Sux to be him, but great for most of the rest of us, who don't get to be paid 65k a year for doing unskilled labor, because now we get to buy cheaper cars.
That's pretty selfish. You want a cheaper car at the expense of entire towns full of families going into the gutter, no hope of sending their kids to college, no more health care for those families, pensions gone, degraded quality of life for many more millions of Americans every year because of it, and on and on. I don't have skills requisite to build a car and I would guess you don't either. Does that not make those workers "skilled workers?" They invested their entire life in their occupation and worked hard for what they had before idiot politicians shipped their jobs offshore.
I couldn't find the stats but I believe I read recently that we only export about 11% of GDP. That's much smaller than many other economic powerhouses. We're used to be being the orphaned baby pig trying to suck off every nipple we can find. Well, now Big Mama Pig is gone: we have to fend for ourselves. For the last few years, the dollar has fallen and now we're making the transition to becoming an exporting powerhouse. Americans are kicking and screaming at this transition, but the change is inevitable. And it will be good as we can compete with anyone in technology, media and many other sectors. Right now America is doing soccer and the NBA is flooded with fantastic overseas players. Are we going to tell those foreign players they can't play here? How can you tell a bunch of 6'11" guys that dribble like a guard, shoot three pointers like a guard and rebound like a 7 footer that they don't deserver to play here??
Remember: This is a transition period. Our entire economy is being reworked almost overnight into a exporting powerhouse. Most companies have fallen into this quite well - that's why you read all the great earnings reports - but many, like Chrysler and GM, don't quite get it yet. But you have to give it a few more years. Don't forget that China and other countries are artificially propping the dollar and that can't last forever. The dollar will inevitably fall a little more to where it should it be and then there's little that can stop us.
One more comment: whatever you do, don't blame Joe Sixpack going through hard times on China and India. You need to look right here at home for that. Greenspan and the superbubble that the Fed created and then the incompetence of the American banks are what have killed our economy right now. We've got noone to blame but ourselves. (And Joe Sixpack must take a little blame himself: after all, he allowed himself to load up on Home Equity loans and ARM's and all manner of subprime nastiness.) But it's a lot easier to blame someone on the other side of the planet instead of taking responsibility of course...
I don't think anyone's blaming China & India for their sucess; if anything they are to be commended for outsmarting the US Congress. Look at increase in quality of life in those countries relative to decrease of quality of life in our own country. Taketh from Americans all the way. Housing has gone through cycles before and it will go through cycles again. Credit has been screwed up before and it will be screwed up again. And as long as two oilmen from Texas are in the whitehouse, oil will be over $100/ bbl. God bless the minute they're history. It's the progressive downward spiral in manufacturing caused by our treasonous trade policies iniated by our own Congress that I have a beef with. Technology can and will be done from anywhere. There is no benefit (in fact there are detriments) to doing technology in America. We have nothing left except consumption which means even more of our money will leave at even greater rates as time moves forward. If you think our country can prosper on Google and Facebook, you're out in left field. Those things can and will be done from anywhere. One thing we could do today is drill for oil and become an exporting nation. But gee, idiot Bush is from Texas and that would bring down the price of oil. And the democrats are afraid we might get a stain on our white shirt of an environment. The absolute last thing Congress thinks about is the American family. Towns across America have been seeing these hyper foreclosure rates long before this current crisis and its caused by our trade policies. Unfortunately those people have no voice.
Bush has been pounding the table to drill more domestically for the last 8 years, LOL..... Your stupidity is outstanding....world class....really difficult to be dumber.... SteveD
Right now Brazil, Taiwan, Mexico, Columbia, Russia, China, India and about 30 other developing countries all have better run economies than us and MUCH higher GDP growth rates. Their quality of life is going up because their central banks and planners are doing an overall better job and because they are growing so fast, not because anything has been taken from us. Again, our anemic growth is nothing you can blame on these other countries: they're just better than us and we need to learn from them. That's a hard thing for Americans to admit, but we're in the second tier now. But we've got to swallow our pride and get busy selling overseas where their central banks haven't bankrupt a huge block of their own citizens. I remember seeing one of the American NBA players whining and saying that the foreign players were "taking food out of our mouths". He needs to wake up and realize that most of us would watch the 6'11" guy that can dribble and shoot like Steve Nash. Sometimes you just have to admit the other player is better and then learn from him...
I think you're too oil-centric. We don't need oil to be an exporting nation. Most of the SnP 500 earns huge blocks of their revenue from overseas. And this is increasing every day.
A few points to ponder here: Mr. Steve: You are welcomed to disagree and voice your own opinions, but when you launch personal attacks you're not welcome here. You only show your lack of education which by most standards defines stupidity. Bush has been in front of many cameras of late saying the solution to the energy crisis is investing in renewable energy technology. He knows damned well that those technologies take 20 years to get to the market and 99% of all monies invested in those technologies are wasted beacuse only 1 or 2 of the technologies invested in will come to fruition, if even that many. If Bush were pounding the table for 8 years to drill domestically, during which time he had a Republican Congress, then he is yet more of a failure for not being able to get his own party to pass legislation permitting more drilling. What do you think happened to the price of oil on the day they classified the polar bear as threatened? Bush ran that one through before he leaves office. Shut down ANWR and push oil prices higher, and higher, and higher...