Google Thinks Different(ly) With Nexus Q: It's Made in USA

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$299 ???. Before I saw that I was thinking "Great, I want to support made in America maybe I will pick one up even thought I don't have a pressing need". Now I am actually more depressed than when I read the hope filled title. Maybe it is the bill of materials that drove the price up but my fear is that it is due to the fact that our wages are too high, our supporting manufacturing base is to depleted, and our management/engineering experience on how to actually build things is now to weak.
 

Mathos

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You have no clue, about working in a manufacturing plant in the US do you??? I'm just barely 35 and I've worked at 2 or 3. If it took an entire work or more for 1 person to make a part, it would be one way to say our manufacturing raises prices on stuff. But, thats simply not the case. You may get paid $20/hr to do the job, but, you're most likely going to have a minimum quota of 200-2000+ parts per hour for example. Now that depends on how large or small the part is. A small part that comes off an auto press, or machine line, and you're just quality control, and you're gonna be expected to have a quota on the higher end. So in that case maybe $0.01-$0.10 of the price of that part amounts to labor. Another small part goes to materials, and packaging if it's a finished part. Otherwise then it's shipping to another company for their assembly. Most of this extra price you see is profit. And they likely would of charged 299 whether it'd been made here or not. Exactly how much do you think it costs them to manufacture that $700 smart phone you have in your pocket?
 

captaincharisma

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[citation][nom]mayne92[/nom]Wow, something finally made in America.[/citation]

yea its not "outscorced". oh wait sorry they call it offshoring now ;) gotta love the nut house called the republican party
 

QEFX

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Made in America*

* Assembled with a significant amount by mass actually made in America, not actually 100% made in America but close enough.
 

merikafyeah

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[citation][nom]QEFX[/nom]Made in America** Assembled with a significant amount by mass actually made in America, not actually 100% made in America but close enough.[/citation]

Almost nothing is "100%" made in any country. Raw materials could come from anywhere, especially rare-earth metals found in nearly all electronics. Rare-earth metals are always found in nature bonded to something else and the extraction and refining process is a relatively difficult and involved one, hence the term "rare". ("Rare" in this case has nothing to do with scarcity as "rare"-earth metals are actually quite abundant albeit dispersed.)

Point being, not all countries have the resources to extract and refine materials like rare-earth metals, so they purchase the processed material from somewhere else. This is just simple business and it has been this way for decades.

(Incidentally, the U.S. has only ONE rare-earth mine in the whole country, located in California. It used to be the largest rare-earth deposit in the world, then China came into the picture. 95% of the world's rare-earth supply currently comes from China. In this sense, China has the technological world by the balls, so to speak.
 

jamoise

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well Australia has a very large supply of Rare earth, as well as every other raw material you could think of, so you could always get a supply from Australia. Currently China and parts of Asia are Australia's biggest exports for raw material. so essentially the materials run from Australia to China to the USA doing a full round trip of the world before they get to your hands.
 

sacre

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Price is because its made in America. See, the issue here is that people want lower prices, but they also want things to be made here for jobs.
---YOU CANT HAVE BOTH---

People here in America want high pay, vacation pay, sick days, bonuses, raises, nice facilities to work in, etc, etc, etc.
People across the border have MUCH lower pay, cheaper stations, no real paid sick days/bonuses, etc.

So because of that cheaper labour, they don't have to pay nearly 20-30 an hour for Americans as oppose to what, less than a dollar across seas?

American made means you'll be paying.
 

alextheblue

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[citation][nom]rhangman[/nom]Could use prisoners for the die-cast zinc base. No $20/hr that way.[/citation]In particular those who've committed non-violent crimes, you could even pay them a small wage. Even if you give them $5/hr, I'd be OK with that. It's not like they have to pay rent or insurance. They can help bolster US manufacturing, and hey when they get out they won't be completely F'd, they can gain some experience and save up some cash.

A tough work program could even help keep them out of trouble when they get out. They might even be able to get a job manufacturing for the company that employed them while in prison. At any rate it seems better than having them do essentially nothing.
 

alextheblue

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[citation][nom]jamoise[/nom]well Australia has a very large supply of Rare earth, as well as every other raw material you could think of, so you could always get a supply from Australia. Currently China and parts of Asia are Australia's biggest exports for raw material. so essentially the materials run from Australia to China to the USA doing a full round trip of the world before they get to your hands.[/citation]Plus the Australians are good allies. We really should be building more tech here. When was the last time we could get a decent ATX/mATX motherboard built in the USA?
 
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sacre: People made the same argument against abolishing slavery around the time of the American Civil War, and it was stupid then too. Money is just a representation of productivity, it works like this:

1. People produce things, hopefully of high quality, and in large quantities, efficiently(SUPPLY)
2. Same people are compensated fairly based on productivity with money, use that money to buy the things they produced, and/or things other people produced.(DEMAND)

When there are no jobs because cheap/foreign/slave labor is being used, then demand also dries up. High wages are a necessity for a sustainable economy, the loss of high wage jobs are the reason the US has a billion/day trade deficit, and a massive national debt that will never be repaid.

It is not the fault of highly skilled, well paid US workers, don't blame the victim. If these 3rd world countries were so great, they'd have their own electronics, and wouldn't bother to make ours, based on our designs. Your argument is "the reason we're so poor is because we're too rich", which makes no sense. Are you trying to say that if we all worked for a dollar a day and lived in mud huts, that our economic woes would go away? I don't believe turning America into a 3rd world country is the answer to our economic problems, sorry...
 

Kami3k

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[citation][nom]Mathos[/nom] If it took an entire work or more for 1 person to make a part,[/citation]

Know how to type before doing so.
 
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Scope of design stolen from Cupertino CA USA
Processor Architecture licensed by Britts and cooked in Fabs in Dresden....
and Austin, where the flash RAM logic is fabbed, by South Koreans....all in upper management...and illegal Mexicans on the the warehouse floor.

But at least the guy that works for google....in Cupertino... and for Samsung in Austin....who are the inspiration for android 'engineering' ... He is an American....probably from India and works for Apple.
 
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