WD Provides Update on HDD Production Due to Flooding in Thailand

I wonder how expensive it will be for them to recover from this?

Mother Nature, running shit since forever.

No flooding in America. It's a sign to manufacture shit here.

Hah Team Obi Juan, was gonna say just that. Wonder if it would have been just cheaper to make these here. Would probably save money on shipping cost too.

Well it probably costs half as much to build factories and hire employees in third world countries. So in the end WD will still come out with profit.

zkostik said:

Hah Team Obi Juan, was gonna say just that. Wonder if it would have been just cheaper to make these here. Would probably save money on shipping cost too.

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Unfortunately no, the costs associated with doing business in this country along with minimum wages are far more than people think. Most parts come from that region so you'd also have to ship an insane amount of parts to this country to manufacturer here as well. (added costs)

Yep, Americans refusing to work for pennies have ruined the country.

Team Obi Juan said:

No flooding in America. It's a sign to manufacture shit here.

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Tell that to the workers at the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska

Team Obi Juan said:

Yep, Americans refusing to work for pennies have ruined the country.

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Why would you try and strawman? No one mentioned anything about ruining the country, it's just the way it is. In a global economy if you want manufacturing jobs back here it has to change otherwise stop even mentioning it. (Referring to politicians)

Yikes!

I just rushed online and bought a 3TB WD Green drive on Amazon. I have a project that I was going to get two of them for. I was going to wait until next paycheck on Friday and pick two up, but prices have already started to rise, so instead I'm scaling back to one, and putting it on the good ole credit card for now.

I don't like using credit, but on occasion it does make sense.

Team Obi Juan said:

Yep, Americans refusing to work for pennies have ruined the country.

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Well, you can't have it both ways.

You either willingly pay 2-3 times as much for the same stuff and have it made in America, or you buy things cheap, and the jobs go elsewhere.

American's have voted with their wallets, and apparently its more important to them to get the cheap shit they want today, than to have a manufacturing base in our country.

And Walmart makes it all possible

next-Jin said:

Why would you try and strawman? No one mentioned anything about ruining the country, it's just the way it is. In a global economy if you want manufacturing jobs back here it has to change otherwise stop even mentioning it. (Referring to politicians)

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Me, strawmanning? I was agreeing with you.

Serves them right for moving their manufacturing overseas.

Zarathustra[H];1037893075 said:

Yikes!

I just rushed online and bought a 3TB WD Green drive on Amazon. I have a project that I was going to get two of them for. I was going to wait until next paycheck on Friday and pick two up, but prices have already started to rise, so instead I'm scaling back to one, and putting it on the good ole credit card for now.

I don't like using credit, but on occasion it does make sense.



Well, you can't have it both ways.

You either willingly pay 2-3 times as much for the same stuff and have it made in America, or you buy things cheap, and the jobs go elsewhere.

American's have voted with their wallets, and apparently its more important to them to get the cheap shit they want today, than to have a manufacturing base in our country.

And Walmart makes it all possible

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America never voted for any such thing! But fine, just expect complete economic collapse when Americans can't afford to buy the shiny trinkets because they have no jobs or are all working in low paying service industry jobs. Yea, without consumers with money to buy the shiny trinkets Capitalism collapses, well, duh.

next-Jin said:

Unfortunately no, the costs associated with doing business in this country along with minimum wages are far more than people think. Most parts come from that region so you'd also have to ship an insane amount of parts to this country to manufacturer here as well. (added costs)

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Its actually not as expensive as most outsource-supporting companies like to make you think

Peteman100 said:

Its actually not as expensive as most outsource-supporting companies like to make you think

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If you look at wages in isolation, then yes it is.

If you consider the system as a whole, including the fact that you get better yields in U.S. manufacturing, have to spend less money on travel, shipping and cultural/language misunderstandings, and all the time that is wasted by people (and product) going back and forth, it is a lot closer, depending on the industry you are in.

For simple labor intensive assembly operations the gap is pretty wide (these are the minimum wage types of manufacturing jobs over here). For more skilled labor, the overall cost is very similar. Some companies have started realizing this, and are pulling back more and more to the U.S. Especially with rising fuel costs.

Think of it this way though. Corporations are set up to maximize profits for their shareholders at the expense of pretty much everything else. That is their reason to exist. They wouldn't voluntarily move production elsewhere unless they thought that they had something financially to gain from it.

Even pennies can matter though. I you save a nickel per part made and you make 60 million of them a year, that's $3 million right to the bottom line.

A lot of the jobs lost to foreign countries are never coming back. To many of them, good riddance. They are the shitty low paying jobs anyway. We need the skilled, well paying jobs here in america, but we are only going to get them if we can produce a high skilled and educated labor force. A labor force full of high school dropouts is going to get us nowhere.

Zarathustra[H];1037895056 said:

A lot of the jobs lost to foreign countries are never coming back. To many of them, good riddance. They are the shitty low paying jobs anyway. We need the skilled, well paying jobs here in america, but we are only going to get them if we can produce a high skilled and educated labor force. A labor force full of high school dropouts is going to get us nowhere.

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You can thank the unions for ruining that for us.

Zarathustra[H];1037895056 said:

A lot of the jobs lost to foreign countries are never coming back. To many of them, good riddance. They are the shitty low paying jobs anyway. We need the skilled, well paying jobs here in america, but we are only going to get them if we can produce a high skilled and educated labor force. A labor force full of high school dropouts is going to get us nowhere.

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Gotta fix the education scam first...however because of the culture, lobbies, and kickbacks involved, meaningful fixes in education are currently the elephant in the room.

rhone89 said:

You can thank the unions for ruining that for us.

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that too, unions can be helpful in some instances, but more often than not it was bullying to protect said low educated work force that now feels entitled to graduate degree salaries for a job that clearly has been able to be sent overseas for cheaper with similar results...or alternately completely automated and removed from the job pool in general.

Manaknight said:

that too, unions can be helpful in some instances, but more often than not it was bullying to protect said low educated work force that now feels entitled to graduate degree salaries for a job that clearly has been able to be sent overseas for cheaper with similar results...or alternately completely automated and removed from the job pool in general.

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Agreed. Unions played a vital role during the 19th and early 20th centirues, when they worked hard to get everyone such things as the Weekend, the 40 hour work week, safety regulations, and other vital worker protection laws we now take for granted.

In the last 50-60 years - however - unions as a whole have been more just greedy organizations trying to over inflate the wages and benefits of a mostly unqualified workforce. Even going to the extent of protecting the alcoholic slacker on the job that everyone - even fellow workers - know just needs to go.

I don't want to belittle the historic work of unions in working to fix the absolutely miserable working conditions of the industrial revolution, it just seems like - to me - at some point they went astray.