Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Billionaire Jack Ma Says the US Wasted Trillions on Warfare Instead of Investing in Infrastructure (cnbc.com)
Alibaba founder Jack Ma fired a shot at the United States in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. An anonymous reader shares a report: Ma was asked by CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin about the U.S. economy in relation to China, since President-elect Donald Trump has been talking about imposing new tariffs on Chinese imports. Ma says blaming China for any economic issues in the U.S. is misguided. If America is looking to blame anyone, Ma said, it should blame itself. "It's not that other countries steal jobs from you guys," Ma said. "It's your strategy. Distribute the money and things in a proper way." He said the U.S. has wasted over $14 trillion in fighting wars over the past 30 years rather than investing in infrastructure at home.
To be sure, Ma is not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland. Still, Ma said this was the reason America's economic growth had weakened, not China's supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a "wonderful" and "perfect" strategy. "The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization," Ma said. "The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions -- the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. ... But where did the money go?"
To be sure, Ma is not the only critic of the costly U.S. policies of waging war against terrorism and other enemies outside the homeland. Still, Ma said this was the reason America's economic growth had weakened, not China's supposed theft of jobs. In fact, Ma called outsourcing a "wonderful" and "perfect" strategy. "The American multinational companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization," Ma said. "The past 30 years, IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, they've made tens of millions -- the profits they've made are much more than the four Chinese banks put together. ... But where did the money go?"
When you get a lecture from a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece...
I think the Chinese would be halfway down the South China sea and entering both Korea and perhaps even Japan. India would be left to fend for itself on various fronts.
Same goes for the Middle East, it would probably be either a pane of glass or Israel would be burning, the Suez and Panama canals, perhaps even the Bering Strait, the Chinese sea and various other shipping passage ways would either be closed or very expensive to cross.
If the US didn't intervene at all in various geopolitical issues across the world and didn't maintain a full fleet of carriers at all time, all Europeans would be speaking German, Russian and/or Chinese by now. NATO would've dissolved and the EU probably would never came to exist.
Geopolitics is very hard and the US having a presence everywhere has value, 1 year's worth of the US GDP in exchange for the security and trade it enables for the last ~100 years isn't a bad bargain.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You are correct in that there would still be an annual deficit. Current projections for 2018 show a deficit of $810 billion. That would be mean cutting defense spending in half would account for a 38% reduction in our yearly deficit.
I don't know about you, but if I could reduce my deficit by one third, that seems like a pretty good idea.
I like your logic, but I can do ya one better. Medicare and medicaid account for $1.2 trillion in spending. So if you cut healthcare spending in half you could save $600 billion per year, which would be a 74% reduction in the defecit.
I don't know about you, but if I could reduce my deficit by two thirds, that seems like a pretty good idea.