Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s 'Scary' For The Rest Of The Auto Industry
Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s 'Scary' For The Rest Of The Auto Industry
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15089465
Americans Are Open To Cheap Chinese Cars. That’s 'Scary' For The Rest Of The Auto Industry
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Lemmy:
Go UAW, fight for higher wages and better working conditions
Also Lemmy:
I demand the cheapest car possible, I don't care if its built by slave labor in xinjiang. If western companies can't compete with third world labor costs then they're obviously inefficient and don't deserve to exist.
I mean I'd argue there's some serious room to help out the consumer since the price of cars has been outpacing inflation pretty handily since around 2014 (and been beating it into a bloody pulp since 2020). There is some insanely obvious price gouging going on when the average price of a new car in 2024 is over 49k. There is room for BOTH higher wages and at least semi reasonable car prices for the American consumer. In my eyes if you clearly aren't willing to help me as an everyday clearly struggling American today, then goooo right ahead and kiss my ass as I buy foreign if it's cheaper.
That added cost came in the form of dealer markups during COVID that never went away since theyre still selling. The manufacturers don't have much control over what the dealerships do.
The average purchase price has gone up because people are buying more expensive cars, eg. Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, high end trims etc. not because cars are getting more expensive.
If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn't changed much. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067
None of those are close to the $10,000 cars coming out of China because you just can't make a car for that cheap in a country with high labor costs like the u.s., or even Japan or Germany.
Now look at how much the executives are being paid in the US compared to the cost of the vehicles...
It ain't the welders and wrench turners who are adding the most to the cost of vehicles.
As opposed to China where there totally isn't a massive wealth gap between factory workers and their executives! Not like the CEO of Xpeng is worth 1.4 billion or anything...
It’s true, China Has Billionaires.
Income inequality rhetoric ignores that a class can reap the benefits of work via public investment (e.g. a bullet train), even if bosses make more as individuals. Working Chinese people are seeing the fruits of their labour despite billionaires and inequality. To recriminate them for not demanding more is recriminating the virtue of patience.
In fact, much of what passes for “socialist” idealism in the West turns out to be a mirror image of bog-standard liberal-capitalist entrepreneurship propaganda: “I will be my own boss! I will run my own business!” This idealism appears unaware that the necessity of management is foisted upon us by logistics, not capitalism. Denial of this reality results in fantasies of perfect synchrony between perfectly autonomous anarchists.
The “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” dream, embraced more by pundits with cushy lives than working people, also reveals a dark truth: western “socialists” have some awareness that a more equal world will mean losing first-world privileges. They cannot conceive of things getting better steadily and slowly, with hard work. And so they are forced to denigrate the Chinese road of self-sacrifice in favour of leisure-driven utopianism. The reality is that the victory of the working class over the capitalist class will usher in an era of hard but rewarding work, as opposed to hard work without reward.
United Nations, 2019: Helping 800 Million People Escape Poverty Was Greatest Such Effort in History, Says Secretary-General, on Seventieth Anniversary of China’s Founding
Sure man, I guess the nets on the sides of the factory buildings are there to catch workers who are jumping with joy because their work is so rewarding.
I don't deny that China's economic ascendancy has been remarkable and a big win against poverty, but now that people have gotten past the starvation phase, I don't think you can use the "high tide raises all boats" analogy. It sounds a lot like tricke-down economics to me, with some hand-waving that things are different in China because the wealthy elites are actually generous patricians.
My worries are not that they can't compete, it's that they won't even attempt to.
They managed to survive the Japanese/Korean car invasions (with some help). They will certainly try with China although it's trickier for a lot of reasons.
If the price of labor was what determined the price, then why have prices gone up, when labor prices have not?
Car prices haven't gone up, the average purchase prices of cars has gone up but that's because people are buying more expensive cars, Large trucks, SUVs, luxury sedans, higher trims etc.
If you look at lower end sedans there price hasn't changed much and has even gone down. For example if you look at the Chevy Malibu the current base price is $25,100 , in 2014 the base price was $22,340 or $29,400 adjusted for inflation, in 2004 it was $18,700 or $31,067
Auto workers wages have gone down but they've steadied in recent years in 2004 hourly wage was $21.71 or $36.07 adjusted for inflation, in 2014 it was $21.38 or $28.17 adjusted for inflation now they are around $30.
So since 2004 the price for a car has gone down 24% and auto wages have also gone down 20%. The recent UAW contract wage increases with little to no increase in price shows there is some room for workers to get more out of that $25,000 cost pie, but there would be no room if that pie is shrunk to $10,000 to compete with Chinese manufacturers.
slave labor in xinjiang
Oh no the CIA-backed terrorists got job training, the horror. https://lemmy.ml/comment/8175413
The actual slave labor is in the United States, thanks to the 13th amendment.
It’s the same thing the right does with government. It is a truism that there is all sorts of “inefficiencies” where the money is going to the wrong people for the wrong stuff.
In both cases, it’s sort of correct and sort of wrong. Corporations, governments, and any human institution beyond a certain scale (a few hundred people), will leak wealth into places it shouldn’t. It’s an unavoidable feature of our species as best I can tell.
It’s fine to accept it, it’s fine to be angry about it. It’s silly to blind yourself to it in some places and whinge about it in others.