Howdy,
On Mon, 15 Sep 2008, Wayne wrote:
> To get off on a little tangent: I'm all for "buy American" but it seems
> most of us can't afford that any more, myself included and I'm not poor.
>
> I'm a computer programmer who's spent much of the last 20 years in
> manufacturing ERP applications and I've spent more years than I'd like
> doing "cost accounting" type things. And I haven't seen the labor costs
> being all that outrageous. I don't grasp how they're shipping this crap
> half way around the planet and still selling it cheaply.
This doesn't make too much sense to me, either.
As an example... Recently I've been addicted to this little 6" AL body
flashlights. 9 leds, runs on three AAA batteries.
Like this:
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.46
I bought a bunch of them prior to last xmas for $2 each.
2 dollars.
The body is an AL tube, with knurls machined in either end & threaded at
both ends. The switch sits in another AL machined deal with an o-ring and
the switch. The "light" end has 9 leds soldered to a board, with an AL
machined "nut" that sandwiches the whole thing down in another AL tube
with threads on the end.
Oh, and a useless fabric wrist strap & plastic AAA battery holder.
They have to make them, them ship them halfway around the world to me.
And they're able to do that, and presumably make a profit at it, with me
buying them for $2 apiece.
How in the heck can that be possible?
Anyway, I do wonder if the recent fuel increases are going to make "cheap
chinese tools" a little less cheap. Of course, that'll also probably
raise the cost of all but the really high end tools, since it seems like
everything except the cadilac tools are made in China anyway (which is an
assumption, and I'd love to know if I was wrong about it).
Mark
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