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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?

#921
post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, you're right, however it ignores some key points; -Some of their costs are in fact linear based on the cost of the item. Inventory cost doubles, perhaps now they have to take out higher interest debt to finance that. Things like insurance would also at least double. Transaction fees (like card fees at about ~2%) and other parts (like returns risk) also increase linearly. -Reduced sales due to increased pri…

Additionally, their risk increases. If the shoes don't sell, their losses can get much larger. They need the potential to make more profit to offset this this potential for larger losses. It's kind of like asking why Sears needs to make $200 in profit selling a refrigerator but only $2 selling a t-shirt. Because that's just how it works...

Which is why Derek [correctly] points out that everything is percentages, not fixed dollar amounts.

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

#922

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but that’s not the same level of diversity as an atheist Frenchman and a muslim Algerian and a Christian Ivorian. The Sichuanese might not get along with the Cantonese, but they’re ethnically the same people with a shared culture

No, they're not. The Chinese have never been especially unified until very recently and they're internally quite diverse on all the key measures of ethnicity: their languages are mutually unintelligible, their religious belief systems span the entire breadth of world religions plus a wide spectrum of home grown ones, and their value systems are very different. One China is a convenient fiction invented by an authorit…

China is over 90% ethnically Han Chinese. Compared to the US it is practically a homogeneous country. The language diversity is greater in China, but the racial/ethnic diversity is lesser. China is more comparable to Europe than the US.

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

#923

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

It's about protecting blue collar workers. H1Bs damage the "coastal elite". Illegal immigrants are the threat to blue collar workers, and look at his stance on them.

It's impossible to not see that Trump is trying to bring back the 1950's rust belt all American factory family.

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

#924
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…

Whilst I appreciate that there are national and security interests to consider, I'd still say fish aren't one of them. I think a lack of seafood would have less of an impact to the general population than say, lack of satellite navigation or communication technology.

It's only ~100 years since seafood was the primary protein source of most coastal regions. The rampant mismanagement of fish/shellfish stocks that put an end to that has had knock-on effects across our entire food supply, that continue to influence agricultural policy to this day

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

#925
I regularly pay in excess of $100 for my shoes and would be a bit suspect of the longevity shoes that didn't cost significantly more than that. I wonder how these costs break out when thinking more about "being shod" than "buying shoes." I have ~$200 shoes that last me over 2500 miles (about a year of walking for me). I doubt a pair of Nikes could manage that but I haven't tried. On long trails, sneakers are usually worn out and trashed after 500 miles. Yes, different terrain but it's not just the soles that give out. Eventually, all soles wear out but the uppers are still good. I've had a cobbler repair some shoes and it's felt very worth the cost.

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

#926

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then when they unionize, all the software jobs will head to cheaper locales. Unless of course you’re suggesting that the U.S. use tariffs on labor to prevent that?

“If you unionize, all the jobs will leave” is the oldest refrain in the book for those opposed to united labor.

So maybe it is wisdom? It's not like it isn't true. Look where auto manufacturing investment in the US is. Southern non-union states.

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

#927
post #258

Earlier 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.

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…

So wait, you have high environmental standards, so you import instead of producing locally. Wouldn't that implicitly give you lower standards at home?

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

#928
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…

Be careful extrapolating based on China's current population and demographics. Too much of our armchair assessments of China's velocity is based on their meteoric rise on the backs of a historically large working-age population—a population that is now rapidly aging out of the workforce with nothing to replace it thanks to the one child policy. The US's demographics aren't stellar, but they're a lot better off than m…

China installed more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined.

https://ifr.org/downloads/press2018/2024-SEP-24_IFR_press_re...

https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/global-robotics-race...

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

#929
post #888

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question you're actually asking is: When will China start innovating instead of copying?

Who in America is China copying with their high speed rail? Who are they copying with their drone displays? What about their skylines that more closely resemble our sci-fi films than anything we've actually built? The truth is, China is already the most advanced country in the world and if we ever manage to modernize our infrastructure and manufacturing, we will be copying them.

Those examples are optimizations.

Trust me I would love for China and India to start innovating and advancing the human race but taking the idea of a train and making it faster is just an iteration on a previous technology.

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

#930

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most shocking thing for Americans when TikTok was shutdown for half a day was when they switched to the Chinese version of the app and they saw the truth -- that the middle class in China is living a higher quality of life than they are.

I didn’t see that at all, but I also don’t consider flashy technology to define quality of life.

Agreed. Some people saw it as quality of life, some people saw it as prosperity, etc. However you want to define it, the point is the same... many people were shocked that the Chinese middle class had more than they did.
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