Well, I certainly don't want those nuclear reactors to get built into vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.
As opposed to the fuel air bombs that are built into current vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.
Oddly enough, a nuclear reactor is a hell of a lot safer from an environmental standpoint than gasoline is. A small core of radioactivity doesn't go boom, it just get VERY hot and VERY radioactive. Gasoline in a river would do more damage.
Portland, OR's MAX system is entirely this way. The only part of it I hate is when I stop off my train at the destination and the spark gap causes my bluetooth headset to retrain to a new frequency.
No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.
I've got a pair of jumper cables that *almost* fit that description.....probably far too naroow though.
It's more convience stores than banks I think....the kinds of ATMs hit so far aren't the types used by banks that have backdoor access only (though, with the recent revelation that Diebold uses common A-Code keys, the same used for your desk drawers at work and the mini-bars in hotels, I have to wonder how secure even the bank style ATMs are); they're the stand alone kiosks used in malls and convience stores.
With Apu at the Qwik-E-Mart setting the damn thing up and keeping it stocked with money, is it any wonder that quite a few of them are still running on default passwords even when the PDFs I've seen all say in 14-point-bold font "RESET THIS PASSWORD"?
I remember when I went off to college, finally got to a city that had a decent supply of BBSs, and discovered online PORN for the first time. 256 color VGA online porn....
China doesn't really need the excuse to take what it wants by force, so giving it one isn't tantamount to launching their attack against the US. Also, I'd like to dispute an half-implied assumption - the US, with its resources, technology, alliances, etc., isn't far enough behind China on cannon-fodder for a Chinese invasion of the US to be profitable.
On the first- if you've got that large of an army, it's usually a good idea to have some political pretext for sending people into battle; otherwise you risk what Roosevelt faced when he refused to pay the promised bonus to WWI veterans. In other words, you might win the war- but your own returning vetrans will make sure you lose your next battle.
On the second- our technological army can't even capture one old crazy man with a bad kidney living in a cave, what makes you think they're sufficient to face a force several times their size invading a half a world away from the current theater of operations? Optimism only goes so far.
Also, what with the modern arsenal including as many nuclear bombs as it does, China probably couldn't afford to do anything of the sort even if it had twenty times the US's manpower.
Depends on whether or not they've learned the same lesson Iran has from Iraq. The US military simply refuses to defend against nuclear powers, we prefer our enemies to be weaker than we are.
Them bomabarding the American shores with finished goods for which they had provided both the materials and the labour?
No place close to as big of a problem- then at least we'd still have the capacity to make something.
What DO they get in return?
They get strategic advantage. It's all about strategy here.
The picture you're painting me - empty containers (assuming it wasn't a one-month oddity) going back, coming back full, and so over and over - sounds insane.
That is because it IS insane. It's giving away the country in return for cheaply made crap that we'd be better off making ourselves, if for no other reason than to have control over our own economy.
Moreoever, you lament it... I still don't understand.
I lament all that is insane, this is just one small corner. I also lament Islamics protesting the Pope calling them violent by killing nuns. The difference being that as an enemy, I think the Chinese are far more dangerous; for they can reason and think and I see no evidence that the Islamics can do anything other than react.
Leaving us with only one option I can think of - this isn't really happening. Either China is getting paid back indirectly, through trade goods it's receiving from the US's other trade partners, or the guys shipping in one direction didn't land the contract for shipping the other way (sounds very unlikely), or it was a one-month thing... either way, your description of matters can't be accurate, the way I see it.
Once again, click on that google link, it IS happening. However, what I'm trying to tell you is that the Chinese ARE being paid back indirectly, in three ways that are all linked: 1. It gives them the money they need to avoid the depressive stagflation Russia got into upon abandoning communism (this reason is almost completed; free market pricing is now common throughout China). 2. Building up their infrastructure at a profit for the eventual creation of a 1950s America style Chinese Middle Class; which would not be able to be supported with previous to 1980 infrastructure. 3. Strategic advantage militarily over the United States as Chinese Government interests invest the excess in US Defence Contracting companies, and transfer their manufacturing to China in the name of cost cutting.
It's amazing how many things are stamped "Made in the USA", but when you examine them, they're only assembled in the USA, but Made In China.
Those little bits of paper represent a promise, which, if push comes to shove, one might refuse to honour.
And given a country that can comfortably support a standing army of 5 or 6 million, do you have a suggestion on how one might refuse to honor such a promise?
If things are the way you put them (and I do not acknowledge it is so), freighters are, day and night, bringing in goods from China to the US, and take about nothing in return.
Actually, to me that would be a *very* bad sign- if they were taking serious amounts of raw materials from us, shipping them to China, and returning finished goods that would be an AWFUL waste of resources and time, let alone raising the price of natural resources for American manufacturers. The economic suicide of such a situation would be obvious.
hardly any manufactured goods, nothing.
Well, according to that google search I gave you earlier, we are now apparently back shipping the cargo containers themselves, as scrap...
Not to China, and, on that route and in those quantities, approximately nothing to anywhere else. By any realistic dissection of the situation (assuming for a moment it really is so), the US is having as many free lunches as it can take.
And my point is there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; there is ALWAYS a hidden cost that you don't want to pay (the original free lunches featured salty food in taverns- to get you to buy the beer). Don't be so naive as to think we will get away without paying this IOU eventually.
However, the aggregate behaviors of humans and markets that economics seeks to explan and understand are not particularly prone to running repeatable experiments
I think the real problem is that we don't allow ourselves to experiment widely enough in this area. It should be simple to set up experiments in this area, especially with the idea of autonomous free enterprise zones.
But we don't allow experimentation- in fact, if you try to propose any system other than the one currently in place, you become anathema.
If that's really so, what exactly is the US losing to China other than green bits of paper?
What, exactly, is so hard to understand that those "little green bits of paper" represent OWNERSHIP in our GOVERNMENT, and thanks to the law of eminent domain, OWNERSHIP in YOU?
True with tobacco, but not for "any crop"- wood products that are used in construction for instance keep their carbon locked up for two or three centuries at a time if properly maintained.
How am I morally bankrupt? I thought you said it was the Chinese and/or Middle Easterners who are trying to take over the world.
Their "one world government" wishes are just being enabled by a problem with the First World itself: that we no longer make anything that is actually *needed* for our survival. It's all done by others. That to me is moral bankruptcy- forcing others to do the work we should be doing for ourselves.
At any rate, the US/China trade imbalance can't go on forever. It's in both of our best interest for China to let the dollar weaken against the yuan, and to do it gradually. Sure, China could send the dollar plummeting and our interest rates through the roof, but then they wold lose the best customer for Chinese goods, which would screw up their own economy.
Do it after they've got their own middle class buying goods, and our little 300 million consumers look like a drop in the bucket compared to their billion. WHY would they want US to continue to be their best customer, when they've got a far better customer at home?
OTOH, if they could force a reversal- keep the yuan cheap and the dollar up- they could suddenly afford to use our natural resources to support their aging overpopulation- thus ruining America to get them through their demographic hump.
Plus there's still the fact that China is primarily a command economy- to them, the world economy is just another weapon to use in their battle to destroy the United States.
Worse yet for me personally: David Wu and Ron Wyden (both D-OR, my Democratic Senator and my Democratic House Critter) are very much neo-liberals who don't think there is anything wrong with sending US Jobs overseas- or importing as many workers as neccessary for the Congressional American Worker Replacement Program. And I've yet to see any Republican oppose them who wasn't a free traitor also.
I think I'm missing the mechanics of how I'm borrowing dollars from Japan. I'm pretty sure that the primary issuer of US Dollars is the United States Federal Reserve Bank.
And they're a private corporation that borrows money to do their operations. It's all just been a giant shell game for many years now.
Are you talking about T bills and notes? I'm pretty sure that the rates on those are determined at auction.
For now they are- but what's to stop a country with a large military from say, demanding a different rate, and backing it up with nukes?
Are you concerned that foreign governments might decide not to purchase T bills at auction, driving up interest rates?
Well, in part- but I'm more concerned that a signle foreign government with a history of wanting US Natural Resources will abuse the process and demand repayment all at once- at a higher interest rate than initially determined. We currently have a military that can't even find one old crazy man in a cave- what the hell are they going to do to protect us against Chinese nukes?
If the interest rate went up, ther would be plenty of investors to buy our T bills. I guess I still can't put my finger on what your concern is.
My concern is that we're basically selling the country out from under citizens. There is NO reason why other countries should be allowed to use our money to begin with, or have access to sell their goods here.
This is not a concept that I am familiar with. So Japan maintains a reserve of US Dollars. How does that entitle them to set US income tax policy?
They have a reserve of more than just US dollars- they have the ability to buy and sell US Congress critters like so many little ants, AND they have the ability to join with other nations such as China in forcing the issue.
This is also a new concept to me. Changing terms of past loans.
The Mafia does it all the time, as do banks- it's in the fine print on all of your credit cards that they can change the interest rate at any time unilaterally as the owner of the loan. Same thing counts in international loans- IF the country that owns the loan is strong enough to back it up with military force. The US American military has proven itself over the last 5 years to be rather ineffectual and impotent, which creates the danger of even Japan's Self Defense Force being enough to do the job.
I honestly am not following you. I think it would help if you would just explicitly state "Having a trade deficit causes A, which causes B, which causes C, which causes my children to be slaves to the Chinese."
Ok. Having a trade deficit requires that we borrow money from the Chinese, which gives them control over the loan, which allows them to decide to raise the interest rate at any time, which would force the United States into a position of either having to attach our wages to pay back the loan through taxes, or fight. It's the same reason that debt is always bad unless it results in an asset worth significantly more than the debt used to acquire that asset.
We're now to the point where we have to borrow money from China, Japan, India, and Saudi Arabia just to continue to feed our 310 million people (including illegal immigrants). That is not a sustainable position- eventually it WILL collapse and we'll lose anything resembling democracy over that collapse. It's stupid to borrow- it is a very sinful mistake that your children will pay for even if you don't.
Hey Ralph Nader, you got your guy into office, you can stop this line now. Yes, the Democrats attract the same venal and base scum as the Republicans, but let's talk about what's going on now, and that's that the GOP is controlled by folks like PNAC, who are some seriously scary Amerika Uber Alles folks. To say nothing of the religious right. Both of these overtly fascist movements operate with the blessing and these days, funding of the GOP.
The problem most people don't see is that PNAC has as many neo-liberals as they do neo-conservatives: the only solution is a nativist movement to counter them, and I've yet to see one strong enough. ALL the democrats and republicans I see on my ballot are PNAC/WTO supporters.
The exception could be this: A group of Socially Conservative Republicans who, unlike the current neo-cons, value honesty above profit would want such a temptation pulled. Balance that with a group of neo-liberal Democrats who like the ability to challenge elections based upon a lack of written record, and you could get EXACTLY the situation that is showing up in Maryland.
So if I send 15,000 scraps of paper to Japan and in return get a Honda Civic
It just occured to me that I'm perhaps misunderstanding you- are you saying it's a good thing to be a liar and a thief, as long as the consequences of your actions never catch up with you personally? In which case, perhaps I'm taking the wrong tack with you by taking the long view that consequences always will catch up with your actions and that it is the goal of asian cultures and middle eastern cultures to fullfill the same destiny that England thought it had in the 1800s.
It's entirely possible that you DO think that fiat currency is a good thing, and that you either don't see or are too morally bankrupt yourself to see the consequences of our actions with respect to foreign trade.
So if I send 15,000 scraps of paper to Japan and in return get a Honda Civic, how am I indebted to Honda or Japan?
Because you don't actually have 15,000 scraps of paper to begin with. To get those scraps of paper, you're borrowing them (in part) from Japan.
How is the US indebted to Japan?
Because US dollars are based on the US Treasury- and the US Treasury is currently mainly financed by foreign sources, having long ago exceeded the spending limit of US taxes.
Please factor into your answer that we are off the Gold Standard, so it's not like Japan can come to Fort Knox and knock on the door to demand $15,000 worth of gold.
Actually, being off the Gold Standard makes it even worse- it means that instead of demanding $15,000 worth of Gold, Japan could, theoretically, demand that the United States attach YOUR wages instead through the IRS.
I'm afraid I don't follow any of this or how it relates to foreign trade. Is China lending dollars to me or the US as a result of foreign trade (so that I can buy a T-shirt, or whatever)?
Yes, that's how credit card companies get the money they need to lend you when you buy a T-Shirt on credit, or how the Federal Reserve gets the money that they print. In addition to that (NEITHER of those is the US Government, both are private corporations), the US Treasury is currently borrowing around $1.5 TRILLION a year from East Asia, but that's in addition to the Trade Deficit, which is financed by the credit card companies and the federal reserve.
On what loan would China be charging 500% interest?
Loans to credit card companies, the Federal Reserve, and the US Treasury. Now of course, China is not about to do that- they currently charge 1-10% on such loans. But say one day they decide that they've finally build such a standard of living that they no longer need US consumers- that they can sell to their own people and not have to worry about sudden unemployment by cutting the US off. Suddenly, it's in their best interest to not only change the terms of future loans, but also unilaterally change the terms of past loans.
At which point they will have won the economic war, without firing a shot- and you can say goodbye to democracy.
True enough- though I'd replace "Software Engineers" with "Project Managers". I find quite often the engineers know what should be done, and are willing to code to a wider array of requirments, but quite often the Project Managers are the ones who limit the scope, make incorrect assumptions, then ignore Brooks' law at the end in an attempt not to make the project a failure.
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Well, I certainly don't want those nuclear reactors to get built into vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.
As opposed to the fuel air bombs that are built into current vehicles that crash by the thousand every day.
Oddly enough, a nuclear reactor is a hell of a lot safer from an environmental standpoint than gasoline is. A small core of radioactivity doesn't go boom, it just get VERY hot and VERY radioactive. Gasoline in a river would do more damage.
Portland, OR's MAX system is entirely this way. The only part of it I hate is when I stop off my train at the destination and the spark gap causes my bluetooth headset to retrain to a new frequency.
No, a largish filling station will need a major substation. And the cable going into your car will be a big thick cable; a pair of large fairly rigid conductor with several redundant layers of insulation over them, probably with sensors buried in the insulation to shut the system down at the first hint of a weak spot.
I've got a pair of jumper cables that *almost* fit that description.....probably far too naroow though.
It's more convience stores than banks I think....the kinds of ATMs hit so far aren't the types used by banks that have backdoor access only (though, with the recent revelation that Diebold uses common A-Code keys, the same used for your desk drawers at work and the mini-bars in hotels, I have to wonder how secure even the bank style ATMs are); they're the stand alone kiosks used in malls and convience stores.
With Apu at the Qwik-E-Mart setting the damn thing up and keeping it stocked with money, is it any wonder that quite a few of them are still running on default passwords even when the PDFs I've seen all say in 14-point-bold font "RESET THIS PASSWORD"?
Not far wrong though- Lulu press does offer a PDF version. And I know from experience that their DRM is nonexistant.
I remember when I went off to college, finally got to a city that had a decent supply of BBSs, and discovered online PORN for the first time. 256 color VGA online porn....
China doesn't really need the excuse to take what it wants by force, so giving it one isn't tantamount to launching their attack against the US. Also, I'd like to dispute an half-implied assumption - the US, with its resources, technology, alliances, etc., isn't far enough behind China on cannon-fodder for a Chinese invasion of the US to be profitable.
On the first- if you've got that large of an army, it's usually a good idea to have some political pretext for sending people into battle; otherwise you risk what Roosevelt faced when he refused to pay the promised bonus to WWI veterans. In other words, you might win the war- but your own returning vetrans will make sure you lose your next battle.
On the second- our technological army can't even capture one old crazy man with a bad kidney living in a cave, what makes you think they're sufficient to face a force several times their size invading a half a world away from the current theater of operations? Optimism only goes so far.
Also, what with the modern arsenal including as many nuclear bombs as it does, China probably couldn't afford to do anything of the sort even if it had twenty times the US's manpower.
Depends on whether or not they've learned the same lesson Iran has from Iraq. The US military simply refuses to defend against nuclear powers, we prefer our enemies to be weaker than we are.
Them bomabarding the American shores with finished goods for which they had provided both the materials and the labour?
No place close to as big of a problem- then at least we'd still have the capacity to make something.
What DO they get in return?
They get strategic advantage. It's all about strategy here.
The picture you're painting me - empty containers (assuming it wasn't a one-month oddity) going back, coming back full, and so over and over - sounds insane.
That is because it IS insane. It's giving away the country in return for cheaply made crap that we'd be better off making ourselves, if for no other reason than to have control over our own economy.
Moreoever, you lament it... I still don't understand.
I lament all that is insane, this is just one small corner. I also lament Islamics protesting the Pope calling them violent by killing nuns. The difference being that as an enemy, I think the Chinese are far more dangerous; for they can reason and think and I see no evidence that the Islamics can do anything other than react.
Leaving us with only one option I can think of - this isn't really happening. Either China is getting paid back indirectly, through trade goods it's receiving from the US's other trade partners, or the guys shipping in one direction didn't land the contract for shipping the other way (sounds very unlikely), or it was a one-month thing... either way, your description of matters can't be accurate, the way I see it.
Once again, click on that google link, it IS happening. However, what I'm trying to tell you is that the Chinese ARE being paid back indirectly, in three ways that are all linked:
1. It gives them the money they need to avoid the depressive stagflation Russia got into upon abandoning communism (this reason is almost completed; free market pricing is now common throughout China).
2. Building up their infrastructure at a profit for the eventual creation of a 1950s America style Chinese Middle Class; which would not be able to be supported with previous to 1980 infrastructure.
3. Strategic advantage militarily over the United States as Chinese Government interests invest the excess in US Defence Contracting companies, and transfer their manufacturing to China in the name of cost cutting.
It's amazing how many things are stamped "Made in the USA", but when you examine them, they're only assembled in the USA, but Made In China.
Those little bits of paper represent a promise, which, if push comes to shove, one might refuse to honour.
And given a country that can comfortably support a standing army of 5 or 6 million, do you have a suggestion on how one might refuse to honor such a promise?
If things are the way you put them (and I do not acknowledge it is so), freighters are, day and night, bringing in goods from China to the US, and take about nothing in return.
Well, don't take my word for it, Google It!
Not any serious amount of raw materials,
Actually, to me that would be a *very* bad sign- if they were taking serious amounts of raw materials from us, shipping them to China, and returning finished goods that would be an AWFUL waste of resources and time, let alone raising the price of natural resources for American manufacturers. The economic suicide of such a situation would be obvious.
hardly any manufactured goods, nothing.
Well, according to that google search I gave you earlier, we are now apparently back shipping the cargo containers themselves, as scrap...
Not to China, and, on that route and in those quantities, approximately nothing to anywhere else. By any realistic dissection of the situation (assuming for a moment it really is so), the US is having as many free lunches as it can take.
And my point is there ain't no such thing as a free lunch; there is ALWAYS a hidden cost that you don't want to pay (the original free lunches featured salty food in taverns- to get you to buy the beer). Don't be so naive as to think we will get away without paying this IOU eventually.
However, the aggregate behaviors of humans and markets that economics seeks to explan and understand are not particularly prone to running repeatable experiments
I think the real problem is that we don't allow ourselves to experiment widely enough in this area. It should be simple to set up experiments in this area, especially with the idea of autonomous free enterprise zones.
But we don't allow experimentation- in fact, if you try to propose any system other than the one currently in place, you become anathema.
If that's really so, what exactly is the US losing to China other than green bits of paper?
What, exactly, is so hard to understand that those "little green bits of paper" represent OWNERSHIP in our GOVERNMENT, and thanks to the law of eminent domain, OWNERSHIP in YOU?
which only hold carbom locked for the lifetime of the tree (unless they fall in a swamp to form coal in 350 million years).
Or if their wood is used in the housing industry- which if properly maintained can lock up the carbon for centuries.
True with tobacco, but not for "any crop"- wood products that are used in construction for instance keep their carbon locked up for two or three centuries at a time if properly maintained.
Are you from HP?
It shouldn't be- but sadly it is. Which is why I'm for commodity based money, that is restricted to citizen use.
Besides, I was wrong- only the PDF for THAT SPECIFIC MODEL has been removed. Operators manuals for hundreds of other ATMs still are up....
Don't bother- the PDF has already been removed from Google.
How am I morally bankrupt? I thought you said it was the Chinese and/or Middle Easterners who are trying to take over the world.
Their "one world government" wishes are just being enabled by a problem with the First World itself: that we no longer make anything that is actually *needed* for our survival. It's all done by others. That to me is moral bankruptcy- forcing others to do the work we should be doing for ourselves.
At any rate, the US/China trade imbalance can't go on forever. It's in both of our best interest for China to let the dollar weaken against the yuan, and to do it gradually. Sure, China could send the dollar plummeting and our interest rates through the roof, but then they wold lose the best customer for Chinese goods, which would screw up their own economy.
Do it after they've got their own middle class buying goods, and our little 300 million consumers look like a drop in the bucket compared to their billion. WHY would they want US to continue to be their best customer, when they've got a far better customer at home?
OTOH, if they could force a reversal- keep the yuan cheap and the dollar up- they could suddenly afford to use our natural resources to support their aging overpopulation- thus ruining America to get them through their demographic hump.
Plus there's still the fact that China is primarily a command economy- to them, the world economy is just another weapon to use in their battle to destroy the United States.
Worse yet for me personally: David Wu and Ron Wyden (both D-OR, my Democratic Senator and my Democratic House Critter) are very much neo-liberals who don't think there is anything wrong with sending US Jobs overseas- or importing as many workers as neccessary for the Congressional American Worker Replacement Program. And I've yet to see any Republican oppose them who wasn't a free traitor also.
Clinton was for a lack of state intervention in the market (NAFTA) and he was a Democrat. So no, you can't count on that.
I think I'm missing the mechanics of how I'm borrowing dollars from Japan. I'm pretty sure that the primary issuer of US Dollars is the United States Federal Reserve Bank.
And they're a private corporation that borrows money to do their operations. It's all just been a giant shell game for many years now.
Are you talking about T bills and notes? I'm pretty sure that the rates on those are determined at auction.
For now they are- but what's to stop a country with a large military from say, demanding a different rate, and backing it up with nukes?
Are you concerned that foreign governments might decide not to purchase T bills at auction, driving up interest rates?
Well, in part- but I'm more concerned that a signle foreign government with a history of wanting US Natural Resources will abuse the process and demand repayment all at once- at a higher interest rate than initially determined. We currently have a military that can't even find one old crazy man in a cave- what the hell are they going to do to protect us against Chinese nukes?
If the interest rate went up, ther would be plenty of investors to buy our T bills. I guess I still can't put my finger on what your concern is.
My concern is that we're basically selling the country out from under citizens. There is NO reason why other countries should be allowed to use our money to begin with, or have access to sell their goods here.
This is not a concept that I am familiar with. So Japan maintains a reserve of US Dollars. How does that entitle them to set US income tax policy?
They have a reserve of more than just US dollars- they have the ability to buy and sell US Congress critters like so many little ants, AND they have the ability to join with other nations such as China in forcing the issue.
This is also a new concept to me. Changing terms of past loans.
The Mafia does it all the time, as do banks- it's in the fine print on all of your credit cards that they can change the interest rate at any time unilaterally as the owner of the loan. Same thing counts in international loans- IF the country that owns the loan is strong enough to back it up with military force. The US American military has proven itself over the last 5 years to be rather ineffectual and impotent, which creates the danger of even Japan's Self Defense Force being enough to do the job.
I honestly am not following you. I think it would help if you would just explicitly state "Having a trade deficit causes A, which causes B, which causes C, which causes my children to be slaves to the Chinese."
Ok. Having a trade deficit requires that we borrow money from the Chinese, which gives them control over the loan, which allows them to decide to raise the interest rate at any time, which would force the United States into a position of either having to attach our wages to pay back the loan through taxes, or fight. It's the same reason that debt is always bad unless it results in an asset worth significantly more than the debt used to acquire that asset.
We're now to the point where we have to borrow money from China, Japan, India, and Saudi Arabia just to continue to feed our 310 million people (including illegal immigrants). That is not a sustainable position- eventually it WILL collapse and we'll lose anything resembling democracy over that collapse. It's stupid to borrow- it is a very sinful mistake that your children will pay for even if you don't.
Hey Ralph Nader, you got your guy into office, you can stop this line now. Yes, the Democrats attract the same venal and base scum as the Republicans, but let's talk about what's going on now, and that's that the GOP is controlled by folks like PNAC, who are some seriously scary Amerika Uber Alles folks. To say nothing of the religious right. Both of these overtly fascist movements operate with the blessing and these days, funding of the GOP.
The problem most people don't see is that PNAC has as many neo-liberals as they do neo-conservatives: the only solution is a nativist movement to counter them, and I've yet to see one strong enough. ALL the democrats and republicans I see on my ballot are PNAC/WTO supporters.
The exception could be this: A group of Socially Conservative Republicans who, unlike the current neo-cons, value honesty above profit would want such a temptation pulled. Balance that with a group of neo-liberal Democrats who like the ability to challenge elections based upon a lack of written record, and you could get EXACTLY the situation that is showing up in Maryland.
So if I send 15,000 scraps of paper to Japan and in return get a Honda Civic
It just occured to me that I'm perhaps misunderstanding you- are you saying it's a good thing to be a liar and a thief, as long as the consequences of your actions never catch up with you personally? In which case, perhaps I'm taking the wrong tack with you by taking the long view that consequences always will catch up with your actions and that it is the goal of asian cultures and middle eastern cultures to fullfill the same destiny that England thought it had in the 1800s.
It's entirely possible that you DO think that fiat currency is a good thing, and that you either don't see or are too morally bankrupt yourself to see the consequences of our actions with respect to foreign trade.
So if I send 15,000 scraps of paper to Japan and in return get a Honda Civic, how am I indebted to Honda or Japan?
Because you don't actually have 15,000 scraps of paper to begin with. To get those scraps of paper, you're borrowing them (in part) from Japan.
How is the US indebted to Japan?
Because US dollars are based on the US Treasury- and the US Treasury is currently mainly financed by foreign sources, having long ago exceeded the spending limit of US taxes.
Please factor into your answer that we are off the Gold Standard, so it's not like Japan can come to Fort Knox and knock on the door to demand $15,000 worth of gold.
Actually, being off the Gold Standard makes it even worse- it means that instead of demanding $15,000 worth of Gold, Japan could, theoretically, demand that the United States attach YOUR wages instead through the IRS.
I'm afraid I don't follow any of this or how it relates to foreign trade. Is China lending dollars to me or the US as a result of foreign trade (so that I can buy a T-shirt, or whatever)?
Yes, that's how credit card companies get the money they need to lend you when you buy a T-Shirt on credit, or how the Federal Reserve gets the money that they print. In addition to that (NEITHER of those is the US Government, both are private corporations), the US Treasury is currently borrowing around $1.5 TRILLION a year from East Asia, but that's in addition to the Trade Deficit, which is financed by the credit card companies and the federal reserve.
On what loan would China be charging 500% interest?
Loans to credit card companies, the Federal Reserve, and the US Treasury. Now of course, China is not about to do that- they currently charge 1-10% on such loans. But say one day they decide that they've finally build such a standard of living that they no longer need US consumers- that they can sell to their own people and not have to worry about sudden unemployment by cutting the US off. Suddenly, it's in their best interest to not only change the terms of future loans, but also unilaterally change the terms of past loans.
At which point they will have won the economic war, without firing a shot- and you can say goodbye to democracy.
True enough- though I'd replace "Software Engineers" with "Project Managers". I find quite often the engineers know what should be done, and are willing to code to a wider array of requirments, but quite often the Project Managers are the ones who limit the scope, make incorrect assumptions, then ignore Brooks' law at the end in an attempt not to make the project a failure.