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The basic gist here is that unless Americans start wanting to live in overcrowded and soul-crushing dorms, where hundreds of thousands of people shuffle to work every day, work 12+ hours, are OK with being roused in the middle of the night by their managers to start work only a few hours after finishing the prior shift, and get paid $17 a day to do it ... there's no way we can match that. Face it, the days when Americans could count on line manufacturing jobs is over.
So, does anyone still believe that it's merely wages or "currency manipulation" (as if the US didn't do that too)?
The article is about losing out on building the I phone. Not that we are losing the war with China economically because of cheap labor.
Cheap labor is part of why China has been successful, but it won't be cheap for long. The people of China are starting to demand more and more freedom. More and more money. Their economy is about to hit a ceiling where its no longer profitable to export there.
The United States great industries are automotive, agricultural, and intellectual. We also have all of the natural resources we need, even oil, if we pushed our transportation demands towards another energy source, like natural gas and coal.
China needs us because they can't feed their people without us. We are the worlds bread basket, we provide the world with most of its cereal crops and others. Without us, they starve.
Even the oil business in Brazil going to Chinese contractors isn't a major disaster. They will lower the price of oil for everyone, because oil is a global commodity. A few jobs lost here and there, but nothing crazy.
In truth, robotics is how we are going to beat china, and to push for major robotic labor forces, we are going to need a load of power. But thats the way we will beat China, out produce them in power, and develop a cheaper, almost slave labor force that never gets tired, and never gets sick. Its not unrealistic, with the processing speed increases and stunning advances in artificial intelligence that have been happening over the last few years.
America is becoming a country of farmers, engineers, and service industry folks. Manufacturing belongs in the 20th century.
Yep socialism has worked real well for all of the soon to be or de facto bankrupt Euro Nations.
Here is the whole story.
Greece has mandatory fully paid retirement at age 55, for every citizen, regardless of what you made before.
They have complete and universal heatlhcare.
They have excellent public schools.
They lowered taxes and hardly anyone in many countries, like greece, pay no real taxes at all.
So saying that the richest Nation in the world can A. Afford a 70 year old retirement for everyone, with healthcare paid for by all (remove the responsibility from the employer), with supplemental insurance to take care of non life threatening stuff, and good public schools isn't so much to ask.
Our problem is that we have DOUBLED our military expenses since 2001. That while we lowered taxes. Then we bailed out everyone that made risky decisions made by deregulation and government direct involvement in the free market.
The government makes good guard rails, but they need to stay out of the lane of free traffic.
Is everyone too young to remember the whole Japanese are going to take over the world and own everything schtick of the 1980's?
How's that working out for them?
Last time I checked they seem to have the world's largest life expentancy and some of the most high tech infrastructure, but also have a whole generation of young men living at home up until their 30s who spend all day reading manga, playing video games, and dating pillow women instaed of real girls. It's a fun geeky paradise with no real future, sort of like a Talking Heads or Devo album from the early 80s
Were you alive in the 80s? I remember as a kid the constant refrain that the Japanese were going to end up owning everything in America--both real estate and corportations were all going to be controlled by the Japanese and their newfound wealth when their economy was skyrocketing prior to the crash in the 90s...
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