Quote:
Originally Posted by figgyburn
As in many western societies the workers priced themselves out of their jobs.think british steel.u.s. steel. These were huge entities and employed many people but the workers did not want any reduction in their wages to compete with the cheaper eastern steel so the end was nigh.i have just been in Pittsburgh(steeltown) on holiday and visited a few steel museums and met people once employed by u.s. steel and they said if they had been a bit more flexible and met the bosses halfway there might have still been a u.s. steel business,the once mighty Carnegie homestead mill is now a shopping centre.hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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The problem is there's no way to beat the Chinese and the Indians in a race to the bottom, thanks to the UK having higher anti pollution standards, not wanting workers to die quite as often and to be able to afford what is, in global terms, a very high standard of living. I'm not saying the unions are blameless, but there's more than the cost of labour.
The answer is to shift the dirty manual graft of raw material generation and simple assembly to these low wage economies and move up the value chain towards design, research/development and production of specialised equipment.
Or, to put it another way, you'll make more money building jet engines than making aluminium to make jet engines.