So Santa’s elfs are actually asian children?
Always has been.
Nah. We only shifted from domestic manufacturing in the late 70s/early 80s. The last fifty years have been a rapid shift to Chinese production due to the low price resulting from the posted picture.
Just ask a Gen-Xer about the super safe American made die-cast steel toys they used to hit their siblings with.
https://rekennect.com/blogs/toys-made-in-usa/history-manufacturing/
I feel this in a scar in my head. US made cap grenade. Like cap guns, but a grenade. There is a dent. In my head.
I had one of those! Heavy as hell with a half sphere on the bottom where the caps would go, right?
As a now parent… How the hell was that ok to give to kids??
Here’s a metal baseball. Throw it towards your friends.
Oh wow you just unlocked a previously lost memory!
I mean yes, the corporations are enslaving children in Asia and polluting the globe, but you need to look on the brigth side: the profits of shareholders have never been higher.
We
Found Santa!
New and improved Sifu Santa! Now with Kung Fu grip!
And China’s been eyeing up moving out of the manufacturing game, which will be a wrench in our plans.
Over way around, we’re eyeing up leaving China and production slowly is.
China cannot afford to not have a manufacturing industry. It would be political suicide for the party to move towards agrarian or a service economy.
…what. They’re everyone’s largest trading partner, why would they do that?
Well, it’s kind of a choice kind of material conditions. China’s become prosperous and educated. Their citizens are starting to demand imports and better jobs. It’s not going to give up the manufacturing game for many decades but it’s definitely ramping down whether it wants to or not. It’s not really a problem for western consumption, there are plenty of struggling countries with cheap/free labor to exploit around the world.
Nah, China had a civil war that spanned WW2, it was only after that that Asia became a manufacturing base for western companies.
Before then western countires did their own things in factories.
Think of all the toys that contain plastic, from lego (1949), to barbie (1959), to most electronics, they didn’t exist as we know them today prior to WW2.
Before then toys were mostly made of wood and metals like tin, and were made more locally and nationally. People had jobs in factories over here, rather than over there.
We need to go back. I was destined to die horiffically in a factory accident, not waste away at a desk.
To cut the story short: before ww2, it was local children.