Tag: China

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Letter to a North American Manufacturer

President
Seabreeze International Corporation
361 Rowntree Dairy Rd #3
Vaughan, ON L4L 8H1

Dear Sir/Madam:

I purchased a model SF6000TA electric space heater from many other available models primary because it was made in North America. Some of the reviews online also gave me a warm fuzzy about my proposed purchase. Your product comes at a price premium compared to similar products from China, but I ignored this as it is important to me to buy products made closer to home.

I noticed the shipping container that my heater arrived in was a cardboard box made in China. Perhaps you should rethink your sourcing of these sorts of products in your business. I want to support manufacturing in North America. I do not think it should be a stretch for North American manufacturers to support manufacturing in North America.

Just a thought.

Sincerely,

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How Much Do You REALLY Love That New iPhone?

Another sad account of Foxconn and Apple and the high human cost of your iPhone: iEmpire: Apple’s Sordid Business Practices Are Even Worse Than You Think

Someone please tell what is right about unfettered capitalism be practiced globally with US in the lead.

Here is a link to a Forbes article listing the top 400 richest people in America. Number 400 has a net worth of $1 billion. Number 1 on the list, Bill Gates, has a worth of 59 billion. Six of the folks on this list made their wealth from Wal*Mart. Steve Jobs is number 39 with a paltry $7 billion. Michael Dell is number 18 with a worth of $15 billion.

Go to the top of the list and find the “source” heading. Click on Continue reading “How Much Do You REALLY Love That New iPhone?”

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Would you buy a vehicle made in China?

A few months ago I bought a new truck, a Toyota Tacoma.   I wanted to buy American, but I did not want the gas mileage of another full size vehicle.  I loved my F-150, but a sipper of gas they are not.  In smaller trucks, the Tacoma seemed like a no brainer compared to the rest of the field.  There a few things I am not totally happy with, but on the whole it seems to be a very good vehicle.  I am happy with it.

I recently received a survey from a firm that I am sure is contracted to Toyota-USA to do these sort of surveys.  It was one of these surveys that sucked you in by appealing to your altruistic side.  Fill out this survey and help us make better vehicles.  It also appealed to your greedy side by promising to enter you into a drawing for a year of free oral sex.  The thought of all those blow jobs was more than I could stand.  I started filling out the survey with all due haste.

Well to make a long story short, it was a long not short survey.   I was ready to just quit about half way through their questionnaire, but dreams of unending fellatio kept me going.

What did stop me in my tracks was this question.  Would you buy a car made in China, yes or no?  And if you answered no, like I did, a text box appeared asking you to explain why.  I answered diplomatically, and said that I did not need another piece of junk from China, and went on to say, “there was not fucking way I would ever buy a vehicle made in China.”

I truck further through the survey quite satisfied with my China answer when I encounter, “Would you ever buy a vehicle made in India, yes or no?”  Again if you answer no, a text box appeared asking for why. This one was easy, “See China.”

I am all for other countries raising themselves up, but do we have to throw the baby out with the bath water for them to do it?

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Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend

Link to an article about small companies that have decided that off-shoring manufacturing is not that good a deal. Labor may be cheap, but the quality and deadlines are not there.

Made in America: small businesses buck the offshoring trend

All I can say is hip hip hooray…maybe some more American companies will see the light.   I detailed in another article my trials and tribulations trying to find a pair of work gloves NOT made in China.  I did finally find a pair made in Pakistan. That is not the USA,  but I would rather it be Pakistan than China.

I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why they are selling frozen vegetables from China. I’ve gotten where I check the “where from” on the package and if it is not USA or at least this hemisphere I put it back in the freezer.

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I Want to Buy American

I was in Lowe’s the other day.   The fact that it was Lowe’s is only incidental.  It could have been any of the many big box store chains that dot Generica.

They provided to me a pretty clear snapshot of the some issues that are troubling me about American business.  It all seems to boil down to corporations being willing to sell out this country because they are more concerned about the quarterly profit statement and executive pay than anything else.

My first observation is that Spanish is nearly as prominent in the store as English.  The lettering was not quite as big as the English, but it was only a small percentage less so. Continue reading “I Want to Buy American”

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Four Indian Firms Hogged 10,000 H1B Visas

Original article at IndianExpress.com is no longer on Da ‘Net

I am not wild about the H-1B program, but if it were about individual Indians I would be a fan.  Admittedly it is a selected subset that I meet here, but they are generally intelligent, hard working, friendly folks.  If I have a complaint about them it is that they tend to be too compliant to the korporate overlords.  That and they undercut wages tremedously. This just adds to decreasing concern American korporations have for their employees.

However the program is about korporate greed here and in India.   It is about American korporations not investing in American workers or the American education system.  I read an article a while back about how American korporations were shifting their education dollars from American universities to those in China and India.  They did this because they felt they were getting more bang for their buck.

I do not know for a fact  how these firms that are hogging the H-1B visas treat their folks.  I do know that Indian work conditions, even for professionals, are Dickinsonian compared to American standards.

This whole paradigm of profit at any cost has got to stop.

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USOC to ship 25,000 pounds of food to China

Next time you go to a US supermarket and pick up a food package with a produced in China label give this some consideration.  This is from an article by Suzie Richards in The Retriever Weekly.

Recent reports have revealed that the United States Olympic Committee has been busy planning the team’s preparations for the summer games. The committee has announced that Team USA will not be eating the local Chinese food at this summers’ games, but instead 25,000 pounds of meat and other food will be shipped from America to the training camp at Beijing Normal University.

The decision comes in response to a food safety check carried out on Chinese foods. Dangerously high level of steroids were found in chickens and other food products. Continue reading “USOC to ship 25,000 pounds of food to China”

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Chinese factory suicide a good thing?

I’m still trying to get my mind around this.   Mattel has had to recall a million or so toys because of lead paint.   I heard on the radio that the plant manager from the Chinese factory responsible for putting the lead paint on the toys committed suicide.

A gentleman in the business segment of the morning NPR news show was commenting on the suicide story.   He said it was fairly common in Japan and Korea for business executives to commit suicide, but not very common in China.   He felt that this was possibly a good thing.   It might mean the Chinese were caring more about the quality and the safety of their products, and possibly a little less about the bottom line  at the expense of everything else.

This is about the time my head starting spinning, or maybe that was from getting out of bed too fast.  Continue reading “Chinese factory suicide a good thing?”