cabelas is discontinuing tractor sales

[Texas Dawg]

Why are we discussing Walmart. What has Walmart got to do with tractors anyway? Maybe they should start selling tractors.

Chinese made tractors of course.

 

[AxleHub]

It we worry about keeping Walmart jobs, it is too late. Low cost retail jobs peddling Chinese made products is not something we should covert. China will experience the same thing Japan did and we can compete again at some point. That and eliminating US tax breaks for "restructuring" (read: sending our jobs to China).

Tom,

That is exactly the attitude that is hurting us. Walmart is a unique American success story. Sam Walton dreamed of providing goods to working people in our country so they could afford to save a little money without sacrifice. Walmart is an envious customer to gain for many 1000s of American made products they sell. Many u.s. businesses are quite pleased to sell to Walmart who in turn sells those to u.s. shoppers as well as in many foreign lands.

But a bigger point is . . If we don't care about 12 and 15 dollar an hour jobs at walmart and if we don't care about 35 and 55 dollar an hour energy sector jobs (500,000 +) . . exactly where do we find jobs for all our kids and friends and "us" to work. Obviously the current last 2 years doesn't support farm and ag related jobs as it once did whrn farmers are already stressed by poor commofity prices and enlarging competition from 3 continents. And MicroSoft is laying off people and IBM is contracting with Somalia snd India for software programming. So which jobs should we care about? The gov't employment numbers are based on new worker jobs . . So a person hired from a temporary work agency can work part of a month at one business and part of a month at another . . and count for 2 (two) for government reporting and then thr next month count for 2 or 3 more newly reported hires again. Same is true if you work part time hours. Hewlett Packard is disposing of 35,000 employees after eliminating 25,000 18 months ago. And a medical asdistant at a clinic or hospital makes less than some at walmart. And construction is often a 7 to 8 months and then unemployment for 4 or 5 month situations. So which jobs should we be concerned about if none of the others listed above isn't important?

 

[TomSeller]

Why are we discussing Walmart. What has Walmart got to do with tractors anyway? Maybe they should start selling tractors.

Walmart = Home Depot = Cabelas

Same thing to me. At least they seem the same walking into them and checking out. Chinese made goods for the most part. No real experts, just employees of the week.

 

[tman1020]

Walmart = Home Depot = Cabelas Same thing to me. At least they seem the same walking into them and checking out. Chinese made goods for the most part. No real experts, just employees of the week.

Good point.

 

[TomSeller]

Tom,

That is exactly the attitude that is hurting us. Walmart is a unique American success story. Sam Walton dreamed of providing goods to working people in our country so they could afford to save a little money without sacrifice. Walmart is an envious customer to gain for many 1000s of American made products they sell. Many u.s. businesses are quite pleased to sell to Walmart who in turn sells those to u.s. shoppers as well as in many foreign lands.

But a bigger point is . . If we don't care about 12 and 15 dollar an hour jobs at walmart and if we don't care about 35 and 55 dollar an hour energy sector jobs (500,000 +) . . exactly where do we find jobs for all our kids and friends and "us" to work. Obviously the current last 2 years doesn't support farm and ag related jobs as it once did whrn farmers are already stressed by poor commofity prices and enlarging competition from 3 continents. And MicroSoft is laying off people and IBM is contracting with Somalia snd India for software programming. So which jobs should we care about? The gov't employment numbers are based on new worker jobs . . So a person hired from a temporary work agency can work part of a month at one business and part of a month at another . . and count for 2 (two) for government reporting and then thr next month count for 2 or 3 more newly reported hires again. Same is true if you work part time hours. Hewlett Packard is disposing of 35,000 employees after eliminating 25,000 18 months ago. And a medical asdistant at a clinic or hospital makes less than some at walmart. And construction is often a 7 to 8 months and then unemployment for 4 or 5 month situations. So which jobs should we be concerned about if none of the others listed above isn't important?

Y'all said the same thing about Japanese products 20 years ago. China will be next once the masses want a better life and a cut of the pie. Are there other countries behind China? Maybe so.

 

[Jim Timber]

Y'all said the same thing about Japanese products 20 years ago. China will be next once the masses want a better life and a cut of the pie. Are there other countries behind China? Maybe so.

China's capable of making the highest quality products money can buy. It's the importers, the US contractors, who make them build to a piss-poor quality price point for maximum profitability on the US market. Even so, China's being undersold by India and Pakistan for cheaper yet labor. Seems like China might not want to stay at the bottom tier that much longer with their market on the verge of collapse too.

Japan had the same problem in the 70's. They exported junk because we imported junk from them. Then they figured out what BMW and Mercedes had figured out - it costs the same to send a boat of poop across the ocean as it does to send one full of premium products, so they stopped selling us junk and laughed all the way to the bank.

 

[GManBart]

Y'all said the same thing about Japanese products 20 years ago. China will be next once the masses want a better life and a cut of the pie. Are there other countries behind China? Maybe so.

Completely different dynamic, and culture. Japan only made cheap stuff for export following WWII because that's essentially what we set them up to produce. They eventually reverted back to what many have described as a national obsession with perfection, and that's when we started to see the high quality products show up on our shores.

My father was a physics major in the mid-1950s and spent a lot of time working with optics. They were given crates of captured German and Japanese optics from WWII (spotting scopes for artillery, naval binoculars, etc) for use in their experiments, and he said the Japanese stuff was every bit as good as the German stuff when they tested it, and everybody was surprised because it was accepted worldwide that German optics were the best. Japan was certainly a number of years behind the western countries in ramping up manufacturing, but their quality was in the same ballpark when they eventually started producing similar items.

Japan was making high quality stuff before the war, cheap stuff after the war and reconstruction, then went back to making high quality stuff within 20 years or so. That's very different from what we've seen happening in China.

 

[GManBart]

China's capable of making the highest quality products money can buy.

That's not what the scientists and engineers I've worked with have told me, and those are people who are intimately involved, not just bystanders (like me). There are good reasons why many high technology items are restricted from being sold to China....they simply aren't capable of producing them domestically.

 

[Jim Timber]

That's not what the scientists and engineers I've worked with have told me, and those are people who are intimately involved, not just bystanders (like me). There are good reasons why many high technology items are restricted from being sold to China....they simply aren't capable of producing them domestically.

Uh, or they're considered sensitive data not to be disseminated to foreign states, like our night vision technology or weapons guidance systems.

China makes what we let them make for us. They knock off the rest. Now, not all Chinese factories are capable of achieving the highest quality, just like not every US manufacturer can machine themselves out of a box (a common expression for the competence of my last manager in the medical implant device industry btw).

 

[AxleHub]

There is a word used and practiced in China that is not ecrn known or practiced in Japan. That word essentially means "for family first". When a product is setup to be manufactured in China by a U.S. business it is all too common a oractice that a copy of the plans is secreted out the back door to "family" who reproduce the item for sald under a pirated name and sale process. Cslloway golf vlubs was an exsmple back in 2001 and 2002. But they got caught because they'd used inferior metals which changed the weight balance and feel just a liiiiitttle bit. But they'd already flooded some markets with the cheaper product and Calloway lost a bunch of money fighting to reclaim their reputation.

60 minutes just did a piece last night how China is stealing trade secrets on virtually every technology sector and business area we have. Piracy is well known but the trade secret thefts are country coordinated. Japan or Korea design and build a better mouse trap but China apparently steals the better mousetrap technology.. That is a big and impirtant difference.