[ExI] undercover at Walmart

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Wed, Feb 11, 2009 at 2:13 AM, Stathis Papaioannou <stathisp at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/11 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>
>> Last month I bought some Chinese power tools, two drills, two jigsaws, three
>> grinders.  Each one cost me 11 bucks.  Seventy seven bucks, for a box of new
>> tools durn near too heavy for me to hoist!  Their quality wasn't stellar,
>> but acceptable.  The only possible way western manufacturing can compete
>> with that is to have a completely automated assembly line, a lights out
>> factory, employing approximately one person.
>>
>> This isn't Walmart's fault, it is ours, for not building the robofactories
>> when capital was still available.
>
> It seems to me there is no good reason why the labour of a Chinese
> worker should be so much cheaper than that of an American or European
> worker.

### The labor of a worker in China is much less efficient, on average,
than the labor of a worker in America (whether it is a Chinese or
American worker is almost irrelevant here). This is the reason for the
low cost of workers in China - they offer little, therefore they
cannot demand much.

----------------

 A massive rebalancing of exchange rates is needed.

### Exchange rates are always in the long term defined primarily by
average labor efficiency. The only way the Chinese can become as rich
as us is by working as efficiently as we do.

Rafal