Monday, April 30, 2012

America: What happened?

We sell a carved wooden thing here for $9.99. Our cost for it is $2.24. We make $7.75 on it.

The people who sell it to us make something off of it. Let's assume our margin is higher just to make the math easier and assume it costs them $1.00 so they make $1.24 on each one they sell. I'm sure they pay far less than that but it'd be too depressing.

Here's the thing. The stupid thing is made in INDIA. It's a simple carved wooden thing. I could make one if I felt like it. (I don't. I'd cut all my fingers off.) But it's made in INDIA!!!

 How is it cheaper to get the damned thing from India?

Some guy in India makes this thing and puts it in a big box. When the big box is full they put it on a truck and haul it to a warehouse where they're loaded into a shipping container which is then loaded into a ship and that ship hauls it from freaking India to the US. From there it goes on a train to a distribution center where it's loaded on a truck to go to a warehouse and from that warehouse it's split up and shipped to distributors who then sell it to us so we can sell it to other people for $10.

How is it cheaper to buy it from India, do ALL that shipping, than to make it here in the US? I don't get that at all. I understand American workers want insurance and all sorts of benefits, but how is shipping from India cheaper than what someone here would do something for? I'm so irritated with American industry for going overseas. The skill involved in making these could be taught in half an hour to anybody over 18.
(I say that in case they have to use a knife, American kids aren't allowed near a meat slicer at a restaurant for fear they'll dismember themselves, meanwhile in Taiwan 10 year olds are sewing together shoes that last me so long I'm tired of looking at them and throw them away but they never wear out.)

There are days when I look at all the crap we've done to ourselves as a country in the name of profit and I think we SHOULD collapse as a civilization as a cautionary tale to other future generations. If a country produces nothing but becomes a country of only consumers then their future is a future frighteningly predicted by the animated film Wal-E. The only thing we're producing with any reliability these days is morbidly obese children with Type 2 Diabetes... the kind that USED to be called Adult Onset diabetes but had to be renamed because 8 year olds were getting it before their livers failed from it. If all we do is consume, how can we be surprised?

How is it child abuse to spank a kid but not child abuse when they're morbidly obese? Only one of those things actually kills the kid. Our laws need to be thrown out & start over and anybody who suggests a law or lawsuit that tries to hold someone ELSE responsible for an individual's actions should be shot immediately and the first person to shoot them gets a cash reward. I'm sick to death of the "not my fault" people.

No comments: