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So then beef production moves slightly north?

This is a confusingly ignorant misunderstanding that I constantly see reiterated on Slashdot. There is only a finite amount of arable land and that is 18% of the United States with 0.21% of that being permanent crops. From this site, you can see in this graph that the figure of 18% actually fluctuates. Now, there's a lot of factors at play but drought is a big one and this idea that you "just move the cattle North" to the new land is downright laughable. Temperature is not the only factor in making land arable. Why does Iowa produce more corn than per acre than any other state? Well, the soil has a lot to do with it but also the temperature is better than, say, Minnesota even though there's a lot of corn and soy grown in Minnesota.

During the dust bowl of the 1930s, we should have learned that you can't just "move cattle and farming North a bit" to avoid droughts. We also should have learned how important it is to combat erosion and protect our water supplies.

What happened last season in Texas was they failed to grow their own roughage (hay, straw, alfalfa, sorghum, etc) for their steers to eat and so they paid top dollar to have it shipped down to them and other states profited from Texas' loss. This is not a sustainable model. Moving cattle northward will not work, there is a reason ranching flourished in Texas -- any areas north of there that have the same conditions have long become ranches. Even if someone does the math and says "Oh, hey, this area of Montana here is going to be highly sought after" it's not like a massive ranch in Texas can pick up operations and move them to Montana in a single season. You're going to see restructuralization problems and the United States consumer will cry highway robbery when their already subsidized McDonald's burger costs $1.33 instead of $0.99. Should Texas become akin to Arizona, our economy will feel it.

Or maybe I can finally get grass fed beef from the USA?

You can already buy this from Montana and other states. The problem is how much grassland can support free roaming cattle. Again, a lesson learned from the Dust Bowl, we need to build ranches and feed them in order to prevent top soil erosion. If you demand they be free roaming and you calculate it, beef will become incredibly expensive and not a viable option for the entire populace.

Over all a small increase in the price of beef is not the end of the world. The decreased red meat consumption would probably be a good thing on average for us.

Right, those grapes were sour anyway?

Texas still has lots of oil and natural gas.

So? Most states depend on multiple sources of revenue, right? You should be alarmed when any major industry faces a major problem. Otherwise, why not just kill off all the other industries and embrace "lots of oil and natural gas"? Well, that's simple, you use what you got and Texas is losing arable land to grow food for their cattle.

Its agriculture was living on borrowed time anyway. Once the aquifer went dry that was coming to an end.

An unsustainable agricultural strategy is bad agriculture. Doesn't everything -- even your oil and natural gas -- depend on the availability of water? You make it sound like we just turned Texas into Mars and probably for the better? Ruining land is not the answer and this report states that Texas will get more arid so measures should be taken to at least prepare for that, wouldn't you think?

You do know that inflation is set by the CPI, which is (wait for it) a basket of commodity prices. The basket contents change periodically, but are relatively stable. If inflation were going up 11-15% per year, I would have seen my real purchasing power go down by half in the past 6 years, and yet it hasn't been anywhere close to that. Most of the stuff I buy is probably averaging 20% higher than it was 5-6 years ago which is (surprise!) about 3.5%. If you just look at gold and gasoline, you're going to get a mighty skewed picture of what "inflation" is.

Compared to 2005-2006 (before the financial meltdown - change the first date on the chart to 2005) the US dollar weighted against other currencies is down about 10%-15%. In reality it's probably down more since the dollar index fund is weighted heavily with the Euro, and the EU has been nearly as bad off as the U.S. (If you go as far back as the late 1990s, it's down even more, but I would argue the late 1990s the USD was overvalued due to the tech bubble.)

So yes you're not seeing much annual inflation via the CPI. But that's because over 90% of the U.S. economy is based on domestic trade. If the dollar declines in value, 90% of what you buy stays the same price. Measured against the rest of the world, inflation in the U.S. has been running at a higher clip than is indicated by the CPI. It's just been mostly disguised in devaluation of the US Dollar.

Has no one else been wondering why Germany is being seen as a utopia with all of the answers, recently?

No. Germany is a prosperous western nation. Germany has its budget deficit under control. Germany has its trade balance under control. Germany financial laws minimized exposure to toxic debt. As a result, the effects of collapse of the debt bubble in '07-08, the so-called financial crisis, were much more limited in Germany, amounting to a total bailout liability of only about 5.5% of GDP. The costs to other western nations was/is much higher.

Among the many effects of this is that Germany still has the luxury of indulging new social programs. It is also the go-to repository of wealth whenever one of the unproductive and misgoverned PIGS needs to be propped up which gives Germany a great deal of influence in the EU.

In my opinion Germany has all of these things for three basic reasons;

First, Germany has managed to keep its spending under control. There are many public benefits and a great deal of wealth redistribution in Germany, but the Germans don't tolerate large accumulations of debt; if the revenue of the German treasury can't fund it the dependents don't get it. That includes the medical system and the education system.

Second, Germany has an industrial policy that isn't subject to certain veto by pressure groups and their civil lawsuits. This means Germany can make choices, like replacing nuclear reactors with renewable, coal or anything else they decide to use and it doesn't get killed by some judge. This attracts capital.

Finally, Germany protects its domestic industry and workers from unrestrained competition with Asia. Trade unions, businesses and governments can all, independently, pursue importers in court to enforce Germany's sovereign trade laws, and they do so with high frequency. This all somehow happens without statist punditry crying 'oh noes trade war!' The result is Germany has a fully developed industrial base and workforce that is very attractive to capital.

Wealth is important. Germany has consistently sustained real wealth creation since the end of of the Second World War through hard nosed trade policy, credible industrial policy and sound fiscal governance. It doesn't surprise me that Germany has earned some respect.

I don't. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth

You ruined my stage, this would have been so hilarious. :(

I don't. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth

Looks as if Germany's GDP is managing just fine.

Osama Bin Laden was killed.

A task achieved by on intelligence community, supported by the bloated defense budget Obama is trying to cut. Attribute Osama's death to Obama simply because he said "sure, go ahead" when presented with actionable intelligence is stupid.

The recession is over.

Which technically started and ended on Obama's watch (2008): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Late-2000s_recession
The first quarter of negative GDP was Q1 2008: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-growth
Particularly damning is that the sharpest downturn was in September of 2008 after the spending of ungodly amounts of stimulus money.

General Motors and Chrysler, and the industrial heartland of the country, were saved from a catastrophe that would make the dust bowl look like nothing.

Failures of companies deserve to fail. Fuck corporatism.

An end has come to the era of people being condemned to death by for-profit insurance companies using the excuse of "pre-existing conditions" to deny people their basic human right to health care coverage.

Fixing that loophole without the additional 999 pages of expensive budget-breaking cruft would have been far preferable.

Colonel Gadaffi was ousted from power without a single American soldier being deployed on the ground, and without adding countless billions to the deficit.

Not exactly attributable to actions of the US...

That god-awful war in Iraq, the biggest foreign policy blunder since Napoleon invaded Russia, has ended.

We still have people on the ground over there, and it was already winding down at the end of Bush's term.

Since Obama took office, oil imports have dropped by an average of 1.1 million barrels per day and in 2010 domestic crude oil production reached its highest level since 2003.

Global commodities dynamics are not a function of government. Or do you believe the resurgence of natural gas (and shift away from coal power) is also because of the government? (rather than regular market forces...)

What in the hell does wage development have to do with trickle down economics?

Well, quite a bit? The definiton according to the wikipedia article is: "Trickle-down, adj., of or based on the theory that economic benefits to particular groups will inevitably be passed on to those less well off...; orig. and chiefly U.S."

Yes, the unemployment rate also fits into that category. So, let's look at the unemployment rate development in other countries in that timespan (I just looked up three):
Canada: same curve.
Sweden: same curve.
Australia: same curve.
I could not find a nice graph for germany and france.

Conclusion: trickle down did not measurably effect the unemployment rate. So I guessed you meant the wages when you said it had positive effects on the poorer parts of the population.

What in the hell does wage development have to do with trickle down economics?

Well, quite a bit? The definiton according to the wikipedia article is: "Trickle-down, adj., of or based on the theory that economic benefits to particular groups will inevitably be passed on to those less well off...; orig. and chiefly U.S."

Yes, the unemployment rate also fits into that category. So, let's look at the unemployment rate development in other countries in that timespan (I just looked up three):
Canada: same curve.
Sweden: same curve.
Australia: same curve.
I could not find a nice graph for germany and france.

Conclusion: trickle down did not measurably effect the unemployment rate. So I guessed you meant the wages when you said it had positive effects on the poorer parts of the population.

What in the hell does wage development have to do with trickle down economics?

Well, quite a bit? The definiton according to the wikipedia article is: "Trickle-down, adj., of or based on the theory that economic benefits to particular groups will inevitably be passed on to those less well off...; orig. and chiefly U.S."

Yes, the unemployment rate also fits into that category. So, let's look at the unemployment rate development in other countries in that timespan (I just looked up three):
Canada: same curve.
Sweden: same curve.
Australia: same curve.
I could not find a nice graph for germany and france.

Conclusion: trickle down did not measurably effect the unemployment rate. So I guessed you meant the wages when you said it had positive effects on the poorer parts of the population.

Wrong, Germany suffered from a low trade surplus prior to the introduction of Euro in 2001, have a look at the historical balance of trade for Germany here. You can see very noticable climb in trade surplus. This was a direct result of the introduction of the Euro.

The Euro was already introduced in 1999. The year 2001 was the introduction of Euro cash. Also, there are lots of over factors influencing the trade surplus (and the economy in general). Germany indeed had no problem exporting goods before the Euro, being the worlds largest exporter before on a couple of occasions. The dip in the surplus in the early 90ies (followed by a slow recovery) was caused by unification.

Wrong, Germany suffered from a low trade surplus prior to the introduction of Euro in 2001, have a look at the historical balance of trade for Germany here. You can see very noticable climb in trade surplus. This was a direct result of the introduction of the Euro.

Well not so much of late. And OH LOOK inflation rates have been hopping around a bit. (Just slide back that start date for a good view) They were pretty level in the 90's. Had some problems in the 70's and 80's. 60's were good.

Of course, all of that is NOTHING compared to the chaotic pre-50's era when the USA wasn't a super power. It's good to be on top.

But it's not like you can set the inflation rate and magically make for a stable economy. It's more like an indicator of the economy. This gets scary when this gets boiled down to things like the FED's interest rate, because the big guy in charge admitting that shit sucks doesn't help the situation any.

Nobody is suggesting that people can't think at all without college, nor that there aren't exceptions, but generally college teaches people better critical thinking skills. People in other countries want to go to college, to American colleges in particular, as much as we do; and in several countries more go to college.

the new fed chairman's love affair with inflation

An odd statement. Inflation has been low by historical standards; in fact at the outset of the financial crisis we risked a deflation spiral; the CPI (the number used to measure inflation) dropped 0.4% in 2009, the first drop since 1955.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt

Last year Japan’s trade balance fell into an annual deficit for the first time since 1980, driven by subdued global demand and soaring fossil fuel imports in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear power crisis.

I fully understand their desire to decrease dependence on nuclear power in light of the disaster, but quitting "cold turkey" obviously has had a strong negative impact.

We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.

What/quoi?

Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%

More...

We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.

What/quoi?

Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%

More...

We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.

What/quoi?

Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%

More...

We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.

What/quoi?

Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%

More...

We're the only country on the planet that's not in a recession right now.

What/quoi?

Canada: 0.9% GDP growth last quarter.
US: 2.8%
India: 6.9%
China: 9.8%

More...

In its battle against a sluggish economy

Right... be sure to carefully avoid mentioning stupid huge budget deficits when discussing Japan and its science funding problems. They've only been running giant deficits since the '90s, accumulating debt equal to 200% GDP, a ratio worse than any of the European deadbeat PIIGS and twice as bad as the US. Why? Let's see what the Japanese themselves concluded 10 years ago:

lowered individual income tax ... two special tax cuts in FY 1998 ... permanent cuts in individual and corporate taxes ... frequent economic stimulus packages ... payments to the social security ... disposing of failed financial institutions

Sound familiar?

Japan has become so unproductive it now has a trade deficit. The first since 1981. Why? Just like us they're busy outsourcing their industrial base to China.

Deficit spending, 'stimulus', monetary easing and all that other gunk doesn't work. Endless tax breaks don't work. Pretending deficits don't hurt doesn't work. Evacuating the productive elements of your economy to third world hell-holes to avoid your own regulatory regime doesn't work. Stop electing the statists that govern this way.

If you like well funded government science you need to figure out how to reconcile yourself with the need for actual prosperity based on actual productivity, despite your banana training. Otherwise, live with the decline. Quietly.

Also, for those of you that believe Japan's debts are inconsequential because most of it is held by its own citizens; who do you think is going to take the inevitable "hair-cut?" How much less hesitation will their statists have disappearing that savings when the time eventually comes due to the lack of diplomatic consequences? Retirements, endowments ... poof. Gone to money heaven.

It's called "insurance" for a reason. Again you display a very strange view on reality. The German unemployment rate just hit a record low of 6.6% (and our rate is real - we don't have people drop from the list like the US when the benefits run out).

Also productivity increase in Germany was the best of all G7 countries in the last decade.

On the other hand our welfare state goes back half a century. Obviously its parameters have to be tweaked constantly but it in the long run it has not hurt us a bit (despite us having to absorb East Germany in between). Nor has it hurt the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands, etc.

It always amuses me how "Socialist" Europe is talked down in the US. Frankly it delivered quite nicely.

The current Euro woes are inherently uncorrelated, and very much predicted, as a currency without a common budget can not really work. In a sense this was by design, to create economic facts that'll force tighter integration.

If you wait to have history prove you right you are in for a very long wait. But at least you can die without ever having to reconsider your preconceived notions.

I ducked nothing - the fact is you have not presented a single fact in all your posts while I have presented many facts and pieces of data. When you start backing up your wild claims with some actual facts then maybe you can try to make demands, but hand waving doesn't get you there.

Frankly, I find that argument more apt to you than me. You've presented exactly one fact in this argument to support your conclusion that the conservatives are better at curbing emissions than the Liberals. And that alleged fact is that emissions were lower in Canada in 2009 than in 1998. You have not cited where your number comes from and I have explained the facts that would lead us to expect emissions to fall in 2009. You also haven't been willing or able to explain what you think the Conservatives actually did to decrease emissions by 25% in 1 year.

The reason is that they didn't do anything. The two largest contributors to greenhouse gases in Canada are oil production, transportation, and electricity generation in that order. Both oil production and electricity fell during the recession because demand fell significantly. These are facts. It is a fact, that GDP didn't grow in 2009, it shrank by more than 3%. It is a fact that during a recessionary year, our emissions were still 17% over Kyoto targets.

Even the Conservative Government credits the reductions in 2008 to slower economic growth and less coal-fired power. Power generation is a provincial matter, not a federal one.

Now if we look at the actual reasons why GHG emissions increased between 1990 and 2009, 54% comes from fossil fuel industries, and 45% from transportation. Which means the single largest contributor to the failure to meet Kyoto targets? Alberta. The booming oil industries in Alberta are responsible for almost half of the increase in GHGs.

Frankly, I find your hostile and abusive behavior to be the real polarizing problem here. I have been more than fair, I attribute blame to both the Liberals and the Conservatives, yet you can't seem to accept that. I made one comment about the Prime Minister, at the outset, I have not invented any conspiracies. Unless you somehow think recessions are conspiracies. I have repeatedly shown that the facts don't mean what you think they mean and you have repeatedly ignored everything I have written, to criticize me for not agreeing with you.

Considering you can't even recognize that context is vitally important when discussing trends and the fact that you think the largest recession in decades isn't important to the numbers under discussion, leads me to believe that you are clueless partisan with no interest in actual discussion. I'm done here.

If you want to export more than you take in, you end up with less goods in your market than elsewhere.

Not at all. Manufacture more than you consume. Look at Germany for example. It exports a bit more than the US and imports buckets of goods - you can't say that a German has less access to goods than someone in America. Yet the German economy exports more than it imports. The german people had a trade surplus of around 150 billion euros (that's around 200 billion US).

Furthermore, with the amount of money those foreign governments hold, it's the US that owns them, not the other way around. The same way that if I owe a bank 100 grand, the bank owns me, but if I owe the bank 50 billion, I own the bank.

That's a total fallacy. Take Greece for example, it's loaded to the eyeballs with debt, they are being forced to accept massive austerity measures to continue getting assistance. If you are really saying say that Greece owns the EU then I think (hope) you might start to see why that statement is a joke.

It sounds like you went to the wrong country though. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/unemployment-rate

The US has a free trade agreement with Australia, with special visas for people from one country to work in the other, that aren't that hard to get.

YOU claim to say the truth... why should we believe you? On some of the pieces in which hard evidence is to be found (economy) you state Argentina's inflation is 2nd highest in the world, but if you see some independent observers such as http://www.tradingeconomics.com/inflation-rates-list-by-country, the latest data puts Argentina in a not nice place, but certainly not 2nd. On economic growth, Argentina has done pretty well considering the world's status. The latest IMF report (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate_(latest_year)) places Argentina at a very nice 9.2% growth, ranked 8th in the world!). In other words, you are just BS-ing around, and I honestly do not believe anything else you have to say.

It's nowhere near 8%, except in the eyes of some paranoid bloggers.

The forecast for 2011 is between 0.5% and 1.5%, and it's been lower recently. Many common expenses are actually in a slight deflationary period at the moment.

http://forecast-chart.com/forecast-inflation-rate.html
http://tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Inflation-CPI.aspx?Symbol=USD

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/mortality-rate-adult-male-per-1-000-male-adults-wb-data.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/survival-to-age-65-male-percent-of-cohort-wb-data.html

'nuff said. I think this is the first war were the death rate is lower than the pre-war period. We westerners really suck at this genocide thing.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/mortality-rate-adult-male-per-1-000-male-adults-wb-data.html
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/afghanistan/survival-to-age-65-male-percent-of-cohort-wb-data.html

'nuff said. I think this is the first war were the death rate is lower than the pre-war period. We westerners really suck at this genocide thing.

If you knew how to damage, disrupt, or otherwise cause havoc with the American energy grid (say, by using something like Stuxnet), and you were an enemy of America, don't you think that would be valuable?

Counter-argument: Attacking the US power grid is an economic attack, and the trade relationship between the US and China is such that we mostly sink or swim together.

Counter to the counter: Is that true? China's GDP kept growing through the Great Recession, albeit at a slower pace.

Disclaimer: I did not read TFA. Which companies were targeted? Were they energy companies involved in trading energy or creating energy, or something else?

they haven't done anything to reverse the disaster... If the economy was actually improving the voters would not have voted as they did.

U.S. GDP growth 2006-current. Obama assumed office in January 2009. At the time growth was around -7%. Since then it rose to 5% and dropping back to 2%. Whether you believe Obama may or may not be wholly or partly responsible for this is debatable, but the turnaround in the figures after his election in early 2009 is clear.

If the economy was actually improving the voters would not have voted as they did.

Voters never vote against the incumbent party when the economy is growing?

This is not a problem with tech, but society in general, and it is a big part on why we have 10% unemployment right now. If we changed to a 35 hour work week, as France did, we could solve the unemployment problem.

Much as I love the idea of a 35 hour work week, I have to point out that France's unemployment rate is also currently at 10%.

Sorry, didn't close a double quote in the previous post:

I commented on this, you can look it up yourself from the link there. Manufacturing in USA today means assembling in USA and the trade deficit, which shows where the economy is really going, is showing the direction very clearly.

But here is the link and if you go there and set the "FROM DATE" to 1992 and leave the "TO DATE" current, you'll see what I am saying.

Big pile of fudge. USA is no longer manufactures the components, it assembles the final product, that is also 'manufacturing', but it really is not.

The proof is in this simple pudding: go to this site and set the 'FROM DATE' to January 1992 and leave the 'TO DATE' as the current year.

This is the real USA economy in action.

Yes, it is laughable that you guessed at my personal circumstances in a line of attack. What possessed you to do such a thing?

wtf

You simply don't understand economics. Let me ask you, how big is the American manufacturing sector right now? I mean, what percentage of GDP. Now, an important question: how big was it at its largest?

- absolute numbers on this are irrelevant in the face of the trade deficit.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Balance-of-Trade.aspx?Symbol=USD - you may want to see this, by setting the dates from 92 to today, you'll see what the numbers are, the numbers are negative, more importantly they are going down consistently, it's almost at a 45 degree angle and even worse this year.

Your absolute numbers don't matter, what matters is that this trend has been going on since Nixon fucked up the economy by getting rid of the gold standard and started printing, all while setting minimum wages laws and fixing prices for food and destroying a working health care insurance that was all private and was allowing 4 people to have insurance for a year for $25 with a $500 deductible covering up to $50K a year, which was 2.5 times the most expensive cancer treatment for a year at the time (20K). So Nixon argued he was going to get everybody insured, there were 10% uninsured people in US at the time, but the PRICES for health care were so low, a day in a hospital under $110. Obviously he met with insurance reps and various lobbyists and got the gov't into insurance and that was it, the prices went up much faster than any inflation. He killed a working system, but did he get rid of the 10% uninsured? No, we know he didn't.

Do you count creating commercials or movies as manufacturing?

- yeah, treasure your movie industry, it's still making money.

How about banking?

- Major US banks are holding the toxic assets and they will crash once the house prices go down after the interest rates soar once the t-bills bubble burst. They will crash hard. Right now banks are making record profits based on being able to borrow at discount 0% and lend back to Fed by buying t-bills and helping to inflate the bubble and making the spread.

Banks are not doing anything useful for the trade balance.

Are those things economically valuable?

- the movies, yeah, sure.

What about software consulting?

- service sector. Almost none of it has anything to do with trade balance. Enjoy your job while it lasts.

Is that manufacturing?

- no.

Demand is specific. It does not always exist. Did demand for computers exist before there were computers? No.

- of-course it did, but there was no product. Once the product hit the shelves, demand was satisfied. This argument that you have on what demand is, is ludicrous. Demand is ABILITY TO CONSUME. And people consume, just give them anything, they'll consume it.

Does the creation of a new entertainment medium reduce demand for other entertainment mediums? History says yes, it does.

- Demand does not go away, the basic principle doesn't change, in fact that is what you are arguing against, when you want gov't to do spending. Competition arises not from gov't spending but from private spending, and private spending is investment into quality and quantity. Changing information medium is changing quality, so market chooses the new competitor with better quality.

Demand for 2 competing products, where one product is cheaper/better than other is resolved by market choosing the better product. Demand is for the same product, but for a better version. If a new product did not affect sales of an old product, then these products were n

I lived in England and traveled around Europe for 3 years. Great beer, old/ancient cities, and gorgeous women. Everything else pretty much sucked ass though.

Let's see a 25% sales tax rate, $8 for a gallon of gas, houses for 3 times the price at 1/2 the size, electronics, clothing, food, and cars that are nearly twice as much, oh yeah did I forget the cronic 10-19% unemployment rate among adults and 75-99% unemployment rate among teenagers.

Get me a plane ticket I want to move right now!

Most college degrees in the US are pretty much not worth the paper they're printed on. Euro degrees even more so. I think the concept of hiring young people the moment they are legal to work and then train them according to their skills is a long missing concept in society.

All the rest of a "well rounded" education can easily be filled in by watching the discovery and history channels and reading a few books.

US employment rate has consistently been higher than the UKs over the last decade (currently USA 9.3%, UK 7.9%). The youth unemployment rate is 19.1% (2009 figure, latest I could find), almost exactly the same as the USA rate for the same year year. Sales tax (VAT) is 17.5%. Petrol is currently £1.14 per litre = £4.31 per us gallon = $6.53. Food is not double the price - its very hard to compare basics like bread and milk are about the same, other things are a little more. Cars are a lot more, but I think 1.5 times as much for most common models. House prices is hard, £250,000 could get you a large 4-bed house in Inverness or a studio flat in Chelsea. Houses are generally smaller, but certainly not three times the price unless you compare the city of London prices.

Based on this, working for Foxconn in China is better than living in Canada, at least as far as suicide risk is concerned.

Only if joblessness isn't a factor in suicide. 'Spin' is a perspective, I suppose.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-rate.aspx?symbol=CNYvs.http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-rate.aspx?symbol=CAD

Unemployment rate in Canada is nearly double than in China - who's spinning again?

Based on this, working for Foxconn in China is better than living in Canada, at least as far as suicide risk is concerned.

Only if joblessness isn't a factor in suicide. 'Spin' is a perspective, I suppose.

http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-rate.aspx?symbol=CNYvs.http://www.tradingeconomics.com/Economics/Unemployment-rate.aspx?symbol=CAD

Unemployment rate in Canada is nearly double than in China - who's spinning again?

A stalled US economy has lead to a lot of upset Chinese unemployed.

China's unemployment rate in March 2007 was 4.1%, and as of December 2009 was 4.3%. Not much from a percentage standpoint, but with a labor force of 800 million, that still adds up to 1.6 million more unemployed.

That changes the whole argument on the F-22 being killed now, doesn't it?

No, not really. As a Russian, let me tell you - since the fall of the USSR (and especially in 2000s), there had been a slew of announcements of new weapons that are supposedly so awesome they can match and outperform the American ones. The problem with them is that what few things actually leave the development stage and enter production, get produced in minuscule quantities. The old Soviet solid manufacturing base is mostly gone (you've got to maintain the factories, and keep workforce there and well-trained - none of that was done), and replacement is nowhere to be seen. Not to mention the simple lack of money, which was always there, but is particularly true these days.

You can basically expect a production run on the order of a dozen or two of those things, just enough for them to fly over in the next V-day military parade while Putin goes on about how the country is restored to its former might and glory. Maybe they'll send one or two to fly real close to, say, Estonia, just to remind them who's the daddy (and get a few more cheers from the "patriotic" crowd). But that's about it. And, to remind, US currently has 145 operational F-22s... there's absolutely no way Russia can catch up with that, even if you discount the rest of the air fleet (and even if PAK FA is indeed on par with F-22 in performance, and superior to F-35 - which is by no means certain yet - I very much doubt it can hold up to two F-35; not to mention the higher quality of training of American pilots, which is historically demonstrated).

Also, one other thing... Russia doesn't have any long-distance force projection capability. There's only one operational air carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov, and that one is in a less than perfect state, and even then inferior to the current generation of US carriers, much less the next one. And, while I have no doubts about US introducing the new line of its carriers on time, there are many doubts about the ability of Russia to do the same, despite all the talks of more carriers being needed (which have been going on since mid-90s). So all those next-gen fighters end up being mostly a defensive weapon, and potentially usable in border conflicts like the recent one in Georgia (though in those cases, air superiority is usually ensured by a preemptive all-out air strike on the enemy airfields, as again seen in Georgia).

Nothing to see here, move along...