$70 is expensive in every country on earth that does not have a middle class. Once we the lose middle class it will be expensive here too. Regardless, the smaller middle class the smaller number of potential customers you'll have. And if your product is indeed a success and you decide to manufacture it in China, and all other employers will also decide to move production of their products to China - who do you think is going to hire americans and pay them their salary so that they could afford measly $70 on your product? You don't expect 300mln americans to become inventors, do you?
70.00 is probably beyond the means of the typical Wal Mart worker... a better target would be about 2.00. This also ensures that your product gets placement on the dollar aisle when it doesn't sell ......<g>
I don't know what the context of this quote was but it made me laugh. This is EXACTLY what I said to myself when I chose to move from Northwest Portland to San Diego. It doesn't surprise me that the whiny article that started this post came out of Portland. The problems of the Portland middle-class are entirely their own. Globalization has nothing to do with it. Every election cycle they elect unbusiness friendly government and are surprised that their are no jobs in the city? As someone intimately aquanted with Intel, Sumco/Mitsubishi Silicon/Siltec I can ASSURE you those high tech jobs didn't go over seas...they went to AZ, and other more business friendly states. For me the straw that broke the camel's back was when the city passed the 1% income tax. Fine, if the city wants to make it more expensive for me to live there I'll look around and see where else I can live. Sure enough I found that there are plenty of expensive cities to live in that also happen to have sun and beaches to boot... I do hate pumping my own gas though
The great philosopher R. Dangerfield once said. If it wasn't for guys like me donating buildings guys like you would have no place to teach
I am pretty sure Alan Greenspan was not talking about Portland when he said this: "The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself.... 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has." Alan Greenspan 06/14/2005
Well actually I dont teach anymore and I own the building where we work so ... I would agree with your quote
Yeah, for some reason people in portland would rather work in a gas station than for Intel .... and a charging a premium to live in the least sunny major city in america is of course a great idea :eek:
to the anti-globalists: think very deeply where the dollars go that importers pay to chinese producers. ps. however i doubt they have the brainpower
It goes to fund the deficit of our government. However, since you are the one with the brain power, please explain how running trillion dollar deficits and financing them at the cost of your country's middle class is a viable long term strategy. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9377813/site/newsweek/
The wealth-transfer in favor of the elite, that has taken place during the BushCo years in US is truly mind-boggling. Predatory companies like ExxonMobil and GoldmanSachs in 2005 just reported their biggest earnings EVER in history. At the same time, the "middle class" in US is loaded with debt up to its nostrils. Effectively becoming debt-slaves. Unless there truly is a "middle class revolt" as the original article suggests, I don't think there's much hope.