Steve Denning: Why Amazon Can't Make A Kindle in the USA

[mannel9]

recent cocktail party conversation .... perhaps US residents don't consider manufacturing jobs as aspirations of lower and middle class here anymore ...what do you think?

[nlging]

Strange, last I checked Dell was still in business.

The last part of Denning's article series is exciting: inflation, automation, and safety/environmental concerns will destroy the low cost employee advantage.

[Carefree27b]

Some sloppy thinking here. He describes Dell's big mistake as outsourcing manufacturing to Asia and lauds Apple, yet Apple's products are made in China too. It is not at all clear that Dell would be more profitable today - or that their customers would be any more delighted if they had elected to manufacture PCs - at higher cost - in the US.

[abraxalito]

@Carefree27b actually not so sloppy - you did not listen closely enough to what he was saying. The outsourcing was going on hand-in-hand with losing expertise. Apple most certainly is subject to some of that (loss of manufacturing and buying expertise) but remember Apple has CPU designers in the USA which Dell does not - they just buy Intel or AMD. So Apple is still innovating within USA whereas Dell handed that over to Asian companies.