The era of cheap s--t is over

Our kids' piano teacher lets our kids choose a little prize after their lessons, if they've tried hard and been attentive. The other day, my wife said, after tripping over one of these dollar toys for the millionth time, "I may have to tell her to start bringing candy, instead of these little toys. I can't keep up with all the crap."

Help is on the way. Last Thursday, on NPR's All Things Considered, reporter Louisa Lim tells us that many Chinese factories who supplied the world with cheap trinkets are going out of business, victims of rising commodity prices and slack demand from the West. Chinese government action may also be a cause, according to the ATC story:

Harley Seyedin, the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, says this slowdown was the result of deliberate action by the government.

"The majority of this happened because of changes in regulations last year deliberately decided by the Chinese government in order to slow down the economy and to move away from reprocessing [and those] labor intensive, environmentally unfriendly and energy-intensive kind of companies," Seyedin says. "And certainly some companies have suffered as a result of that. Those types of companies needed to go anyway."

Hallelujah. One of the byproducts of the economic slowdown will be a ratcheting down in our acquisitiveness, and a reduction in the easy credit that's allowed us to buy more crap, cheap or otherwise. To me, there's good news in that.

Tags:
economics, manufacturing, recession, credit crisis

Favorite non-business business blogs

Can blogs that aren't about business shed light on problems we businesspeople face every day? James March, the professor who taught us about foolishness, might say yes. Here are my favorites:

1. Hobby Princess - all about handicrafts, yet sprinkling in lessons for those of us in business. Check out this post about how small can be better than big. Or this one about the conflicts between copyrights and open source.
   
   
2. Greg Mankiw's Blog - economics brought to ground level by a Harvard professor. Ostensibly a tool for his introductory econ students, the blog takes on questions of government policies and looks at them with an economist's eye. Want to learn what Pigovian taxes are? Check here.
   
   
3. David Report blog - on design of architecture, furniture, clothing. Beautiful pictures and some thought-provoking commentary about how design can improve or degrade our lives.
   
   
4. Bill Walsh's Blogslot - the author, a copy editor for the Washington Post, regularly points out poor grammar and word choice in the nation's newspapers. The lessons for anyone who writes (i.e., all of us) are invaluable. Here's a simple take on an emerging problem in blog grammar.
   

design, crafts, economics, writing, blogs