Tail wheel, the only problem with a wider range of cheaper consumer goods and services as a result of globalization, is that it ain't sustainable.

I like my toys and luxuries as much as the next person. But subsequent generations are going to have to pay for it, one way or another.

Oh goody a whole post almost directed at me & from a Mod too.............gee & here I thought I was gunna get banned or have my post deleted...........again !:E

I own very little Aussie made, my Ford is prolly the main Aussie owned item I have & even that has foreign content.
I don't go out of my way to buy Aussie purely due two things. I get paid at a level that only allows the purchase of cheaper products generally & few products are Aussie made.

I no longer fly a 'yanky doodle dandy' machine but did so as there was no choice for the task at hand (PC12 too me wasn't a suitable safe choice nor was it for AAV thank God ! but lets not go there hey?)

Simply put Aussie made products are mostly too expensive. We want the good lifestyle, the good wages with union protection but we won't pay for it (Aussie stuff) at the checkout as we couldn't sustain that lifestyle. Catch 22 situation!

In a nut shell Globalization means one thing.........choice!


Wmk2

Tarq57 has nailed the essence of the problem. We are filling landfills at an exponential rate, with Chinese junk, that we are being taught, can be disposed of, at an ever-increasing rate. It's not sustainable.

Has any one of you ever worked in a landfill? I have! Nearly a decade and half ago, when I was truly desperate for a dollar, after a nasty period of severe personal losses... I was forced to work in a landfill operation for 2 mths until I could raise some $$'s again.

EVERYONE should be made to work in a landfill operation for 2 mmths, just to see what goes on!
Our Depression-era parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, would be spinning in their graves, at the waste!
Perfectly good bicycles are buried, because new ones have been purchased! Electrical goods with minor flaws (noisy fan) are turfed out and buried, because owners can't be bothered fixing anything... and most people don't even have the knowledge on how to fix it, anyway!

We were constantly running out of room in the "industrial" waste side of the landfill (as compared to the "household waste" section). The majority of the material buried was Chinese.
We were burying, at my best estimate, $3000-$5000 worth of immediately-recyclable metals, a week! Iron, aluminium, copper... it wasn't worth gathering up, said the landfill bosses! :ugh:

We will pay for this waste in more ways than one, eventually. Electrical waste disposal is a huge problem. Waste plastics are everywhere, and only a small % is recycled.
Councils are being overwhelmed, and take the easy, less-costly options... build more landfills, further out of town.

If products were built with better quality, and made repairable, then our landfill problem would be minimal. It can be done, but manufacturers such as the Chinese have no interest in doing so... and neither do our retailers, politicians, and regulatory authorities.
We have a Govt intent on a Carbon Capture tax... yet those same pollies are blind to the manufacturing quality/waste problem, that will overwhelm our children.
The Chinese don't care, they are exporting the problem, and getting rich, on doing so.

My 2 yen
 

Err Tailwheel,
Since Merc's were made in China they have gone from the most dependable , reliable automobile ever made to one of the worst in about 10 years. Maybe the fault of the bean counters? But I know if I was on the production line in downtown Bejiing getting paid 1/100 of the german guys, my heart might not be in it.
Also heard a rumor that the repair job on the Qantas 747 that did some nose ploughing a while ago , was so bad , it had to be redone in Aus.
MC

Tailwheel, it's a very good observation in so far as we do live a more 'affluent' lifestyle than our predecessors. But I doubt the next generations will be singing the praises of globalisation and the subsequent deregulation of credit markets that have caused this. There are plenty of charts floating around showing the near perfect correlation between consumption and credit growth. Particluarly salient for us in OZ, with one of the highest private debt levels on the planet.

Globalisation may have helped us leverage off cheaper foreign labour and materials to live better, but in doing so we've reduced ourselves to no more than a FIRE economy with a few quarries. At the same time, those same countries like China and previously Japan are the ones who we're now indebted to.

With mining being 5% of our GDP and now effectively wagging the economic dog in this country, it's obvious we're now starting to repay the piper - check out retail. Floundering, not because of the internet red herring, but because too much money is being spent servicing private interest costs. I hope the 15+ year binge was worth it for all of us!

The Chinese are buying these US companies because the investment engine in the US is broken. Few people in the West want to invest for a reasonable return anymore - they all want above average returns and get-rich-quick ponzi schemes of which the Banksters can provide many and are usually the first (i.e. most rewarded) subscribers.

The end result is that the West will eventually own little wealth-making enterprises and have no money to buy the goods that are produced. We will become the low-wage slaves of the new mercantilist eastern empire

Another thing I heard from a trader who works in China is that the Mercs made in China are mostly exported. The Chinese only want the German ones.

Cirrus has been owned by a foreign company (middle Eastern) for over the last 5 years & has become the most succesfull 4 seat aircraft during this time ( by market share & sales volume).
Cirrus will contine to build their product in MN & ND USA. The Chinese have also given a $100 mill cash injection instantly to fund the final stage of the SF50 jet program so a production certification can be achieved sooner rather than later. In the future SR series aircraft might be produced in China, but i would suspect this would be only for the domestic Chinese GA market which is about to explode with the restictions on GA being relaxed in stages.

The investment also offers security for the cirrus employees going forward whilst the USA slowly drags itself out of economic doom & gloom.

Excuse my poor English skills as i have just returned from an end of Avalon 2011 BBQ, and the Shiraz was quite tasty:}