DOES ST. NICK SPEAK MANDARIN?

Why China Is Rising And The U.S. Is Declining

You wrote, "After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt banned the sale of private cars in order to mobilize the manufacturing capacity and engineering skills of the U.S. automobile industry to build tanks and planes. In contrast, after 9/11, President Bush urged us to go shopping."

The Japanese attacked mainly our military installations as their first act in a country to country war. Their goal was to neuter the US military presence in the Pacific so that they could establish an Asian empire. They hoped that after a couple of quick body blows in the Phillipines and Hawaii the US would sue for peace. That was their hoped for result. Roosevelt responded to marshall our manufacturing capacity to respond to these body blows and come back with a few of our own. The 9/11 terrorist attack had as its purpose to sow the seeds of terror by attackin civilians. They would have been successful beyond their dreams if our country and its citizens responded with economic collapse as commerce within our cities withered and died. Both Presidents Bush and Roosevelt responded with the appropriate resolve and direction to dash the vilians goals. Just my opinion.

Nearly all of what you say about the US is true, but I also think you are leaving out some very imporrtant and yet positive information on the U.S such as, among other things, always pulling in the bulk of the top immigrants. This also ignores China's countless and deep problems, including with its peasantry.

http://www.chinalawblog.com

The Chinese are immigrants to this country called North America just like ,many others ..coming to build the Railroads in the "Old West". They continued to do the laundry bussiness.. this established ties in the US of America to prosper.. Yes China is important but their workforce is numerious and proficient.. so yes American will still buy the China made goods for a long time.. You can bet on that! Giddup!

North Korea has been a puppet regime since created by the Soviets at the end of WWII. Right now that sockpuppet seems willing to bite the hand that feeds it. What will China do when its misbehaving sockpuppet upsets the economic juggernaut that fuels Chinas rise?
See: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20943831-2703,00.html

Hello Lester,
Your story is not so much wrong as it is inaccurate & incomplete. I too now TRY to not buy things made in China, this is hard to do. And I do not blame China or the Chinese people for this. I exlcusively blame the hard right Conservatives who have dominated the Republican Party since Reagan. Policy tools in this country over the last thirty years have relentlessly been set to benefit the bare 1/10th of 1 percent of earners at the direct expense of everyone else, including generations to come. Warren Buffet said in the seventies that it was wrong that he,Buffet, should pay a smaller part of his income in taxes than his receptionist. Recently he and Bill Gates have said that this has gotten far worse, witness the Bush 78 Billion subsidy for the needy wealthy. You may also look at the Reagan era Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, designed to destroy company pensions, and the demise of Montana Power & Light as just two modest examples of robbing us all to benefit a very small number of people.
Yes, there are many things wrong with "Globalization", the first & foremost defect is that our economy and many others are in the hands of trans national corporations, predominately American.
And, No, there is no straight line between a company doing well and its employees and communities doing well. Mostly just a small handful of executives & large investors do well, all the rest of us are just being trickled on.

Have a Nice Day, Will Rogers said, in the 30s, "that every so often the Republicans get into office & make a whole lot of money. Then every so often us Democrats get back into office and take it all away from them." Let's look forward to 2008!

See: http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1997/05/07/clinton.mexico/

NAFTA 1 was brought to us when Democrats hung a "for rent" sign on the White House for wealthy contributors. I guess when a democrat again becomes President we can look forward to NAFTA 2.

Mr. Brown, I don't think the situation is really as dire are you make it out to be. I specifically suggest that you rethink the following statement toward the end of your essay:

"We have lost influence in world financial markets simply because of our mounting debt, much of it held by other countries. If China’s leaders ever become convinced that the dollar is headed continuously downward and they decide to dump their dollar holdings, the dollar could collapse."

As odd as it may seem, exactly the opposite of what you imply is true. China cannot "dump their dollar holdings" without hurting themselves even more than us. The reason that China and Japan buy so many US bonds is to keep their own currencies cheap so that they can export goods to the US at a competitive exchange rate. As soon as they decided to sell a significant amount of their dollar-based assets, their own currencies would inevitably rise against the dollar, ruining their export sectors and giving the US manufacturing sector a boost. So actually, our mounting debt actually increases our clout, because we are so big. If you owe the bank 10,000 dollars and you cannot pay, then you have a problem, but if you owe the bank 10 billion dollars and cannot pay, it is the bank that has the problem.

You are so in the right. Money that dose not buy much is not much worth holding onto. As for the artificial supply side economics, just print up and peg their money to the dollar and as for the artificial demand side of the exchange rate, just print up some more as long as the dollar is the world reserve currency.

Brown is lost in his ideology. Things are manufactured in China because it is cheaper to produce things in China than in the United States and because China restricts imports. It has nothing to do with most of the issues Brown raises. Blame US labor unions, taxes, regulations, and the burden in general that the massive US goverment puts on business. It costs a lot to match employees' social secutiry and medicare payments, and for workers comp, and then China restricts American imports. It's elementary. China offers a better deal than the US—to foreign manufacturers and to its own domestic businesses (as it restricts US imports). Brown needs to operate in the real world, and get out of the left-leaning enviro mind set (people who often no nothing about business) to understand how things really work.

Harry

Harry, do you seriously think Americans can compete with laborers in China making $3 a day? Or worse do you think we should? Is American sweat worth so little to you? How often do you shop at Walmart while you moan to your conservative friends about unions of any type? Don’t you drive home in you SUV and turn red with anger at any suggestion of a real tax policy and then in your next breath do you not sing the praises of corporate deregulation? You complain about immigration while your gardener works ten times harder then you making minimum wage. You think those shopping at a farmers market or who actually care to buy locally are left-leaning enviros. All this while you pretend because you listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News you actually know something. You, the selfish, hateful and ignorant conservatives are the reason our country is bankrupt.

Tim from MT, it's Christmas. Let's all be generous and compassionate!

ABC's John Stossel of 20/20 wrote the following article on American generosity: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/12/who_gives_to_charity.html

>>>>>
But the idea that liberals give more is a myth. Of the top 25 states where people give an above-average percentage of their income, all but one (Maryland) were red -- conservative -- states in the last presidential election.

"When you look at the data," says Syracuse University professor Arthur Brooks, "it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more. And incidentally, conservative-headed families make slightly less money."

Researching his book, "Who Really Cares", Brooks found that the conservative/liberal difference goes beyond money:

"The people who give one thing tend to be the people who give everything in America. You find that people who believe it's the government's job to make incomes more equal, are far less likely to give their money away."

Conservatives are even 18 percent more likely to donate blood.
<<<<<<<

Tim, let's all defy the statistics, steroptypes, barriers, and mindsets that retard making the spirit of Christmas giving an everyday habit.

I own a small manufacturing business and do not directly hire Americans. If I did I would be insolvent within weeks ( I know this from experience ). We subcontract everything but the final assembly and critical components in our products to shops in close proximity to ours. This way we do not have to pay FICA, workman's comp, health insurance, meet OSHA's regs, worry about EEOC regs, a host of other state and federal mandates, and put up with the day to day management problems of labor in general, that would put us out of business. Lets face it, to compete with China, I must mimic China's policies. The American corporate and subsequent employment environment will disappear in the future. It has no direct connection to liberals or conservatives. It is a function of economics. If current trends continue we will soon be a nation of cottage industries that will work for much less than we do now.

Let us suppose the USD were to be hammered down. USA produced items would not be significantly more expensive. Imported items would. What would happen?

USA entrepreneurs, with a price equality or even advantage, would spring up like weeds to fill the suddenly appearing vacuums. USA manufacturers are CAPABLE of manufacturing anything on Earth. A cheap dollar simply makes it economically feasible.

Raise the dollar price of Chinese-made Barbies by a factor of two and you'll have ten USA Barbie factories within six months. Google any manufactured good you can think of and see how many USA manufacturers exist.

Crude oil is a special case. But raise it's price far enough (in dollars) and you'll be up to your eyeballs in pluggable hybrids made by the suddenly resurgent American auto companies. And, after ten years, hundreds of new nuclear power plants to charge them.

No foreign manufacturer can cast off the USA market painlessly. And no large foreign holder of USD in their reserves can afford to see their value decrease significantly.

For every action there is a reaction.

This is a question. It is my understanding that many of the Corporations making products in China are owned by U S companies,whose stockholders are throughout the world. Doesn't profit from these corporations flow out of the Yuan to dollars,Euros etc?

It is a strange relationship we have with China, and I don't know how it will end. I find the argument of under-valued currency rather bizarre, except for the dependency it creates. An indeal corporation rises in power by underselling its competitors until they're out of business, and then they can use monopoly power to jack up the prices later. But such a corporation is willing to lose money in the short term, while China's trade surplus is pulling in the cash.

On the other side I find the argument that China is afraid to divest in the U.S. because they'll lose money by causing a crash, rather weak. A gambler whose up 200% isn't afraid to lose some money to put on a good show - and China doesn't need to totally divest. They only have to THREATEN it to scare the world.

Anyway, whatever the future holds, SOMEONE is going to pay. I just can't guess whether it is the borrowers or the lenders or both. I just think the long term the value of the dollar must fail, and it's just a game of chicken to decide when to "cut and run".

Reducing one's cost of living seems the only defensive strategy.

It is absolutly true that 80% of what we purchase is made in China. So..... their is a reamedy....LET ALL AMERICAN SAY AND PRACTISE......BUY AMERICAN AND BE AMERICAN. Let us not just watch and worry ..our supermacy slipping through our fingers. From 2007 let us start a movement to keep our GLORIOUS NATION where she belongs to.

_____Stop preaching to the choir, because the choir is overworked, underpaid, under-represented, oppressed and downright downtrodden. You call us Americans lazy and debt-ridden. You depict our lifestyles as free-wheeling, greedy and all consuming--decadent and lazy. The way things are said, it paints this picture of Americans as being consumerist hog-monsters that lay about when not working, consuming goods until we take on more than passing resemblances to Jabba the Hutt. Guess what? We're hungrier and harder-working than before, just working for survival, don't need any more hate coming down on our heads. We don't need preachers; we need social policy.
_____Out here in the United States, in the real world, we are working multiple jobs merely to survive. Housing prices are nearing psychotic levels. Thank you, Wall Street, for playing paper games with real estate and jacking up rents, mortgages and land prices to champaigne-and-caviar levels! Benefits for workers are being cut all over the darned place as corporations seek to be "more competitive" in the "global economy." Compound that with floods of illegal immigrants taking all the entry-level jobs, outsourcing of all the technical jobs, and a love of reactionary politics cutting back New Deal programs (Thank you, President Clinton!), and one sees that this place is getting to be Hell on most people who work for a living.
_____Meanwhile, the only people happy are the sort of people who don't work to live--rather, live to accumulate ever more wealth, ever more property and ever more millions and billions for their friends. They have lobbyists to cut, cut, cut taxes--even in a time of war. Corporate welfare comes in the forms of publicly subsidized oil exploration programs and wholesale bail-outs of major manufacturing conglomerates (e.g. General Motors and Ford), along with--get this--even more tax cuts to those who do not need them. Heck, they do not even pay taxes at all; accountants find all kinds of tax shelters and tax credits to let millionaires keep their millions. And should it ever come to the millionaires being confronted with any sort of criminal wrongdoing, teams of high-priced lawyers and even more PAC lobbyists have them covered. The elitist ruling class rules, and they do whatever they wish.
_____So if you want to preach, go preach to THEM. Go to the Hamptons and drop some mail to the Vanderbilts or something. Send Bill Gates an e-mail about this. Drop by the Kennedy family compound and let them know about what is happening. Do not preach to us because we're too damned tired from working our two-or-more jobs just to pay the damned rent, the car payments (if fortunate enough to have a vehicle), and cannot even afford to have children. Better yet, tell it to someone who cares. Now I am off to take a nap from working sunup to sun-down and hope to get at least five hours of sleep tonight before the madness starts again. Or maybe things would be all the more better if the whole system just went the way of La Revolution Francaise and showed the elitists a thing or two about the need for noblesse oblige and social policy.

"Even though rising oil imports are widening our trade deficit, we consume oil with abandon, weakening the economy and undermining our political independence."

Really? And just which side of the aisle is responsible for our predicament of "rising oil imports"?

Yes we should all voluntarily get low wages, work too hard and long in poor conditions and rape and pollute the environment so that we too can be an up and comer like China. Yea thats it, lets be like China We got it made in the USA - go visit Mexico and get a taste of the other side.

Amen Elliott. Truer words have never been spoken.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. Our own greed is consuming us. We strike for higher wages and that drives the cost of American goods up. So high up that we cannot afford to buy them. Our own companies are forced to look outside the U.S. for cheaper labor to manufacture the same goods we used to make at home.
What I really don't understand is why our government gives China a "most favored nation" status in the world economic community? Could it be that our leaders sold us out to our communist enemy for the sake of a dollar? It IS the god in whom we trust. It says so right on it.

Simply put - The financial leaders do not care what country they belong to. The "smarter ones" are focused on making currencies work to produce sellable products. At the end of the day it all boils down to increment in the number of benefectors of goods in the world. Is the world financially better off today vs 10 years ago? In the eyes of such persons USA vs China is not an issue. Such persons can easily move around and retire anywhere in the world, including USA - the best functional place on earth.

Eliot:

You seem an intelligent guy stuck in a hard place. I'm sorry. But here are some facts. I am one of the "rich guys" you castigate. I have assets over $80 million. I earn more than $5 million annually.

But guess what...I earned every damned cent of it. Myself. And do you know that the top 1% of income earners pay 37% of the US personal income taxes? And the bottom 50 % of income earners pay 3% of the US personal income taxes?

Do I have high-paid accountants and lawyers hired to avoid my taxes? Ha! I pay 35% of my income every year to the Feds and 7% more to states. That's 42% total. That's over $2 million each year in taxes. How much do you pay?

I'm sorry I'm luckier or smarter or better educated or worked harder than you. But it's America, and everyone has a chance. I started with $600.

And with my 58% left, I don't sit on my ass and eat grapes and drink wine. I pay for my life needs then invest the rest in businesses that are starting or growing and need my investment.

Without that, how would our economy grow?

So, I'm sorry you feel you are in a rough patch. But you are richer than 99% of the humans on the face of the earth. Just spend less than you earn. Forget the new SUV or the plasma TV. Save and pay your damned bills, then start a business as I did.

Stop whining. The gates are open for everyone.

Well, it's late. But I'm up and feel like talking. Here's how we got to where we are.

The earliest Americans happened upon the richest treasure trove the world has ever seen. Fertile land. Abundant water. An isolation preserved by oceans with no realistic competition near our borders.

The world for us in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries was sheltered. We could do whatever we pleased. And luckily, we had abundant timber, iron ore, coal and hardened pioneers and entrepreneurs to take advantage.

The hoards of subsistance-level denizens of China, Africa, India, Japan and other remote locales were of no import to us. So we just built...helped in no small measure by the amazingly abundant natural resources of this continent.

And we grew and grew. Robber barons of the various eras...Rockefeller, Gould, Carnegie, Ford and Harriman, for example, put their wits to work to make themselves rich. Bad men.

Bullshit. They built an amazingly robust economy that transcended anything ever imagined. All within the confines of the USA. Of course, they exported, but it wasn't essential then. But make no mistake...the riches that happened to be found in this country...iron ore, coal, timber, copper...had a mighty hand in our supremacy.

The wealth produced by this economic miracle was so abundant that it "had" to be shared. Unions appeared. And the producers could afford to pony up to their demands. So, they did.

This produced a new social class. Everyday workers, who in the past had existed in virtual servitude, suddenly were being paid 35-45-60-70 thousand dollars annually. GM, Ford, Chrysler, US Steel, and hundreds of others, were paying the workers more than could have ever been imagined in the past.

Health care exploded. In the past, if you got real sick, you died. As it should be. But no, we can solve that and save you. Well, it will cost $100,000 but who cares...insurance will pay for it. Err, maybe your company health plan will.

Retirement. No problem. Social Security will pay for your lazy ass. Who cares if you never saved for it.

So, over the years, we developed a vast middle class who expected a $60K salary, prepaid health, pensions, vacations, et al. And they were screwing bolts into nuts minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. For $60K.

World War II only exacerbated the picture. Now we needed every man (and woman) jack to fight the Hun and the Nip. Salaries and sales and profits rose rapidly. The economy soared. Oh well, a little Federal debt was incurred.

The 1945-1970 economy soared as the warriors came home to help fill the the staggering surge in demand for all goods scarce during the war. Good times for all. And the factory workers and construction laborers prospered with their $60K++ lifestyles.

But the shit has hit the fan. "Lifelong healthcare is my right. A retirement pension is my right. Forty hours max per week is my right. Vacations in Disneyland are my right. I'm an American, and I almost finished high school".

Suddenly, the world obtained air travel, FedEx, UPS, overseas phone service, the Internet and more than 5.5 billion people who would kill to have 1/10th of what our "entitled" citizens had.

And they could produce what we were producing at 1/10th the price, considering what we were paying our "entitled" citizens.

And so it happened. We can't compete. We can't compete because our labor costs too much. And if you think it's bad now, just wait.

Lawyers, accountants, file clerks, physicians, auditors, actuaries, computer technologists, service centers, mail-order retailers...you all are next. You think you are worth $60K++. Well, there's a guy a lot smarter than you in China, India or Vietnam who'll do it for $6K.

Our own wealth has overpriced our wages. And we'll never recover until the other 5.5 billion people in the world get even.

So...we are screwed. Hunker down, save something every month. Live below your means. Start a service business that can't be outsourced. I cannot even find someone to mow my lawn, except a Mexican who is happy to do it. No "entitled" American would stoop to that.

Get over yourselves. You aren't worth $60K. And you never will be again. Because, many of our citizens are stupid. They cannot spell. They cannot compose a coherent sentence. They cannot balance a checkbook.

If you don't know what the population of the world is, you are stupid. What is the population of the USA? Your state? Who is your Vice-President? How many justices sit on the Supreme Court?

What is the average family income in the United States? What percentage profit does the average American company make after taxes? How do you spell liaison, fluorescent, rhythm?

Don't know? You are stupid. That's why we are in the fix we are in.

End of rant. Have fun with Britney Spears, your DVDs, Disneyland, and your weekend BBQ because the party's over.

the average factory worker should in my view make a max of about $27,000/yr after being there awhile. the standard 80/20 premium health plan with $500 deductible and $20 copay is reasonable. this could be part of universal health care. it makes people see some of the cost in the health care, they wouldn't go to the doc for every ache and pain. bank loans backed by the government with only be approved with no more than 30% going to all other expenses. at least 20% down. this is the way loans were done as recently as 20 to 25yrs ago, no more easy credit. everyone would have to pay into social security. social security taxes would not top off at $80,000. they would be no top limit. of course the social security benefits would be means based. the dollar would have to be backed by gold. the growth economy must go, with peak oil coming. people are so afraid to talk about population control, it must be done. so little bit for conservs and libs.