Talk about being disconnected from your membership

The price differential, of course, was due to the value-added tax and the higher costs of doing business in European welfare states.

I wonder what the “cost-per-pair-of-jeans” would be if you factored in your out-of-pocket health care costs that you have to pay, because we don’t have them covered in our “non-welfare state.”

Hmmm: cheap jeans vs. health care??? Which to choose???

As someone noted to me offline, who even pays $15-30 for jeans anymore? I have to pay at bare minimum,$45. Guess on addition to having au pairs raise his kids, he has someone buy his clothes for him too.

Yeah, I think I’ve found a few pairs of Levis at $35/$40 on sale if I’m lucky.

$15 to $30 jeans seem as if they would most likely fall apart after a very few washings.

And I wonder how much cheaper the jeans would be if the companies didn’t have to pay health insurance costs because we had a single payer type system rather than an employer provided style system?

hear, hear!

It should also be noted that when Levis gave up trying to keep any manufacturing in the US, among the reasons cited by them was, of course, labor costs. . . which includes health benefits for current and former employees. With national health, we could probably get cheaper jeans, made domestically, that would be affordable to more people who no longer have balance a pair of Levis against a doctor’s visit or a prescription co-pay.

Actually, $15-30 jeans are fairly sturdy. They may not have the “brand name”, but they are usually made by the same companies that make the more expensive lines.

On-topic, this is definitely another article that goes for “look how in touch I am with the common man” and then proceeds to miss by a country mile.

On-topic, this is definitely another article that goes for “look how in touch I am with the common man” and then proceeds to miss by a country mile.

How so?

Those cheap jeans sure are durable when you gather around the 55 gallon drum burning lumber scraps to keep warm.

You can find Levis “Signature” jeans for around $20 here. Of course, you have to be willing to shop at the demon Walmart but being poor I’ve long been resigned to that.

Anyway, I nominate George Will for an honorary Jean Genie award.

Slow down. Slow down. Your talking too fast for me. I’m thinking. I’m thinking. Well okay now. Okay. I think I got it now.

Lemme see now: 45 for the pants or 9500 for sucky private insurance with high copays and 65% coverage of my actual costs. Lemme see now. I’m thinking. I’m thinking. Okay. I’m done thinking now.

Lemme have those pants.

The price differential was “due to the value-added tax and the higher costs of doing business in European welfare states.” Um, really? The writer admits that the au pairs were talking about the very same brands of blue jeans. They were buying the same brands of blue jeans that they’d buy in their home countries and they were more expensive at home than they were at Mall of the Americas. That is the way it has always been – that US blue jeans (no matter where they are manufactured) cost more after they’ve been imported to Europe than they do here. I recall stories from my friends in college being able to sell their Levi’s when they were in Europe right out of their suitcases for major dollars. It was NOT ‘due to the…higher costs of doing business in European welfare states.” It was import. period.

Not even the slightesst self-awareness of his own exploitation of the “Eastern bloc” labor pool by having successive nannies imported to mind his children. What’s wrong with hiring American, oh mighty oligarch? Surely you weren’t that interested in your spawn learning Latvian, were you?

Or did these au pairs simply come more cheaply than real American babysitters?

And don’t you know you’re supposed to space out your children’s births so that the older ones can mind the younger, a la Palin?

The other thing to keep in mind here is that the dollar is cheap compared to the euro. Also European countries have retained more small boutique retailers that often carry higher quality goods. These are located in the downtowns and within walking or mass transit distance of consumers. Here in this country, those $15-$30 jeans would be more expensive if you had to calculate in all the roads that had to be built to get the mall and the wear and tear on vehicles driving the extra distance to them.

Good grief, I’ve never paid more than $30 for a pair of jeans for myself. I have spent that much for my sons’ jeans but only occasionally. This is their favorite brand.

Wal-Mart launches probe into labor abuse allegations
Source: China Daily

By Chen Hong
United States retailing giant Wal-Mart yesterday launched its own investigation into the findings of a New-York based human rights group, which levied serious labor abuse allegations against the company after inspecting five of its supplier factories in China.

“We take such reports very seriously,” a statement from Wal-Mart said.

“We will take prompt remedial action if our investigations confirm any of the alleged findings.”

A China Labor Watch (CLW) report, which was made public on Wednesday, alleged that employees in a number of Chinese supplier factories of the US retailer have been forced to work up to 77 hours a week in “poor working conditions”.

As the world’s largest retailer, “Wal-Mart leverages its massive product orders to purchase goods at low prices, and the workers have to bear the financial burden”, CLW said in a statement.

Read more: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2009-11/27/conten...

Are these people really this stupid???? Must have inherited their wealth and position. Are they all made from the George W. Bush mold?

If you have to ask…

Since you did, my stab at an elaboration is the common person will have the cost of jeans far closer to the front of their mind than what would happen to them if they:

Exceeded their insurance’s maximim allowable reimbursements for a condition;
were denied coverage for an obscure pre-existing condition; exceeded their insurance’s maximum cost coverage for a period; were the subject of a recission for any reason; had to, themselves, pay for insurance whose cost was raising 10% or so a year; or, as in my case, had to begin paying a percentage of the insurance costs that their employer provides because the carrier has been raising costs about 10% per year (with no challenge from the state insurance rate board).

How not so?

And what about how fucked up his kids are from having six different mommie stand ins in a row.

So it’s elitist to use the Chamber of Commerce to point out the idiocy of how they quote someone who went with his au pairs to buy jeans but it’s also elitist to tie the cost of those jeans to health care?

Is that what I’m reading?

When their time with us came to an end, each au pair

Note not Baby Sitter or Day Care Lady, Au Pair or Foreign Expensive baby sitter who you get through a service that handles her immigration status and does back ground checks on the people they hire.
Way to connect with the little people with Personal Stories.

hello you obviously dim witted one! you are using MATH and MONEY …

bad bad bad. go back to watching Dancing with the Surviving Idols …

/snark tag, for the incredibly dense.

Any studies of how kids suffer when raised by strangers even if they are Au Pairs?

Yes

The McCurnin International Babysitter Research Council says that these kids are f’ed up.

The Chamber appears to ignore the fact that under the depredations of its corporate members, some portion of US domestic blue jeans manufacture is now undertaken by prison labor in California, Oregon, Washington and Texas, under corporate outsourcing arrangements. In fact, Prison Blues and Gangsta Blues (Oregon and California, respectively) claim to be the only two brands of American blue jeans that are 100% domestic source. Presumably, forced labor gets healthcare irrespective… at least one hopes.

The price differential, of course, was due to the value-added tax and the higher costs of doing business in European welfare states.

Er, no. That price differential is due to the different brand perception of “Levi’s”.
Due to the image of being the “original” jeans Levi’s has a higher image, and can therefore ask higher retail prices.

Other brand-name jeans have little price differential, and European no-name jeans are just as cheap as US no-name jeans.

Jeez this guy is clever. If we had been talking about the trade bill he would have harped on the “au pair” story to bitch about europes protectionism. this au pair story gets a lot of mileage im sure. the man loves shopping for jeans with his “au pair”.

I bought a great pair of Celio jeans in Paris for 30 euros (when the Euro cost $1.15 instead of $1.50, thanks a lot former president and your failure of an administration). That included a 17% VAT. On the other hand, when I hurt myself and had to go to the hospital to get a cut over my eye glued back together, I paid exactly nothing.

Of course, people from the Chamber don’t go to Europe: their minds might be polluted.

Are they this stupid? Maybe. But what’s most insulting is they think we are stoopid enough to believe them.

Yep, Levis are expensive in Foreign because they are priced to be expensive in Foreign. Classic “premium” brand arbitrage, backed up by great advertising, all concepts apparently beyond the business sensibility of the Chamber of Morons.

K-Mart. Or Target. They’re reasonably good quality. (‘Chic’ jeans are made by Wrangler, FWIW.) Levi’s are expensive, and have been for decades.

There are still blue jeans made in the U.S., we have 6 pair of Pointer Jeans that are 2 yrs old, the denim doesn’t tear in places it shouldn’t,the blue has barely faded, and if you buy 2 pair,they can be bought for under $30.00

My favorite jeans are made by the Diamond Gusset company:

100% Made in the USA for 21 Years

The origins of Diamond Gusset Jeans:

* Denim from American Cotton Growers™ (all over Southeast USA)
* Buttons and burrs from Kentucky and Tennessee
* Thread from Nashville
* Hang Tags and Labels from Tennessee
* Pocketing from Mississippi
* Leatherette Patch from Atlanta
* Sewn together in the Georgia mountains
* Stonewashed in Georgia

The Hall cousins are the original inventors and owners of Diamond Gusset Jeans. Lifelong southerners, the Halls live in Tennessee, near Nashville where they operate Diamond Gusset. The hang tag on classic Diamond Gusset Jeans features a picture of the founders’ ancestors.

These are excellent jeans for bicycle or motorcycle riding, as they don’t have a nasty big seam right where you sit. Comfy enough that you can get away without a biker chamois for short rides.