Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
In an ideal world, people who manufacture, export and sell things would be able to deal with people who consume, buy and import things without governments butting in. Free trade requires nothing more than that government gets its hands off.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Must disagree, Peter.
Manufacturers have transferred large sectors of our productive economy to cheap-labour countries.
The State must have a Constitution that protects local manufacture from being transferred to junk-wage economies.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
The UK's minimum wage is the highest in the world bar the Netherlands. Where would you draw the line, Alex?
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Peter, China's average factory-worker wage is at something like the equivalent to 50 pounds a month.
The Chinese currency is kept artificially low by the Communist state, for decades, so as to allow them to take over world-production of textiles and electronics.
This is not fair competition and fair trade, and the economic system that has allowed for British and other countries' economies to be partly dismantled and transferred to China en mass, so that we and other countries mass-import what we used to produce, is sheer madness! It is economic suicide and economic self-destruction.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
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Reports have reached me that China mass-exports apples to Britain and Europe at peanuts prices, and that the Chines Communist State-run plantations have destroyed all the bees in huge areas by spraying the fruit trees with chemical poison.
Just one example.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
Alex, those are the wages of 15 years ago. China's average manual wage is now about £1.80 an hour, and each province now has a minimum wage of up to £1.40 an hour. The cost of living for a working class family is about a quarter of the UK's. So the problem is not one of low wages per se but of a currency deliberately undervalued. The Americans have been banging on about it for 30 years and it is only going to change gradually.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
China is an opportunity and not a threat. There are massive changes going on there with their economy developing now into a consumer one. Protectionism will damage UK jobs and our economy, not save it.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
there is a burgeoning middle class there with money to spend on luxury western items, up to our business community to take advantage of that.
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Land Rover are now opening up production in China, Howard.
Question is, how long will it be before Land Rovers sold in Britain are made in China, or only assembled here once the parts are imported by container ship?
??
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
Alexander - there are always swings and roundabouts. You just want to cut off your nose to spite your face.
Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
nah he has motion sickness from being on the roundabout to long.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
alex
your mention of land rover reminds me of when the japanese economic miracle had reached the stage when the consumers there started to dream of luxury cars.
one they aspired to was the "range rover", the japanese authorities managed to nip this in the bud by stripping 1 in 10 imports down to the last nut and bolt at the port of entry as part of a "quality control" programme. british leyland were
working on a 10% profit margin!!
no doubt the chinese will have similar ideas.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
Anything the chink rich want will be manufactured in china at chink rates.
Anything they don't have they will copy .
This will be finical services to one day
Especially insurance and banking they will not pay Weston wages and bonuses for these services, and they will undercut you all
Peter Car workers in Thailand get 200 Thai baht a day £4 . I think it's less in china
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
KeithB - thankfully we have plenty of business people who see an opportunity there and are selling to the Chinese. This is set to carry on and expand. That is the difference between your attitude and that of successful business people.
Guest 745- Registered: 27 Mar 2012
- Posts: 3,370
The people you refer to Barry are the middle men importing china's goods
Getting cheep and selling expensively to the UK markets, destroying jobs in this country
You may think this good, but long term for the UK plc its not.
There will never be balanced trade with china, there not in the business of shearing there wealth.
China looks after china ,there not going to let your Tory spivs get rich in there internal markets .
We sell more to the Irish than china, your successful business people not doing to well so far Barry
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
Keith is right there.
The Chinese upper class millionaires make huge profits on exporting cheap labour products from China all around the world.
It's a rip-off. It causes us hundreds of thousands, if not over a million jobs lost to unemployment in Britain alone.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
My figures on Chinese wages came from a Wall Street Journal article of Sept this year. Wages in Thailand are certainly lower than China. Things will balance out eventually, 40 years ago we were saying the same about Japan.
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
Guest 696- Registered: 31 Mar 2010
- Posts: 8,115
The current Chine average pro-capita wage is the equivalent to $3000 (US dollars) a year, Peter. More or less what you indicated as the per hour rate.
We must get our textile and electronics industries back, and to do this, we need a fair trade and competition law, and a local-economy law that enhances and guarantees economic production through a vigorous no-rubbish wage policy.
Guest 655- Registered: 13 Mar 2008
- Posts: 10,247
No Keith and Alexander - I was clear, I am speaking of businesses selling to China, just one example it is happening now with luxury cars that are built here (in fact for the first time in decades the UK is a net exporter of cars). As the new consumerism takes off in China exports there will expand.
The world economy develops and changes and we need to be fully part of that change, adapting to new situations, seeing advantages and benefiting from it. The alternative is sitting in protectionist isolation with an ever declining economy as the world develops around us like some Albania (in the old days) or North Korea.
Guest 698- Registered: 28 May 2010
- Posts: 8,664
#38: Alex, even if such a policy were desirable, how would our Parliament pass a law which binds China?
I'm an optimist. But I'm an optimist who takes my raincoat - Harold Wilson
