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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?

#941

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was an unnecessary slight by the vice president of the United States. Vance is a provocateur, and I'm not sure he's an intelligent one.

Definition: Peasant: 1. A member of the class constituted by small farmers and tenants, sharecroppers, and laborers on the land where they form the main labor force in agriculture. 2. A country person; a rustic. 3. An uncouth, crude, or ill-bred person; a boor. You unsurprisingly choose the third option. Uncouth, crude and or ill-bred people are probably not especially productive in their working life. We do know tha…

Vance does not get the benefit of the doubt.

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

#942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think we're missing an important point here: moving production to low cost environments just moves costs from business costs into external costs, putting them on society. As for productivity, I think that's an issue that could be addressed but people generally avoid the answer to the why question.

> moving production to low cost environments just moves costs from business costs into external costs [Citation needed] Of course that can happen, but it's hardly guaranteed. If a company in the US moves a call center to a lower cost city, that's hardly foisting externalities onto anybody. > people generally avoid the answer to the why question. What does that even mean? What "why" question?

>If a company in the US moves a call center to a lower cost city, that's hardly foisting externalities onto anybody.

Sure it does. That new small city then needs to upgrade their infrastructure to support that business.

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

#943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

India has no energy. It imports most of its energy. While China has lots of coal and burns it to provide energy for its industries.

'India imports most of its energy'. So what's happened to the extremely abundant 'free energy' available from the sum in India. They have the expertise, they could make the funding available. What is missing in their thought processes or is there something wrong with the premise?

> So what's happened to the extremely abundant 'free energy' available from the sum in India

Where did you get this from? I am Indian and this is the first time I'm hearing of it.

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

#944
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…

Every single person in the supply chain has a lever they can pull to change price, except the end consumer

Not at the bottom of the supply chain. As a farmer, we get told what the price is. Our only lever is to opt out of selling if we don't like the price. Which is ultimately the same as the consumer opting out of buying.

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

#945
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…

> we mocked the Chinese as being able only to copy American technology.

Thing I disliked most about the movie Blackberry (and I liked the movie!): The Blackberry lost to a phone that could only have been made in China.

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

#946
post #828
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.…

> 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 establishe…

You need to pay money to people who will put in effort and agency. You can't just throw money at random people and expect something useful to happen. Sometimes, the people who will make things happen if you throw money to them don't exist. Sometimes, you have to turn people into those people (which also costs money).

Money is something you give people so they can eat and stay warm while they do the thing you want. They still have to be doing the thing you want. Sometimes there's enough reputation and legal threats on the line that you can assume the person will do the thing just based on the fact they're taking money from you and not freaking out. Companies do things this way a lot - individuals not as much.

The abstraction is not the territory, and the idea that money denominates value is an abstraction... often we define "value" as "that for which money is exchanged", making the abstraction tautological, at no gain. This is often done by people who want to think the thing they're spending a lot of money on is very valuable, or want to make you think the thing you're spending a lot of money on is very valuable.

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

#947

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I can't help but feel that this can be said for any country anywhere. Compare New Englanders to Southerners in the US. They are totally different, but they are still wayyy more similar than Southerners are to Cantonese. It's easy to track differences between people around you, in your country, and very hard to track difference between people in other countries. This creates an illusion of "We are very different, and…

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

#948
post #938
post #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…

I upgraded to Red Wings and Adidas Sambas. I'm astounded by the durability of both. Shoes used to be something I changed every season. It was indeed worth the cost.

Sambas for walking or running or sports? I've had good luck with Ecco shoes with Vibram soles for walking but my favorites were discontinued. Luckily, I bought a bunch of extras. As I've gotten older I've learned that if you find some shoe or clothing you really like, buy backups. So many great products are discontinued at some point.

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

#949

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're conflating racial and ethnic diversity in ways that are distinctly western or even really US-centric. Europe is extremely ethnically diverse, as is China, they just don't use skin color as the primary ethnic marker the way that is commonly (and still incorrectly) done in the US.

The 90% Han Chinese number isn't especially useful because it's comparable to the way that most of Europe has historically identified itself as the successor of Rome. That they all identify as Han doesn't make Han a truly useful grouping for judging diversity when they all have different ideas of what "Han" means.

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

#950
post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opinions of "elites" simply don't matter. There's only one guy who matters when it comes to policy now. And he's not known for his thinking abilities

You don't actually think he's making these decisions himself do you? He has advisors for these things.

No, he doesn't have advisors. He has a cabinet of sycophants who parrot his every flip-flop. His "advisors" have made it clear several times now that they have no idea what the plans are until they're announced on Truth social.
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