Death Inc

lololol so true  hitler

Buy Australian = buy yourself a job.

true that, most people don't understand it though.

Tell me where you can get a high paying job in Manufacturing? A service based economy is considered more mature than a manufacturing based economy, and by service base I mean you will find your job delivering services rather than goods, like a trade, financial or IT services, the list goes on.  It is true we need a mix, but you will find the majority of our jobs should be in the Services sector

Have to agree with mone on this one. Economies should focus on doing what they can do best and most efficiently. Every one in the media goes on about the loss of manufacturing to (for example) china, but it is a load of BS. Manufacturing in Australia has mostly been uneconomical and propped up by the government for a long time now, and why? To keep a small percentage of the work force in a shrinking sector employed when they could be better employed elsewhere.
Manufacturing isnt this great thing that it is often portrayed to be. It is the intellectual owners of the property who make the most money, whilst putting up with the least of the externalities associated with manufacturing. An example would be the Iphone 4.  It costs US$180 to manufacture. The parts that go into it are built all over the world, by a variety of different companies.  It retails for (un subsidised) roughly $600. So Apple are taking nearly $400 per unit (out of which the cost of designing, building the software, then marketing and support must come). Even if all those factors were added, Apple would be turning a profit of roughly $200 per unit shipped.

But the actual manufacturing of the phone took place in China. The parts that went into it came from various places (I think the screen is from Korea, as is the CPU, the gyroscope from Europe etc). but the main manufacturing of it was in china. Now for this honour, the average profit per unit made in china is $2 each!

Call me strange, but I would rather be at the non-manufacturing end of this equation. This country doesn’t need more manufacturing jobs. It needs more people to invest and take risks and innovate. Leave the manufacturing to wherever it can be done cheapest.

But Cowcar, then the government would have to spend more money educating people so we have engineers capable of designing equipment worth manufacturing overseas. Education funding obviously isn't what taxpayers want.

That's an interesting point Cow, I hadn't really considered that before. It ties in with what I have seen within my industry, and industry in the general. The people that make the good money are as Mone says, in the service industry, people who sell knowledge.
I worked briefly in a design agency, and I did a design for an a3 stut card for a shopping centre with a clock on it, you know the ones, 'santa will be back at (clock with rotating hands)'. Nothing fancy took me about 10 minutes. The design agency charged the design out at $180 and the printer charged me $15 to make it.

Once I have seen it the other way. There is a specialist screen printer in sydney who manufactures the most expensive wallpaper in the world, that is his claim to fame, Harrods stocks this guys wallpaper ffs. His approach to business was to find a niche market where low price wasn't a deciding factor. This guys machinery was probably as old as screen printing, all manually done with wooden frames and pegs and screens maybe 1000x750mm. Top end screen printing machinery has screens at 1300x2400mm, is automated end to end, covered in camera's, uv lamps, conveyer belts, and can print a full sheet (1200x2400) in one run in about 1 minute, amazing to watch, worth a million plus. The guys running the 7 figure machines are running high volume low margin with massive overheads. The wallpaper guy was low volume high margin and low overheads.

^ just industry stupidity. Where more $$$ must equal better quality!

I agree with the cow on this one too. Moooooooooooooo.
It was pretty much what i was going to say just on a much much more intellectual level... for once.

re iPhone, Hungrybeast on ABC last night said that if the iPhone (could've been iPad) was made in the USA, it would retail at US$15k :D