March 29, 2010

How'd that buying cheap crap from China at Walmart work out for you Americans?


You did it to yourselves. You offshored your jobs. You sold you soul. You gutted your downtowns. You destroyed your small businesses. You permanently altered your way of life.

All because of you love cheap crap from China, more than your fellow (now jobless) man.

Such a shame. It didn't have to be this way.

Enjoy your trip today to Walmart.

Try not to notice the blight on your way there.




US Unemployment Rate



14 comments:

edd browne said...

It's cheap, but moves further
from crap each year, if you
exclude milk products, toy coatings, etc.

Much of the stuff is designed and
process-controlled by Taiwan, ROK, or Japan.

China even produces W3 mirv warheads
from US designs, as confirmed by
spectrographic analysis of test detonations.
DOD could save some money.
.

Anonymous said...

I think JibJab had something fun to say about "big box mart"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKv6RcXa2UI

casey said...

As long as the crap at walmart is cheaper thats where people will go.People dont give a shit about saving someones job.all they care about is saving a buck.
Money talks and bullshit walks.

Anonymous said...

got news for ya, it doesn't matter where you go it's all made somewhere else

Anonymous said...

.


How did buying that load of crap from who knows where work out for you Americans?


Hope and Change my ASS!

.

Markus Arelius said...

Keith, it doesn't matter.
Walmart was definitely "progress" from what Mom and Pop stores were offering between 1975 and 1995. Americans today live a much more different, high-tech, fast-paced life than the goods on offer in some discount dime store in Waterloo, Iowa. And since when to consumers have to feel obligated to keep non-convenience stores alive? That's about as dumb as the phrase "buy american" when the american goods are lesser quality.

US tax policy and the crippling expense of putting a roof over your head in the US forces both parents in families to work. There are economic and social consequences to this. Americans simply ain't got the time to go to the bread store, the meat store and then the freaking vegetable market like the Germans do. That might be nice in an Orwell painting, but Americans simply don't have time for that sh%t these days. They got to make moves.

A bigger problem has been America's lack of education and innovation as it affects business. What does it say to you that the worlds 9th largest economy (California) has a K-12 education system that is ranked 46th in the union and one of worst on the face of the earth? I'm sorry, but the US will never win create jobs without raising the bar of education significantly and immediately. There's an entire generation of adults coming who can't read and cannot execute basic math skills like algebra and calculus. There's a price to be paid for ignorance. That's what your 1941 to present chart indicates to me.

America simply doesn't value education and progressive policies to promote homegrown businesses, production and export. Instead ignorance is promoted, and guns and preparation for foreign military intervention is much more valued. This is where most of the US tax dollars go by the way, just look at the US budget. Do we really need 40K troops in Japan right now on top of the housing market bailouts? Seriously.

And besides, some people simply want the crap of Walmart and McDonalds, value-add or not. This explains for example why you cannot find an Inn and Out Burger restaurant in London or Paris.

Pay Lay Ale said...

"A bigger problem has been America's lack of education and innovation as it affects business. What does it say to you that the worlds 9th largest economy (California) has a K-12 education system that is ranked 46th in the union and one of worst on the face of the earth?"

Yeah, it's a big problem. CA spends more money on education than any other country on earth, and yet it has a Turd World education system. Why the hell is that??? I guess we should just double down and give the NEA more money, RIGHT?

"Instead ignorance is promoted, and guns and preparation for foreign military intervention is much more valued. This is where most of the US tax dollars go by the way, just look at the US budget."

Government at all levels consumes 44.98% of GDP. Furthermore, Are you kidding? Social Security, Unemployment/welfare/other mandated spending, Medicare, Medicaid/SCHIPS, the VA, and HUD were a combined59.43% of the FY2010 budget. The amount of social services spending alone is more than all tax revenue. The defense budget was 18.7%.

"Do we really need 40K troops in Japan right now on top of the housing market bailouts? Seriously."

We don't need either, but the cost of the 40k troops is a drop in the bucket.

Anonymous said...

Didn't what's his name, the teacher in Ferris Bueler's Day Off, say that since stuff was so cheap at Walmart, it's like everybody is making a lot more money?Like everybody got a raise? Like if you had to buy that stuff from a local business, it would cost three or four times as much.
Of course, he was touting getting in on the real estate market NOW or be priced out forever. That was back in '02. He said "Would you rather live here ?(luxe mansion) or HERE ?(someplace that looked like my apartment). I ended up getting a great deal on a house for cash. Did he have all his money with Maddox? I forget.
Such is life.
'It my walmart! heh!'
(from old documentary showing chinese people preparing for the walmart day)

Some real bad drywall coming out of China on the news tonite.
Has all kinds of toxic chemicals in it. People crying because their houses have to be torn apart.
Just dont' eat any food products made there, probably has lead or kerosene in it somewhere.

Keith, why do you no longer post my comments? Are you only posting things smart people say now?
How boring.

Anonymous said...

"That might be nice in an Orwell painting, but Americans simply don't have time for that sh%t these days. They got to make moves.'

______
Like in George Rockwell and Norman Orwell?
Cool pic.
HAHA!


Whoopty shit whadoicare!
I live where everything dirt cheap and weather beeeeeeeeeeeutiful!!!
And I work from home so can stay in my plus size jammies all day.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!!
Life is fucking GREAT!

Anonymous said...

Calculus is a basic math skill?

OK, Markus, please give us the answer to this, remembering to show your work:

For the function f(x) = (x + 3)(x -2) ^3 find

a) the interval(s) of increase and decrease of f,

b) the value(s) of x for which f has a local maximum and minimum,

c) and the interval of concavity and inflection point(s).

-
And no, this is not an open book question.
-
I agree with you that there's no need for the US to spend the money to maintain their military empire overseas, but I disagree with you on many of your other points. Do not have time to expound upon it all right now, though.

Looking forward to your answer to the "basic" problem above.

edd browne said...

"Calculus is a basic math skill ?"

Depends on context; but 'yes'.
Newton's neat math is basic in this world.
We just don't realize that yet; as the World does.

Many in white-collar technology, medicine,
and finance use derivative math.

ooooooooo
"For f(x) = (x + 3)(x -2)^3 find ... interval(s) of
increase/decrease, local max/min, inflections. "

You don't need integrals, and 4th-order functions
are no problem for basic derivative solutions.

ooooooo
"…there's *no need* for the US to spend the
money to maintain their military empire[sic] ..."

False choice. And if you believe "no need",
then I have a Hummer for you.

Frank the Underemployed Professional said...

Don't blame Walmart and other companies for doing what makes business sense while following American law. If you are angry, blame our public officials for allowing Global Labor Arbitrage to occur unabated.

Heck, these rascals refuse to even acknowledge the existence of the problem. The only economic plan they have is to bail out the banks and to throw money at the economy (much of which will stimulate the Chinese economy).

I haven't read Housing Panic for ages, but I wanted to revisit it to look at an example of a blog that published long enough to see the end of the societal insanity it railed against.

My own blog, in part, (and those of the law school scambusters), chronicles another bubble and another instance of societal irrationality--the higher education bubble. In response to economic malaise and global labor arbitrage, our politicians' and intellectuals' solution is more and better education. If only everyone would obtain college education in STEM fields, college-education-requiring jobs would magically materialize into existence and our problems would just disappear.

The problem of education overproduction is very much related to Global Labor Arbitrage. Unable to find traditional blue collar jobs, everyone feels compelled to go to college and parents feel they should send their kids to college. Then, unable to find jobs with the Bachelors degrees (many of which were sent to India or filled by foreigners on H-1B and L-1 visas), the students flood into the graduate and professional schools, resulting in a huge oversupply of lawyers, MBAs, and even PhD. scientists (science research at the universities is a pyramid scheme).

Eventually the madness of society's spending billions of dollars to train people for non-existent job positions will have to come to an end. At some point all of these unemployed and underemployed-and-involuntarily-out-of-field graduates will end up defaulting on their student loans.

Come visit my blog and those of the other law school scambusters to learn more about the Education Bubble.

Frank the Underemployed Professional
http://FlusterCucked.blogspot.com

Frank the Underemployed Professional said...

"Didn't what's his name, the teacher in Ferris Bueler's Day Off, say that since stuff was so cheap at Walmart, it's like everybody is making a lot more money?Like everybody got a raise?"

Ben Stein you mean? That is a common misconception--that we enjoy a net benefit from having slightly lower prices. The problem with that argument is that it only considers the front end effects on prices and completely ignores the invisible back end costs.

The back end costs manifest themselves in the form of mass unemployment and underemployment and all of the associated costs and sociological problems they cause--such as having more poor people, resultant increased crime and suicide, and a greater demand for government welfare, etc.

In reality, it is hard to get something for nothing. The Chinese and the Indians are not just giving us these manufactured goods for free. We do have to pay for them in the form of IOUs and by selling them our capital assets (land, business ownership).

When you consider how we are paying for these purchases and the great expense of unemployment, underemployment, and all of the social problems they cause, the 25% cost savings on a pair of shoes is completely illusory.

The proper response to someone who peddles that bullshit about our benefiting from foreign outsourcing and other forms of Global Labor Arbitrage by having lower prices for goods and services is:

What good is a 25% decrease in price if, as a result, your income decreases by 50%?

Frank the Underemployed Professional
http://FlusterCucked.blogspot.com

Anonymous said...

no thanks edd, it would be impossible for you to give me a hummer. i'm a girl.

:-D

i took calc 3 times before i finally passed it. i'm just saying the nitty gritty study of it is far from basic stuff.

but yeah, noone should graduate hs without taking physics and at least pre-calc/trig. i got to the calc level and it was beyond me at the time. maybe if i took it now i'd have the sense to ask the right questions so i'd get it better.

hey keith, and whoever, go to flickr and look for "teabonics". funny scary stuff.

xomm

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