Our new Chinese overlords, reptilians and new world order

[Scatcat]

5 hours ago, Marty Backe said:

Well said in all respects. I'm trying to refrain from diving more into the conversion because these topics have a tendency to devolve quickly 

Yes, everybody loves their own home, which makes it a very touchy subject to discuss. Also some of us lean right, others left, some neither. It is very easy to set off a sh*t-storm, unless you're very clear you're not trying to denigrate anyone.

[Dingfelder]

On 5/29/2017 at 1:35 PM, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

. For us it will be different than Japan because there is more technology available. YOu have seen the articles about automation in all areas with robots. We will use that to supply more productivity and cover labor shortages. If they become true. Or maybe nothing will happen. Who knows. If you assume people are having less children then labor shortage will be a reality.

We have a great deal mitigating against a labor shortage in the U.S..

First and foremost, there is already a surfeit and has been for a long time.  The U.S. keeps a high unemployment rate on purpose in comparison to numerous other first-world countries.  Indeed Alan Greenspan once summed up effectively the whole of his duties as Chairman of the Federal reserve as keeping unemployment rates up to at least 5%.  Though the press gives it much less coverage than it deserves, we already have many millions of unemployed and underemployed workers and have kept it so for generations.  With the age of social security/retirement climbing ever upwards, part of our natural reduction in the working populace as people age out of employment will diminish less and less quickly.  But still, unemployment and underemployment is a huge problem in America, well set to continue, and regardless of what antiquated economic metrics like GDP show.

Also, ever-increasing automation and use of artificial intelligence is going to continue to put people out of work.  It makes sense from the point of view of making profits and sometimes from the point of view of increasing utility to the average consumer -- say in the case of AI making information quickly and cheaply available that would have only come at a great expense of time and money previously and that might not be locally accessible.  A prime example there is in the field of law, which I've seen estimated to require far less professionals in the future as so much of law can be put on, researched and written on computers.  However, that utility comes at the cost of many more job losses to come.  Whether that "frees up" workers or just shows them the path to the unemployment office, time will tell, but it doesn't look good for them so far ...

Finally, the U.S. is right up against the third world in Mexico and the huge flood of South and Central Americans, as well as Mexicans themselves, traveling through it to get to America.  There is little chance that the U.S. will not have a more attractive economy and less violence and better security than the countries that those economic migrants are fleeing from.

Even religion plays a part, as people from the south of America's borders are overwhelmingly Catholic, and tend to have more children than do people in first-world nations.  So not only can America open its doors any time it likes to as many immigrants as it likes, but doing so will bring in a population likely to sustain itself for generations to come.

Even the supposed short supply of highly-skilled technical professionals is great exaggerated, as native workers are often available but simply displaced for cheaper workers from abroad.  The shortage is never labor ... it is labor at the the lowest prices, with the fewest benefits and protections, possible.  That goes from the people picking tomatoes in Florida to software engineers at Microsoft.

 

8 hours ago, Scatcat said:

Yes, everybody loves their own home, which makes it a very touchy subject to discuss. Also some of us lean right, others left, some neither. It is very easy to set off a sh*t-storm, unless you're very clear you're not trying to denigrate anyone.

Usually even that doesn't help.  

[Dingfelder]

On 4/13/2017 at 0:03 PM, esaj said:

I probably should cut this conversation to the off-topic, but anyway...

"Don't shoot the messenger"   Well, I don't think it's going to happen fast, but you must admit that the Asian economies are (at least slightly) booming when the western countries are falling behind all the time. In the end, like @Carlos E Rodriguez above showed in numbers (btw, there's one too many zeroes in the China population -number ), population wise they are a very large portion of the entire planet, so I doubt whether the country's authoritarian or totalitarian won't matter as much as just cold numbers.

I've stumbled upon the "signs" (call it a conspiracy theory, if you will ) since maybe around 2012: the Chinese hold a very large amount of the US (and probably other countries) debt, they're already number #1 in the economy size in terms of "purchasing power parity" GDP ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) ) , and will probably hold first place in the nominal GDP by 2030 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) ) . They're buying up mining and other companies (resources) around the world and have been buying up large amounts of gold (there's been more than a few rumors of gold-backed yuan, but that's just speculation, although it would devastate other fiat-currencies) for several years, but their national bank inventory shows smaller amounts than enters the country, so maybe it's just private companies and people buying? India imports a lot of gold too, but arguably that's just due to traditions (gold being given as gift in weddings and such), and the government has placed some bans and high tariffs for gold import. India was forecasted to rise to 2nd place in GDP by 2050 or so?

But, in the end, who knows? Certainly they've made pretty clear that they want the international trade currency-status (actually, the Yuan has been added to the IMF Special Drawing Rights -currencies, eg. technical reserve currencies lately, Oct 1st 2016?), but that won't happen fast... More like a few decades?

I don't think it's about power and wealth so much as financial transparency.  China is worlds away from anything of the sort.

If people around the world have no idea whether you're cooking the books, how, and to what extent, and whether there is a reliable justice and regulatory system in place to address problems from banking to securities trading to simple accounting standards, an economy is too opaque to put trust in.

The U.S., for all its problems, is a comparatively heavily documented and regulated society.  There is an expectation that auditors can come in and check the books and make sense of them.  Someone filing a lawsuit or asking too many questions isn't likely to be imprisoned, disappeared, or otherwise threatened or destroyed.  You need that for a currency to become a safe haven.   For all its present day power and immense future potential, China has no leadership on this level.  It's a fruitful chaos.  At least we hope it is.  But who really knows?  There isn't even a way to find out if you wanted to.

 

 

[steve454]

1 hour ago, Dingfelder said:

the U.S. is right up against the third world in Mexico and the huge flood of South and Central Americans, as well as Mexicans themselves, traveling through it to get to America.

We will never have a labor shortage.

[Philip W]

I lived my first half-life in China, and the second half-life in the US. I am a citizen of the U.S. and proud to be one. So I guess I have some saying in it.

In my adolescent life the classroom taught me Marxism and Communism. I learned them because they were required curriculum. All students had to learn it. There was no way around. There were many issues I had with the things they taught, but I strongly agree on one thing Carl Marx pointed out:

Science is the first productivity.

In any historic society, the knowledge of science pushed their productivity, making them better than other places. In all the wars won or lost, you can find out that besides the strategy of the leader, the army's technology level and the society's productivity level decided who won and who lost. Science, or technology is the major boost to the productivity. America had the best productivity in the world after WWII. Their advantage in the science is the reason they could dominate the world for so long.

But now there are no more advantage. American used to admire scientists and astronauts, but after 80s they don't. Few kids in the school want to become scientists. If they do, they will be labelled "nerds". The government concerned less and less about education. Presidential candidates publicly announced that "teacher's union" are bad guys. They have zero respect to scientists, claiming the global warming is a conspiracy, and EPA is hurting the economy. It was not just this year, but has been happening for many years. Now our education system cannot produce enough qualified engineers and scientists to make real progresses, even with the H-1B program.

At the same time, Chinese government, yup they are totalitarian no doubt, focus on getting the technologies from all around the world. Either they do it for selfish reason, for domination or others, the result is that China now accumulate a huge amount of technologies in their chest. In Shenzhen a new idea can be prototype in 1 month, and mass-produced in 3 months. Compared to the U.S., for a new idea to take shape, we have to apply for the patent, wait for it to approve, then begging around for venture capital, maybe post the contraction in some crowfunding sites like gofundme.com or Indiegogo.com, they will all take long time. They can never catch the speed of Shenzhen, the real silicon valley of the world.

Shenzhen now has the largest concentration of the electric component factories. Anything they could think of, they can design it then ask the component suppliers around the corner.  Hoverboard and electric unicycles are just 2 little examples.

Over decades of focusing on education, now China has abundant amount of engineers. They can design electrical components at a speed no one else can compete.

Also take a look at the technology of China high speed railway, ten years ago they have no such tech. Then the government gathered the best high-speed train companies in the world and told them to build high-speed railway and trains in China, but the condition was they need to partner with local train companies and taught them everything they knew. 10 years later now China was covered with more than 10,000 km of high-speed railway and mastered the technique from Germany, France and Japan. It was almost like the government forcefully stole the tech from those companies, and those company had no choice. That's what Chinese government will do in order to get the best tech for themselves. What did America government do today to acquire high level tech? H-1B? America didn't even protect their own tech. Most factories moved to China and other countries, and the tech was lost to them. It's very difficult to set up factories in America now. That's one of the reason that Apple won't move their factories back.

I am not here to bash America and praise China. No, I am more of a concerned citizen. I love America and the people. It's the steady decline and people not waking up from the new reality worries me. The government allowed Japanese and Korean electric appliance to beat the domestic ones and lost all the profit and taxes to them. Now they allowed China, the totalitarian country, to beat them again. Why didn't the government promote science and technologies to students, like any other developed countries? Why no one concerned that once a factory moved to China, not only the employment and tax dollar are lost, the technology of producing that merchandise is lost too?  Science and Technology is the first productivity. They should be protected like national treasures!

So yeah, it's a heavy topic. Welcome the Chinese overlord. I know how corrupted they are. Yet they still beat us. Kind of like Donald Trump is no good but he still beat Hillary Clinton.

 

[Mono]

I am all for science and education and have quite similar concerns. The "good" news is though that the US still out-GDPs any other big country in the world by quite some margin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

19 minutes ago, Philip W said:

I lived my first half-life in China, and the second half-life in the US. I am a citizen of the U.S. and proud to be one. So I guess I have some saying in it.

In my adolescent life the classroom taught me Marxism and Communism. I learned them because they were required curriculum. All students had to learn it. There was no way around. There were many issues I had with the things they taught, but I strongly agree on one thing Carl Marx pointed out:

Science is the first productivity.

In any historic society, the knowledge of science pushed their productivity, making them better than other places. In all the wars won or lost, you can find out that besides the strategy of the leader, the army's technology level and the society's productivity level decided who won and who lost. Science, or technology is the major boost to the productivity. America had the best productivity in the world after WWII. Their advantage in the science is the reason they could dominate the world for so long.

But now there are no more advantage. American used to admire scientists and astronauts, but after 80s they don't. Few kids in the school want to become scientists. If they do, they will be labelled "nerds". The government concerned less and less about education. Presidential candidates publicly announced that "teacher's union" are bad guys. They have zero respect to scientists, claiming the global warming is a conspiracy, and EPA is hurting the economy. It was not just this year, but has been happening for many years. Now our education system cannot produce enough qualified engineers and scientists to make real progresses, even with the H-1B program.

At the same time, Chinese government, yup they are totalitarian no doubt, focus on getting the technologies from all around the world. Either they do it for selfish reason, for domination or others, the result is that China now accumulate a huge amount of technologies in their chest. In Shenzhen a new idea can be prototype in 1 month, and mass-produced in 3 months. Compared to the U.S., for a new idea to take shape, we have to apply for the patent, wait for it to approve, then begging around for venture capital, maybe post the contraction in some crowfunding sites like gofundme.com or Indiegogo.com, they will all take long time. They can never catch the speed of Shenzhen, the real silicon valley of the world.

Shenzhen now has the largest concentration of the electric component factories. Anything they could think of, they can design it then ask the component suppliers around the corner.  Hoverboard and electric unicycles are just 2 little examples.

Over decades of focusing on education, now China has abundant amount of engineers. They can design electrical components at a speed no one else can compete.

Also take a look at the technology of China high speed railway, ten years ago they have no such tech. Then the government gathered the best high-speed train companies in the world and told them to build high-speed railway and trains in China, but the condition was they need to partner with local train companies and taught them everything they knew. 10 years later now China was covered with more than 10,000 km of high-speed railway and mastered the technique from Germany, France and Japan. It was almost like the government forcefully stole the tech from those companies, and those company had no choice. That's what Chinese government will do in order to get the best tech for themselves. What did America government do today to acquire high level tech? H-1B? America didn't even protect their own tech. Most factories moved to China and other countries, and the tech was lost to them. It's very difficult to set up factories in America now. That's one of the reason that Apple won't move their factories back.

I am not here to bash America and praise China. No, I am more of a concerned citizen. I love America and the people. It's the steady decline and people not waking up from the new reality worries me. The government allowed Japanese and Korean electric appliance to beat the domestic ones and lost all the profit and taxes to them. Now they allowed China, the totalitarian country, to beat them again. Why didn't the government promote science and technologies to students, like any other developed countries? Why no one concerned that once a factory moved to China, not only the employment and tax dollar are lost, the technology of producing that merchandise is lost too?  Science and Technology is the first productivity. They should be protected like national treasures!

So yeah, it's a heavy topic. Welcome the Chinese overlord. I know how corrupted they are. Yet they still beat us. Kind of like Donald Trump is no good but he still beat Hillary Clinton.

 

@Philip W.  I feel the same way. But no one is listening. Mayube it will never happend, but I think it is possible.

[steve454]

23 minutes ago, Philip W said:

I lived my first half-life in China, and the second half-life in the US. I am a citizen of the U.S. and proud to be one. So I guess I have some saying in it.

In my adolescent life the classroom taught me Marxism and Communism. I learned them because they were required curriculum. All students had to learn it. There was no way around. There were many issues I had with the things they taught, but I strongly agree on one thing Carl Marx pointed out:

Science is the first productivity.

In any historic society, the knowledge of science pushed their productivity, making them better than other places. In all the wars won or lost, you can find out that besides the strategy of the leader, the army's technology level and the society's productivity level decided who won and who lost. Science, or technology is the major boost to the productivity. America had the best productivity in the world after WWII. Their advantage in the science is the reason they could dominate the world for so long.

But now there are no more advantage. American used to admire scientists and astronauts, but after 80s they don't. Few kids in the school want to become scientists. If they do, they will be labelled "nerds". The government concerned less and less about education. Presidential candidates publicly announced that "teacher's union" are bad guys. They have zero respect to scientists, claiming the global warming is a conspiracy, and EPA is hurting the economy. It was not just this year, but has been happening for many years. Now our education system cannot produce enough qualified engineers and scientists to make real progresses, even with the H-1B program.

At the same time, Chinese government, yup they are totalitarian no doubt, focus on getting the technologies from all around the world. Either they do it for selfish reason, for domination or others, the result is that China now accumulate a huge amount of technologies in their chest. In Shenzhen a new idea can be prototype in 1 month, and mass-produced in 3 months. Compared to the U.S., for a new idea to take shape, we have to apply for the patent, wait for it to approve, then begging around for venture capital, maybe post the contraction in some crowfunding sites like gofundme.com or Indiegogo.com, they will all take long time. They can never catch the speed of Shenzhen, the real silicon valley of the world.

Shenzhen now has the largest concentration of the electric component factories. Anything they could think of, they can design it then ask the component suppliers around the corner.  Hoverboard and electric unicycles are just 2 little examples.

Over decades of focusing on education, now China has abundant amount of engineers. They can design electrical components at a speed no one else can compete.

Also take a look at the technology of China high speed railway, ten years ago they have no such tech. Then the government gathered the best high-speed train companies in the world and told them to build high-speed railway and trains in China, but the condition was they need to partner with local train companies and taught them everything they knew. 10 years later now China was covered with more than 10,000 km of high-speed railway and mastered the technique from Germany, France and Japan. It was almost like the government forcefully stole the tech from those companies, and those company had no choice. That's what Chinese government will do in order to get the best tech for themselves. What did America government do today to acquire high level tech? H-1B? America didn't even protect their own tech. Most factories moved to China and other countries, and the tech was lost to them. It's very difficult to set up factories in America now. That's one of the reason that Apple won't move their factories back.

I am not here to bash America and praise China. No, I am more of a concerned citizen. I love America and the people. It's the steady decline and people not waking up from the new reality worries me. The government allowed Japanese and Korean electric appliance to beat the domestic ones and lost all the profit and taxes to them. Now they allowed China, the totalitarian country, to beat them again. Why didn't the government promote science and technologies to students, like any other developed countries? Why no one concerned that once a factory moved to China, not only the employment and tax dollar are lost, the technology of producing that merchandise is lost too?  Science and Technology is the first productivity. They should be protected like national treasures!

So yeah, it's a heavy topic. Welcome the Chinese overlord. I know how corrupted they are. Yet they still beat us. Kind of like Donald Trump is no good but he still beat Hillary Clinton.

 

 

23 minutes ago, Philip W said:

I

 

8 minutes ago, Mono said:

I am all for science and education and have quite similar concerns. The "good" news is though that the US still out-GDPs any other big country in the world by quite some margin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

It's almost as if the US is letting other countries have some of the pie.  There is plenty to go around, the US has plenty, now let's spread these technologies around, and China is certainly taking a lead in technology.  And it comes back to the US and other countries and helps a greater number of people.

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

17 minutes ago, Mono said:

I am all for science and education and have quite similar concerns. The "good" news is though that the US still out-GDPs any other big country in the world by quite some margin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

according to this other link CHINA already is equal or higher. Your number/link is a per capita number and China has a lot more people than use.  My link is pure GDP adjusted for purchasing power. Meaning what can they do with the money.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)

 

[Dingfelder]

I think it's because we are no longer truly in the era of the nation-state, but that of trans-national wealth and power.  There has been a huge rush of off-shoring American capital to other countries, in the trillions, enabled and encouraged at the highest level of American politics.  American wealth is more concentrated than it's been for almost a hundred years, with no end to the consolidation in sight or even conceivably likely.  That's because politician's real clients are not ordinary citizens, but wealthy ones.  The wealth, and the living standards, that count for the wealthy are those of the wealthy.  

So if they can get their labor from Mexico and their engineering from India and China, that is fine.  If they can offshore production and as a consequence pay less tax, with society declining as a result, that's fine too.  Worst comes to worst, they can be wealthy anywhere, and in the meantime, they can pile up more money and power all around the world.  

Now that money can travel so freely and quickly all around the world, capital protects itself and countries protect their own security, militarily and economically, by virtue of nations and wealthy companies and individuals being heavily invested in each other across borders.  Even the notion of borders is becoming antiquated  There is no reason for war, and little profit in devastating another country economically when your fortunes are intimately bound up with each other.   You will only be stealing from yourself and destroying your own profit if you try.  So outside of extraordinary and very limited circumstances, as with Russia and the Crimea and Ukraine, it doesn't happen any more in first-world countries and hasn't for a very long time, in historical terms.  

Remember what happened with one of the founders of Facebook?  He made a huge fortune but decided he didn't want to pay taxes, so he renounced his citizenry just in time to avoid paying them.  He lost effectively nothing; you can be a billionaire comfortably anywhere.

So the wealthy no longer have to be interested in which country gets any particular benefit; it is sufficient for them to simply maximize their own personal benefit.  If American wages drop to the level of Mexican wages, and the education system drops to the level of Saudi Arabia's, where 96% of post-graduate degrees are in religious studies. that's fine.  Capital, and the ability to protect it and live safely and luxuriously, are transnational now.  The era of the nation-state has been quietly slipping away for decades now. 

 

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

4 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

I think it's because we are no longer truly in the era of the nation-state, but that of trans-national wealth and power.  There has been a huge rush of off-shoring American capital to other countries, in the trillions, enabled and encouraged at the highest level of American politics.  American wealth is more concentrated than it's been for almost a hundred years, with no end to the consolidation in sight or even conceivably likely.  That's because politician's real clients are not ordinary citizens, but wealthy ones.  The wealth, and the living standards, that count for the wealthy are those of the wealthy.  

So if they can get their labor from Mexico and their engineering from India and China, that is fine.  If they can offshore production and as a consequence pay less tax, with society declining as a result, that's fine too.  Worst comes to worst, they can be wealthy anywhere, and in the meantime, they can pile up more money and power all around the world.  

Now that money can travel so freely and quickly all around the world, capital protects itself and countries protect their own security, militarily and economically, by virtue of nations and wealthy companies and individuals being heavily invested in each other across borders.  Even the notion of borders is becoming antiquated  There is no reason for war, and little profit in devastating another country economically when your fortunes are intimately bound up with each other.   You will only be stealing from yourself and destroying your own profit if you try.  So outside of extraordinary and very limited circumstances, as with Russia and the Crimea and Ukraine, it doesn't happen any more in first-world countries and hasn't for a very long time, in historical terms.  

Remember what happened with one of the founders of Facebook?  He made a huge fortune but decided he didn't want to pay taxes, so he renounced his citizenry just in time to avoid paying them.  He lost effectively nothing; you can be a billionaire comfortably anywhere.

So the wealthy no longer have to be interested in which country gets any particular benefit; it is sufficient for them to simply maximize their own personal benefit.  If American wages drop to the level of Mexican wages, and the education system drops to the level of Saudi Arabia's, where 96% of post-graduate degrees are in religious studies. that's fine.  Capital, and the ability to protect it and live safely and luxuriously, are transnational now.  The era of the nation-state has been quietly slipping away for decades now. 

 

I dont understand.  First I am not a billionaire so that option is not available to 99% of nationals. Second I just dont want to leave my country. It is my life, friends, family, holidays, sports. So What are you trying to say?

[Dingfelder]

13 minutes ago, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

I dont understand.  First I am not a billionaire so that option is not available to 99% of nationals. Second I just dont want to leave my country. It is my life, friends, family, holidays, sports. So What are you trying to say?

I'm saying issues like who has the best technology or education or whose citizens make the higher wages are nowhere near as important anymore to the powers that be.  And we all just have to live with the consequences. 

Henry Ford gave his workers unprecedented wages when he first started out, and tailored his products to be cheap enough for them to buy at the salaries he was paying them.  When things worked together like that,everybody won, and won big.  After all, if nobody can afford to buy your products, what's the point of making them?

Now if you can't sell to your own citizens, you can sell somewhere else.  The Chinese are the major purchasers of France's red wines, especially the premium ones.  Can the French afford their own premium wines, or even get access to them?  It doesn't matter anymore.  

Now if you don't want to pay American taxes here, you can offshore your companies and skip out on them entirely.

Now if you do not have the labor costs and lack of liability for things like worker safety and medical care that you would prefer here in America, you can build factories elsewhere.  It doesn't matter anymore.

Now if you do not have the sheer numbers of technically trained people you need, India and East Asia have been training engineers for decades.  But what good are they over there instead of over here?  Well, just import them on work visas or move your factories over there ... where a lot of them already are in the first place.  It doesn't matter anymore.

We are no longer dependent on geography for our industry, for our markets, for our capital flow, or, for that matter, our politics.  Wealth, power, and industry are transnational now.

In short, if America largely goes to hell in a handbasket, the people with real power don't have to care nearly as much any more, and they do not.  And they probably never will again.  The era of the nation-state as the most important economic entity is coming to a close.

Regarding leaving your country, that may not be in order.  On the other hand, people in America have to leave their small towns for better opportunities all the time.  It's a much more fluid economy now, and will be even more so for our children and the younger people coming up.  The pace of change isn't going to slow down, and we're never going to have the stability again that we once had, because there is no reason to invest in any economy but the one that gives shareholders the highest return on their investments.  For a great many of our companies, that economy is somewhere else.  For politicians, the true economy they serve and the company of which they are made shareholders is that of the wealthy, which has no borders and can put its money anywhere.  

You and me are on our own.  I don't expect anything to change for the better here.  There's little economic incentive for it.

[steve454]

@Dingfelder reminded me of a funny bit by Steve Martin.  You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes.  First, get a million bucks.  Then, when the taxman comes to your door and says why haven't you paid taxes.  You say, I forgot.

[Scatcat]

56 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

I'm saying issues like who has the best technology or education or whose citizens make the higher wages are nowhere near as important anymore to the powers that be.  And we all just have to live with the consequences. 

Henry Ford gave his workers unprecedented wages when he first started out, and tailored his products to be cheap enough for them to buy at the salaries he was paying them.  When things worked together like that,everybody won, and won big.  After all, if nobody can afford to buy your products, what's the point of making them?

Now if you can't sell to your own citizens, you can sell somewhere else.  The Chinese are the major purchasers of France's red wines, especially the premium ones.  Can the French afford their own premium wines, or even get access to them?  It doesn't matter anymore.  

Now if you don't want to pay American taxes here, you can offshore your companies and skip out on them entirely.

Now if you do not have the labor costs and lack of liability for things like worker safety and medical care that you would prefer here in America, you can build factories elsewhere.  It doesn't matter anymore.

Now if you do not have the sheer numbers of technically trained people you need, India and East Asia have been training engineers for decades.  But what good are they over there instead of over here?  Well, just import them on work visas or move your factories over there ... where a lot of them already are in the first place.  It doesn't matter anymore.

We are no longer dependent on geography for our industry, for our markets, for our capital flow, or, for that matter, our politics.  Wealth, power, and industry are transnational now.

In short, if America largely goes to hell in a handbasket, the people with real power don't have to care nearly as much any more, and they do not.  And they probably never will again.  The era of the nation-state as the most important economic entity is coming to a close.

Regarding leaving your country, that may not be in order.  On the other hand, people in America have to leave their small towns for better opportunities all the time.  It's a much more fluid economy now, and will be even more so for our children and the younger people coming up.  The pace of change isn't going to slow down, and we're never going to have the stability again that we once had, because there is no reason to invest in any economy but the one that gives shareholders the highest return on their investments.  For a great many of our companies, that economy is somewhere else.  For politicians, the true economy they serve and the company of which they are made shareholders is that of the wealthy, which has no borders and can put its money anywhere.  

You and me are on our own.  I don't expect anything to change for the better here.  There's little economic incentive for it.

There are other forces in play too, so I feel your vision of contemporary trends and the future needs a little revision

First:

When you use the transnational possibilities to move production to where it's cheapest and where the people you need are, you raise those people up to your own level. We can see that trend in both India and China, as well as other places. It's not a fast process, as in "it won't happen in a year or two", but it does happen. In both India and China, you see the emergence of a relatively affluent middle class. They expect a standard of living far closer to what we have in the west.

The result is that they too will eventually find themselves on the short end of the stick, as production moves on to where it's even cheaper. We may well find that our standard of living is dependent on us being the only really rich nations, and we may well have to lower our standards somewhat. But as we go down, we'll met others on the way up. Eventually we'll hit equilibrium, where the transnationals no longer can find ultra-cheap work-forces anywhere else. The impetus to outsource will no longer be as strong.

Second:

To produce something is just the potential for profit, without buyers the potential will never be realised. So even as transnationals look for the cheapest way of getting a product to market, there must be a market to get the product to. To some extent we see that the emerging economies also becomes main markets, like China, but the older affluent markets like the US and EU can't be ignored either. And as the costs of production go up in China and India, neither can those markets be ignored...

But to have a market that works, people must be able to afford your product. And if you "rob" them of their living by killing their jobs, there won't be a market left for your goods. It is a little bit like the "robbing Peter to pay Paul"-problem, in that if you make people poorer by moving their jobs to where production is cheap, you at the same time get less for your product in the marketplace. Ergo you'll find yourself no richer in the long run.

As companies are economic entities with neither remorse, social consciousness or societal responsibility on their agenda, only profit, the short term profit of moving production around will still happen. But the other forces will come into play, and the playing field will change shape and the rules for playing will not be what they were. The companies that realise this and stop thinking short term will in the end become the winners.

[Philip W]

@Dingfelder and @Scatcat  You both are still thinking the free capitalism way, where the globalization boost up people and increase the market. It is a fantastic description of an ideal world, but I have to disagree with what actually happened out there.

Since the 70s Chinese people have been working to the bones to get little US dollar. In every factory there were workers/slavers making products for American and other countries for a tiny profit. It still happens today, as we talking in this forum. Many other countries followed the same pattern: Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand... Millionaires in America found their new fortune and discovered they could profit much more using their cheap labors. Thus the massive factory move-out happened from the 80s. The plan was simple: let those 3rd world country produce the low-tech-level low-profile things, and America keep producing high-tech high-profit things. So one little silicone chip is equal to tens of thousands of hours of a normal worker's earning. So in effect America people only need to produce limited high-end expensive things, and easily afford the cheap things other countries people break their backs making. This plan still works well in many third world countries, where their natural resources were robbed, their people became slaves in the factories.

However, this plan was defeated by China. Both the government and the people saw through it a long time ago. You can talk about it's because globalization, disappearance of nations... those nice things all day long, but in reality it was the monetary fight between nations. Who owns better technology will dominate the market, and the country with inferior technology will have to suffer. There is no rose or flowers in globalization. It is a war without bloodshed.

From very early on, I learned that China would not allow any foreign companies did any business without partnering with a local company. At that time I kept thinking to myself, what a dick move, the government was hating the capitalist companies. We couldn't have good TV, good fridges or many things that was common in the western world. Why government had to do that? Over the time, I gradually understood the Chinese government was doing a good thing for their people: if they had allowed western companies to flood our market with all their merchandises, in the short time it would have appeared to be as wealthy as the west, but all their little savings would have gone. The government would be dominated not only by the corrupted bureaucracy, but also the western corporations. And once those corporations took hold of the government, there was no way back. China would have stayed poor like India.

Over the years, little by little, the forced marriage of companies brought in technologies that China needed. Like snowball rolling downhill, it grew bigger and bigger. Right now China has accumulated enough science and technologies to defeat U.S., believe it or not.

Money is always temporary. Only tech can generate wealth and real product over and over. Wall street seems quite happy now, but once the bubble burst, like it almost did in 2008, their money will be gone in a flash. U.S. government won't be able to afford the next bail-out, and that's when the new overlord China starts to dominate.

Did we notice that we lose European allies left and right? Most of the people outside of America thinks we are the cause of terrorism. At the same time China quietly building railways for Africa countries, making trade deals with European countries, opening trade routes via old silk-road... Everything shows that they want to be the next leader of the world. Even the global-warming issue, which China is most guilty of, are now leading by them. Just imagine what will happen in the next financial crisis. American's wealth will jump down a cliff, because most of it is concentrated in Wallstreet. And what happened in a financial crisis? Wall street's money will disappear faster than you say " Abracadabra".

[Dingfelder]

5 hours ago, steve454 said:

@Dingfelder reminded me of a funny bit by Steve Martin.  You can be a millionaire and never pay taxes.  First, get a million bucks.  Then, when the taxman comes to your door and says why haven't you paid taxes.  You say, I forgot.

The part I remember is him saying, very flippantly, "Okay, so you're on trial for armed robbery.  You go before the judge and say, 'Sorry, your Honor ... I *FORGOT* ... armed robbery was a crime ...  What's he gonna do?  Everybody forgets!"

[Dingfelder]

5 hours ago, Scatcat said:

There are other forces in play too, so I feel your vision of contemporary trends and the future needs a little revision

First:

When you use the transnational possibilities to move production to where it's cheapest and where the people you need are, you raise those people up to your own level. We can see that trend in both India and China, as well as other places. It's not a fast process, as in "it won't happen in a year or two", but it does happen. In both India and China, you see the emergence of a relatively affluent middle class. They expect a standard of living far closer to what we have in the west.

The result is that they too will eventually find themselves on the short end of the stick, as production moves on to where it's even cheaper. We may well find that our standard of living is dependent on us being the only really rich nations, and we may well have to lower our standards somewhat. But as we go down, we'll met others on the way up. Eventually we'll hit equilibrium, where the transnationals no longer can find ultra-cheap work-forces anywhere else. The impetus to outsource will no longer be as strong.

The thing is, not only can that take generations to occur, but we still have most of Asia and virtually the entirety of Africa to exploit for cheap labor and lax/non-existent environmental and safety regulations.  China certainly will have no problem working with dictators ... and to judge by America's record in south and central America, the Philippines and elsewhere, ,neither do we.  

One day things may work out.  Or not.  But whatever equilibrium that might be found will not come quickly. 

And true equilibrium means everyone's living standards and health and safety in America gets lowered as much as it does that living conditions in China and elsewhere get raised.  The true equilibrium of history is that most people have always been poor.  It's only a thin slice of history, in a small number of countries, that would count something resembling today's middle class in first world countries as anything approaching a norm.  If we are to move to an equilibrium between countries ... welcome to hell.  Someone in some backwater in India may be able to get  by on twenty bucks a month for rent, but it's hard to buy an afternoon's worth of rent for that in big cities in America.

Quote

Second:

To produce something is just the potential for profit, without buyers the potential will never be realised. So even as transnationals look for the cheapest way of getting a product to market, there must be a market to get the product to. To some extent we see that the emerging economies also becomes main markets, like China, but the older affluent markets like the US and EU can't be ignored either. And as the costs of production go up in China and India, neither can those markets be ignored...

 

Yup, but it doesn't have to be within your own borders anymore.  GM sells more cars in China than it does in America.  And who owns it?  Last I read, a consortium comprised primarily of Canadians ...

And China's market, and India's, and the rest of Asia's, and Africa's, has an enormous amount of growth potential.  You can displace markets the same way you can displace  the manufacturing jobs that used to fuel them.  It's happening every day.  It's nice to have as many markets as possible, but they can be anywhere now, like financial capital, like physical capital, like intellectual capital.  Like power.  Even, in declining societies, like safety.
 

Quote

But to have a market that works, people must be able to afford your product.

And if you "rob" them of their living by killing their jobs, there won't be a market left for your goods. It is a little bit like the "robbing Peter to pay Paul"-problem, in that if you make people poorer by moving their jobs to where production is cheap, you at the same time get less for your product in the marketplace. Ergo you'll find yourself no richer in the long run.

 

Yup.  That's why we have been having such a slow and lopsided "recovery" from the 2008/9 recession.  Almost all of the gains achieved since then have gone to the most wealthy sectors of society.  The people at large largely got nothing.  You can't go out and see movies or buy dinner or a new washing machine if you have no job or have a job with no benefits, and live like most Americans, with just a tiny bit of savings and disaster always looming on the horizon ... or no savings at all.  

Quote

As companies are economic entities with neither remorse, social consciousness or societal responsibility on their agenda, only profit, the short term profit of moving production around will still happen. But the other forces will come into play, and the playing field will change shape and the rules for playing will not be what they were. The companies that realise this and stop thinking short term will in the end become the winners.

 

How long can we wait, though?  Unfortunately, societal institutions and powerful people can be stupid for a long time or essentially forever. Certainly the span of multiple lifetimes.  Look how long we lived under kings, as unproductive societies of men rather than law, unable to create new wealth through increased productivity and more equitable societies but instead content to try to achieve wealth by stealing from their neighbors through war and slavery.  Even the mere rule of law is an ongoing revolution that many countries and powerful corporations and individuals still cannot abide

I don't believe in a teleological end to life or nature.  Life doesn't have a goal in mind or work toward it.  It just happens and then we deal with it the best we can.  Progress can be fought for, but even so, it is not inevitable.

I do believe human nature is inevitable.  And there will always be someone trying to throw a wrench into the works for personal gain.  And even when there is no more to be gained, purely for ego.  

[Scatcat]

29 minutes ago, Dingfelder said:

The thing is, not only can that take generations to occur, but we still have most of Asia and virtually the entirety of Africa to exploit for cheap labor and lax/non-existent environmental and safety regulations.  China certainly will have no problem working with dictators ... and to judge by America's record in south and central America, the Philippines and elsewhere, ,neither do we.  

One day things may work out.  Or not.  But whatever equilibrium that might be found will not come quickly. 

And true equilibrium means everyone's living standards and health and safety in America gets lowered as much as it does that living conditions in China and elsewhere get raised.  The true equilibrium of history is that most people have always been poor.  It's only a thin slice of history, in a small number of countries, that would count something resembling today's middle class in first world countries as anything approaching a norm.  If we are to move to an equilibrium between countries ... welcome to hell.  Someone in some backwater in India may be able to get  by on twenty bucks a month for rent, but it's hard to buy an afternoon's worth of rent for that in big cities in America.

 

Yup, but it doesn't have to be within your own borders anymore.  GM sells more cars in China than it does in America.  And who owns it?  Last I read, a consortium comprised primarily of Canadians ...

And China's market, and India's, and the rest of Asia's, and Africa's, has an enormous amount of growth potential.  You can displace markets the same way you can displace  the manufacturing jobs that used to fuel them.  It's happening every day.  It's nice to have as many markets as possible, but they can be anywhere now, like financial capital, like physical capital, like intellectual capital.  Like power.  Even, in declining societies, like safety.
 

Yup.  That's why we have been having such a slow and lopsided "recovery" from the 2008/9 recession.  Almost all of the gains achieved since then have gone to the most wealthy sectors of society.  The people at large largely got nothing.  You can't go out and see movies or buy dinner or a new washing machine if you have no job or have a job with no benefits, and live like most Americans, with just a tiny bit of savings and disaster always looming on the horizon ... or no savings at all.  

 

How long can we wait, though?  Unfortunately, societal institutions and powerful people can be stupid for a long time or essentially forever. Certainly the span of multiple lifetimes.  Look how long we lived under kings, as unproductive societies of men rather than law, unable to create new wealth through increased productivity and more equitable societies but instead content to try to achieve wealth by stealing from their neighbors through war and slavery.  Even the mere rule of law is an ongoing revolution that many countries and powerful corporations and individuals still cannot abide

I don't believe in a teleological end to life or nature.  Life doesn't have a goal in mind or work toward it.  It just happens and then we deal with it the best we can.  Progress can be fought for, but even so, it is not inevitable.

I do believe human nature is inevitable.  And there will always be someone trying to throw a wrench into the works for personal gain.  And even when there is no more to be gained, purely for ego.  

@Philip W Yes I reason the free capitalism way, which doesn't mean I don't see your point. I think both ways of reasoning has relevance to understand as many aspects of what's happening as possible.

@Dingfelder It is not a fast process, but I think it's faster than you may believe. Generally the country that has to bootstrap its economy to some extent does as China, or for that matter as Japan did before it. It is not a perfect world or a perfect process, and I'm sure there will be turbulence.

I'm just stating that there are many forces at play.

[Philip W]

@Scatcat My point is, there is not such thing as "raising other nations up", the nature of corporations are predatory. If a government let them, they will exploit all the local natural resources and drove all the native people to be factory slaves to no end. It's against corporations' interests to "raise a nation", because it means increase of salary and other costs. Corporations can move out to other countries, but it will take a large amount of money and effort to do that. So the best way to profit is to do everything they can to suppress the native people and keep them poor as long as possible.

This strategy works in a lot of countries, Vietnam, Thailand, India, only the top 1% got rich and the rest are still as poor as before. The worst one is Nigeria. Over $600 billion oil money were extracted but most people there are still living in poverty.

It just didn't work in China. Take the example of GM, as we all talk about, they are forced to joined with SAIC (a government own corporation) 50/50, GM had to give SAIC most of the technologies, even sent trainees to American factories to learn things. Right now, over 90%, if not all, parts were made around Shanghai. GM enjoys the vast market of China, but what SAIC is doing? They are building their own brands and promoting them. Even though they are not as successful as GMs. If one day GM go down in a financial crisis, SAIC has no difficulties picking up the slacks. They have been producing cars with the same GM technologies for a long time already. The only difference is the brand.

So you see, Scacat? Only when a nation strategizes to rise up get raised up, America and corporations have no interest in raising up any nation to become their own competition. China is a totalitarian plus dictator nation, but they are doing everything right to raise themselves up, and they are getting better and better at luring foreign companies to give up their most valuable technologies, as my high-speed railway example shows.

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

Its a predatory system.

Human nature is survivalist. Get the most for yourself, associate and form alliances to conquer and prosper. 

What determines the alliances?  Religion, Race, national borders, economic status.

One of the most odd alliances are the wealthy. they belong to the same ethnic, religious and national alliance but still managed to create another sub-elite-group within. the only answer is they managed to accumulate more wealth and they each other make sure it stays that way. Who sets the salaries for CEO? Other CEO. That is very screwed-up. and if you do a bad job you get millions as compensation. that is even more screwed up.

Have you seen the reality show "Southern Charm"? That is sickening to me. Most of them in the show are wealth heirs with family connections and money circulating from where? sickening how they just party and dont really do any work or struggled to get the wealth.

Anyway. Human nature is driven to create these competing groups and at the end there will be the stronger-richer and weaker-poorer. Or at an extreme genocidal. without Social values humans are very dangerous-murderers. and would murder by justifying their group existence. See Roman empire, Muslim empire, German, Spanish empire, British empire, colonial america. They all engaged in one form of slavery and genocide to assure their wealth. And only revolutions reversed the oppression. all those empires were the most advances economically, literate. But they all siphoned too much from the working class and revolt collapsed the empire.

But have gotten smarter and more sophisticated. Now we still do it gentler. With monetary currency manipulation, credit and loans, education. by restriction or supplying it.

Its just human nature and we need not be ignorant of it and think we are here today because of human kindness. Most of our rights and privileges have come to be through popular revolts, revolutions and organized labor.

[Dingfelder]

30 minutes ago, Philip W said:

It's against corporations' interests to "raise a nation", because it means increase of salary and other costs.

Exactly.  How are you going to lower wages and raise them at the same time?  How are you going to reduce costs and raise them at the same time?  

When people are impoverished and can foresee no good future ahead of them, they'll do whatever you want and slice each other to ribbons for the privilege.

Labor is almost always one of the major costs of doing business, if not the primary cost.  There will be no push to raise living standards or better the working conditions of the working classes and, increasingly, the middle classes. The money lies elsewhere, and there are vast swaths of people that the real movers and shakers do not want educated or in any way empowered..

 

[Philip W]

5 minutes ago, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

Anyway. Human nature is driven to create these competing groups and at the end there will be the stronger-richer and weaker-poorer. Or at an extreme genocidal. without Social values humans are very dangerous-murderers. and would murder by justifying their group existence. See Roman empire, Muslim empire, German, Spanish empire, British empire, colonial america. They all engaged in one form of slavery and genocide to assure their wealth. And only revolutions reversed the oppression. all those empires were the most advances economically, literate. But they all siphoned too much from the working class and revolt collapsed the empire.

Yup, it's funny that every time an empire reached its end, everyone in it thought the collapse was impossible. Even today, no politician had ever learned anything in the history and refrain from their horrible policies. It's almost like they had no worries that American people would revolt against tyranny. When 40 million people lose their health insurance, many more lose their jobs, the salaries stagnate for 30 years... all these would become fuses to the revolution bomb. I just cannot imagine how those politicians can sleep at night, if they knew what would happened, and what already happened in the history over and over again.

[Carlos E Rodriguez]

Just now, Philip W said:

Yup, it's funny that every time an empire reached its end, everyone in it thought the collapse was impossible. Even today, no politician had ever learned anything in the history and refrain from their horrible policies. It's almost like they had no worries that American people would revolt against tyranny. When 40 million people lose their health insurance, many more lose their jobs, the salaries stagnate for 30 years... all these would become fuses to the revolution bomb. I just cannot imagine how those politicians can sleep at night, if they knew what would happened, and what already happened in the history over and over again.

And I forgot. China has gone through a couple of those already too. Ming Dynasty, cultural revolution, Mao.

[Philip W]

6 minutes ago, Carlos E Rodriguez said:

And I forgot. China has gone through a couple of those already too. Ming Dynasty, cultural revolution, Mao.

Don't forget June 4th, 1989. Tiananmen Square. At that time the Chinese government was so panic, so afraid, and so totalitarian we all felt it. The whole nation was on the brink of revolution that year. The government survived that crisis, but still it leaves mark on everyone's heart, including mine.

Maybe that's why after that they started to do good things for people, out of the heavy guilt? American government never went through the fear of people, at least not since 80s. So maybe that's why the forgetful politicians are doing what they are doing now?

[Scatcat]

I commented while under time-pressure before. I think a little bit more nuance is called for.

I AM an optimist when it comes to the free market in general terms. Just look at the difference in both general affluence, life expectancy and future possibilities for large groups of people. Groups that as late as thirty years ago were in a perpetual meltdown of famine, sickness and hopelessness. The number of less-than-a-dollar-a-day poor have gone down drastically the last few decades, and are still plunging, infant mortality is going down, education is going up - and so on.

But while general trends of humanity's ability to feed, clothe and give hope to the masses are positive, it doesn't follow that everybody does good, or that some STHTF won't happen. Especially in how the first world will develop and its relation to the emerging economies and cultures.

In general I think Salman Rushdie captured some of the roots of the problems in his book "Fury". He writes long diatribes about the western culture and social stratification, that points at the chasm between us and the rest of the world - the absolute cluelessness of the privileged. So while I am generally optimistic for humanity in general, I think there will be a lot of friction.

We have the one-percenters, who no longer really belong to their own societies, but becomes more like a transnational nationality in themselves. Just as an example: They just don't get why it would be a problem to move the production of clothes to Bangladesh, where the clothes we wear is sewn together by mothers of ten, under conditions that would put the owners in jail in EU or the US. It earns them more money, so it must be good. The idea that those people should have rights too, or that the consumers of the goods needs work to be able to pay doesn't hit them.

We have the FIAT-economy, where we more or less "print" money like interwar Germany, thereby hiding that we're consuming for money we don't have. How many have mortgages that would last several lifetimes in any other economy than the pyramid game?

As noted corporations doesn't do conscience, unless it earns them money. It is not a part of the corporate model, and it never was. They can simulate conscience if it earns them money, or if the founders/leaders have a personal conscience and forces that on their corporation. Even then it almost never lasts very long.

Look at Google which is one of the "good" corporations. They have their "do no evil" as a slogan in their headquarters, and they fight against government mass surveillance and so on. Even so they handle your personal data, and they use it to make you into a commodity - since their users are not their customers, but their merchandise. Look at their Youtube and the automatic "pirate" takedowns. Algoritms that are stupid as h*ll judge whether your video contains other peoples IP, if you protest you may be vindicated, but the chances are low and you're penalised anyway. The ones asking for takedowns OTOH are not penalised even if they show obvious bad-will or even break the law. And of course that is all about the bottom line. A more refined process would cost more and cut into the money-making of ads and the ability to run the site without IP-hawks trying to take the whole thing down. So they accept that people get mistreated, because to protect their users would cost more and cause more problems. To repeat myself, the users are not the customers, they're the merchandise and if a small part of the merchandise gets mishandled - that's the breaks of the game, or isn't it?

The only time a corporate entity shows conscience, is when their customers and/or users become upset with their shenanigans. Like the clothing company outed by the press for using child labor in their asian factories. When such things happen, they're suddenly very keen on showing how they take responsibility. But in reality they wouldn't, if they thought they could get away with not doing it. Unless they find that taking responsibility is a better deal.

That is also part of the answer, to make sure todays possibilities of total transparency are used not against citizens, but against power-mongers to keep them straight-laced and on their toes. The other part is that workers that are exploited ruthlessly show no loyalty, while those that are made part of the organisation and given respect and a path to personal betterment not only becomes loyal, but more productive. The companies that realise this will thrive in the long run.

Or to use the same quote from Goethe's Faust that begins Bulgakow's "The Master And Margarita":

—Who art thou, then?
—Part of that Power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

With that quote I'm not saying the corporations are evil, they're more amoral than evil, driven by other maxims than the good/evil dichotomy. What I'm pointing at, is that while they're not doing good to be good, the alternatives would sometimes be worse. To have work that pays some, is for many people infinitely better than having no work at all. And whatever they want with their exploitation, good things tend to squeak out of the cracks in their money-making schemes.

And then there's human ingenuity. I get baffled sometimes by how humans find ways to better their lot. Makers of wooden bicycles in Africa that thrive on a local need. Making stoves out of old hub-caps. Inventing an electronic cigarette to help people quit smoking. Invent a music streaming service that rewrites the map.

For that matter young Chinese engineers starting out of more or less a garage, making Electric Unicycles... Sure there are teething problems and poor traditions of quality control and design testing, but even so it is rather amazing.