Quote:
Originally Posted by pidgeon92
The thing is that Americans want to be paid top-dollar for the work they do, but they don't want to pay a fair wage value for the things they purchase.
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Wages are a relatively small piece of the pie when you look at cost savings through moving off shore.
In the 1960's, wages were the big savings. Wages have not been the biggest savings since that time, and in each and every year that has passed since then the cost savings from being outside ever more obtrusive and costly regulations has grown.
Plants are more ane more automated. Wages are a smaller and smaller part of the cost of a product.
If a plant was entirely automated, and didn't have one single employee to pay wages to...it still would not be able to compete with a plant in South Korea or Taiwan.
Unless there is no competition from abroad, or the process requires no hydraulics or forges.
MEMC will be leving Texas in the next couple of years - mostly for Malaysia.
Expect TI to follow.
This is how California got to be in the position it is in - decades of driving its taxbase overseas or to other states. Eventually that reaches a breaking point.