[DanSC]

BartSimpson wrote:

Raising tax rates from 33% to 38% is a 15% increase.

Yes, but it is a 5 percentage points increase. That's the point of Psudo's post.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos wrote:

Why would China wish harm on their largest customer and biggest borrower?

Because, ultimately, China is ruled by a military/communist elite that sees economics as another means of waging war.

Were I a Chinese strategist bent on destroying the US I'd have done nothing different.

The USA did the industrial weightlifting in WW2 because our automobile factories, washing machne factories, toy factories, and etc. were retooled in the space of months to war production.

Now, thanks to greedy, self-serving Americans who shop at Wal Mart and who demand "low prices, always" and the greedy, self-serving Americans who make money off of the others our industrial base has been nearly eviscerated.

The net result? If we were faced with a world war tomorrow it would have to go nuclear or we'd have to surrender because we simply do not have the industrial base to wage a protracted conventional war.

[DanSC]

Eh if the Chinese start acting up we'll consider taxing food exports. The peasent underclass won't allow the Party to rule if they have no food.

[BartSimpson]

DanSC wrote:

Eh if the Chinese start acting up we'll consider taxing food exports. The peasent underclass won't allow the Party to rule if they have no food.

Taxing food exports? Me, I'd embargo them.

China's only got 1.5 billion people. Can't be all that hard to get food from, say, Africa.

[Macguyver]

BartSimpson wrote:

Thanos wrote:

Why would China wish harm on their largest customer and biggest borrower?

Because, ultimately, China is ruled by a military/communist elite that sees economics as another means of waging war.

Were I a Chinese strategist bent on destroying the US I'd have done nothing different.

The USA did the industrial weightlifting in WW2 because our automobile factories, washing machne factories, toy factories, and etc. were retooled in the space of months to war production.

Now, thanks to greedy, self-serving Americans who shop at Wal Mart and who demand "low prices, always" and the greedy, self-serving Americans who make money off of the others our industrial base has been nearly eviscerated.

The net result? If we were faced with a world war tomorrow it would have to go nuclear or we'd have to surrender because we simply do not have the industrial base to wage a protracted conventional war.

That is a little naive, their system depends on having buyers. At what point does a market exist when the end game is elimination of their customers. If they have no customers then the billion Chinese have no jobs. If they have no jobs they have no money, if they have no money they have no food. If 1.33 Billion Chinese have no food either they starve or revolt.

Our systems are intricately entwined. War is unlikely, unless the US stops paying its bills and China needs to start sending collection agents.

Best defence against the Chinese threat? STOP BUYING FROM CHINA.

[Psudo]

US manufacturing production is up an average of 2% per year since '89. If you discount the fiscal crisis (as the rest of this post does), it's 3%. Manufacturing jobs are down gradually but consistently over the long term because of ever-more efficient domestic automation, not foreign competitors. Also, the US economy has been growing faster than that, so manufacturing as a proportion of the US economy has shrunk. But there's no way to construe "manufacturing is up, but the economy is up more" as a negative assessment of the state of US manufacturing.

Besides, if America stops paying it's bills we're already screwed from domestic collectors.

China is hardly our primary concern.

[bootlegga]

BartSimpson wrote:

Thanos wrote:

Why would China wish harm on their largest customer and biggest borrower?

Because, ultimately, China is ruled by a military/communist elite that sees economics as another means of waging war.

Were I a Chinese strategist bent on destroying the US I'd have done nothing different.

The USA did the industrial weightlifting in WW2 because our automobile factories, washing machne factories, toy factories, and etc. were retooled in the space of months to war production.

Now, thanks to greedy, self-serving Americans who shop at Wal Mart and who demand "low prices, always" and the greedy, self-serving Americans who make money off of the others our industrial base has been nearly eviscerated.

The net result? If we were faced with a world war tomorrow it would have to go nuclear or we'd have to surrender because we simply do not have the industrial base to wage a protracted conventional war.

I agree that "thanks to greedy, self-serving Americans" are the cause of outsourcing and offshoring.

The problem is you've got the target group all wrong.

The "greedy, self-serving Americans" you speak of are CEOs and executives at America's large multinational corporations. It was they that led the charge to outsource production to cheaper places so that they could vastly increase dividends and share prices (and thereby earn CEOs & executives massive 'performance' bonuses).

Once one company in an industry went overseas, everyone of its competitors was forced to do the same to keep pace. That allowed them all to reap the same increases in profit, while of course knocking a few cents off the retail price (so they seemed like they were really making the switch for consumers).

I agree that most Western consumers are now addicted to cheap products, but the ones who started it all were western multinationals looking for higher profits to feed to their greedy masters on Wall Street.

[andyt]

And because with that outsourcing went a lot of jobs, many people now have no choice but to shop at Walmart. They're not greedy, they're just not keeping up economically. Then there's the 15% who are poor and wish they could shop at Walmart.

[Psudo]

Speaking as one of those 15%, we shop at Walmart all the time. Speaking as a former Walmart employee, we see the impoverished all the time, as we accept food stamps and WIC to pay for some of the cheapest food on Earth often without any profit margin at all.

The definition of poor that means they can't afford Walmart is a lot more narrow than the definition that covers 15% of the US population. There's a big difference between "starving" and "below the poverty line." We sometimes talk about the mega-rich -- now you're talking about the mega-poor.