Quote:
Originally Posted by unclebilly
China has taken the playbook of a 1980s drug dealer. The ‘goods’ are cheap, almost free so we buy them for a fraction the cost of local product. The reality is that North American companies can’t even buy the material to make this stuff for what it retails for from China.
Let this sink in.
They are obtaining the raw materials, adding value through various manufacturing processes, then it passes through at least 1 middleman (Amazon or whoever), then it is shipped half way around the world for an all in cost less than the materials are worth.
The Chinese government is subsidizing this dumping with the end game of choking out all other countries who manufacture. At that point, there will be no other option (in some cases, there already isnt).
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Back in the days before digital photography I worked in a professional photo lab. We made photographic prints for our customers. When Wal Mar came along they were selling 4x6 color prints to the customer at a cost that was less than our cost for the piece of photographic material buying direct from Kodak with our dealership license.
They could sell a 4x6 print for a nickle. Just the paper was 6 cents for us. Much less the printer which was a 40K machine we needed to expose the print from the negative, the 25K paper processor, and the expensive chemicals the water and employees needed to mix the chemistry and run the printer. That was the start of the end to that business. Digital just drove a stake through the heart of it. And at the time we charge 60 cents for a 4x6 color print. Our print was a good quality proper color print. The Wal mart print was whatever the machine spit out and might be horrid color balance, but it was CHEAP!