process.

We need a resin printer tuned for mass production of tiny pieces, just like belt FDM printers are tuned for mass production.

FDM prints are either slow or have obvious layer lines or both. If you're painting it maybe that doesn't matter.

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

#834
post #818
post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say it’s the opposite. So much of the US government has been focused on maintaining the global hegemony, US citizens wellbeing was sacrificed. Trump was elected in reaction to rising global hegemony, or at least the effort put to maintain it, not the end of it. To say US hegemony is numbered doesn’t make much sense. The US economy has only pulled headed further from any Western rival, and China’s economy is stumb…

> If anything, US ability to project power is greater now than any time in the past. Absolutely not. It caved to Russia in the first place, it is weak against Russia. It WANTS to project power, but while doing so, it is showing itself crumbling into itself.

The US unwillingness to project power is a direct result of its current leadership. The US capability to project military force is, for better or for worse, pretty extreme in the global context. The ability to support a protracted conflict would depend on the support of the population, but it’s unwise to think that the current administration is a reflection of potential. When the court jester carries the sword, it’s a blunt and careless rod, but that same sword in the hands of a master is an instrument of lethal precision.

The sword remains unchanged.

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

#835
post #823
post #797

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

China can’t produce it own jet engines from scratch. The engine on the jet fighters are made on Western tooling machine and have components imported from the West or Russia.

Will China eventually catch up? Absolutely.

But I’d temper any fear of China pulling ahead in research when they can’t even put today’s technology into full production.

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

#836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think a lot of people are fixating on the market. I will share a metaphor you can spread. I run a mile every morning not because it is the most calorie efficient way to get around, nor because it is the most monetarily productive use of my time, but because it keeps my legs strong and me healthy.

It's a good metaphor, but I guess the idea here is that a middle-aged sedentary person has suddenly decided, for his own good, to only eat what he can catch and kill with his bare hands.

My history is not that good, but I have a fondness for the guilded age. Lets look back for wisdom.

Consider a case that was not unique, the growth of iron production in the great lakes area between 1855 and 1865.

In 1855 it was 1000 tons of iron ore. By 1860 it was over 100,000. By 1865 it was a few times greater than that.

Now consider even a single year in there where production is increasing by thousands to tens of thousands of tons. Good business. (The machines used to load and unload those boats and the change in boat designs is awesome by the way. Worth looking up.)

That was early. With much worse technology, and much less capital.

There were crazier deltas in production increase in the 1890's and across the guilded age.

The US natural resources are gigantic. There are 330 million people living there. It has more resources than ever before in history.

Steel and plastic are currently produced in the hundreds of millions of tons per year in the US. That is hardly a middle aged man who cant do a pushup.

With a proper 10 year boom, US production could be exponentially increasing year over year. If it and its people choose it.

A lot of people in the US seem to be envisioning this. It is a really non-abstract vision even for americans of... modest intelligence.

It may be the case that providing the world with banking and facebook, and silicon plans, though possibly much more lucrative than physical production, is just too abstract for the average american to identify with as a positive.

Or it may be the case that physical production is more lucrative than software service export, but that the US government has mismanaged the market constraints in the physical domain and so it just appears to not be the case.

I am not sure which is true. What I do know is that for the average person, the idea of making stuff and trading it is simple to understand, and people like it. Even people who do not make anything identify with this goal. Maybe instead of iron and steel it will be nvidias chips this time around.

I think Americans dont like being the social media export country. Its just not a good future vision you can identify with.

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

#837
post #83

> But if we bump the cost of freight, insurance, and customs from $5 to, say, $28, then they wholesale the shoes to Footlocker for about $75. And if Footlocker purchases Nike shoes for $75, then they retail them for $150. Everyone needs to fixed percentages to avoid losses. I don't understand this paragraph. If Footlocker was okay with $50 profit/shoe, why do they need to claim $75 profit/shoe in their costs per shoe…

> I don't understand this paragraph. If Footlocker was okay with $50 profit/shoe, why do they need to claim $75 profit/shoe in their costs per shoe go up? The costs of handling the shoes, retail space, advertising, and labor are all fixed.

Some extra costs are real and linear to their "factory" price (returns, insurance, stolen stuff, less people buying less shoes, so they need higher margins to survive, etc.).

On the other hand... they can raise their prices today by $whatever_tarrif_trump_mentioned, and blame trump for the price hike and pocket the extra profit.

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

#838

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US birthrate is 1.6, really bad, but by far less disasterous and permanent as China's 1.

I Googled: china fertility rate 2024 A couple of reliable sources say: 1.7 births per woman Where did you get 1?

No credible source says 1.7, the source that says this must be based on some kinda UN projection of 2010. Real TFR is probably around 1.0, in some parts of china it's below 0.7 (in the northeast it's around this number, in Macao it's 0.4). A lot of other countries are completely fucked as well and google pushes up UN projections from years ago (Like colombia UN projects the fertility rate to be higher in 2100 than it is according to the official numbers right now).

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

#839
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you can see that putting in $75 to make $150 for a $75 profit is significantly different than putting in $10075 to make $10150 for the same $75 profit, yes?

"putting in" is doing a lot of work. A shoe doesn't sit for a year waiting to be sold. It turns over quickly.

Capital is capital. Just because you don’t need it for very long doesn’t make it free.

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

#840
post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Today, China is competitive with or ahead of America in key technology areas, including nuclear power, AI, EVs, and batteries. I can’t tell if you’re brainwashed by propaganda or just spreading propaganda. China is great at making things flashy. But the quality things like EVs is low. The battery quality is not good. The promise of long range cars is often 30% of the promise. Cars leaking. Rusting like American mad…

Yet it took only 2 years and you see WAY more Chinese cars for example here in Switzerland than American ones (which was 95% Tesla anyway)

The quality they export is higher than the quality they have in China. Thankfully there are standards that must be met for exported cars.
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