value added?

[Jon Ford]

Bob, I thought your "value added" remark to be truly a classic. Let's look 
at some facts: 1) a huge number of the  products you mention are not really 
"value added"  by US consumptionsince they  (or most of the parts used in 
the products) are actually manufactured in the Third World  under US control 
and ownership. This means the Third World is having to build big power 
plants to provide the modern-style factories to make them, and of course 
provide the child labor for pennies an hour to crank these fine products 
out.  The energy consumption of these countries (along with atmospheric and 
water pollution)has skyrocketed in recent years, as has the demand for 
natural resources to make the products and fuel the machines.

2) Then, getting even wilder,  many of these goods are imported to the US, 
some being sold here as US products (value added "over there, " making them 
cheaper), reexported to the Third World with fancy brand tags on them, 
higher prices, big profit for the US. Only the middle or upper  class Third 
Worlders can afford said products, but the poor get something a few years 
behind the times, yearning for that upper  middle-class  world that the 
products can magically transport them to. We are really just outsourcing 
what wouldn't be tolerated here in terms of huge energy consumption and 
pollution (of course, we are still by far the largest consumers per capita 
of energy and products of all kinds).

3) What's  also happening now in the Third World (well, let's say most of 
the world) is that prices are going way up because of increasing energy 
coasts, less land in cultivation, etc.-- the pennies a day the factory 
workers make don't really cover all this very well. So the international PR 
firms of which you seem proud have to work really hard to create 
hyper-consumerism in Third World countries,  to open up new markets 
everywhere so  that very poor people  will be motivated to scrimp and save 
to buy, say, a US brand toaster which they could probably do without-- they 
could warm their bread (if they could afford any) some other way.

Jon "the Zen saint" Ford



>
>Well I noticed something interesting too....the fact that you totally
>ignored the point of my original post and fixed on the 'tone' of the post
>rather than the simple idea that the USA is not quite the energy and
>resource hog that many of the stats imply since so many of the raw 
>materials
>imported have 'value added' and then are re-exported to the world.
>
>Perhaps you would care to address that issue?
>

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