This is scary

[SwampDonkey]

Just check out the "International Monetary Fund" website. ;D

[Kansas]

If the buying and selling of the same wood is at the same price, all priced in US dollars, then there is no currency manipulation. The renmimbi is pegged to the dollar. You would have to have wildly fluctuating currencies. And where they move in tandem, that won't work. I can't think of a single trick that would change that. Maybe someone knows one I don't know of.
That leaves two possiblities. One- they are resawing the lumber and then using that surfaced against some cheaper wood or product. The second, is that the government is subsidizing the industry. I suppose that's possible. They have been known to do that. For some reason, I doubt that, but I dunno.

[ihookem]

  Yes, middle income class is shrinking, mostly because if China. Scgargoyle grew up like me and if we go back to our lifestyle when we were kids we would be better off. Honestly, we seemed happier then anyway. We want it cheap! China is the answer! They make junk though. By the sound of it, they have more problems than I thought. They can hardly feed themselves without having rural farmers heading to the city. Erosion is up and water table is down. I found myself saying to myself the other day when thinking about the world economic collapse. We have land and a lot of it, and it's good land! If Americans can keep our land we will most likely fair ok. We can't sell our land to foreigners. We can work and make more money than China. We just have to lower our wages enough to compete to some degree and be content with the simple life style we had 40 years ago.It was a good life then, maybe better cause it was simple. Hebrews 13 v 5  " Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have, because God said never will I leave you or forsake you ". I guess I want more too but need to be reminded sometime. We still have plenty.

[Ron Wenrich]

40 years ago the chant was about the Japanese and how everything you bought was made in Japan and that it was junk.  Different time and a different country to complain about.  We can't go back 40 years. 

China and those other countries making lower quality products with a cheaper labor force are taking jobs away that can't support a middle class lifestyle.  Back in the '50s, the US had the only manufacturing base that wasn't bombed out during WWII.  That gave us a manufacturing advantage until those other countries came on board and started taking low end jobs.  Eventually they got into higher end products like electronics and cars.

But, our future and our middle class isn't in our past.  If we brought back all those knitting mills, shoe factories, toy factories and other of the lower end manufacturing base, we would end up having to have immigrants as our labor source.  We can't support a middle class with that sort of manufacturing.

You need to have higher end products.  You need a well trained work force, which means that the education system needs to improve.  You need to start looking at some of those green jobs that can help in a lot of different ways.  Look at the profits from the iPhone and other innovative products. 

Lowering our wages just to get more jobs just leads to poverty and a wider gap between the rich and poor.   

As for the flooring, when looking around the net, the cheapest I found was $2.69/sq ft.  It was 1/2" think.  For the heavier stuff, it was all up in the $4-5 range for an average price.  We're getting 34-50 ¢ for our flooring stock.  I think we should be able to compete.

[fishpharmer]

Ron, where is the iPhone manufactured?

And why?

[jim king]

As for the flooring, when looking around the net, the cheapest I found was $2.69/sq ft.  It was 1/2" think.  For the heavier stuff, it was all up in the $4-5 range for an average price.  We're getting 34-50 ¢ for our flooring stock.  I think we should be able to compete.

Ron:  You are looking a retail prices , not what the Chinese sell it for.

china walnut flooring  FOB Price: US $22-25 per sq meter
china walnut flooring   $2.09 to $2.38 per sf
18mm x 92mm/122mm x RL
T&G micro beveled
prefinished with 9 coats of lacquer with aluminum oxide

engineered flooring, Flooring market, china flooring
1. Size: RL*123*14/3mm
2.Engineered flooring
3.handscrapped Feature...
Min. Order: 1300 Square MetersFOB Price: US $12-26 per sq meter
$0.95 to $2.47 a square foot

They have several web site marketing operations, one is "Alibaba"  there you can find the wholesale price of about anything they make.

[Ron Wenrich]

Ron, where is the iPhone manufactured?

And why?

I didn't say anything about the manufacturing.  I said about the profits.  Its a US product, and we're the ones reaping the profits.  You profit from the innovation. 

[ihookem]

Ron, to some degree you are right about having to import imagrants to help, but we wouldn't if we would get rid of the extra white collar workers and make the prisoners work. We have 2 million prisoners doing nothing. I think they should be in the bean fields all day. Then they would think twice before commiting a crime.

[SPIKER]

Ron, where is the iPhone manufactured?

And why?

Made by the biggest electronics manufacture in china (forget the name was 3 or 4 weeks back they were in headlines.)  It was the one that has been in the news for workers killing themselves at work.   I forget what the facts were but something like average wage was / is ~160.00/month working 10/12 hr shifts 6 days.   They went on strike and the company gave them what amounted to a wage increase of somewhere about 20/month more.

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