I happen to agree with some of what you're saying, but for God's sake, write a bit more formally. Stop using "..."'s, capitalize your "i"'s, and at least spell out the easier words.
"Friend or Foe" target acquisition is not done through the internet, at least not exclusively. The details are obviously classified, but from what I understand they mostly rely on radio transponders.
The internet is very very new, and outside of Operation Iraqi Freedom(when most of the military internet infrastructure had not been rolled out yet), we have not had any conventional wars where internet access to troops has been available or decisive.
It is very easy to see how hooking up every tank to the internet might be helpful, but it is rather trivial to think of how to disable such capacities(Primitive cannons shooting tin foil over the area could destroy reception if done correctly). Military planners know this, so they have built their forces so that they do not rely too heavily on any one type of communication. Or atleast I hope they have.
Misread a tail number? These are are fucking nukes, you should need 5 levels of specialised photo IDs, Security Clearence, and possibly a PHD in order to get within a mile of these things.
"Well your idea of trade deficit would be fine and dandy if it were true, but the way it actually works is clearly different than you describe. Inflation growing at a higher rate than it has in decades(note it's not high yet, I just said the rate was high), and to me "adjust for eduction" means that people really can't find jobs. The Midwest is currently experience massive unemployment."
No, it meant that inflation adjusted median wages are going up for people with college degrees, while they are stagnant for those without. But really, there is no shortage of jobs. Unemployment is very low right now (no educational adjustment or anything, it is currently in the low 4 percent range). Ironically, this inflation you mention is most likely because of our low unemployment. You have to love the dual mandate.
"It's hard for us to compete against China's prices, even when we build robots to automate manufacturing they are still more expensive than teenage girls working 12 hour days for a few dollars."
Were you paying attention in Intro to Microeconomics when they proved that even if one country has an absolute advantage in every single good over another, both nations would be better off then if they had not traded? If not, I'll gladly pull it out and post it.
And believe me, we are not anywhere near that point. There are many goods that we possess an absolute advantage in, and many goods that we never will. This is the point of trade in the first place.
"The US and the UN have turned a blind eye to China for years, which is also a member of the UN. You realize that the UN has many programs, right? Programs that the US funds, that only seems to target the weaker nations and has no teeth against the superpowers."
That has more to do with the structure of the UN; China is given permanent veto power, on the same level as America. There is nothing we can really do about that.
"And I never said a country has to be a democracy for us to trade with them."
Actually, this seems to be exactly what you are saying. China thinks very much like the US, in every way except our political system.
"We should not prop up unfair autocracies with our financial support or prop up indirectly via our apathy towards their imperialism and unjust behavior."
Show me one example of a nation brought down by economic sanctions. If all it took was to cut off trade, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, and countless other nations would have been democracies.
You can not force democracy on a people, and the truth is that at the moment, the Chinese do not want democracy. Some of them do, and these people are either in Taiwan, the west, or jail. But the others have been brainwashed by government propaganda, history, and an entirely different value system. If you don't believe me, find a friend who can read Chinese and ask him to read some of the posts on a Chinese forum. After decades of propaganda, the Chinese are some of the most nationalistic people alive, and as the anti-Japanese riots a couple of years ago showed, the government is rather powerless to stop it. If the Communist part of China was swept out of power, it is rather terrifying thought to consider what would replace it.
China is a powder keg of hundreds of ethnicities and religions, historic hatred and distrust between them, and billions of dollars worth of weapons (some of them nuclear). Do you really want to destabilize them?
This is a valid point, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. But baseline food costs are rather small, and China's GDP per capita is rather high. I'm not sure if it would really be an issue for them, with their current rate of growth.
Your numbers consider nominal GDP, while for the purposes I was exploring(determining how much the Chinese can actually buy), I thought that PPP numbers would be more relevant. If you would like to check those numbers, check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ GDP_(PPP) .
"We spend about $466B, the rest of the world combined spends about $500B, and China $65B. Granted, China's PPP means they get more stuff for their $65B, but they still spend far, far less than we do."
Do you know what the grammatical phrase "will be able to" means?
Their population growth is slowing down, in a couple years it will start shrinking. Why exactly can't they just buy the food? It would most likely be cheaper than attempting to conquer us. Not only that, but if they were to invade a nation for Food, Uzbekistan would be a more natural choice then America.
Please don't misunderstand me, I don't believe that their GDP is a problem either. I am rather happy that the Chinese people are doing well, and I don't see their rising wealth as any sort of threat. I am just trying to bolster my argument that we should not try and confront China militarily.
Thank you for the intelligent and well written reply.
While inaccurate reports certainly are a problem, they are more prevalent in regional numbers(central Chinese states trying to get more funding). International Auditors and Agencies have done their own calculations that confirm that overall Chinese growth is in the same ball park as claims suggest.
I realize that the growth will not continue at the same rate forever(though it seems that their biggest concern, sub-prime fall-out causing a decrease in international consumption, did not materialize) , but China can have a much lower GDP per capita then us while still having a larger GDP. The money does not go into a giant pool, but if the government chooses to raise an income tax, they will be able to afford a larger military then us. But we should do all we can to avoid this kind of arms race.
"To use your word, "Bullshit". While their GDP might match ours, their per capita GDP barely beats out the Philippines and lies slightly under the vast military power of the Republic of the Congo. Of course their GDP is huge, they have billions of people. The problem is, they have billions of people. GDP by itself is a useless metric."
Did you miss my point? GDP is by itself a useless metric if you want to calculate living standards, but it is the perfect metric to describe military might. It does not matter why they have a large GDP, it means that if their government spends the same percentage of their GDP as the US does, they will be able to afford more tanks, better technology, and more research, then we can.
As an aside China's GDP per capita is 20% higher that The Philippines and 7 times larger then that of the Republic of the Congo. Also, China's population has been stagnant over the last decade, while GDP per capita has been growing rapidly. They seem to be following the same economic path of development as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. This suggests that their GDP per capita should level off at around 70% of US levels. But with a population 5 times larger, they will have a much larger GDP.
No need to resort to paranoia(besides, all of the images Google Earth receives were taken at some point by a spy satellite.), a US spy plane crashed in China a couple of years ago.
"That they are playing the same games with other nations that we played."
What are those games?
"The military is building up at a rate seen only by countries that are going to war (such as America or Germany prior to WW II)."
No, it has not. Those nations had a dramatic increase in defense spending relative to the size of their economy. China has not done such; their economy has grown at an average of 10% per year. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP has decreased, and is much lower than the United States.
"That they are not spending their surplus in a sane fashion (with trillion dollar surpluses, they are not buying things to help their country."
How can you say that? China is building brand-new cities every day; they are building highways, subway systems, electrical systems, etc. While I detest their government, they have certainly spent their surplus "sanely".
"Their leaders are not held accountable via a vote."
So? If they fuck up too badly, the people, or a general will rebel. It's not like that has not happened before in Chinese history.
"We are most likely headed for a cold war, if not a hot war."
No, I don't think we are. China does not seem to have an appetite for conquest of foreign territories; they learned their lesson from Islamic extremists in Xingjian. And unlike the USSR, they don't really seem to be building up a system of influence or client states.
They have no ideology to export; the only long term strategic goal of the government is to stay in power, by any means necessary. Detestable to be sure, but I don't see how they are a threat.
There is no such thing as economic warfare, they just make many goods much cheaper than you can(the restrictive labor laws, high taxes, and social net could have something to do with it)
"But allowing extreme trade deficit at the expense of the working class and structuring of government policy because of the economic ties to such a degree that China has an unfair advantage over "friendly" countries when dealing with the US. They are allowed much more leeway than other nations when dealing with the US, and in my opinion too much leeway."
How exactly is the trade deficit a bad thing? It means that they are giving us actual goods, and we are giving them nothing but green slips of paper. They devalue their currency in order to boost trade numbers for propaganda purposes, and we get a lot of free stuff. It seems like a win-win. The "working class"(a rather ephemeral phrase, since even rich people work, and this country does not have much factory labor any more) is getting cheaper goods, and more jobs. Yes, more jobs, Unemployment very low, and if you adjust for education, median wages are going up too.
"Maybe the US shouldn't participate in the UN or start wars until they can stand up to China?"
I would love for the US to stop starting wars, but I fail to see what the UN has to do with this.
"As long as a country respects basic human rights, or at least is making serious attempts to correct the problems I think its fine to trade with them. The US trades with Europeans despite them thinking health care is some kind of right.:)"
When the US was first founded, we were the only democracy. Would it have made sense to cut off trade with the rest of the world? And isn't the definition of democracy somewhat iffy? Iran has free and fair elections, coupled simultaneously with an autocratic police state, Ethiopia has such elections, and Thailand is an absolute monarchy where the king is actually worshiped by the people. In fact, it is rather likely that Hu Jintao (president of China), has a higher domestic approval rating then George W. Bush.
It is not really our business to judge other peoples way of life. If we really want to save people in autocracies, we should let in as refugees, not cripple their homeland with sanctions and bombs.
And if we stopped trading with them, who exactly would that hurt? The Communist party leaders will be rich anyway, using at least the black market to procure US goods. The people however, will be stripped of their prosperity.
Besides, if the US never traded with autocracies, there would never have been a US in the first place.
Could you at least use spell check? Don't think youre so intelligent, I'm a 16 year old math major in my senior year of college, and I have met a bunch of kids smarter then me.
But to actually debate your point, the US is not perfect. Your heart is in the right place, but I suggest that you take some classes in economics, read a couple more books about the Middle East(I recommend "The Lemon Tree" and "From Beirut to Jerusalem") and realize that the US is not the only place that has problems.
"Sad really. This admin has helped out our enemies and our future enemies. I suspect that once Chinese leadership believes that they are close to American Military power, we will see the next global war. Hopefully, before that time, we put all of W's admin in prison."
Why? What at all do they want from us that only war will give them?
"China knows they can get away with such actions, so they will. If you don't believe me, look up recent actions regarding Taiwan, Tibet and East Timor, amongst other things. China also does nothing to combat the millions of dollars in lost US revenue from stolen IP, yet we give them favored trading partner status, making our trade deficit worse."
China invaded Tibet in the 50s; I'm not sure what you mean by "recent abuses". China has had rather good relations with Taiwan in the last decade; I think you can now get direct flights between the two nations. And East Timor is a bit north of Australia; they have nothing at all to do with China.
Slashdot Mirror
I happen to agree with some of what you're saying, but for God's sake, write a bit more formally. Stop using "..."'s, capitalize your "i"'s, and at least spell out the easier words.
The internet is very very new, and outside of Operation Iraqi Freedom(when most of the military internet infrastructure had not been rolled out yet), we have not had any conventional wars where internet access to troops has been available or decisive.
It is very easy to see how hooking up every tank to the internet might be helpful, but it is rather trivial to think of how to disable such capacities(Primitive cannons shooting tin foil over the area could destroy reception if done correctly). Military planners know this, so they have built their forces so that they do not rely too heavily on any one type of communication. Or atleast I hope they have.
The stakes are a bit high though, don't you think? At the very least, some "These are fucking nukes" stickers would be nice.
Mistake? If these kind of mistakes happen, we need to disarm.
Misread a tail number? These are are fucking nukes, you should need 5 levels of specialised photo IDs, Security Clearence, and possibly a PHD in order to get within a mile of these things.
No, it meant that inflation adjusted median wages are going up for people with college degrees, while they are stagnant for those without. But really, there is no shortage of jobs. Unemployment is very low right now (no educational adjustment or anything, it is currently in the low 4 percent range). Ironically, this inflation you mention is most likely because of our low unemployment. You have to love the dual mandate.
"It's hard for us to compete against China's prices, even when we build robots to automate manufacturing they are still more expensive than teenage girls working 12 hour days for a few dollars."
Were you paying attention in Intro to Microeconomics when they proved that even if one country has an absolute advantage in every single good over another, both nations would be better off then if they had not traded? If not, I'll gladly pull it out and post it.
And believe me, we are not anywhere near that point. There are many goods that we possess an absolute advantage in, and many goods that we never will. This is the point of trade in the first place.
"The US and the UN have turned a blind eye to China for years, which is also a member of the UN. You realize that the UN has many programs, right? Programs that the US funds, that only seems to target the weaker nations and has no teeth against the superpowers."
That has more to do with the structure of the UN; China is given permanent veto power, on the same level as America. There is nothing we can really do about that.
"And I never said a country has to be a democracy for us to trade with them."
Actually, this seems to be exactly what you are saying. China thinks very much like the US, in every way except our political system.
"We should not prop up unfair autocracies with our financial support or prop up indirectly via our apathy towards their imperialism and unjust behavior."
Show me one example of a nation brought down by economic sanctions. If all it took was to cut off trade, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, and countless other nations would have been democracies.
You can not force democracy on a people, and the truth is that at the moment, the Chinese do not want democracy. Some of them do, and these people are either in Taiwan, the west, or jail. But the others have been brainwashed by government propaganda, history, and an entirely different value system. If you don't believe me, find a friend who can read Chinese and ask him to read some of the posts on a Chinese forum. After decades of propaganda, the Chinese are some of the most nationalistic people alive, and as the anti-Japanese riots a couple of years ago showed, the government is rather powerless to stop it. If the Communist part of China was swept out of power, it is rather terrifying thought to consider what would replace it.
China is a powder keg of hundreds of ethnicities and religions, historic hatred and distrust between them, and billions of dollars worth of weapons (some of them nuclear). Do you really want to destabilize them?
I realize that you are supporting me here, but I want to bring to your attention that those statistics are a bit sketchy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_th e_People's_Republic_of_China and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_th e_United_States
This is a valid point, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention. But baseline food costs are rather small, and China's GDP per capita is rather high. I'm not sure if it would really be an issue for them, with their current rate of growth.
"We spend about $466B, the rest of the world combined spends about $500B, and China $65B. Granted, China's PPP means they get more stuff for their $65B, but they still spend far, far less than we do."
Do you know what the grammatical phrase "will be able to" means?
Their population growth is slowing down, in a couple years it will start shrinking. Why exactly can't they just buy the food? It would most likely be cheaper than attempting to conquer us. Not only that, but if they were to invade a nation for Food, Uzbekistan would be a more natural choice then America.
Please don't misunderstand me, I don't believe that their GDP is a problem either. I am rather happy that the Chinese people are doing well, and I don't see their rising wealth as any sort of threat. I am just trying to bolster my argument that we should not try and confront China militarily.
While inaccurate reports certainly are a problem, they are more prevalent in regional numbers(central Chinese states trying to get more funding). International Auditors and Agencies have done their own calculations that confirm that overall Chinese growth is in the same ball park as claims suggest.
I realize that the growth will not continue at the same rate forever(though it seems that their biggest concern, sub-prime fall-out causing a decrease in international consumption, did not materialize) , but China can have a much lower GDP per capita then us while still having a larger GDP. The money does not go into a giant pool, but if the government chooses to raise an income tax, they will be able to afford a larger military then us. But we should do all we can to avoid this kind of arms race.
How exactly is per capita income relevant to how much the government can spend on the military?
Did you miss my point? GDP is by itself a useless metric if you want to calculate living standards, but it is the perfect metric to describe military might. It does not matter why they have a large GDP, it means that if their government spends the same percentage of their GDP as the US does, they will be able to afford more tanks, better technology, and more research, then we can.
As an aside China's GDP per capita is 20% higher that The Philippines and 7 times larger then that of the Republic of the Congo. Also, China's population has been stagnant over the last decade, while GDP per capita has been growing rapidly. They seem to be following the same economic path of development as Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. This suggests that their GDP per capita should level off at around 70% of US levels. But with a population 5 times larger, they will have a much larger GDP.
No need to resort to paranoia(besides, all of the images Google Earth receives were taken at some point by a spy satellite.), a US spy plane crashed in China a couple of years ago.
What are those games?
"The military is building up at a rate seen only by countries that are going to war (such as America or Germany prior to WW II)."
No, it has not. Those nations had a dramatic increase in defense spending relative to the size of their economy. China has not done such; their economy has grown at an average of 10% per year. Defense spending as a percentage of GDP has decreased, and is much lower than the United States.
"That they are not spending their surplus in a sane fashion (with trillion dollar surpluses, they are not buying things to help their country."
How can you say that? China is building brand-new cities every day; they are building highways, subway systems, electrical systems, etc. While I detest their government, they have certainly spent their surplus "sanely".
"Their leaders are not held accountable via a vote."
So? If they fuck up too badly, the people, or a general will rebel. It's not like that has not happened before in Chinese history.
"We are most likely headed for a cold war, if not a hot war."
No, I don't think we are. China does not seem to have an appetite for conquest of foreign territories; they learned their lesson from Islamic extremists in Xingjian. And unlike the USSR, they don't really seem to be building up a system of influence or client states.
They have no ideology to export; the only long term strategic goal of the government is to stay in power, by any means necessary. Detestable to be sure, but I don't see how they are a threat.
There is no such thing as economic warfare, they just make many goods much cheaper than you can(the restrictive labor laws, high taxes, and social net could have something to do with it)
How exactly is the trade deficit a bad thing? It means that they are giving us actual goods, and we are giving them nothing but green slips of paper. They devalue their currency in order to boost trade numbers for propaganda purposes, and we get a lot of free stuff. It seems like a win-win. The "working class"(a rather ephemeral phrase, since even rich people work, and this country does not have much factory labor any more) is getting cheaper goods, and more jobs. Yes, more jobs, Unemployment very low, and if you adjust for education, median wages are going up too.
"Maybe the US shouldn't participate in the UN or start wars until they can stand up to China?"
I would love for the US to stop starting wars, but I fail to see what the UN has to do with this.
"As long as a country respects basic human rights, or at least is making serious attempts to correct the problems I think its fine to trade with them. The US trades with Europeans despite them thinking health care is some kind of right. :)"
When the US was first founded, we were the only democracy. Would it have made sense to cut off trade with the rest of the world? And isn't the definition of democracy somewhat iffy? Iran has free and fair elections, coupled simultaneously with an autocratic police state, Ethiopia has such elections, and Thailand is an absolute monarchy where the king is actually worshiped by the people. In fact, it is rather likely that Hu Jintao (president of China), has a higher domestic approval rating then George W. Bush.
It is not really our business to judge other peoples way of life. If we really want to save people in autocracies, we should let in as refugees, not cripple their homeland with sanctions and bombs.
Besides, if the US never traded with autocracies, there would never have been a US in the first place.
Why can we only trade with people who think exactly as we do?
But to actually debate your point, the US is not perfect. Your heart is in the right place, but I suggest that you take some classes in economics, read a couple more books about the Middle East(I recommend "The Lemon Tree" and "From Beirut to Jerusalem") and realize that the US is not the only place that has problems.
Why? What at all do they want from us that only war will give them?
Why?
China invaded Tibet in the 50s; I'm not sure what you mean by "recent abuses". China has had rather good relations with Taiwan in the last decade; I think you can now get direct flights between the two nations. And East Timor is a bit north of Australia; they have nothing at all to do with China.
Yes, but I don't see any reason at all the see the Chinese as a threat to America. We could do it, but I just don't see why.