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China PM Wants to Rule Global Tech With India
GrumpyDeveloper writes "As reported in this Wired story, China's prime minister said Sunday that China and India should work together to dominate the world's tech industry, bringing together Chinese hardware with Indian software.
Makes sense.
India has gained global repute as a hub of software professionals while China is strong on computer hardware. Both countries' cheap and plentiful labor has undercut the tech industry in America and other Western countries through outsourcing.
Seems as if they're trading on the principle of 'comparative' advantage, something that makes perfect sense. Software in India, hardware in China. Now, I understand that we're going to see some misguided anti-Globalisation backlash on this site. Overall, firms will then get lower prices for their tech products. Everybody will win from this.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
That said, the border agreement India and China announced today seems like a terrific step forward. I'm surprised it's not getting more attention. The two biggest countries in the world have been banging heads over that border for decades.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Cooperation between India and China is inevitable. Their feud stems from a small war and dispute over small threads of land. The benefits of their cooperation is far greater than the benefits of a rift, and both sides have seen this. Add this to a burgeoning ASEAN, and you have a truly global economic power.
Whether or not they succeed at dominating the tech industry is redundant. If they cooperate, even economically, they'd have a lot more say in the world than the either the US or the EU, over time.
In a century or two, perhaps they will taunt each other like the U.S. and Canada.
I think that it's fair to say that this is the first time in history that people everywhere else see America whining about its inability to compete.
In times past, the American workforce was something to admire. I don't think that's the case any longer.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Yes, and the fact that China does not give a hoot regarding Intellectual Property and Copyright should not concern India in the least.
Somewhere, there's a joke begging to be told.
Let's see if we're all still laughing in 18 months.
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
The gov of China knows that India is supposed to surpass them in population relatively soon. According to the CIA, by 2020 (15 years, folks...) a China/India duo would account for 36% of the global population. Western Europe plus the United States will only be 9% of the global population. With emerging economies, it is forecasted that we westerners are supposed to become quite obsolete.
China, knowing that by 2030 india is predicted to pass them in population, knows they have to act. Most of China's land mass is worthless, after all (why do you think Tiawan is so important to them?) so they have to position themselves as a solid consumer front.
The problem India/China will face: they'll be *consumers*. Being the biggest consumers has been a major harm to the US economy (trade deficits, etc). For our substantially smaller work force (1/5th-ish), we still produce twice as much as China does (see above CIA link). They need to seriously work on their production per-capita. That, and feeding those folks is already a serious problem. Production, on their end, is not just an industrial issue - its a natural resource issue.
The Western Hemisphere controls the food, and with it...we'll still control the wealth. If the US made some strong ties with South America, we'd retain power with even just 2% of the global population...put 3 billion people in an area that can only make food for 1 billion, and what does supply/demand dictate? It dictates that food prices will skyrocket, and non-food goods will plummet. Watches and games will become trivial, throw-away items (already are), but an apple...an apple will be valuable.
This might be a good thing. Do you think harware manufacturers in China are going to give a rat's ass about 'Trusted Computing' and harware-level DRM that media cartels want? Funny how we may have to look to China to preserve freedom over our own computing property.
atleast with the FOSS method you can roll your own and not have to depend on the whim of corporations & governments...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Is what is good for the USA also good for Microsoft? is what is good for Microsoft good for the USA? Is Microsoft the last great hope for Planet Earth?
;-)
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
You've GOT to look in the long term. Like 50 or 100 years.
When we, ( I mean America, the "West" and probably Japan ) no longer make anything, or design anything, but only consume, consume consume... we will fall apart.
Everything we buy will be designed in China or India, and made in China or India. Our universities (if they're still relevant, and haven't been shut down by the evangelical right-wing) will be educating Chinese or Indians in math, science, engineering, etc while we get degrees in "communications" and get jobs pushing paper around, so we can buy chinese products.
Such an aritficial economy can't support itself, and we'll *probably* collapse into some sort of 3rd world police state. Here I'm referring to America -- we've been tottering on being a plice state for like 50 years, an economic collapse would push us over the edge.
Meanwhile, China and India will have become what America was 40 years ago -- the Big Cheese, but *too* successful. Fat on money and industry, with those pesky (educated) workers demanding high falutin' things like medicare, wages, retirement packages, etc.
So what happens? The chinese will move their factories to the US, Japan, England, and so on! Our starving and uneducated populations will *want* these jobs, because its better than tending the rice patties, and everything will be A-O-K.
Now, in all seriousness, as far as I'm concerned, the Chinese and Indians deserve the success they are having right now. They're educated, and hard working. And we, we deserve to have our asses handed to us for our laziness and hubris. I just hope all this manages to happen without too much warfare.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
Considering most of the current hardware is already made in China (ever look at a Dell computer and all those white stickers with MADE IN CHINA clearly printed) and so many jobs are being shipped across sees, I am surprised you even say 18 months.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
But how long will that last ? Once their workforces see the wealth that they are generating they are going to want a share of it, that is going to lead to demands for higher wages. This has happened before (see Eastern Europe).
Part of the West's wealth relies on an imbalance of income -- ie the West relies on low wages in Africa/Asia to supply them with cheap food/goods/holidays/... This is not to say that things won't change: they will -- there will be an averaging of standards of living; we in the West are going to have to accept a reduction in our standards of living or work much harder for it. This is good in global terms.
Where will the world's workhouse be ? Africa ?
BTW: Anyone remember 20-30 years ago the golden future that was painted for us -- that automation would mean that no one would have to work more than one day a week (or something like that). Whatever happened to that dream ?
Am I the only one bothered by the fact India is keeping the pro-Tibetan protestors out of the picture?
Seems money is all that matters in the world. So much for the hindus living up to the Srimad-Bhagavad Ghita. =\
Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai
China stands to become the next superpower through stealing technology and what are we going to do about it. We have already sold ourselves to the devil with all this debt so if we complain China has the power to sink our economy into the ground and they can walk away laughing.
"Quality?" Over 90% of the world's desktops runs Microsoft Windows as their OS, and you seriously think most people give two hoots about quality?!?
Regards;
As far as the current wages for "IT" professionals in India go, they are among the top paid people in the white-collar industry. They can afford to live a lifestyle that may be at the very least considered as upper middle class in most societies.
When most Americans hear about "pennies-per-hour" salaries (which in itself is an exaggeration), software professionals are being exploited as "slave labor" in "sweat shops". This view couldn't be further from the truth.
The truth is that "IT" professionals are being paid princely salaries by Indian standards (similar to how it was during the boom in the Silicon Valley). The cost of living in India is *way* low compared to the US. For comparison, a loaf of bread costs about 10 Indian Rupees or about 25 US cents. A large pizza at Pizza Hut/Dominos would cost about 100-300 INR, which is about 2.00 to 6.00 US Dollars. A low-cost meal in an average fast-food type restaurant would run you about 25 INR or less than 1.00 USD.
That's about all I have to say in this rant. Comparing wages without taking in the cost of living into account is crazy, but I guess it's convenient to ignore making misinformed arguments against "outsourcing" (which the corporations are responsible for, btw and not Indians who're "stealing our jaabs") and dissing Indians for being ready to work at lower wages.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Carter was a nuclear engineer. He was also one of our most unpopular presidents. That says a lot about the American people. Heck, Bush cannot even pronounce nuclear!
You may consider this troll or flamebait, but it's still completely true, and that's what really pisses you off.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
It started when Nixon first rolled out the red carpet to China's dictators and promtly dumped support for the occupied Tibetans' struggle to regain independence.
The only answer I have so far is greed. It seems that the formerly rather benevolently socialistic India now wants piece of the action, principles and ideals be damned. But hey, if the US and Europe can lick Chinese Communist Party's bottom, why can't the newly-assertive India? This corporate-lead foreign policy must be quite lucrative for the policy-makers too. And the Chinese Party cadres are masters in playing parties against each other.
Why else would the occupied Tibetans and Uighurs be so goddamn dispensable?
Next time you buy a Dell or visit Walmart (or other financiers of the Chinese Communist Party rule), remember that you aren't financing Hitler's autobahn network in the 1930s, but nevertheless something eerily similar.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Let's see if we're all still laughing in 18 months.
Meanwhile, the US has spent itself into such a massive hole that it can't keep up spending for education. Even colleges have had to turn away students because they've laid off so many staff.
An economy isn't so much based upon money, but on ideas and when there's poor education then the flow of ideas is stunted.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Whether or not they deserve their success is not relevant, though. What's relevant is that American companies and politicians are selling-out the people they're supposed to represent. Other countries would not so willingly sell out their education forces and work forces so a company could turn a quick buck with cheap labor. They may or may not deserve the success, but it comes not because American workers dropped the ball. It comes because America was looking out for number one. And number one is corporate America's bottom line - not the American citizen's bottom line.
And I'm not sure what you mean by lazy. I work 80 hour weeks and have racked up enormous quantities of vacation time as I've never taken one. Most people I know are in a similar situation. I suppose you can call that lazy, but... whatever.
See, the idea is that in a capitalist society, everyone competes against everyone else. But a capitalist society has caused prices to increase to the point where workers need a certain wage to survive and thrive in their own country. Other countries, however, not having exactly what you'd call a "capitalist society", don't have a cheaper workforce. By nature of not having a capitalist society, they are able to provide cheaper costs for the capitalists. Go figure.
Really, I don't know what people expect the American worker to do. Are we expected to just start working for 20% of our current salaries, give up our health benefits, 401ks and stock options? If so, when do we get this offer? I've seen PLENTY of people laid off from their tech jobs in favor of foreign labor and none of them were given the option of "cut your salary our lose your job".
If capital is free to move about the globe but labor isn't, then all that the owning class has to do to keep control is to keep moving from the rich, expensive countries to the poor, cheap countries. They let the rich countries become poor again, and then move back.
It's all about cheap labor, and if you think it's "Us" (the US and the West) vs. "Them" (China, India, etc.) then you have bought into the lie that the ruling class uses to keep control.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Don't get me wrong: I actually think that globalization is not such a bad thing (assuming some semblance of fair market practices - but then again, read Arundhati Roy for the dark side of the World Bank, globalization, etc.) I live in the US and because I live in a remote area I only telecommute so I both compete with foreign workers and also receive a fair amount of work from companies in India and Europe. It is all a matter of trying to stay competitive in the amount of work done per $$.
Where I think we really have problems is in our educational system. In the 1970s, most articles in ACM journals were written by Americans. Now relatively few articles are. In the US, we have the top end of the IT food chain covered - by this I mean super creativity, capital for investments, etc. Anyway, it bothers me how few young people that I talk with have any desire what so ever to pursue careers in science and engineering.
-Mark
Since India is hosting the nation of Tibet (in exile), teaming with China would be a complete slap in the face to their Tibetan guests. Not that the US really cares since Tibet holds nothing of interest to us. (like oil or strategic bits of land)
If the US supports this partnership, then it confirms the fact that it's okay for the US to oppose dictatorships in all other countries, but China's Communist dictatorship is perfectly acceptable.
GET FREE APPLE STUFF!
"we deserve to have our asses handed to us for our laziness"
According to every stat I've seen Americans are some of the hardest working people on earth. Maybe we work too hard based on our lack of vacations, crazed schedules, and heart disease.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
"where workers need a certain wage to survive and thrive in their own country"
Not to cut up your post too much, but the above should read "WANT (or even demand) a certain wage" instead of need.
If people were forced to work 90 hours a week at a $7 hourly job to feed themselves they would. If you disagree, well, go without food for a wekk then get back to me.
So what if China wants to dominate anything? What have they EVER done right along these lines? The success they are currently having is because they emulate the West. If they are going to do what they intend, they need to innovate, not imitate.
Since China is primarily a society of followers, I doubt very seriously they'll be able to do anything more than make themselves a player, and then only because of the volume they can introduce.
India, on the other hand, well, I see them as a force. Which is probably why China is so eager to steal from... ahem work with them.
Free trade economics does NOT guarentee:
* Good jobs for those displaced by cheaper nations
* Vibrant middle class
If it by chance worked out that way in the PAST, we were lucky. But the theory does not mathematically guarentee the above. If you say otherwise, please show me the study.
It may mean better averages, but averages don't mean much for those stepped on. Do we cut the legs off of one in ten so that nine can have bigger cars? That seems to be what we are doing, figuratively.
Table-ized A.I.
I'd hate to be stuck living in a free country, where I have to work 6 weeks less per year to have a higher standard of living. That would really suck.
I think you've not been looking to see who is on the faculty of those math and science departments. They are dominated by the Chinese. Historically, the chinese are expert mathematicians. The Egyptians may have created math, but the chinese have math down to an artform.
Both countries are very very good at math and science because of the kind of schooling they go through at a young age.
No, what the U.S. is good at is creative thinking and what to do with the science you've learned. Thats where the U.S. has it's strongest strength. We teach creativity in our school. (or rather we used to)
The Bush administration have steadily been screwing over the educational system due to lack of federal funding, restrictive rules. You won't be having the best schools for long since foreigners can't do any research anymore. I think you're going to see the end of any innovation thanks to this adminstration's anti immigration bent. 911 has done it's job, it's the beginning of the end.
sri
Yes, it is flawed. You do not have a right to a job. The job is not yours. The job has a certain value to the company and they state what that value is. You make the decision to take that job or take your job skills and experience somewhere else. If you do not have skills that will allow you to get another job then it is your fault. Why should I be forced to subsidize your lifestyle when you are directly responsible for your situation. You are the sum total of thousands of decisions you have made in your life. Some are good, some are bad. Deal with it.
The only solution is to drive developement where they can't go yet. Biotech/nanotech. We have to pour money and employ all our resources into developing those two technologies.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
So wait, you mean Cal-tech's full name is the California Baptist Technical Institute? MIT is actually the Methodist Institute of Technology?
God doesn't look too fondly upon liars like you.
What are you calling a recovery? The northeastern United States is still poverty-stricken (and I'm not talking about the Coastal areas). Infrastructure is decaying. Many of the region's lesser cities have become the worst minority ghettos in the country. The tech industry never came to the 'Rust Belt,' and it never will.
"America" as a whole will continue to prosper, yes. But each time a Big Change occurs entire regions become scar tissue, forever useless. It is a bit arrogant to consider this model of economics to be superior to any other.
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
If they are necessary then, by definition, everyone will follow suit or die.
The US is perfectly within it's rights to insist on a certain amount of equity when trading with other countries.
You have equity. If you don't want shoes made by semi-slave labour in environmentally destructive factories, then don't buy them. Buy shoes from US factories at the price you'd be paying for the imported ones if the exporting country ran to the same rules. If the same majority who chose the labour and environmental laws choose to buy the goods at the resulting price, there will be no problem.
The problem comes when you want to imagine that you can have jobs at the higher lifestyle price, but buy goods at the lower lifestyle price.
Tarifs are just a way for the US (or wherever) reasonably well off to, in the short term, screw the US poor. Force the poor to pay high prices for low price goods to subsidise the choices of those who could actually afford to buy the expensive US shoes if they weren't such tightwads.
And, of course, the slave labour and the environmental damage still happens on the other side of the tarif barrier.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
The're going to have to beat the US, which currently dominates global tech with Chinese hardware and Indian software.
--
make install -not war
According to every stat I've seen Americans are some of the hardest working people on earth.
It's more like most-working rather than hardest-working. If you compare productivity on an hourly basis, the EU is on par with America. They just take month-long summer vacations and have a lot more time off during the rest of the year. I think the numbers were around ~70% of the hours worked and ~68% of the producitivity per capita of the USA.
We do have a lot more stuff and bigger houses than the people on the EU do though.
I haven't seen a comparison with the 3rd and 2nd world countries.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I call BS on the lack of educational funding. The problem isn't that students don't have the opportunity due to lack of funding, that instead it has to due to lack fo motivation and drive thanks to our MTV overlords and lazy parents willing to stand up for morals and values. But then again, you can't teach what you don't know yourself as a parent. Hence, a self fulfilling prophecy.
Point being, you can never throw money at a problem that is a social issue in society. It's like mixing oil and water.
Life is not for the lazy.
Is when they start innovating themselves as opposed to competing on price.
There's always going to be people who won't want to buy cheap knock offs - for example, when wrenching on the (old) Harley (the one made in the USA) I want tools that are well made, not some Harbor Freight well at least they're cheap things.
But when Ling Liong Wen Hung Flung Wuong Chang Inc. comes up with the next killer app in conjunction with RamaChandraChakraGuru Enterprises, that's when to upgrade to brown alert.
We may not be cheap, but we are usually the engines of creation. Asia does it cheap, Europe does it with style (or at least with government subsidy) - we tend to do it first and forge ahead...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
>>The environmental laws exist because it was
>>determined they were necessary.
>If they are necessary then, by definition,
>everyone will follow suit or die.
What a silly idea! There is obviously a cost to exploiting or degrading (pollution) the environment. It may manifest itself in flooding (deforestation), decreased productivity from health problems (pollution), liability from lax controls resulting in damages (see: Bhopal), etc. At the same time, none of these things are going to cause humanity as a species to drop dead tomorrow--but they may collectively limit the future viability of the planet for human survival.
As a result, there is a "tragedy of the commons" scenario--we all share the environment, but the costs of exploiting it are seldom internalized, so companies are not discouraged from taking unfair advantage of it. Even if the processes are unsustainable in the long term, people will tend to take the short term view if it means they personally profit.
India has serious systemic problems in government and culture that they will need to overcome before they can be effective solving new problems.
In government, there is corruption and graft, the likes of which would take any American's breath away. This is accepted as "business as usual" by the Indian populace, who see few alternatives. The average Indian citizen has nothing to gain and a lot to lose if they are the "squeaky wheel", so everyone pretty much sits quietly and takes their share of the graft. Because of this situation, Indian infrastructure (roads, wiring, communications) is in a perpetual state of near failure. The areas where this is not the case are private networks where western companies are currently pumping money in and demand a high quality of service for their money. As soon as those funds disappear, the repairs on the redundant power generators, the satellite uplinks (made by western companies) the telecom equipment and redundant trunks (made by western companies) will all fall apart.
Based on my observations, the cultural problems relevant to tech workers revolve around attitudes towards authority and strategies of pedagogy and learning. Further, the two problems are tightly coupled and coupled with the enormous power disparities between cultural groups, which makes the problems even less tractable.
The education problem can be framed as one in which the teachers pour the knowledge that the students need into the student's heads and that's what they get. This "banking" method of teaching has been long discredited for developing creative thinkers (something that American and European educational systems can list among their strengths). If you go into a bookstore in Bangalore, most of what you will find are certification training books. When you talk to outsourcing companies about the team you might be hiring, they list certifications at you and will almost refust to discuss experience.
When you go to India to work with your team, you find that unless you can frame your problem and development approach as a series of strict single-option rules, your rules will not be followed. Rules of the form, "Either (1) or (2), whichever is more readable." will result at best in 100% (1) or 100% (2) and usually neither. When you ask about a shortcoming that you've found in a review or testing, they will ask where the problems are, then wait until you tell them exactly how to fix those problems before making changes. If the problems that you have mentioned are a part of a pattern and you point out other cases of the problem, you will find that only those instances that you specifically pointed out have been changed.
In short, until Indian technology workers start treating software development as a craft, they will only be the equivalent of the "web developer" here in the US. Until the Indian educational system teaches a craft approach to problem solving, Indian software workers are unlikely to have any success at anything other than the simplest and most motonous projects. Until the culture supports asking challenging questions to teachers and team leaders, the educational system and the products of that educational system are unlikely to change in any significant way.
I liked India. I liked most of the Indians I met (the souvenier sellers were not very likeable, except for 10-year old Madhu up there on Chumundi hill in Mysore). But aside from their personal appeal, I needed to build up an honest evaluation of their suitability for use by my employer.
My conclusion after working with them for a year and being overseas for a month of that: If it's trivial detail work that doesn't require any creativity or insight into the underlying design. If the task can be specified up front and is entirely based on widespread standards, the Indian team is perfect and will do a good job.
If, on the other hand, the module is core to the system, if the module requires careful design, if the requirements are poorly understood, if we need to have a lot
The Bush administration have steadily been screwing over the educational system due to lack of federal funding, restrictive rules.
Our education system has been screwed over by a mindset in this country that says don't do anything that might make someone feel bad. If a kid is slow at math, it's not because they're slow...the math program must be too difficult! Dumb it down! The SAT scores are low...it's not because the people taking it don't know anything..it must be too difficult. Dumb it down! We tell our kids, "If you think it's too hard, we'll make it easy as crapping your pants honey!" It does our education system no damn good, and we should be pushing our students HARD to do well in school. Make them learn. 99% of the time, all of the "challenged" kids in schools are just too damn lazy to do the work, and thus don't learn. But people in the country are too eager to "help" these kids out and boost their self esteems by sacrificing everyone else's education.
Do you think the Chinese and Indians care if a kid can't keep up with the classword? No, they don't. We shouldn't be holding all of our students back just because there are some who just don't get the material.
We have enough funds. All the money in the world won't help out education system if we keep doing things the way we are. We need to start teaching and stop coddling.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
You are aware that the only reason it was "made in Kentucky" was due to the "bureaucratic masterminds" in our country that placed import quotas on Japanese cars in the late seventies and early eighties? I find your faith in the power of free thoughts and markets in opposition to that of unbridaled economic power to be touching - naive, but touching. Power begets a desire for more power. Why do you think that econimic power is any different? In reality, unless free-thinking people band together to reign in economic power early via some sort of organized effort (like... let's say... a government?), they will have no choice but to reign it in later, when the price paid to do so will be much greater and generally involve much more blood.
That is all.
Contrary to what his handlers might tell you, and for all his blathering about 'political capital', Bush isn't that popular. His latest approval is about 50/50. Furthermore, most people agree with the action in Afghanistan (although this may be because most people don't realize that we didn't do too much).
is there more to what makes a popular president than you say?
If you had read my post, you would have seen that it said "generally". This is an important word.
The reality is that the bulk of the consumers will be in China and India and the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. That is where the people are and where most consumers still have a lot of buying to do to catch up or where the oil money eventually gets deposited.
Western influence will continue to wane and we are seeing the begining of end game strategy play out now, where a few well placed governmental trade hacks and their cronies have a sustainable long term evolutionary strategy. Only they are well positioned to accept bribes (or excuse me, campaign contributions) or receive sweetheart deals as the result of "free" trade agreement. They get a free lunch while you and your family eats sh@t and falls sucker to their PR team who makes you feel like "you are a winner" or better yet "about to be rewarded in the afterlife for good behavior".
China and Saudi Arabia already their man in Washington (Bush), who, surprise, surprise, has neither an energy policy (other than buy more oil from Saudi Arabia), a fiscal policy (other than more borrowing money from the Chinese, Japanese, and Saudis), nor a program to maintain leadership in high tech (other than weaponry, and Oh Yea a trip to Mars). Last week the US pulled out of high energy physics and is busy dismantling long standing governmental funding programs for other high tech university research for short term tax cuts for their friends (excuse me, campaign contributors) and to appease the right wing of his party who want to see an end of the biomedical/biotech industry in the US for religious reasons.
Money will increasingly flow to Chinese/Indian/Saudi markets, until they no longer have any use for our IOU's. This will occur once their technical advances elsewhere make US military hardware obsolete or largely dependent on overseas suppliers of electronic subcomponents.
The solution is obviously to elect Jeb Bush president so he can pass a constitutional amendment permitting his brother to run for president again. Most Americans are just a few short steps from being in a vegetative state anyway. I can hear the campaign promises now, "400 shopping only channels, a feeding tube, and a TV monitor in the security of your bedroom".
Praise the Lord. I can't wait to be saved. Where do I stand in line to get my social security benefits cut by 40%?
And I haven't seen any comparison since you're all talking out of your asses. How about an empirical study published in an accredited, peer-reviewed journal? Anyone got one of those?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Power begets a desire for more power. Why do you think that governments are any different?
If you're really worried about Chinese, Eastern Europeans, and the rest of the bogeymen, there is something you can do about them: push for governmental reform. Lower the income tax to 10%, elimintate 80% of the cabinet departments, and get rid of "Government is your granny" entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.
If you'd like to learn some basics about how economies function, I recommend this book by Thomas Sowell. While you're at it, buy a copy for that wacko who thinks a government-mandated push for biodiesel is going to solve all our problems.
"you'll only have to learn chinese and indu" What on earth is "indu"?
Thats the problem with the Patriotic Americans. While they can spend 15 minutes bashing other countries, they cannot make themselves spend 5 minutes to google the national language of india... jeez.... make some effort guys !
US employees are also consumers who already HAVE benefited from cheaper goods imported from other countries: clothing, steel, electronics, food, petroleum, etc.
Where you are unable to benefits from outsourced goods/services is where the higher level of US wages make the real impact: Real Estate, transportation, personal services (education, health care, etc.) (Check out the Paul Krugman column in the NYT on how the rising costs of health care impact both companies and individuals. Always an insightful read.) The US businesses are subject to most of these same costs unless they can PHSICALLY locate their operations offshore.
Thus, it is very interesting how the current political Powers that Be is refusing to remove tax BENEFITS to company with oversea operations. For ideological reasons, they refuse to enact changes that might somewhat recover these savings when US companies relocate offshore.
Today, after lots of plant closings, the UAW has realized that they need to work together with the company to find solutions that build the business as a whole while maintaining a fair cut for them.
Try telling that to General Motors, which is required by its UAW contracts to pay employees for NOT working [hence GM is forced to sell cars at a loss, under "Zero Percent Financing" schemes, just to keep their assembly lines running - i.e. they would lose even more money if the assembly lines were idle, because they would still be responsible for paying the same wages as if the assembly lines were running].
To see what this has done to GM, search the recent news headlines for general+motors+junk.
That doesn't mean organized labor is inherently bad.
Au contraire, organized ANYTHING is bad, and organized labor is particularly bad.
You seem a little angry there my friend.
It is very unproffessional to sell a product in another country with badly written documentation. If a company has not taken the time to get a proficient native speaker (most native speakers are very prone to creating errors), that may indicate that they have not taken the care to ensure the quality of their product either.
Saying that someone has bad English is not being rascist, it is telling the truth (if they do indeed have bad English).
And yes, having Engrish on products intended for the English market has plenty to do with lazy translators, and inferior education in the English language (though not neccesarily inferior education in other areas). What you said about the style icons is indeed true, however, these style icons are only appropriate if intended for (in particular) the Asian market.
And a lot of the "style icons" are not as benevolent as you think. A lot of them if translated directly into Chinese or Japanese would not mean anything bad. But because of a lot of colloquialist sayings, they actually mean bad things in English and I am sure that a lot of the time they do this on purpose.
English happens to be my third language, but I don't see myself distributing "Engrish" all throughout my writing, although my way of explaining myself may seem a little odd. But I believe that a lot of these people could have taken a little bit more effort into perfecting their English, and in the end, it does reflect on laziness.
Although I can write in Korean, I would never trust myself to actually use that in a professional situation as I know it is far from perfect. I would firstly make sure that I had learnt perfect grammar before proceeding to desecrate the name of my company with bad translations.
De Paciencia
Oh, we have all kinds of creative measures to move people out of the labour force here in Europe. There are such things as early retirement, retraining schemes, conscription, years and years of higher education or technical training, etc. It is standard economics to exclude from the number of unemployed those who are not actively looking for work: it's not unique to you, we all do that.
The most recent comparison I've seen suggested that, today, official unemployment rates in the industrialised countries are broadly comparable. There used to be big differences, but not so much any more. Unemployment in the UK and USA really is a lot lower than in France and Germany (this does not apply to all of the EU!), but social inequality and levels of severe poverty are much higher in the UK/USA.
Perhaps discussing we be over excellent british food washed down with bull's blood ^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h wine excellent Spain from.
hawk