Meanwhile California now has 5% of its power needs met by Wind Generation.
So I thought this was BS, but it is actually true! (source).
However it should be pointed out that California gets nearly the same amount of Total System Power from geothermal as it does from wind, and the power from solar is a measly 0.3% (less than biomass at 2.4%).
the difference in labour costs is a factor of 20 or so
This is too simple a measure, because US workers are far more productive than Chinese workers (because they have access to more capital).
World Bank numbers for 2008 say US GDP PPP per employed person is $65,480. China GDP PPP per employed person is $10,378. So a US employee is likely to be six times more productive than a Chinese employee, so you need to hire six Chinese workers to replace one American worker.
However because of the factor of ten difference in US vs. Chinese salaries, it still is around half as expensive for much manufacturing to be done in China.
I should add that Chinese wage rates are rising quickly (your factor of 20 was correct back in 2005), faster than Chinese productivity rises.
A study claims that in 2015, the productivity-adjusted wage difference between the US and China will only be 69%. So likely by 2020 there may not be much of a difference between manufacturing in the US or China.
The trade deficit with the US causes the Chinese central bank to "sterilize" the dollars it earns by purchasing US government debt to stabilize its currency.
Foxconn wage: $17 per day. Chinese average wage: $5 per day.
And that "Chinese average wage" hides the huge amount of poverty still in china. 486 million Chinese (more than the 300 million people who live in the US - 36% of the Chinese population) make less than $2/day (as of 2009).
And about 200 million Chinese still make under $1.25/day!
Only about 50 years ago, under Mao's Great Leap Forward, somewhere between 18 and 42 million Chinese starved to death in the name of communism.
It is a miracle they have been able to turn things around as well as they have. From 1981 to 2006, nearly 600 million Chinese have been brought above the poverty line ($1.25/day). 40-50 million are now working in (relatively) well-paying manufacturing jobs.
It would be much more honest to compare Foxconn to other Chinese factories, rather than to the practically-no-longer-existing factories in the Western world.
The robots in Western factories are being exploited! They are slaves forced to work 24 hours per day with no food or water, and are hooked up to electricity!
Yeah, I guess the comparison kind of falls short...
Suicide in China accounts for 26% of all suicides worldwide: It is the fifth leading cause of death in the country.
The suicide situation is slowly becoming better in rural China as the economy improves, rural people can migrate for work, leading to people of different generations to no longer live together as long as they used to - a source of much traditional tension within rural families.
No one is starving to death in China now (although Mao did starve 20-40 million to death during the Great Leap Forward).
Although for the 371 million Chinese eeking out a life doing small-scale farming in the rural areas, 75% of villages have no central water purifying systems, 84% percent lack garbage treatment plants and 80% percent have unhygienic toilets.
Meanwhile hourly compensation costs of manufacturing employees in China have risen from $0.57/hour in 2002 to $1.36/hour in 2008. And they added 14 million manufacturing jobs in that time, for a total of 34 million.
This drug could treat about 1,200 people in the US.
The cheapest drugs cost $100 million to bring to market, the most expensive cost $2 billion.
So let's say it cost $500 million, that is $416,000 per patient needed to recoup just the development investment.
Vertex has had operating losses each year since inception, including net losses of $754.6 million, $642.2 million and $459.9 million during the years ended December 31, 2010, 2009 and 2008, respectively.
It should be noted that while CFFT (the non-profit drug discovery and development affiliate of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) provided money to start VX-770 research, Vertex will pay a royalty to CFFT on the net sales of any approved drugs discovered from the collaboration.
Certainly there is a relative aspect to life around the globe. I would not expect a worker in a developing country to have the same living environment, the say pay, or the same life style as I.
Would you be happy if Europe banned all goods from the US because we here all don't get 1 month of paid vacation?
who is getting between 100Mbit/sec and 1Gbit/sec? Anyone? Anyone?
Think about the land line to the cell. Do you really think mobile carriers are going to put more than OC-3 (155 Mbps) to a cell? It is all they can do now to get DS-3 (45 Mbps) to cell sites. So maybe the first couple of users get speeds over 10 Mbps, but after you have a handful of people using broadband services, your speed will degrade.
A single digital channel can carry two HD channels
Correction: A single 19.39 Mbps DTV RF channel can carry one MPEG-2 HD video service that looks good, or two MPEG-2 HD video services that look crappy:)
"2012-01-20 16:35 G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm Possible January 23
SWPC Forecasters have determined that the CME from NOAA Region 1402 near disk center yesterday will likely pass above (north) of Earth. This glancing blow will cause just G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm activity. Look for the first signs of it around 1800Z (1:00 pm EST) on Sunday, January 22, with the bulk of the disturbance to occur Monday, January 23."
The big story at CES is the debut of Cubify, a $1299 MSRP 3D printer that uses technology similar to the Makerbot, but it is a bit more professionally assembled. It will launch with accepting a USB drive with STL files on it, and may later have WiFi with an open API.
It is stupid to measure trade in scientific/engineering goods and say the US is losing its edge.
The key is scientific/engineering intellectual property - where are things designed rather than manufactured. The IP for the iPhone was developed in the US, and Apple reaps most of the profits from iPhone sales, despite manufacturing none of it.
Google is headquartered in the US, and most of its profit come from ideas hatched in the US. Microsoft and Intel as well.
Of course all of these US-headquartered companies also have operations outside the US, but then foreign-headquartered multinationals (Sony, ARM, etc.) also have US operations as well.
I will admit that a lot of consumer electronics design is being done in Japan (and increasingly Korea) and that the US is pretty far behind them.
And also we have a crazy amount of people doing non-STEM majors in college, often on loans that will never be repaid because they either won't get a paying job in their field of interpretive dance or if they do get a job it won't pay much.
You seem to imply that third world countries would automatically be rich, if not for their corrupt government
Yes. Poverty in the modern era is due to lack of development is caused by government. Corruption is one factor, over-regulation of economy is another. See Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for example. 10 is very clean, 0 is very corrupt. US=7.1. Canada=8.7. Sudan=1.6. DR Congo=2.0. Greece=3.4.
An indication of over-regulation is the amount of the economy forced by regulation into the illegal informal sector. US=8.8%, Canada=16.4%. Tanzania=58.3%. Greece=28.6%.
As a coherent experiment in near equal beginnings and very different governmental results, at the end of the Korean war, both North Korea and South Korea were incredibly poor countries (although the North had more mineral wealth and industrial capacity). Today, South Korea is a country living at "western" levels, and North Korea is one of the poorest countries with highest levels of malnutrition and death due to starvation in the world.
I remember thinking as a teenager that technocratic socialism made perfect sense. Of course we could engineer a solution to make sure that everyone enjoyed life and had plenty.
Only after a brief stint with Democratic party politics did I realize how naive this was. Complex networks of governments and economies are impossible to control centrally. They must be organized to solve problems with self-organization.
The price signal is the most important self-organizing feature of the world. Only with free prices can thousands of people who don't know each other figure out how to mine the ore, refine the metal, design things, make the parts, assemble them, market and sell things, resell things, modify things, all in a network of increasing value to humanity.
There are certainly zones of central authority (sometimes at the level of an industry, a business, but often only within a department of a business). But they are just nodes in the network of the economy.
I'll note that a price of zero is still a price, and we know that is often a good price for some software. And of course if you use GPL software, you are paying a non-zero price in terms of opportunity cost of what you might do with that software.
The flight toward other entertainment channels is already in full swing. TV ownership is declining.
While TV ownership may have dropped from 96.7% this year down from 98.9%, the last Super Bowl still managed to draw an all-time high of 111 million viewers.
Slashdot Mirror
California does have the leading producer of steel in the western US...
Meanwhile California now has 5% of its power needs met by Wind Generation.
So I thought this was BS, but it is actually true! (source).
However it should be pointed out that California gets nearly the same amount of Total System Power from geothermal as it does from wind, and the power from solar is a measly 0.3% (less than biomass at 2.4%).
the difference in labour costs is a factor of 20 or so
This is too simple a measure, because US workers are far more productive than Chinese workers (because they have access to more capital).
World Bank numbers for 2008 say US GDP PPP per employed person is $65,480. China GDP PPP per employed person is $10,378. So a US employee is likely to be six times more productive than a Chinese employee, so you need to hire six Chinese workers to replace one American worker.
However because of the factor of ten difference in US vs. Chinese salaries, it still is around half as expensive for much manufacturing to be done in China.
I should add that Chinese wage rates are rising quickly (your factor of 20 was correct back in 2005), faster than Chinese productivity rises.
A study claims that in 2015, the productivity-adjusted wage difference between the US and China will only be 69%. So likely by 2020 there may not be much of a difference between manufacturing in the US or China.
You can already get a $40 ARM computer, the Duinomite-Mega
No Ethernet though...
Did they manage to wide-scale convert to IPv6 by the 23rd century?
India's latest GDP growth figure slipped to 6.9% and industrial production numbers showed a decline of 5.1% compared with the previous period.
The trade deficit with the US causes the Chinese central bank to "sterilize" the dollars it earns by purchasing US government debt to stabilize its currency.
Foxconn wage: $17 per day. Chinese average wage: $5 per day.
And that "Chinese average wage" hides the huge amount of poverty still in china. 486 million Chinese (more than the 300 million people who live in the US - 36% of the Chinese population) make less than $2/day (as of 2009).
And about 200 million Chinese still make under $1.25/day!
Only about 50 years ago, under Mao's Great Leap Forward, somewhere between 18 and 42 million Chinese starved to death in the name of communism.
It is a miracle they have been able to turn things around as well as they have. From 1981 to 2006, nearly 600 million Chinese have been brought above the poverty line ($1.25/day). 40-50 million are now working in (relatively) well-paying manufacturing jobs.
It would be much more honest to compare Foxconn to other Chinese factories, rather than to the practically-no-longer-existing factories in the Western world.
The robots in Western factories are being exploited! They are slaves forced to work 24 hours per day with no food or water, and are hooked up to electricity!
Yeah, I guess the comparison kind of falls short...
And by the way, how many subsistence farmers do you know that committed suicide due to farming?
I don't think you've ever been a rural subsistence farmer...
People are two to five times more likely to kill themselves in rural areas of China than in cities.
Suicide in China accounts for 26% of all suicides worldwide: It is the fifth leading cause of death in the country.
The suicide situation is slowly becoming better in rural China as the economy improves, rural people can migrate for work, leading to people of different generations to no longer live together as long as they used to - a source of much traditional tension within rural families.
When people are starving to death
No one is starving to death in China now (although Mao did starve 20-40 million to death during the Great Leap Forward).
Although for the 371 million Chinese eeking out a life doing small-scale farming in the rural areas, 75% of villages have no central water purifying systems, 84% percent lack garbage treatment plants and 80% percent have unhygienic toilets.
Meanwhile hourly compensation costs of manufacturing employees in China have risen from $0.57/hour in 2002 to $1.36/hour in 2008. And they added 14 million manufacturing jobs in that time, for a total of 34 million.
This drug could treat about 1,200 people in the US.
The cheapest drugs cost $100 million to bring to market, the most expensive cost $2 billion.
So let's say it cost $500 million, that is $416,000 per patient needed to recoup just the development investment.
Vertex has had operating losses each year since inception, including net losses of $754.6 million, $642.2 million and $459.9 million during the years ended December 31, 2010, 2009 and 2008, respectively.
It should be noted that while CFFT (the non-profit drug discovery and development affiliate of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation) provided money to start VX-770 research, Vertex will pay a royalty to CFFT on the net sales of any approved drugs discovered from the collaboration.
Certainly there is a relative aspect to life around the globe. I would not expect a worker in a developing country to have the same living environment, the say pay, or the same life style as I.
Would you be happy if Europe banned all goods from the US because we here all don't get 1 month of paid vacation?
who is getting between 100Mbit/sec and 1Gbit/sec? Anyone? Anyone?
Think about the land line to the cell. Do you really think mobile carriers are going to put more than OC-3 (155 Mbps) to a cell? It is all they can do now to get DS-3 (45 Mbps) to cell sites. So maybe the first couple of users get speeds over 10 Mbps, but after you have a handful of people using broadband services, your speed will degrade.
A single digital channel can carry two HD channels
Correction: A single 19.39 Mbps DTV RF channel can carry one MPEG-2 HD video service that looks good, or two MPEG-2 HD video services that look crappy :)
"4G: 35Mbps down"
Once there are hundreds of 4G phones watching streaming video on your cell, I wonder if these results will continue to be hold...
From http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/
"2012-01-20 16:35 G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm Possible January 23
SWPC Forecasters have determined that the CME from NOAA Region 1402 near disk center yesterday will likely pass above (north) of Earth. This glancing blow will cause just G1 (Minor) Geomagnetic Storm activity. Look for the first signs of it around 1800Z (1:00 pm EST) on Sunday, January 22, with the bulk of the disturbance to occur Monday, January 23."
The big story at CES is the debut of Cubify, a $1299 MSRP 3D printer that uses technology similar to the Makerbot, but it is a bit more professionally assembled. It will launch with accepting a USB drive with STL files on it, and may later have WiFi with an open API.
But I don't know any technologists who aren't MORE concerned about... job losses due to offshoring,
There are 10's of millions of geeks in China and India who are looking forward to offshoring...
It is stupid to measure trade in scientific/engineering goods and say the US is losing its edge.
The key is scientific/engineering intellectual property - where are things designed rather than manufactured. The IP for the iPhone was developed in the US, and Apple reaps most of the profits from iPhone sales, despite manufacturing none of it.
Google is headquartered in the US, and most of its profit come from ideas hatched in the US. Microsoft and Intel as well.
Of course all of these US-headquartered companies also have operations outside the US, but then foreign-headquartered multinationals (Sony, ARM, etc.) also have US operations as well.
I will admit that a lot of consumer electronics design is being done in Japan (and increasingly Korea) and that the US is pretty far behind them.
And also we have a crazy amount of people doing non-STEM majors in college, often on loans that will never be repaid because they either won't get a paying job in their field of interpretive dance or if they do get a job it won't pay much.
You seem to imply that third world countries would automatically be rich, if not for their corrupt government
Yes. Poverty in the modern era is due to lack of development is caused by government. Corruption is one factor, over-regulation of economy is another. See Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for example. 10 is very clean, 0 is very corrupt. US=7.1. Canada=8.7. Sudan=1.6. DR Congo=2.0. Greece=3.4.
An indication of over-regulation is the amount of the economy forced by regulation into the illegal informal sector. US=8.8%, Canada=16.4%. Tanzania=58.3%. Greece=28.6%.
As a coherent experiment in near equal beginnings and very different governmental results, at the end of the Korean war, both North Korea and South Korea were incredibly poor countries (although the North had more mineral wealth and industrial capacity). Today, South Korea is a country living at "western" levels, and North Korea is one of the poorest countries with highest levels of malnutrition and death due to starvation in the world.
I remember thinking as a teenager that technocratic socialism made perfect sense. Of course we could engineer a solution to make sure that everyone enjoyed life and had plenty.
Only after a brief stint with Democratic party politics did I realize how naive this was. Complex networks of governments and economies are impossible to control centrally. They must be organized to solve problems with self-organization.
The price signal is the most important self-organizing feature of the world. Only with free prices can thousands of people who don't know each other figure out how to mine the ore, refine the metal, design things, make the parts, assemble them, market and sell things, resell things, modify things, all in a network of increasing value to humanity.
There are certainly zones of central authority (sometimes at the level of an industry, a business, but often only within a department of a business). But they are just nodes in the network of the economy.
I'll note that a price of zero is still a price, and we know that is often a good price for some software. And of course if you use GPL software, you are paying a non-zero price in terms of opportunity cost of what you might do with that software.
"Corporations are currently the largest source of corruption and the largest threat to personal rights in the western world."
And governments are the largest source of corruption and largest threat to personal rights in the non-western (i.e. poor) world, keeping them poor.
But even the most conservative candidates (like Ron Paul - who ironically is very isolationist) don't speak much to cutting the US defense budget
"The Department of Defense would see $832 billion disappear from its budget during Paul's first term in office"
(source)
The flight toward other entertainment channels is already in full swing. TV ownership is declining.
While TV ownership may have dropped from 96.7% this year down from 98.9%, the last Super Bowl still managed to draw an all-time high of 111 million viewers.