Investing Thread

[tower912]

Thinking about going full cabbage patch kid and buying up all of the toys I can and hoarding them until Christmas time.   Good investment?

[Uncle Rico]

Thinking about going full cabbage patch kid and buying up all of the toys I can and hoarding them until Christmas time.   Good investment?

In the 1940's, you couldn't afford to do that. 

[Hards Alumni]

I believe China ushered in the throw it away society.
Inexpensive, poorly made products.  When it breaks down, throw it away and get another one.
Do we now start to mend worn torn clothes, resole our shoes, fix our TVs?
Back in the 1920s,30s, 40s when majority of products were made in America, did people have as many pairs of shoes, cars, clothes, conveniences?
Will be interesting when items become more expensive.

They simply filled a need we required.  Market driven global economics.  The US consumer was wealthy and wanted things, but did not want to pay much for them... which just makes sense.  Labor makes up a chunk of the price of all goods, and China was able to have lower labor costs for decades.  Now, what they have as a strength is specialization and automation of those plants.  This allows them to have a near monopoly on production of many items.  Sure, the US could open up plants to replace those items, but the barrier to entry is incredibly high, and even IF the plant is built the workers have no experience making those products.  It'd take years and a ton of money to make an inferior product.  What foolish society would willingly do this to themselves?

Making *things* here is expensive and we don't do it because we've been accustomed to our current lifestyle.  From the Boomers until the current babies things have been this way. 

[Uncle Rico]

They simply filled a need we required.  Market driven global economics.  The US consumer was wealthy and wanted things, but did not want to pay much for them... which just makes sense.  Labor makes up a chunk of the price of all goods, and China was able to have lower labor costs for decades.  Now, what they have as a strength is specialization and automation of those plants.  This allows them to have a near monopoly on production of many items.  Sure, the US could open up plants to replace those items, but the barrier to entry is incredibly high, and even IF the plant is built the workers have no experience making those products.  It'd take years and a ton of money to make an inferior product.  What foolish society would willingly do this to themselves?

Making *things* here is expensive and we don't do it because we've been accustomed to our current lifestyle.  From the Boomers until the current babies things have been this way. 

Things were just better when we had factories.  More jobs, more happiness, less poverty and an economy that never was on the precipice

[NCMUFan]

They simply filled a need we required.  Market driven global economics.  The US consumer was wealthy and wanted things, but did not want to pay much for them... which just makes sense.  Labor makes up a chunk of the price of all goods, and China was able to have lower labor costs for decades.  Now, what they have as a strength is specialization and automation of those plants.  This allows them to have a near monopoly on production of many items.  Sure, the US could open up plants to replace those items, but the barrier to entry is incredibly high, and even IF the plant is built the workers have no experience making those products.  It'd take years and a ton of money to make an inferior product.  What foolish society would willingly do this to themselves?

Making *things* here is expensive and we don't do it because we've been accustomed to our current lifestyle.  From the Boomers until the current babies things have been this way. 

Shouldn't this be in the Daily Doom thread?

[Hards Alumni]

Shouldn't this be in the Daily Doom thread?

Nah, we are talking economy here.

The doom is still to come.

[NCMUFan]

Nah, we are talking economy here.

The doom is still to come.

Guess time to invest in cemetery plots.

[Hards Alumni]

Guess time to invest in cemetery plots.

People never appreciate them enough until they need them.   

[TSmith34, Inc.]

Wow, a thread that exists so people can brag about what stocks they made killings on to one on "human decency".  You look very very cute on your soap box.

The only person that bragged about their results--incessantly--was roqqet.

[MUBurrow]

Thinking about going full cabbage patch kid and buying up all of the toys I can and hoarding them until Christmas time.  Good investment?

[rocky_warrior]

Didn't take long for the "prices are too high" crowd to become the "prices are too low" crowd.

Right, inflation was the other guys fault.  Now we're fixing it by raising prices! 

I bought stock in shoesmiths today.  Lots of shoe repair coming I hear. 

[Scoop Snoop]

Thinking about going full cabbage patch kid and buying up all of the toys I can and hoarding them until Christmas time.  Good investment?

Too long of a wait to reap the rewards. Buy all the coffee you can with your investing dollars, and you will get a quick, substantial profit on your investment. It's going to be quite a while before McDermott's American based coffee plantations are producing. My source tells me he has already purchased suitable property in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then "Blue Mountain" coffee will be from America rather than Jamaica. I'm hoping he will hire me to help manage the plantations. After all, I can ride a horse.

[dgies9156]

What folks don't understand is that from the 1970s onward, the most critically controlled element of the U.S. Economy was inflation. The 1970s had horrific inflation -- brought about by a number of factors, not the least of which was oil shocks. The Federal Reserve made the decision to tame inflation. By the mid-1980s, we had largely succeeded.

We controlled inflation by either lowering costs, which meant off-shoring production to developing parts of the world, or, by replacing man with machine. Open trade policy and agreements with Chine, Vietnam and other countries made this possible.

Where we could not off-shore, we "tolerated" illegal immigration. Millions of people came to our country to mow lawns, pick fruit and vegetables, do clean-up work and perform tasks that Americans didn't want to do for what folks were willing to pay. So we "off-shored it" by bringing the labor to us.

Now, we have a President who is tinkering both both trends.The result will take years to resolve if we don't abandon the current path.

It's interesting how Americans are willing to abandon their values to save a few cents or avoid inflation. In my wife's hometown, we were talking to well-educated friends about how child labor, low wages, horrible working conditions and theft of intellectual property was a hallmark off the Chinese. It's why we won't shop at Walmart. One person looked at us and said, "it must be nice to be rich enough to have ethics."