There's a bit more to it than even that- on many foodstuffs, market price is far below cost of production anywhere in the world- farming is simply not profitable without subsidies. Which is a scary thought- it means that capitalism can't feed people without government interferance, regardless of how efficient we become.
If it weren't for subsidies, there would be no food production in the United States. Even with a tractor, you can't hit the price differential for somebody making $1/day.
Give me a single fucking example of a myth that has consistent predictive power at all comparable to even Newton's theory of gravity.
The rice planting calendar of the Gods of Bali. You can go look it up- it's a particularily interesting example of how a myth predicted a certain outcome, westerners came in and said "This is all superstitious bunk, we'll replace it with modern agriculture techniques", only to produce a bumper crop year followed by three years of famine. It's also a good warning story on why scientists shouldn't be bigots.
Uh, I think you meant "objective evidence."
No, I meant subjective evidence. It's easy to reverse a theory in science if objective evidence shows it to be false; but surprisingly hard if all you have is an avalance of subjective evidence.
Anyway, you were talking about electrons: give me a single fucking piece of evidence that indicates the present-day model of electrons is false, but your "elves inside the CRT" is better.
I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying that it is EQUALLY SUFFICIENT and there's no reason to be bigoted about one over the other.
Believing in unicorns or that Zeus throws lightning bolts from the heavens is not the same as believing that there exist a particle with mass of 9.10938188e-31 kg (known to about one part in 10^-7), charge of 1.602176462e-19 C (known to a few parts in 10^-8), and a gyromagnetic ratio of -2.0023193043737 (known to a few parts in 10^-12).
Yes it is- the only difference is the definitions. Though I would have said beliving that God Judged Those Who Sat on The Judgement Seat of the Arc of The Covenant- it's more well known to a Christian society and has been proven to work just as well whether you're talking about a vengefull, wrath filled desert God or a three farad gold plated capacitor drawing static electricity from a desert environment.
There is significant holding of US debt by foreign companies and reserve banks, this is true. However, it's worth remembering that this debt is payable in dollars, and we can print those if we have to.
Until, of course, the bank requests payment in land instead, because we've printed so many dollars that dollars become essentially worthless.
For the public debt, there's simply no risk of us not repaying because of this.
Bullshit. There isn't an infinite number of atoms in the universe, and eventually we'll run out of atoms to print money on.
For corporate debt, it doesn't really matter who owns those bonds - companies will succeed or fail as always, and be rated on their ability to repay debt as always.
And given America's current public and private debt, anybody who loans money to us is either an idiot or looking to grab American assets when the time comes for America to declare bankruptcy. My guess is the second, and we're fast approaching that bankruptcy now that Iran and Venezula are planning on accepting Euros for Oil.
Just because something has proven to be a good thing in the past, does *not* mean that it will be a good thing in the future. And in fact, I'd say there's a good argument to be made for it not being a good thing in the past.
A poor man when everybody he knows is equally poor is happy with his lot- he knows life's a struggle but he also knows that his world contains no luxuries- so he deals with the struggle as best he is able and makes time for recreation.
A poor man who knows that there are people living in luxury is an unhappy being indeed- he knows he is poor, he knows life is a struggle for him- but he also knows that there's no way out of the struggle for him and that other people are living in luxury off of his labor.
Advancement is merely advancement- it's not always good or always bad, it just is. But advancement that produces inequality is a truly terrifying thing.
Or for that matter- simply shut down the ports they own for six weeks and we'll have massive starvation here. That little tidbit came out on Lou Dobbs during the debates on the Dubai ports deal- China owns a lot of ships and West Coast ports operations, and overall we've only got a two week supply of food TOTAL in this country.
On the last bit- I'm not talking about produce. Out of the Dubai ports deal it was revealed that if a foreign government-owned company decided to simply shut down our ports (as is their right if they own the port operations) as a non-nuclear first strike against us, we simply don't have enough food in this country to survive more than a two week seige without major food shortages- and no more than a six week seige without major starvation. That's STUPID. A completely rediculous hole in our national security- and final proof that subsidies don't work, since farm subsidies in the 1960s were oringinally passed to avoid such a situation. We need to end food exports now- tell GATT and the WTO to go fuck themselves, free trade is too much of a national security risk.
ES all this trade profitable--do you think companies outsource because they anticipate taking a loss from it?
The companies don't take the loss- the country does. It's been 30 years since America has made a profit with international trade- only traitors like AMD and Intel do. They lie about where their fab plants are. They lie about all sorts of things, because it is more profitable to lie than to tell the truth. It's far more profitable to get money by fraud than by being honest.
If foreign countries export things to us without importing anything from us, then they've given us things for free.
Nope, it just means that they own us- and will kill you if you refuse to pay the debt when it comes due. They'd love to kill us off and resettle the United States to relieve their population stress. And they will eventually kick you out of your house to do it.
India doesn't have 29% unemployment--the actual figure is just 9%. And even that's exaggerated because many people in India have "unofficial" employment on the side.
That's not counting the Dahlits- who don't show up on India's employment numbers because they're not considered human.
China does not have 1/100th our minimum wage.
Then why does Wal*Mart get EVERYTHING in their stores from there?
The reason China and India have much lower wages is because their labor productivity is much lower. Right now, farming in India is done with a hand plow. Yes, you can produce 10x more than the Indian farmer because you have huge tractors--and that's precisely why your wage is 10x higher
What does that matter when there aren't enough jobs to go around right now? What does that matter to me? I'm tired of free traitors giving away my civil rights.
Right now, China and India cannot make CPUs (Intel and AMD), large airplanes (Boeing), pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, Merck, etc), fabrication equipment, large multiway servers (Sun, IBM, HP, Fujitsu), windows-compatible OSes, capital goods of various kinds, or even adequate food to feed their populations, which is why the U.S. is the world's largest agricultural exporter. Note that all the items on that list (except the last one) are much more profitable and pay much higher wages than what China and India export to us.
You've obviously never looked at the label on the CPUs (I've got both Intel and AMD chips that have "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in China" stamped on them). You also apparently don't know that Boeing has a plant in Bejing that makes wings, tail sections, cockpits, and seats. You don't seem to understand that most of our fabrication equipment now comes from China, that IBM is now owned by Lenovo (a Chinese company), that HP has moved its manufacturing overseas, or that Microsoft now does most of it's coding in Hydrabad. You also apparently missed the news story last week that the United States now exports so much food that we only have a two week supply for our own people. NONE of this is profitable anymore.
If China and India didn't want to buy anything from us at our inflated prices then they would stop exporting to us.
Not as long as OPEC still sells it's oil in dollars or as long as the New York Stock Exchange is still willing to sell American businesses to foreigners- there's plenty they want to buy. Oh yeah, and have you read the GATS treaty? The one that forces the United States to sell off it's infrastructure to foreign interests?
Even when Indians and Chinese buy U.S. assets or debt, it just means they're delaying (and slightly increasing) our exports to them.
And what exports would those be? All of your examples except for food are made in China and India.
China's minimum wage is not 1/100th of ours. In fact the PPP-adjusted median income in China is around $6,000 compared to around $40,000 in the U.S. Even non-PPP adjusted, the figures are nowhere near what you indicate.
And yet workers at Ohio Art's plant, making Etch-a-Sketches, now earn 24 cents an hour- compared with the $24/hr they were paying plant workers in Ohio just 5 years ago.
If China were to "flood the US markets with computers and cars" without buying anything from the US in return, then the Chinese have given the US free computers and cars without getting anything in return.
Oh, they buy things in return all right- they buy our companies and stocks, so that the profit from our companies goes back to China instead of staying in America. They buy up our water supplies under the GATS treaty so that you have to pay Bejing every damn time you turn on a faucet in your house. They buy our politicians so that tariffs don't return and ruin their great deal. Oh yeah, and they then buy up Saudi Oil with that excess profit to fund the terrorists.
You wish to shoot Ricardo because he wrote something you disagree with? You certainly live up to your handle, Mr Marxist! Perhaps you should read what Ricardo wrote before shooting him.
I've read him. He is a propaganda artist for the very people that have proven themselves to want me dead.
Everything that is not labor-intensive: airplines (commercial and military), cars, steel-forging technologies, supercomputers, nuclear power plants, advance medical imaging equipments, latest CPUs, to name a few.
Every last one of these things is currently made in China, not in the United States. Nobody's stupid enough to manufacture any of this in the United States anymore, unless it's to sell to the US market ONLY and even then only to cut shipping costs when they can use robots instead.
China is willing to trade 800 million t-shirts with USA to buy one Boeing 747.
Except for the fact that 3/4ths of the parts in that 747 were made in China.
Who do you think benefits more from this trade?
Near as I can tell, those people rich enough to own stock in Boeing and their Comrades in the Bejing government. Certainly no AMERICANS benefit at all- just a bunch of free traitors.
So the key to beating China would be to stop exporting to them? End all trade now. Sounds good to me. They've threatened us with nuclear war several times in the last few years- time to cut them off.
And yet, manufacturing capacity (if not jobs) is returning to the US from China every year - robots work cheaper than people. America has one huge advantage over India and China right now: we have infrastructure. We have reliable power, good safe roads, good telecom infrastructure, and universities capable of graduating world-class engineers in every corner of the country. China and India have this in a few cities. We still have a real advantage in producing goods that require more than just cheap mindless labor.
All that means nothing- I can reduce any good to cheap mindless labor, and infrastructure is far better in India and China than you know. Besides- if you just keep infrastructure in the manufacturing centers, then you can keep paying people slave labor prices and draw them away from the farms.
A factory with high-tech automation, reliable power, and reliable delivery of raw materials is going to outproduce a sweat-shop eventually, it's just a matter of technology. I know my company, for example, might want to move all of its engineering work to India ASAP, but it simply can't: India doesn't have the infrastructure available to it yet. Not enough power and telecom to move big test labs there, not enough engineers graduating every year to move design there at what we want to pay.
And yet Intel is doing it- they're putting in 9 new fab plants and now are doing design and test work there. It's not a big problem- you just generate your own electricity on site and you can put a plant virtually anywhere.
Marx predicted this exact thing. He's been wrong for over 100 years in a row, so pardon my optimism. Growing up, my family was damn poor, but we could afford shoes for everyone, more than one chair, "silverware" (not silver, of course) for everyone to eat with, and a car. There's wasn't a single working-class family who could afford any of these things at the start of the industrial revolution. Just about every manufacturing job that existed 100 years ago is gone today, and yet everyone is better off. Ain't technology grand?
Perhaps you've heard of this guy named David Ricardo?
Yes I have- but I consider him to be a liar and a fraud. His faked numbers don't pan out in the real world- and I strongly suspect the merchant class of his day paid him to lie to Parliment to lower tariffs, eventually causing the Recession of 1988.
Even if, as you claim, EVERYTHING can be made cheaper in India than in the U.S., trade is still MUTUALLY beneficial. Unless everything is made cheaper in India in *exactly* the same ratio, there will be benefits to specialization and trade.
Since the reason everything can be made cheaper in India at 1/10th the labor cost is due to a difference in standard of living and the value of currency, yes, everything is cheaper by exactly the same ratio. Same with China, except that ratio is 1/100 instead of 1/10. Ricardo lied to you.
Who the hell needs a better toaster enough to pay 100x the cost of labor? NOBODY. Same with computers, cars, every other mature technology. Innovate all you want- unless you produce something that is enough better to actually justify the cost, it'll be like HDTV- nobody will buy it.
Please explain these "subsidies" that you talk about. If there are subsidies, they are very much targeted at commodity groups. The US has given up most subsidies, at the behest of other countries (who keep their own subsidy programs in place to ensure that THEIR markets are protected from US exports).
As any farmer knows- the cost of labor in the United States is so high now, and food prices so low, that food has to be produced for below cost. Thanks to agribusinesses bribing Congress, the subsidies meant to allow farmers to do that are also being used to sell our food overseas for less than local production cost. The US Taxpayer is underwriting this stupid unfair trade scheme. Personally, I say the US needs to stop exporting altogether because of it- at least until such a time that we consume less than we produce.
Atoms are a good example- they're completely mythical, a model. Nobody has ever actually *seen* an atom, they're a consensus construction based on how certain molecules and compounds work- and even then they required a hell of a lot of scientists to get together and *agree* on how those molecules work. This is *exactly* the same as how the Bible (or any other holy book you care to name- the Vedas and even the Tibetan Bardo were the same) got written.
This lasts only as long as we are unwilling to lower our prices.
When was the last time you ever saw a government or corporation willing to lower their prices and accept deflationary forces?
The damage to our income is totally countered by the gain we get with lower foreign prices.
Really? Then why have real wages in the United States fallen by 3% adjusted for inflation in the last 5 years? Why have technology salaries fallen 5%?
Factor in some smart middlemen lopping off some money to become billionaires, and you have a temporary situation where globalization ends up not helping some people much at all. But that's okay.
Why is that OK to you? It's damn sight not OK to me- we should only do trades where EVERYBODY wins. If one person loses- that's something we shouldn't be doing.
Myths don't respond consistently to input conditions. Otherwise, they'd be science, you dumbfuck.
That's exactly my point. Myths are far more scientific than you think- and science contains far more mythology than you'd like to admit.
Religions don't "work" in ANYTHING LIKE the way scientific theories do.
Yes they do- in fact, the councilar method and the scientific method are both ways of finding truth through consensus- in fact, one was created from the other.
Everybody is always praying to God or Allah or the FSM to help everybody they like, and God still randomly fucks with people by giving them terrible cancers, or sending hurricanes, or tsunamis, or letting other religious zealots fly planes into the buildings they happen to work in.
Uh, no- to both. But hey, you've got a hell of a lot to learn about theology and how it works.
Am I supposed to believe God is on the side of terrorists, because their experiment in the name of God succeeded?
No, you're supposed to believe that reality is so large, so infinite, that it can't be contained within a single theology, logic system, or model. Only stupid fundamentalists believe that- and like you say, it's demonstratable that their certainty, while it may work for them, doesn't work for other people. Certainty is where we all go wrong- what we're certain about, we're wrong about, including the idea that certainty is wrong.
God answers your prayers? He's wonderful! Thank you God for letting me win the lottery!! Thank you God for letting me win the Superbowl!! Or he doesn't answer your prayers, so he is testing your faith. Thank you God for testing my faith by letting me lose the lottery!! Thank you God for testing my faith by letting me lose the Superbowl!! Thank you God for wiping out my family in a tsunami, because we all are sinners, although I was away on a trip at the time, so my sinning family was wiped out, but my sinning ass was left behind to marvel at your wonderful, wise, and just ways, O God!
Which has nothing at all to do with organized religion and the councilar method of finding truth.
What controlled experiments can you conduct on religious beliefs?
What uncontrolled experiment can you conduct on a scientific theory?
That religious believers keep believing in their religion, no matter what happens?
Kind of like scientists keep believing in their theories long after subjective evidence shows them to be false?
That's not a test of religion, its a test of believers.
Just like controlled experiments are not a test of theories, they're a test of how well scientists can follow the controls.
This is a very good point. Even if each item is cheaper to make in India, when considered seperately, that doesn't mean that India can produce all items cheaper, if it tries to do everything.
Does it matter? They've got 29% unemployment, and 1/10th our minimum wage. That's a hell of a lot of worker dollars to soak up before productivity means anything at all- and when you throw in the fact that they could be trading with China, which adds another billion workers and 1/100th our minimum wage, our productivity doesn't mean squat unless it's 100x better than the entire rest of the world in at least one item.
In any case, India is a cheap labor market, but it has poor infrastructure, so it doesn't scale very well. It's going to take 50 years to build good roads, good power, and good communications infrastructure out to the far corners of India, just as it did here, and by that time India will no longer be a cheap labor market.
The point isn't that. The point is- they can do all of that with native labor importing nothing, so it means nothing as far as trade is concerned.
Also, while we're still losing manufacturing jobs to China, for example, China is losing manufacturing jobs far faster to robots. Eventually, all manufacturing will be highly automated and there won't really be any manufacturing jobs anywhere. That's just the continuation of the industrial revolution to its inevitable conclusion, and that will benefit everyone to judge from history.
Either that, or it will be feudalism all over again- the robots will benefit the top 1% of society and everybody else will simply starve to death.
No, not everything can be made cheaper somewhere else.
You're wrong about that.
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
But since China's minimum wage is 1/100th of ours- they pay only the eqivalent of.1 hour to produce a computer, and.02 hours to produce a car. It's still cheaper to do both in China- NO abosolute advantage for America at all.
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
But- here's the big one- China has a billion workers to feed. They have a virtually unlimited supply of labor. So they can make all the computers and cars THEY need, PLUS enough for export to swamp the markets of the United States and Europe with computers and cars, and drive the native manufacturers in the US and Europe out of business entirely, of both computers and cars.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
But since China has a relatively unlimited supply of workers, they can just bring more factories online and outproduce the United States in both cars and computers- thus utterly destroying the US market with cheaper goods.
Now, that's very basic trade economics.
It's also complete bullshit at this point, since China's wages are 1/100th of ours and they have no shortage of labor.
It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation.
It actually shows no such thing, because it has a severe lack of input data.
Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
Productivity means NOTHING when you have a billion starving workers to feed- you can always overcome productivity with sheer numbers. Ricardo was an idiot and if he were alive today I'd shoot him just for proposing such a dangerous piece of sheer propaganda and lies.
We can make products they need over there such as infrastructure building technologies. They haven't the capacity to do it yet.
Bullshit. They're making OUR infrastructure building technologies. They obviously have the capacity, capability, and will- they have *everything* we do already. There's no competitive advantage left for the United States- they can do everything so much cheaper than we can that there is nothing left that is unique to us.
Have more faith and less suspicion and fear of people.
Easy for you to say if you have had less than two weeks laid off in your entire life. Try saying the same after searching for a new job for two years- and watching your children starve while you're doing it.
It's not about trading what one has in surplus. The theory is that one trades in the goods in which one has a comparative advantage. That is, you trade in the goods that cost you the least to produce.
But we have no such goods left at all. EVERYTHING can be made cheaper someplace else. If it wasn't for agricultural subsidies, we wouldn't have anything left at all.
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Which is why if you send those goods to another market entirely, the price stays high.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a bit more to it than even that- on many foodstuffs, market price is far below cost of production anywhere in the world- farming is simply not profitable without subsidies. Which is a scary thought- it means that capitalism can't feed people without government interferance, regardless of how efficient we become.
If it weren't for subsidies, there would be no food production in the United States. Even with a tractor, you can't hit the price differential for somebody making $1/day.
Give me a single fucking example of a myth that has consistent predictive power at all comparable to even Newton's theory of gravity.
The rice planting calendar of the Gods of Bali. You can go look it up- it's a particularily interesting example of how a myth predicted a certain outcome, westerners came in and said "This is all superstitious bunk, we'll replace it with modern agriculture techniques", only to produce a bumper crop year followed by three years of famine. It's also a good warning story on why scientists shouldn't be bigots.
Uh, I think you meant "objective evidence."
No, I meant subjective evidence. It's easy to reverse a theory in science if objective evidence shows it to be false; but surprisingly hard if all you have is an avalance of subjective evidence.
Anyway, you were talking about electrons: give me a single fucking piece of evidence that indicates the present-day model of electrons is false, but your "elves inside the CRT" is better.
I'm not saying it's better. I'm saying that it is EQUALLY SUFFICIENT and there's no reason to be bigoted about one over the other.
Believing in unicorns or that Zeus throws lightning bolts from the heavens is not the same as believing that there exist a particle with mass of 9.10938188e-31 kg (known to about one part in 10^-7), charge of 1.602176462e-19 C (known to a few parts in 10^-8), and a gyromagnetic ratio of -2.0023193043737 (known to a few parts in 10^-12).
Yes it is- the only difference is the definitions. Though I would have said beliving that God Judged Those Who Sat on The Judgement Seat of the Arc of The Covenant- it's more well known to a Christian society and has been proven to work just as well whether you're talking about a vengefull, wrath filled desert God or a three farad gold plated capacitor drawing static electricity from a desert environment.
There is significant holding of US debt by foreign companies and reserve banks, this is true. However, it's worth remembering that this debt is payable in dollars, and we can print those if we have to.
Until, of course, the bank requests payment in land instead, because we've printed so many dollars that dollars become essentially worthless.
For the public debt, there's simply no risk of us not repaying because of this.
Bullshit. There isn't an infinite number of atoms in the universe, and eventually we'll run out of atoms to print money on.
For corporate debt, it doesn't really matter who owns those bonds - companies will succeed or fail as always, and be rated on their ability to repay debt as always.
And given America's current public and private debt, anybody who loans money to us is either an idiot or looking to grab American assets when the time comes for America to declare bankruptcy. My guess is the second, and we're fast approaching that bankruptcy now that Iran and Venezula are planning on accepting Euros for Oil.
Just because something has proven to be a good thing in the past, does *not* mean that it will be a good thing in the future. And in fact, I'd say there's a good argument to be made for it not being a good thing in the past.
A poor man when everybody he knows is equally poor is happy with his lot- he knows life's a struggle but he also knows that his world contains no luxuries- so he deals with the struggle as best he is able and makes time for recreation.
A poor man who knows that there are people living in luxury is an unhappy being indeed- he knows he is poor, he knows life is a struggle for him- but he also knows that there's no way out of the struggle for him and that other people are living in luxury off of his labor.
Advancement is merely advancement- it's not always good or always bad, it just is. But advancement that produces inequality is a truly terrifying thing.
Or for that matter- simply shut down the ports they own for six weeks and we'll have massive starvation here. That little tidbit came out on Lou Dobbs during the debates on the Dubai ports deal- China owns a lot of ships and West Coast ports operations, and overall we've only got a two week supply of food TOTAL in this country.
On the last bit- I'm not talking about produce. Out of the Dubai ports deal it was revealed that if a foreign government-owned company decided to simply shut down our ports (as is their right if they own the port operations) as a non-nuclear first strike against us, we simply don't have enough food in this country to survive more than a two week seige without major food shortages- and no more than a six week seige without major starvation. That's STUPID. A completely rediculous hole in our national security- and final proof that subsidies don't work, since farm subsidies in the 1960s were oringinally passed to avoid such a situation. We need to end food exports now- tell GATT and the WTO to go fuck themselves, free trade is too much of a national security risk.
And what or where or who is Hydrabad?
Southern India.
ES all this trade profitable--do you think companies outsource because they anticipate taking a loss from it?
The companies don't take the loss- the country does. It's been 30 years since America has made a profit with international trade- only traitors like AMD and Intel do. They lie about where their fab plants are. They lie about all sorts of things, because it is more profitable to lie than to tell the truth. It's far more profitable to get money by fraud than by being honest.
If foreign countries export things to us without importing anything from us, then they've given us things for free.
Nope, it just means that they own us- and will kill you if you refuse to pay the debt when it comes due. They'd love to kill us off and resettle the United States to relieve their population stress. And they will eventually kick you out of your house to do it.
India doesn't have 29% unemployment--the actual figure is just 9%. And even that's exaggerated because many people in India have "unofficial" employment on the side.
That's not counting the Dahlits- who don't show up on India's employment numbers because they're not considered human.
China does not have 1/100th our minimum wage.
Then why does Wal*Mart get EVERYTHING in their stores from there?
The reason China and India have much lower wages is because their labor productivity is much lower. Right now, farming in India is done with a hand plow. Yes, you can produce 10x more than the Indian farmer because you have huge tractors--and that's precisely why your wage is 10x higher
What does that matter when there aren't enough jobs to go around right now? What does that matter to me? I'm tired of free traitors giving away my civil rights.
Right now, China and India cannot make CPUs (Intel and AMD), large airplanes (Boeing), pharmaceuticals (Pfizer, Merck, etc), fabrication equipment, large multiway servers (Sun, IBM, HP, Fujitsu), windows-compatible OSes, capital goods of various kinds, or even adequate food to feed their populations, which is why the U.S. is the world's largest agricultural exporter. Note that all the items on that list (except the last one) are much more profitable and pay much higher wages than what China and India export to us.
You've obviously never looked at the label on the CPUs (I've got both Intel and AMD chips that have "Made in Taiwan" or "Made in China" stamped on them). You also apparently don't know that Boeing has a plant in Bejing that makes wings, tail sections, cockpits, and seats. You don't seem to understand that most of our fabrication equipment now comes from China, that IBM is now owned by Lenovo (a Chinese company), that HP has moved its manufacturing overseas, or that Microsoft now does most of it's coding in Hydrabad. You also apparently missed the news story last week that the United States now exports so much food that we only have a two week supply for our own people. NONE of this is profitable anymore.
If China and India didn't want to buy anything from us at our inflated prices then they would stop exporting to us.
Not as long as OPEC still sells it's oil in dollars or as long as the New York Stock Exchange is still willing to sell American businesses to foreigners- there's plenty they want to buy. Oh yeah, and have you read the GATS treaty? The one that forces the United States to sell off it's infrastructure to foreign interests?
Even when Indians and Chinese buy U.S. assets or debt, it just means they're delaying (and slightly increasing) our exports to them.
And what exports would those be? All of your examples except for food are made in China and India.
China's minimum wage is not 1/100th of ours. In fact the PPP-adjusted median income in China is around $6,000 compared to around $40,000 in the U.S. Even non-PPP adjusted, the figures are nowhere near what you indicate.
And yet workers at Ohio Art's plant, making Etch-a-Sketches, now earn 24 cents an hour- compared with the $24/hr they were paying plant workers in Ohio just 5 years ago.
If China were to "flood the US markets with computers and cars" without buying anything from the US in return, then the Chinese have given the US free computers and cars without getting anything in return.
Oh, they buy things in return all right- they buy our companies and stocks, so that the profit from our companies goes back to China instead of staying in America. They buy up our water supplies under the GATS treaty so that you have to pay Bejing every damn time you turn on a faucet in your house. They buy our politicians so that tariffs don't return and ruin their great deal. Oh yeah, and they then buy up Saudi Oil with that excess profit to fund the terrorists.
You wish to shoot Ricardo because he wrote something you disagree with? You certainly live up to your handle, Mr Marxist! Perhaps you should read what Ricardo wrote before shooting him.
I've read him. He is a propaganda artist for the very people that have proven themselves to want me dead.
Everything that is not labor-intensive: airplines (commercial and military), cars, steel-forging technologies, supercomputers, nuclear power plants, advance medical imaging equipments, latest CPUs, to name a few.
Every last one of these things is currently made in China, not in the United States. Nobody's stupid enough to manufacture any of this in the United States anymore, unless it's to sell to the US market ONLY and even then only to cut shipping costs when they can use robots instead.
China is willing to trade 800 million t-shirts with USA to buy one Boeing 747.
Except for the fact that 3/4ths of the parts in that 747 were made in China.
Who do you think benefits more from this trade?
Near as I can tell, those people rich enough to own stock in Boeing and their Comrades in the Bejing government. Certainly no AMERICANS benefit at all- just a bunch of free traitors.
So the key to beating China would be to stop exporting to them? End all trade now. Sounds good to me. They've threatened us with nuclear war several times in the last few years- time to cut them off.
And yet, manufacturing capacity (if not jobs) is returning to the US from China every year - robots work cheaper than people. America has one huge advantage over India and China right now: we have infrastructure. We have reliable power, good safe roads, good telecom infrastructure, and universities capable of graduating world-class engineers in every corner of the country. China and India have this in a few cities. We still have a real advantage in producing goods that require more than just cheap mindless labor.
All that means nothing- I can reduce any good to cheap mindless labor, and infrastructure is far better in India and China than you know. Besides- if you just keep infrastructure in the manufacturing centers, then you can keep paying people slave labor prices and draw them away from the farms.
A factory with high-tech automation, reliable power, and reliable delivery of raw materials is going to outproduce a sweat-shop eventually, it's just a matter of technology. I know my company, for example, might want to move all of its engineering work to India ASAP, but it simply can't: India doesn't have the infrastructure available to it yet. Not enough power and telecom to move big test labs there, not enough engineers graduating every year to move design there at what we want to pay.
And yet Intel is doing it- they're putting in 9 new fab plants and now are doing design and test work there. It's not a big problem- you just generate your own electricity on site and you can put a plant virtually anywhere.
Marx predicted this exact thing. He's been wrong for over 100 years in a row, so pardon my optimism. Growing up, my family was damn poor, but we could afford shoes for everyone, more than one chair, "silverware" (not silver, of course) for everyone to eat with, and a car. There's wasn't a single working-class family who could afford any of these things at the start of the industrial revolution. Just about every manufacturing job that existed 100 years ago is gone today, and yet everyone is better off. Ain't technology grand?
Are you an idiot? I can't afford that NOW!
Perhaps you've heard of this guy named David Ricardo?
Yes I have- but I consider him to be a liar and a fraud. His faked numbers don't pan out in the real world- and I strongly suspect the merchant class of his day paid him to lie to Parliment to lower tariffs, eventually causing the Recession of 1988.
Even if, as you claim, EVERYTHING can be made cheaper in India than in the U.S., trade is still MUTUALLY beneficial. Unless everything is made cheaper in India in *exactly* the same ratio, there will be benefits to specialization and trade.
Since the reason everything can be made cheaper in India at 1/10th the labor cost is due to a difference in standard of living and the value of currency, yes, everything is cheaper by exactly the same ratio. Same with China, except that ratio is 1/100 instead of 1/10. Ricardo lied to you.
Who the hell needs a better toaster enough to pay 100x the cost of labor? NOBODY. Same with computers, cars, every other mature technology. Innovate all you want- unless you produce something that is enough better to actually justify the cost, it'll be like HDTV- nobody will buy it.
Please explain these "subsidies" that you talk about. If there are subsidies, they are very much targeted at commodity groups. The US has given up most subsidies, at the behest of other countries (who keep their own subsidy programs in place to ensure that THEIR markets are protected from US exports).
As any farmer knows- the cost of labor in the United States is so high now, and food prices so low, that food has to be produced for below cost. Thanks to agribusinesses bribing Congress, the subsidies meant to allow farmers to do that are also being used to sell our food overseas for less than local production cost. The US Taxpayer is underwriting this stupid unfair trade scheme. Personally, I say the US needs to stop exporting altogether because of it- at least until such a time that we consume less than we produce.
Atoms are a good example- they're completely mythical, a model. Nobody has ever actually *seen* an atom, they're a consensus construction based on how certain molecules and compounds work- and even then they required a hell of a lot of scientists to get together and *agree* on how those molecules work. This is *exactly* the same as how the Bible (or any other holy book you care to name- the Vedas and even the Tibetan Bardo were the same) got written.
This lasts only as long as we are unwilling to lower our prices.
When was the last time you ever saw a government or corporation willing to lower their prices and accept deflationary forces?
The damage to our income is totally countered by the gain we get with lower foreign prices.
Really? Then why have real wages in the United States fallen by 3% adjusted for inflation in the last 5 years? Why have technology salaries fallen 5%?
Factor in some smart middlemen lopping off some money to become billionaires, and you have a temporary situation where globalization ends up not helping some people much at all. But that's okay.
Why is that OK to you? It's damn sight not OK to me- we should only do trades where EVERYBODY wins. If one person loses- that's something we shouldn't be doing.
Myths don't respond consistently to input conditions. Otherwise, they'd be science, you dumbfuck.
That's exactly my point. Myths are far more scientific than you think- and science contains far more mythology than you'd like to admit.
Religions don't "work" in ANYTHING LIKE the way scientific theories do.
Yes they do- in fact, the councilar method and the scientific method are both ways of finding truth through consensus- in fact, one was created from the other.
Everybody is always praying to God or Allah or the FSM to help everybody they like, and God still randomly fucks with people by giving them terrible cancers, or sending hurricanes, or tsunamis, or letting other religious zealots fly planes into the buildings they happen to work in.
Uh, no- to both. But hey, you've got a hell of a lot to learn about theology and how it works.
Am I supposed to believe God is on the side of terrorists, because their experiment in the name of God succeeded?
No, you're supposed to believe that reality is so large, so infinite, that it can't be contained within a single theology, logic system, or model. Only stupid fundamentalists believe that- and like you say, it's demonstratable that their certainty, while it may work for them, doesn't work for other people. Certainty is where we all go wrong- what we're certain about, we're wrong about, including the idea that certainty is wrong.
God answers your prayers? He's wonderful! Thank you God for letting me win the lottery!! Thank you God for letting me win the Superbowl!! Or he doesn't answer your prayers, so he is testing your faith. Thank you God for testing my faith by letting me lose the lottery!! Thank you God for testing my faith by letting me lose the Superbowl!! Thank you God for wiping out my family in a tsunami, because we all are sinners, although I was away on a trip at the time, so my sinning family was wiped out, but my sinning ass was left behind to marvel at your wonderful, wise, and just ways, O God!
Which has nothing at all to do with organized religion and the councilar method of finding truth.
What controlled experiments can you conduct on religious beliefs?
What uncontrolled experiment can you conduct on a scientific theory?
That religious believers keep believing in their religion, no matter what happens?
Kind of like scientists keep believing in their theories long after subjective evidence shows them to be false?
That's not a test of religion, its a test of believers.
Just like controlled experiments are not a test of theories, they're a test of how well scientists can follow the controls.
This is a very good point. Even if each item is cheaper to make in India, when considered seperately, that doesn't mean that India can produce all items cheaper, if it tries to do everything.
Does it matter? They've got 29% unemployment, and 1/10th our minimum wage. That's a hell of a lot of worker dollars to soak up before productivity means anything at all- and when you throw in the fact that they could be trading with China, which adds another billion workers and 1/100th our minimum wage, our productivity doesn't mean squat unless it's 100x better than the entire rest of the world in at least one item.
In any case, India is a cheap labor market, but it has poor infrastructure, so it doesn't scale very well. It's going to take 50 years to build good roads, good power, and good communications infrastructure out to the far corners of India, just as it did here, and by that time India will no longer be a cheap labor market.
The point isn't that. The point is- they can do all of that with native labor importing nothing, so it means nothing as far as trade is concerned.
Also, while we're still losing manufacturing jobs to China, for example, China is losing manufacturing jobs far faster to robots. Eventually, all manufacturing will be highly automated and there won't really be any manufacturing jobs anywhere. That's just the continuation of the industrial revolution to its inevitable conclusion, and that will benefit everyone to judge from history.
Either that, or it will be feudalism all over again- the robots will benefit the top 1% of society and everybody else will simply starve to death.
No, not everything can be made cheaper somewhere else.
.1 hour to produce a computer, and .02 hours to produce a car. It's still cheaper to do both in China- NO abosolute advantage for America at all.
You're wrong about that.
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
But since China's minimum wage is 1/100th of ours- they pay only the eqivalent of
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
But- here's the big one- China has a billion workers to feed. They have a virtually unlimited supply of labor. So they can make all the computers and cars THEY need, PLUS enough for export to swamp the markets of the United States and Europe with computers and cars, and drive the native manufacturers in the US and Europe out of business entirely, of both computers and cars.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
But since China has a relatively unlimited supply of workers, they can just bring more factories online and outproduce the United States in both cars and computers- thus utterly destroying the US market with cheaper goods.
Now, that's very basic trade economics.
It's also complete bullshit at this point, since China's wages are 1/100th of ours and they have no shortage of labor.
It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation.
It actually shows no such thing, because it has a severe lack of input data.
Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
Productivity means NOTHING when you have a billion starving workers to feed- you can always overcome productivity with sheer numbers. Ricardo was an idiot and if he were alive today I'd shoot him just for proposing such a dangerous piece of sheer propaganda and lies.
We can make products they need over there such as infrastructure building technologies. They haven't the capacity to do it yet.
Bullshit. They're making OUR infrastructure building technologies. They obviously have the capacity, capability, and will- they have *everything* we do already. There's no competitive advantage left for the United States- they can do everything so much cheaper than we can that there is nothing left that is unique to us.
Have more faith and less suspicion and fear of people.
Easy for you to say if you have had less than two weeks laid off in your entire life. Try saying the same after searching for a new job for two years- and watching your children starve while you're doing it.
It's not about trading what one has in surplus. The theory is that one trades in the goods in which one has a comparative advantage. That is, you trade in the goods that cost you the least to produce.
But we have no such goods left at all. EVERYTHING can be made cheaper someplace else. If it wasn't for agricultural subsidies, we wouldn't have anything left at all.
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Which is why if you send those goods to another market entirely, the price stays high.