China won't antagonize valuable partner America over Taiwan. Taiwan could come into play though if China wants to test the water on our resolve in a trade war. Russia is over. Small country that's losing population due to negative birth rates. China is closely allied with Pakistan. How that play's out long term with a more radical fundamentalist government in Pak will be interesting.....
China is becoming less dependent on American consumers with each passing year. They are the factory of the world, and the U.S. comprises 4.6% of the world's population. It's not about what China will or won't do now, or even in 2010. It's about the next 40 years.
I think you're missing the point. And I am not American, I was not born here. I also do not justify paying $75 dollars for a major league game. Yes I think that the athletes are pre-madonnas who are absurdly paid, but at the same time as long as easily controlled masses can be persuaded by the Colosseum, not much to be said about it. Still, this is not a conversation about the flawed U.S. consumer and the forces behind establishing that mentality. The point is that you have a standard of life that cannot be supported by the available jobs. All at the expense of a trend in which few benefit. You also cannot deny what has happened to cities like Buffalo, Rochester, Detroit, Pittsburg and many others. Really, there is a whole country outside Miami, NYC, Atlanta, San Fran & L.A. And things are not too dandy there. So the whole system is running on debt because it cannot stop the consumerism. The problem is that the consumer is not being given the income opportunity to keep up. My biggest issue is that the offshoring trend is mostly a scam. It does not really make sense. There is no reason to go to Bangalore or Mumbai, when you can pay the same here for the same quality. I understand the complications of unions and labor laws but at the same time, this is not the solution. From a geopolitical perspective, do you really think it's wise to offshore your industrial base? How about having your technological property offshored to some retard in India? What if the symbiotic relationships were broken? USA would be F**KED. You can't deny what's going on. And you cannot keep blaming the average Joe for it. Last I checked, exec compensation was through the roof and the wealth disparity is increasing. So someone is taking a big chunk from this trend. These strategic decisions are not being made by the population but by a group of few. Cost of living being increased, hence the average blue collar worker demands more money, I somehow fail to see how you can blame him for it. People wanting cheaper prices, I somehow fail to see how they are wrong to ask for it, they may actually have problems affording it. Meanwhile, GM and Ford executives are making millions, all after decades of continuous strategic f**k ups, lack of innovation and wastes of money. Yet the unions & pension benefits are the ones to blame (not saying Unions are angels, far from it). The consumer has a part in this, but the consumerism trend is one heavily instilled by a handful of industries and the government itself. It's an individual matter, it is a sociological matter. It still does not make the offshoring of US jobs the right way to go. You wanna know my opinion? If the corporations wanna use the excuse of profit margins, then why did they not gather together and ask for union concessions? How about the whole company making concessions, including the overpaid execs? A corporation has a social duty, or at least, it used to have. I think it's fair game for them to bring up their concerns of cheaper labor abroad and profit margins. And give the unions & etc. to agree to lowered & competitive pay. But, noooo, cause that would require the overpaid pig executives to look at their own salaries & bonuses. Why do that, when you can just offshore, kill the quality and then get even more money by claiming how much you decreased costs. You wanna keep blaming the US consumer? Ok, who are you going to blame when there is no U.S. consumer because the debt faucet was turned off and there are still no jobs to provide income?
Hydro - Don't forget that in the late 60s, at the peak of American power (because Japan and much of Europe were still being rebuilt and recovering from the devastation of WWII), the average American CEO made about 40 times what the average employee in their company made. This is about the ratio in Japan today. Today in America, the ratio of CEO to average employee pay in Fortune 500 companies is closer to 400 times to 1. There is historical precedent here - those nations with the largest and most vibrant middle classes - a 'fat' middle, if you will, are the empires of their times. Those nations with 2% of the population controlling 50% or more of the wealth, let alone 80% or more, are in a state of decline.
Following 9/11, when President Bush was trying to bolster the nation's confidence, he said something along the lines of "Don't just stand there, buy something!" Those weren't his exact words, but that was his exact message. It gave me a touch of vertigo. If there should be such an attack here in Canada, perhaps I should buy a new car.
"Industrial Metamorphosis, The Economist: For the first time since the industrial revolution, fewer than 10% of American workers are now employed in manufacturing. And since perhaps half of the workers in a typical manufacturing firm are involved in service-type jobs, such as design, distribution and financial planning, the true share of workers making things you can drop on your toe may be only 5%. ... Our figure of 10% comes from dividing the number of manufacturing jobsâjust over 14m, say the latest figuresâby an estimated total workforce (including the self-employed, part-timers and the armed forces) of 147m. In 1970, around 25% of American workers were in manufacturing. The share of manufacturing has also been falling in all other developed economies since 1970..." http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2005/10/the_decline_in_.html As you can see Hydro, this isn't a new phenomena. It's been over in American manufacturing for quite some time. Except for a few candy factories everything has left that can leave. And yes the debate at it's core is much more about consumerism than the practice of "big business". The jobs that have left the States are not in the kind of Big Cap names you trade each day. They're apparel manufacturers who left Manhattan's Garment District and the mill towns of New England decades ago. They're the steel companies who were knocked out by anti-trust, unions and strikes, environmental concerns and America's appetite for Japanese cars. There was a long metamorphosis where labor said we'll only do this kind of shit work for huge money. Maybe in 1910 uneducated guy's aspired to work in a factory but by 1980 blue collar jobs started to pay well because nobody wanted them. Those wages caused high operating costs which caused high prices of finished product. Enter foreign competition and then something's got to give. America voted. Up with Toyota down with Oldsmobile. Now America whines. You'll soon see the same phenomena in an interesting milieu. I predict high grain prices will cause food to go through the roof in the next year. Farmers, the epitome of down trodden the past two decades will become scapegoats by America's hypocritical consumer. I still remember well-to-do suburban MILF's organizing beef boycotts in the mid 70's because of soaring rump roast prices. Clueless bimbos.
There will probably be more jobs lost due to MA and PE than outsourcing. And it doesn't matter whether its happening or not. Perception is reality and reality is that a lot Americans are not happy about something. The presidents approval rating wouldn't be so low and the dems would not have taken over last november. Corporations holding sway over a labor pool that ballooned by three billion people in the last 15 years is a problem and it will continue to create economic and social tensions in the US until something cracks. My biggest worry is that our soldiers in Iraq become worried about there economic well being and decide they dont want to die so some corporation or ceo can earn an extra 100 million dollars while he can't afford health care or tuition. Those are the realities of massive pay differences.