Dr.Love
October 24, 2009, 6:19pm
29
ralph124c:
Yes, the Chinese CERTAINLY can build a blue-water navy/carrier force if they want to; but why would they want to? They own us, and they have no interest in killing the golden goose. Also, they see Russia in decline-they see Siberia as falling into their lap. As the Chinese extend their influecne over Africa, they see no confrontation with the West-why would they? We are not doing much in Africa (we prefer to waste our strength in pointless wars in the ME).China’s future-they do much better by driving America out of manufacturing (which they have done a great job of). I fuly expect the USA to cease manufacturing cars-they will be made in China.
In addition to mswas ’s points, this is about the most popular myth that you couldn’t possibly be more wrong about. If it is China’s goal to drive out US manufacturing, they’re doing an abysmal job. As a matter of fact, the US today manufactures roughly twice as much as it did when Nixon first visited China. See below, the post I made in August for the cites and interpretation.
Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization in the US, compiled by the Federal Reserve. Look, especially, at Chart 1 , which shows the manufacturing output out the United States over the past 40 years. If you look at the chart*, even after accounting for the damage done by the current recession, we’re still manufacturing roughly twice as much as was manufactured in 1970. The population in 1970 was about 200 million, which means the US is now manufacturing roughly 33% more per US citizen than it did it 1970.
The graphs are constructed from source data measuring physical output of each industry, then combined in a weighted average. The weights are “derived from their proportion in the total value-added output of all industries” (from the explanatory notes ). Notice that neither the physical output, nor the weights are affected by inflation, and thus the graph itself automatically corrects for inflation.
What is true is that manufacturing employment is dropping. Part of this is probabily because other countries are increasing their manufacturing employment, but it is also because the manufacturing workers that remain are becoming increasingly more productive. Basically, we don’t need as many manufacturing workers because the ones we have are so damn good at what they do.
*The Federal Reserve should update the report to include data from July in about five days, so what I say will be a bit out of date soon…