If all you’re going to offer is moving goal-posts, circular arguements and strange incomprehensible sentences then frankly I can’t be bothered anymore.
Only if we had a similar lashed up system to China. I know, I know…you think China is a utopia where the grass is always greener, and the US is degenerating into a 3rd world hell hole where we shovel the starving into mass graves, but the reality is a bit different.
To make the point that others have made, the US DOES have bad harvests…just about every year some crop or other has issues. We don’t starve because of it. So…why is that, do you suppose?
BnS and your own understanding of the situation seems to run counter to that of most of the acknowledged experts of the subject…the ones who publish in peer reviewed journals and all that. Granted, you guys could be geniuses who are about to set the entire foundations of modern economics on it’s head and revolutionize the field…but I doubt it. And until you do, you might not want to toss around words like ‘unrealistic fantasies’ and ‘disproven (sic) misconceptions’ about ‘the market and it’s relationship to human beings’, since, to be honest with you, that’s more of a characterization of your own position. Just sayin’…
No…they aren’t. You are wrong. China isn’t competing for US manufacturing jobs, since the only way we could compete with China on a price basis for those manufacturing sectors would be through heavy (and capital intensive) automation. We COULD make most of the stuff currently being made in China and imported to the US, but if we did they would cost more, and all those jobs wouldn’t be coming back to the US…instead, we’d be using robots to make them (which would be a boom for the robotics and maintenance guys, but wouldn’t be bringing home to blue collar bacon you seem to be wishing for).
What then? If you got your dream about bringin’ all the offshoring chickens home, and this didn’t translate into a ton of new blue collar manufacturing jobs (plus it entailed higher costs), what would you do at that point? Furturo-Luddism?
They wouldn’t work for us because they would do more harm than good from our perspective.
(Oh…and btw, we DO use tariffs and subsidies to ‘protect’ some of our industries. Talk to a Canadian about hardwoods some time, or talk to folks who import cheap American agricultural products and see what their take is on the subject)
What facts do you have to back up this incredible assertion? What type of jobs do you suppose we’d have if we moved the manufacturing outsourced to China back to the US?? How do we have a ‘stronger lower class’…what does that even mean, and what effect would this have? Hell…what’s your definition of ‘lower class’, and who makes up this group?
-XT
That is because they don’t have cars to begin with. I’ve heard in 1990, Chengdu, a city of maybe 12 million people. had around 600 private cars. If you suddenly made it so America didn’t have any cars and then everyone goes to buy them at once, American car sales would be booming, too. An all-at-once-scramble for basic consumer goods doesn’t give us a great picture of total economic health. What will be telling is if they continue to replace and upgrade these cars.
The Chinese working class most certainly cannot afford cars. I lived in China for two years, and I think I knew maybe five people with personal vehicles. All of these people were extremely well-employed…successful businessmen, high-ranked police officials, university presidents and the like. The middle class can only dream of one day owning a car, and factory workers can barely afford to ride the bus. My students, for example, like to visit their parents in their coastal factory towns during breaks. They could only afford to buy standing tickets for the train ride, meaning that for the entire 40+ hour train ride they would be packed in shoulder to shoulder, standing up.
This image you have of China as a magic land of absolute economic abundance is simply not true. It’s getting better and growing quickly, but it’s coming up from “eating bark and leaves because you are starving to death.” When one billion people are making the leap from “subsisting only on rice” to “able to add some veggie dishes to the rice” it is going to look like crazy growth. But remember- my Chinese students would get starry eyed about their fantasy of being able to serve a meat dish to their family every day.
Even the most unemployed American can walk into taco bell and order something off the $.59 value menu- this is a kind of abundance that many Chinese people only dream of.
From your own cite:
There is no primary source in your own cite suggesting Ford raised wages so his employees could afford Ford cars. I, on the other hand, provided a quote from Ford himself.
(And in any event it should be rather obvious that the Ford Motor Company couldn’t rely on its own employees buying the cars as a significant source of income.)
You’re now not only presenting old legends as fact, but defending them with cites that actually state the opposite of what you claimed.
Ford was a supporter of Nazis and eugenics so you’ll forgive me if I am skeptical of his moral supremacy.
Raise taxes and put more government funding into education.
The example of the flat screen TVs is instructive. Basically, the USA gave up trying to manufacture TV sets, about 15 years ago. The last domestic manufacturer was (ironically) the Dutch firm Philips-they made CRT TVs in Tennessee.
These guys tried everything-the TV assembly line was almost totally automated-yet they could not compete with sets made in China. The reason? Many of the TV sets made in China were made at government-owned factories, and a good number of them employed convict labor (zero wages).
Now, 99% of flatscreen TVs are made in either China, Korea …with (very few) in Japan. The reason is that all of the LCD screens are made by two Koren firms (Samsung and LG)-Philips MADE THEM BUT LOST MONEY ON EVERY ONE PRODUCED. So, there is no way that you could ever make tv sets in the USA again.
I belive that wea re at a tipping point-we have to decide: “do we want to become an economic colony of China”? Because China is going to use all those dollars we send them-to buy up even more US industrial plant…and ship it to China.
The day will come when we drive Chinese-made cars, eat Chinese-grown (poisonous) foods, and sit on Chinese-made furniture, while in our Chinese-made houses. And when you die from tained Chinese-made drugs or foods, who will your relatives sue?
And… that is how everyone else has felt about the US during it’s period of economic dominance so don’t expect the rest of the world to have any sympathy. This is not some new phenomina either, the whole of recorded history has been a series of economic cycles of alternating power between the west and east. One side gets rich, decadent and complacent and the other side out-competes it and takes over.
But this is not inevitable. America can still retain properity for itself, though it’s almost certain that it’s previous dominance is at an end. But protectionist policies won’t save you, at best they will provide a temporary illusion of strength before an inevitable and greater collapse.
Education sounds good but when you finish there is no job to pay for it. You have an educational mortgage.
The jobs are going to China and India for much smaller wages and no regulation.
When Chinese wages go up, they have union activity and work stoppages now, the corps will move again. Corporations have no nationality and no loyalty. The next third world country will suddenly have huge assembly lines erected there.
Next time don’t take basket weaving or social studies…
-XT
Ah yes, falsely accusing me of moving goal posts is your way of saying you can’t deal with the fact that your arguments have no basis in truth and are constantly contradicted by history.
So now you’re denying what was actually SAID in the article?
Are you claiming that this a lie?
“Henry Ford had reasoned that since it was now possible to build inexpensive cars in volume, more of them could be sold if employees could afford to buy them.”
Stand up and say that this is a lie. Also go look into his memoirs, “My Life and Work” and tell me it’s a myth.
China is worse than that. Yet you support free trade with them.
Good deal. Now we’ll have biotech research graduates who can’t find a job because their jobs are going to India. What now?
That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose. Equally valid is that your own arguments aren’t fact based, and instead are based on emotion and economic ignorance posing as intuitive wisdom and backed up, from what I can see, by ‘cites’ that are mainly opinion pieces, and given all that, you simply shift around the goal posts in order to shore up your own arguments.
Could go either way really…guess it depends on your perspective. Personally, I’d say Baboonanza has the cooler name, so…
-XT
Well, as a matter of fact, we are degenerating. Have you looked at the economy as of late? And all the jobless recoveries we’ve had? Can you give any evidence that things are improving past that? Hello, have you heard about what might happen to the US dollar soon?
Define “bad harvest”. When was the last time we had a crop shortage of the likes of Russia’s wheat harvests (like the recent one that got hampered by the 2010 summer fires in Russia)? From what I understand we have maintained surpluses here. It used to be several days’ worth of surpluses back in the previous decades.
And like I said, what would happen to us if foreign countries embargo us or worse… if our currency collapses and the cost of imports (including food) goes through the roof?
You keep hiding behind these peer reviewed journals a lot here. These journals failed to predict this current economic collapse.
You can keep on genuflecting to these “peer reviewed journals” and keep on failing. And while you’re at it, look up “Appeal to authority”.
I’ll continue to point out your unrealistic fantasies and misconceptions about the market and its relationship to human beings because the march of history itself has continued to disagree with you.
You go ahead and continue to take the path of failure and degeneration. More power to you!
You’re wrong again. We could compete with them on price. No, really, we could. Or we can raise tariffs. It has been done. It’s being done by China right now. You’re wrong. China is competing for US manufacturing jobs and they’re getting them.
Someone would have to manufacture the robots. That’s a lot of robots. And if you want to wish that robots would be making robots then you’re asking for much bigger problems than economic issues.
FINALLY, someone finally used the right word around here. This is the first CLOSE TO ACCURATE argument that you free market apologists have made.
If robots do exactly what you fantasize about them doing, then guess what? We’re looking at a technological singularity. Especially when nano-manufacturing matures. At that point societal and economic collapse are absolutely impossible to avoid. One boss and one maintenance guy would be all that you need to run the factory and no one else would be able to afford their stuff.
Unemployment right now is a global problem. You bring your fantasies of increased automation into the picture and that number will only increase. Even the UN is warning that unemployment at the level we’re at now will cause global unrest.
Luddism? If automation hits its stride you’d better be worried about societal collapse.
The same jobs we lost. Duh.
Look up “trickle-up economics”.
I’m a business owner myself, for real. When the working class has more money they have more stuff that they want to buy and that includes houses and cars; they then come to me to insure it against losses and liabilities. That’s a LOT of policies for me. In this recession I’ve lost a LOT of policies because people have lost homes, gone homeless and had their cars repossessed.
The investor class is the highest class. The corporate heads are the next group. The business owners below that and the workers below them. The lowest class of all is the unemployed/homeless.
What you can see? You need to check your glasses. Your side has rarely cited anything at all, and most of my cites are not opinion pieces. Show one instance where I’ve moved any goalposts. Your argument is based on sheer delusion and wishful thinking.
Yet another misguided argument.
Biotech college grads are now losing jobs to biotech researchers overseas. I guess in your world biotech and basket weaving are all the same? Or maybe you’ll try to claim my cite is “an opinion piece”? :rolleyes:
What? This is a total non sequitor. The Chinese starve when their crops fail because they don’t have money to buy food, not because people won’t sell to them. We don’t starve because we are rich and can afford to buy the food. The idea that poor farmers in China are somehow better off than anyone in America is just absurd.
No, they can not even come close to affording cars. The cheapest new car in China is about $5,000. A factory worker is going to earn in the range of $200-300 a month in wages. That means they need to work a full year and a half without spending a dime on anything else before they can afford a car.
That word does not mean what you think it does.
And what do you think Americans here who have no money do? Conjure food out of nowhere?
And before you mention food banks take a look at this.
I didn’t say they were better off than anyone in America. I said that the poor here who are unemployed are worse off because they can’t make their own food like a Chinese farmer can. Where are they going to buy food when they have no money?
Where will they go when the soup kitchens are overwhelmed?
This is going to only get worse as the American homeless population increases and unemployment benefits get cut, along with food stamp benefits.
Do I need to remind you of the traffic jams in China? China’s roads are clogged with cars.
Again, your theories fly in the face of absolutely astoundingly overwhelming reality.
China’s roads are clogged with Chinese. Shenzhen and Shaghai are in the top ten in the world in terms of population denisity. Beijing is 12. (Number 1 US city - LA at number 90!) Imagine LA traffic jams but you don’t have 2700 people per square mile you have 17,000. Even if a much smaller number of people own cars, the roads are going to be clogged. And since car ownership is new to the newly “affluent” Chinese, the road infrastructure isn’t there in a lot of places to support it. Fewer six lane highways than LA.
My point was that at 10 million cars per year, China’s got more cars being sold than in the United States.
To say that “No, they can not even come close to affording cars” when you’re selling more cars per year in China than in the United States is just 100% bad argument style no matter how big China is.
I’m pretty sure it means when a statement doesn’t follow from the previous ones. Your embargo comment certainly qualifies, as it makes no sense in the context of the conversation.
Food banks, food stamps, church charity, dumpster diving, and probably a half a dozen other legitimate options.
What exactly am I missing here? Dozens of disparate organizations combining to successfully tackle a problem.
If the poor in America are worse off than the farmers in China, then the Chinese farmers must be better off simply by the definition of the words “better off” and “worse off”.
When they have no money to buy food they will get food from food banks or from food stamps. These organizations might struggle to fully meet demand, but there’s not going to be a situation where people are starving to death.
Can you provide a cite where someone either died or was hospitalized for starvation because they couldn’t find a food bank or soup kitchen?
There are ~70 million cars in China cite compared with about 250 million in the USA. In terms of per person, that is 1 car for every 18.5 people in China and 1 car for every 1.2 people in the USA. The idea that factory workers can afford cars in China is just ridiculous and flies in the face of all facts. They simply don’t make the wages to afford them.
Oh, and the reason they have traffic jams is that their infrastructure is awful compared to ours.
I certainly am denying that Henry Ford raised wages so his employees could afford them, yes. I have provided a quote from Henry Ford himself saying exactly that. You have provided an article from Ford’s website that says Ford realized his workers could afford the cars now that they made more money - which is not at all the same as raising wages SO they could afford the cars.
No, I don’t. I am on record, multiple times, as stating that a free trade deal with China is clearly not in the cards right now. And as there ISN’T a free trade deal with China, I’d think you would be happy with the current situation.
We’ll have to do other things, as has always been the case. We found new jobs for switchboard operators. We found new jobs for chimney sweeps, whaling vessel operators, and typing pool workers. Economies change.
If you really think that what’s going to happen is that eventually 300,000,000 Americans are just going to sit around on their asses saying “Gosh, I can’t find any work,” you’re so far behind on the required reading here that I’m not sure where to start. We can only spend so much time knocking down absurdities, like your apparent belief that Chinese people are as rich as Americans, or that there is mass starvation in the United States.