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USA is still number 1 destination for FDI

Actually, China is one of the largest military spending nations and most of it went into new weapon systems. This is due to their command economy, which outside of companies that export, their economy remains a command economy.

America is spending the bulk of our money fighting W's wars. While we belong in Afghanistan, we should have finished that up and been out of there by 2006. More importantly, we should NEVER have gone into Iraq and likewise the same with Libya. However, we had lying neo-cons that put us into Iraq, while EU put us into Libya.

And I was NEVER speaking about 'China taking away all jobs'. You obviously do not get it. EU has a number of barriers against China and other trade. As such, you maintain a more balanced trade deficit. China is BEGGING you to drop your barriers and it was apparently made as a pre-condition for their willingness to bail our your mess. Thankfully, you folks did not do that.
OTH, we have obeyed pretty much the FTA that we signed with them. They, OTH, have reneged on just about everything. In particular, they manipulate their money directly, rather than allowing the market to decide. But it extends well beyond that. In particular, they have numerous trade barriers up. At the time of the FTA, they had 90. Now, they are well over 400 and rising them quickly. Perhaps you missed the recent one in which they blocked mercedes SUVs made in America, but not the exact same car from Germany? Likewise, with their bubbles bursting, they have already started to dump on the global market. China is going to get worse. That is why I want to see tariffs rise here in America.

As to wages, the companies that are MINORITY owned by western companies are required to pay much then double what Chinese owned companies pay. And it will remain that way until China feels that they can destroy the dollar and the Euro. As it is, they are pushing for these companies to raise their pay so that chinese owned have a great advantage. IOW, it is not free market principles.

Stole informational assets worth $500 billion over the past year? Um, does anyone bother to do basic reality checks?

$500 billion is about 1/3 of the US's GDP for all of 2010.

So ... no, just ... just no.

These are "assets", not revenue so aren't tied to GDP. If someone stole all of the gold out of Ft Knox, they'd have $200B worth of assets that would have no relation to GDP. Likewise, if they steal a secret chemical formula valued at $1B, that has no relation to GDP. (though the valuation is related to how much revenue it could earn).

In any case, the numbers are very suspect. No one knows who exactly is stealing the data, what data is stolen, or what they are doing with it, yet somehow they came up with a surprisingly round figure of $500M for the value.

More likely it's just a wild-assed guess that has no basis in reality, just like the piracy numbers that the MPAA likes to throw around.

Stole informational assets worth $500 billion over the past year? Um, does anyone bother to do basic reality checks?

$500 billion is about 1/3 of the US's GDP for all of 2010.

So ... no, just ... just no.

Small Internet user base? Little country? Are we still discussing India?

There are more Indians online than British people. India is 6th. CIA world factbook (and that's from 2009, I wouldn't be surprised if India is now ahead of Germany. Most Germans who want to be online are; that's not the case for India.)

Let's have some respect for the world's largest democracy, please.

Do you just make stuff up for fun? When I was in school I was taught that 20* is less than 33**, did that change?

But even if that was the issue, then the midwest is irrelevant. Why does, say, New York City with a population similar to that of Sweden, but a population density three orders of magnitude higher not have cheap broadband like all the places that do apparently because "the have high population density"?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden or https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sw.html but you'll need to do some division...
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States or https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html and again with the division.

Do you just make stuff up for fun? When I was in school I was taught that 20* is less than 33**, did that change?

But even if that was the issue, then the midwest is irrelevant. Why does, say, New York City with a population similar to that of Sweden, but a population density three orders of magnitude higher not have cheap broadband like all the places that do apparently because "the have high population density"?

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweden or https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sw.html but you'll need to do some division...
** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States or https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html and again with the division.

Now this one really does require a citation

I know it's hard to live in the information age and even harder to use a calculator and even harder when big numbers are involved, but there you go. Also remember China is growing 9% a year. That adds the demand of a country the size of Australia, every year. And that's just China.

First off, when you scroll down that same wikiMedia (not wikipedia) page you can find that other map/chart by the same author, which should make you question his/her "unbiased approach to the subject", or at least the precision of his/her data.
Also note that neither of those graphs are currently used - cause, you know... there are better and more precise ones.

Then there is the fact that neither of those maps currently used is of any particular value on its own.
ESPECIALLY those related to the headcounts.
Cause, while it may seem from the map of distribution that "Christians RULE!!111eleven!", from "religiosity" and "irreligion" maps one kinda gets the feeling that there may be a rather large percentage of bollocks in those stats.

Then, back to that graph, besides it being out of date - there is the fact that CIA's "The World Factbook" (which is the source of data for that graph) doesn't list its sources or methods or sample sizes.
Which makes it basically more akin to guesstimates than statistics.
They can't even be bothered to be up to date with readily available data on USA, let alone the rest of the world.
And where they pulled those numbers on protestants from is anyone's guess.

So, I wouldn't really bet the farm on those 55.6% you got from that graph.
Particularly when taken into account the fact that it's mostly the people in "undeveloped countries" who give credence to the stories in ANY of the religious books.

And that's all without going into the whole "it's a packaged deal" thing where you can't pick and choose the bits of God's words you'll believe in - making all of them unbelievers to some extent.

I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.

313M US Population (July 2011 est.) US CIA World Factbook
286M US cell phones (as of 2009), US CIA World Factbook, approx 240M unique users (source eMarketer and
96.7% of U.S. homes have a TV (2012 estimate) Nielsen May 2011 estimates
Almost 99% of video content watched in the U.S. is on traditional television (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
The average American watches 31.5 hrs of TV per week (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. www.pewinternet.org

So it appears neither broadcast TV nor cell phones captures the entire population but both are good options to reach a substantial portion of the population.

I could not find any comparison in numbers between TV subscriptions and cell phones, but I suspect that more people nowadays have access to text messaging.

313M US Population (July 2011 est.) US CIA World Factbook
286M US cell phones (as of 2009), US CIA World Factbook, approx 240M unique users (source eMarketer and
96.7% of U.S. homes have a TV (2012 estimate) Nielsen May 2011 estimates
Almost 99% of video content watched in the U.S. is on traditional television (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
The average American watches 31.5 hrs of TV per week (2010) Nielsen 2010 fact sheet
83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. www.pewinternet.org

So it appears neither broadcast TV nor cell phones captures the entire population but both are good options to reach a substantial portion of the population.

In a democracy without voter support you get a different Government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate_elections,_2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elections_in_the_United_States

From what I see the voters don't really want that much change. At most they want something "slightly" different. And both the D and R parties do change a bit so that the voters keep voting for them. The other parties don't appear to be able to convince the voters.

If the voters were really unhappy in the past elections they sure have a strange way of showing it.

Maybe the next bunch of elections might be different - they might really be unhappy enough to change things. Meanwhile it's wrong to presume the majority of the voters want what you or I want. The voters may not dislike the bailouts as much.

Reduce the Government's power and you'll have the Corporations rush in to fill the vacuum.

When that happens:
1) Good luck expecting those same voters to vote with their wallets, every day, in the way you want.
2) My guess from the research is that those same voters "wallet votes" count for much less compared to say Barclays's votes.

So just because the Government isn't doing a good job stopping the Corporations from screwing you, doesn't mean that when the Government is weak/small, the Corporations will stop screwing you.

Sure a few may fail, but the rest will still be around, ready to profit from the changes. They're not going to vanish - they own most of the stuff. You're not going to easily cut off the money supply for them. They have more ways[1] of making money than private individuals.

Think about it, say you are the CEO of a powerful company, with bodyguards, private jets etc. Who could really stop you from doing stuff? Your customers? Private individuals? The Government? The Courts?

[1] Example: the US economy is such that one farmer can provide food for 140+ people ( and the US produces 8% of the worlds total production of wheat) :
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html

Labor force - by occupation: farming, forestry, and fishing: 0.7%

The rest of the economy and $$$ is in other areas.

So there's a lot of money floating around that's not involved in "food". And so it is possible for those who control a lot of that "floating" money to corner the market on food (or other similar inelastic necessities), raise the prices and profit.

There is no reasonable way to seal US borders.
There are 12,034 km of land boarders and 19,924 km of coastline.

Even if our entire military people was stationed at the borders smugglers could still fly over or tunnel under. Much of this border is in areas that are totally or nearly uninhabited, costs to feed and transport this border protection force would be on the scale of a major war. You would also have to have these people inspect every container that comes into US ports. 7 million containers come into this nation by sea every year. You would also need to throughly inspect every rail-car and tractor-tailer that crosses a border.

Sealing the borders would totally destroy the US economy and people would starve because of it.

Sources:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_Security_Initiative

You know I was going to argue the exact same thing. Except I was going to use facts and figures. However when I looked up US spending it is comparable percentage wise to China and Russian GDP spending. The US spends more money but they get less bang for their buck. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2034rank.html Use google to compare spending. Pretty cool! http://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=ms_mil_xpnd_gd_zs&idim=country:USA&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+military+spending

Top 5 2009 Estimates, Citation, of the percentage of adults (aged 15-49) living with HIV/AIDS followed by a news bit lending no credence to any claim of traditional values as we define them.

25.90 - Swaziland - 23 August 2005, Swazi girls celebrate as king lifts ban on sex for under-18s - Citation
24.80 - Botswana - 1 December 2010, Botswana mulls legalizing prostitution to fight HIV - Citation
23.60 - Lesotho - July 20, 2004, in Lesotho as in much of sub-Saharan Africa, early sex is the norm. - Citation
17.80 - South Africa - 9 October 2011, 30% of people would use condoms for their first coital sex versus 4% for oral sex - Citation
14.30 - Zimbabwe - 12 June 2009, girls as young as 12 to sell their bodies for as little as a packet of biscuits - Citation

Not too sure about those traditional values. It just looks like the dazzled approach isn't being worked.

Not all that far from the truth. About 90% of the population lives within 160km of the US border. The three territories make up 39% of the area of Canada, but only 0.3% of the population.

People may not like it, but anyone with a US security clearance has a requirement for "prepublication review". That usually applies to talking about your job or things you learned during your job. Since this guy worked for State, and he posted information about state, I think they have a good point. For all any of us know he knew about that Cable from seeing it at work. Just because it has been publicly disclosed does *not* mean it is not still classified. https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v41i3a01p.htm http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/prepub/index.shtml

I have been pondering for years, the protocol for ESP (PSI), and know through research that the function is extremely real. Although the mechanism remains obscure, for any who would spew venom at the subject of ESP, you might do so first in the direction of Daryl Bem (http://dbem.ws/), who works in the parapsychology dept. of Cornell. Then before tearing the eyes out of open-minded victims, go to the CIA's Crest Database, and search "remote viewing". http://www.foia.cia.gov/search_archive_results.asp We will soon have little choice but to acknowledge a deep and disturbing correlation between such things, and the content of this article.

note: because China's exchange rate is determine by fiat, rather than by market forces, the official exchange rate measure of GDP is not an accurate measure of China's output; GDP at the official exchange rate substantially understates the actual level of China's output vis-a-vis the rest of the world; in China's situation, GDP at purchasing power parity provides the best measure for comparing output across countries (2010 est.)

And when you look at that number you find that it's...

$10.09 trillion (2010 est.)

And if we follow the country comparisons link next to that number, we find the figures that the grandparent cited. Although, for some reason, he left off India at $4.3T$.

So, you've demonstrated that you're not even capable of reading sources that you cite. Hardly a compelling demonstration of your credibility...

note: because China's exchange rate is determine by fiat, rather than by market forces, the official exchange rate measure of GDP is not an accurate measure of China's output; GDP at the official exchange rate substantially understates the actual level of China's output vis-a-vis the rest of the world; in China's situation, GDP at purchasing power parity provides the best measure for comparing output across countries (2010 est.)

And when you look at that number you find that it's...

$10.09 trillion (2010 est.)

And if we follow the country comparisons link next to that number, we find the figures that the grandparent cited. Although, for some reason, he left off India at $4.3T$.

So, you've demonstrated that you're not even capable of reading sources that you cite. Hardly a compelling demonstration of your credibility...

At this time, only three countries - Burma, Liberia, and the US - have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry.

Sort of off-topic I'll grant you, but ain't it an interesting factoid and source folks?

U.S. CIA World Factbook

I think they're only there for the oil, frankly. If the Afghan / Pakistan areas weren't so rich in oil

Yeah, that 60,000 barrels of oil per day from Pakistan and 0 barrels of oil per day from Afghanistan really makes an impact compared to the US's 9,000,000 per day.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2173.html

(While Afghanistan has an estimated roughly 2 billion barrels of oil reserves, this is puny compared to the oil available in Iraq or even the US. Afghanistan lacks the technological expertise required to extract this oil, so the government is contracting with outside companies to drill for it.)

Norway is even further north than Canada, we have _very_ little flat land at low elevations close to the ocean, and we get pretty much all our electricity from hydro-electric plants.

We will still get badly hurt by increasing global temperatures:

The first result of a temperature rise is a large increase in the amount of severe weather, something which you could argue have already started. In the US that means longer and much more severe tornado seasons, in Norway we get severe river flooding from melt water (both snow and glaciers) combined with heavy rain periods.

Yes, our agricultural growing season will increase, but with only 2.7% potentially arable land, this really doesn't make much difference.

Terje

Well, let's look at the economic stats, according to the CIA World Factbook:

- Unemployment is at 4.3%. Not bad, and certainly less than what we have.

Yea Obama! He said that we will never get above 8%! Maybe he meant 80%?

- GDP per capita (PPP) is $7,600.

Obama plans on taxing everyone down to that level. Anyone making more than that is too rich anyway. And he needs all that money for his stash, aka slush funds, aka DNC reelection funds, aka economic stimulus funds which only hire government employees. The only sector of business that isn't losing jobs is government. More IRS agents, fewer border patrol.

That is hardly the rich power we think of when we think "China". It's middle-income, with vast disparities in their society. While some live in fabulous apartments in Shanghai or Beijing, others live in third-world poverty in Urumqi or Lanzhou.

I think it's clear that China has a problem with poverty generally. The US has a temporary unemployment problem; China has a structural wealth problem.

The US companies are not planning to do much in the US because if they cannot plan for the idiotic regulations Obama will come up with in the future. He hates profitable companies. It offends his socialist goals.

30% of companies that currently have health care plan on dropping it because of ObamaCare. A large portion of the doctors plan om retiring when it takes effect.

He has increased the US debt more than ALL the previous presidents combined, and he's been in office less than three years. That includes all the previous wars. Your share of the debt he created in his first year is over $30,000. China will be able to fund their military on the interest of the money he borrowed from them.

The US is at 10% unemployment with more families living with fewer funds, resulting with many people who do not have minimum food or shelter. It is unclear if China has such a problem.

Well, let's look at the economic stats, according to the CIA World Factbook:

- Unemployment is at 4.3%. Not bad, and certainly less than what we have.
- GDP per capita (PPP) is $7,600. That is hardly the rich power we think of when we think "China". It's middle-income, with vast disparities in their society. While some live in fabulous apartments in Shanghai or Beijing, others live in third-world poverty in Urumqi or Lanzhou.

I think it's clear that China has a problem with poverty generally. The US has a temporary unemployment problem; China has a structural wealth problem.

Do you realize that the US is the largest manufacturer in the world not China. Countries see these big gains as they improve thief infrastructure but they never surpass the US. Look at Germany and Japan both have had times in the past 60 years where "experts" said they were over taking the US.

Bullshit.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2078rank.html

Is there really a point in linking to http://t.co/2QGXy6f instead of http://cia.gov? I guess URL lengtheners are the new trend?

LulzSec's disabling of the CIA's website (CIA.gov) is currently being discussed on ZeroHedge: LulzSec Takes Down Cia.gov One thing is certain. The crackers in LulzSec are damned good, OR they have considerable "inside" help at the CIA and FBI. Or BOTH!!

confirmed. cia.gov seems to be down at the moment.

True. However, According to the CIA World Factbook, Germany exported 61.7 billion kWh (last estimate available from 2008). At the same time. The whole European super grid thing, you know. Germany is a net exporter - even after taking down half the nuclear capacity already.

Yap. And according to the same CIA World factbook it exported... 61.7 billion kWh (2008 est.) - all in all a surplus of about 20 billion kWh.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2043.html?countryName=Germany&countryCode=gm&regionCode=eu&#gm

According to the CIA World Factbook, Germany imported 41.67 billion kWh (last estimate available from 2008).
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2043.html?countryName=Germany&countryCode=gm&regionCode=eu&#gm

Here you go

That's not what I'm seeing. In the US, the birth ratio of men to women is 1.04. The natural birth ratio is about 1.05.

In China it's 1.133 males to female. And that's just what gets reported for births. Not a lot of ultrasounds getting done in a lot of places in China too, remember. So now consider the total population... something like 1.33 billion people. So no matter how you cut it, unless there's something magic in the water there, a whole lot of baby girls getting disappeared.

My numbers are primarily from the cia world factbook and wiki, which are the sources most everywhere else seems to use... please lemme know if I'm overlooking something.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2018.html and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sex_ratio

I believe many Taiwan top Govt officials are PhDs
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/world-leaders-1/world-leaders-t/taiwan-nde.html

You are considered broke when your payments for debts exceed your income.
By that definition the "state of the united states of america" is broke.
You will see that in US news the next days ;D

No, debt service is under 10% of the federal budget, if I remember right (less than 2% of gdp?).

You're almost certainly thinking of the *debt* to gdp ratio, which is very close to 100%--but that's not a critical milestone (according to https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html, Japan's debt-to-gdp ratio was 225% in 2010, and people are still willing to lend to the Japanese government.).

Those subsidies are literally a drop in the bucket. Obama stated the petroleum industry gets $4 billion/yr in subsidies and tax breaks. In 2009, the U.S. used 18.7 million barrels of oil per day. That's 6.83 billion barrels per year. The subsidy works out to $4 / 6.83 barrels = $0.586 per barrel. From one barrel of oil, we get 10 gallons of diesel, 19.4 gallons of gasoline.

So ignoring all the other uses for the oil, the subsidy works out to $0.586 / (10 + 19.4 gallons) = 2 cents per gallon of diesel or gasoline. While getting rid of them may be the right thing to do, they're not going to change the cost nor demand for petroleum energy in the slightest.

BMW, Mercedes, etc, are sold to higher paying markets where the cost to the consumer is less important. I should remind you that a BMW in europe costs WAY less, about as much as a ford sedan. I lived in italy for two years and happily owned a BMW M5 at WAY less cost than you would ever own one in the US.

The point I was making is that Japanese (and now Chinese) autos would go for even cheaper and would have severely undercut our own vehicles in cost. The european cars would be of much more comparable cost than being higher..... And the end result would be a nearly complete adoption to purchasing foreign vehicles.

From what I can garner, you would be glad with that outcome. But your shortsighted approach to economics is in the point of sale. You are focused on the consumer savings at that moment. The actual cost comes in to play when hundreds of thousands of US automobile manufacturing employees are no longer employed. Not only do you now have LOTS of families that are out of work, but those that are skilled in that work are now flooding the other related markets with worker-supply. Since the related markets are likely not seeing a big increase in demand, that excess supply in skilled labor ends up devaluing the labor as a whole -- those that are currently employed are lucky to see raises because they can now be easily replaced by the unemployed auto workers that are now eager just to have an income.

The net result is that nations of low economic resource have an exploitative advantage over their people, or at least a relative advantage in cost of living (china vs india). And in both cases, their products are simply cheaper to produce. Their products are cheap to them, but should not be cheap to us. This drives the cost of goods up, but it retains our ECONOMY local. This means that when you buy shoes, your neighbor was part of the company, and then he buys the toaster you made.

Right now, thanks to outsourcing/insourcing and globalization, the US is rapidly sending its wealth OUTSIDE of the country. And even though our corporations are growing off the cheap labor and products, our PEOPLE are suffering from the net loss. The loss is visible in this data here.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2187rank.html

I'm still curious how the net export of our economy is not yet obvious to you. If you pay your neighbor to fix your PC, he has a job and pays taxes and buys your kids' lemonade. If you pay an Indian to fix it remotely, your money leaves and likely won't be coming back. Many industrialized/westernized nations use tariffs, and we do still to some degree --- the issue is that the degree to which we apply it is not appropriate to protect our people and economy as a whole. You can see that Germany and the Netherlands clearly have it balanced in their favor.

Thanks for playing.

http://www.foia.cia.gov/search.asp

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

But they were classified and kept by the CIA. The documents themselves (1 2 3 4 5 6) carry stamps keeping them exempt from declassification for dates as late at 1978 and 1989.

Some of the recipes in there, however, are as old as Julius Caesar.

ignorance is a bliss. If a worthless currency was such a great thing for economy, Zimbabwe would have ruled the world, Argentina would have been up there with it, USSR would have dominated, Weimar Republic of Germany would have drowned the world in its currency.

The GP wasn't talking about a worthless currency. I'm pretty sure theres a middle ground between what we have and Zimbabwe.

NO. It's not the 'overvalued' currency that drives manufacturing jobs overseas. It's WEAK currency coupled with government regulations that destroy incentive to save capital and invest it in local economy, it's all the shit that drives prices up - printing and borrowing and rules that create asset bubbles and minimum wage laws (yes, even that), and all the social obligations that destroy jobs.

I'm not an economist, so you probably know this subject matter better than I do, but some of what you're saying sounds a little off to me. Didn't China kept their currency artificially low to help their economy? A lack of regulation might be one factor in companies moving their manufacturing operations to China, but wasnt the fact that the yuan was weaker than the dollar also a factor? Also, even with all those regulations, the USA is still the https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2198rank.htmlmost invested in country in the world. But without the minimum wage law and all those social obligations, what kind of jobs would we have? Again, Im not an economist, but would the size of the middle class shrink if these protections are lifted?

Stop illegal aliens and slow immigrants from going to nations where they already have a low birthrate. That will put pressure on nations who have not learned to control their own birthrates.
Then fund protestants to convert roman catholics,mormons and muslims. Once you do that, then you will get ppl to use birth control and look beyond their church.
Finally, figure out how to slow down Africa.

Good luck with that.

I don't suppose this would impress you, but the CIA says that Fiji has a multiparty constitional democracy.

    Then the question becomes, if there are no ISPs in Tuvalu, and no users (as they're struggling to remain above sea level), then why is it a concern? There shouldn't be any hosts registered, since there are no users.

    The CIA World Factbook for Tuvalu says differently.

    They report there are 1,700 landlines, and 2,000 cell phones in use, and 4,200 Internet users. Not bad for a population of 10,500. It doesn't explain the need for about 110,000 hostnames registered though. That's 26 names per Internet user. Oh ya, they were fundraising by letting anyone in the world buy their hostnames. As far as the Internet is concerned, countries are not a nationality, they are a commodity. .tv registrations account for about 13% of their GDP.

It's not more accurate. We're a representative democracy otherwise known as a democratic republic. A republic does not suggest that you're voting on representation. It's equally valid to have a system like they did in Rome where the oldest citizens are automatically representing the people. Consequently, the term representative democracy is the term to use or democratic republic.

What distinguishes the definition of a republic from the definition of a democracy is the prohibition against a head of state that is a monarch. The definitions of both often include supreme power in citizens allowed to vote and the direct or indirect election of representatives who exercise power on behalf of the citizens.

The US government officially describes itself as a constitution-based federal republic with a strong democratic tradition.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html