NationStates Jolt Archive

I've got one for the doomsayers today. You know, those people who say that our economies will move to China and other places like that. Germany, being an economy heavy on manufacturing and engineering might be a good example of this trend, right?

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,508006,00.html
Burned by Offshoring, Mid-Sized Firms Return Production to Germany

The trend towards offshoring production from Germany to other countries is slowly being reversed, with medium-sized businesses leading the way. In fact, Germany is itself becoming an attractive location for foreign investment.

Maybe not.

EDIT: Sorry about the title. There should of course be no hyphen there...if any mods want to change they'd be very welcome to.

i know it is in the quote from the article, but is anybody around here that really hates, and i do really mean 'hates', the word "firms".

it's as some sort of generic word that some ideolog invented to cover-up and try to get us to believe that corporations are the same as a regular business.
oh, you know, except for size...;)
all us 'firms' are in the same boat.

pcha, right.


that's the first thing we have to do, is de-colonize our minds.
remember, the corporation was first used for wealth extraction in the name of the king...colonialism

woo! for germany then.

That's the market. Labor costs and turnover in India, China, and other offshoring targets are soaring, making the savings from offshoring labor pretty insignificant; you might be able to save, say, 50% on labor costs, but if those workers are deserting work in droves every year, the turnover is simply too great and the quality too low (all of the good workers have already likely been hired or are already working in the US/EU), it's simply not worth it.

That's the market. Labor costs and turnover in India, China, and other offshoring targets are soaring, making the savings from offshoring labor pretty insignificant; you might be able to save, say, 50% on labor costs, but if those workers are deserting work in droves every year, the turnover is simply too great and the quality too low (all of the good workers have already likely been hired or are already working in the US/EU), it's simply not worth it.
Hmm..perhaps. Be interesting to see how this plays out and if this kind of thing (what happend to Germany) starts showing up in other countries (notably America).

Hmm..perhaps. Be interesting to see how this plays out and if this kind of thing (what happend to Germany) starts showing up in other countries (notably America).

Depends. Wages in Germany for comparative labor in America isn't quite on the same level yet I think, along with standard of living (cost efficiency wise). You'd need to have the economy rework itself a bit before that sort of thing happens.

NL, it's completely off topic, but mate... How do you instigate actual free trade (not fair trade) today?

Just struck me your thread is the reverse of your own ideology; trade ends up unfree, and ends up going to an insanely expensive and restrictive 1st world country. It's quite the Neo-Lib argument, at least from a practical definition of a neolib as a indiscriminate tycoon, but it seems to be at odds with both actual free trade and anti authoritarianism.

EDIT: Sorry about the title. There should of course be no hyphen there...if any mods want to change they'd be very welcome to.
Using a hyphen is grammatically correct.

The poor hyphen is slowly being killed off, by ppl who know not how and when to use it properly.
A moment's silence if you please, for the loss of a well-used and well-loved punctuation mark.

The hyphen is dead, long live the hyphen!

The hyphen is dead, long live the hyphen!Like I said; ANCAP is dead, Long Live ANCAP... WTF?

Seriously, I'm not that much of an ideologue, I'm only an anarchist because at least it's a take on a humane economic system that hasn't been proven to be inhumane. This, however, seems to be both at odds with socialist and capitalist economics, and at odds with the idea of an economic system that isn't a goal in and of itself, but rather a means by which individuals can increase their standard of living. In other words, it strikes me at anti-meritocratic and anti-democratic.

Ten again, -_I'm higher than a fucking kite, so perhaps I'm wrong. NL, please explain. You always make4 a fuckload of sense, even when it's the kind of sense I'd rather do without.

NL, it's completely off topic, but mate... How do you instigate actual free trade (not fair trade) today?

Just struck me your thread is the reverse of your own ideology; trade ends up unfree, and ends up going to an insanely expensive and restrictive 1st world country. It's quite the Neo-Lib argument, at least from a practical definition of a neolib as a indiscriminate tycoon, but it seems to be at odds with both actual free trade and anti authoritarianism.
:D
You really are high as a kite.

I suggest you ask that question again, because I don't think I fully understand it. I don't think a trade can, by definition, be unfree, because it's a voluntary exchange. Germany may be an expensive and in some way restrictive (actually, they've made a lot of headway in many areas) location, but German companies know how to deal with it - and they know their systems gel together with the skills and demands of the workforce very well.

I think that if the firm makes the decision to come back, then the economic benefit of this gelling together is greater than the benefit they could have gained from paying Romanian or Chinese workers less money. And if they had kept going for the latter, it would have been a net loss not just to them, but to society in general as well.

Long live the free market!

shouldn't you be like against companies moving back because of inferior overseas-ism?

shouldn't you be like against companies moving back because of inferior overseas-ism?

I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your meaning.

shouldn't you be like against companies moving back because of inferior overseas-ism?
Why?

Why?

because if medium size firms find it more profitable to exist in there home country despite the ability to ignore human rights and the environment then something must be up!

because if medium size firms find it more profitable to exist in there home country despite the ability to ignore human rights and the environment then something must be up!
Clearly.

Or, to quote an objectivist: There is no such thing as a contradiction. Check your premises.