That question used to be simple to answer. But listen to this and then decide.
Could someone let President Zero know that he doesn’t need to take America down any more pegs?! He’s already done more than enough.
That question used to be simple to answer. But listen to this and then decide.
Could someone let President Zero know that he doesn’t need to take America down any more pegs?! He’s already done more than enough.
Shanghai is the capital of capitalism, not New York. I guess we will have to get used to it.
It is not every generation in the history of mankind that witnesses the collapse of three empires, the British, the Soviet and the latest, the American. M. Strong should be happy.
Thats not good enough. Only Americas destruction will sate this beast.
The gentleman said of the Chinese “they are not sitting around being complacent”. Well, they’re not sitting around dreaming up new ways to regulate the crap out of every successful endeavor either. Could have a lot to do with it…
China is an octopus. It is fulfilling Mao’s vision and Obama is helping it.
Yes, of course, Obama destroyed the American Empire in 21 months. Amazing.
China conquered America in the aisles of WalMart, and never fired a shot. American’s insatiable demand for cheap goods at any cost, put their neighbors out of work and drove jobs overseas. Chinese have bushel baskets of rapidly devaluing US dollars that Americans gave them. Americans did this to themselves.
It’s not economically feasible to produce many products in North America. The labor costs in North America are prohibitively expensive and North American environmental regulations which keep our air, water and land from being heavily polluted don’t exist in Asia, so most production is over there where they can pollute and keep their costs low. The electricity to run their factories comes from dirty coal and the factories dump pollution into the environment.
China didn’t conquer America…Walmart did. Thanks to free trade and globalization, corporations have no incentive to support the economies that made them great, just the ones that make them richer. This is your baby, right wing assholes, so enjoy it.
Although I have little use for Obama the seeds to western destruction were sewn under the Clinton years. Long story short.
You simply can not outsource thousands of factories, kick millions of well paid workers to the curb and expect life to go on unchanged. It was (is) great for China, India etc. but at the expense of the manufacturing industry here at home. Millions of former taxpayers and consumers have become jobless liabilities and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Also…..we should not be smug in Canada as we can not escape whatever happens to the USA. We are totally dependant on their economy for our own success as they are our largest trading partner. These are still the good times. The worst is yet to come.
China ships in the raw materials, ships out the finished product and can still make it cheaper than it costs to make in the USA.
This is your baby, Big Labour, so enjoy it.
You simply can not outsource thousands of factories, kick millions of well paid workers to the curb and expect life to go on unchanged.
The government didn’t outsource those factories and send jobs overseas. It was the demand for cheap disposable products by American consumers that forced companies to move production overseas to stay competitive in a global market.
Consumers caused this recession by choosing Chinese cheap over N. American quality.
I heat my house with wood and recently purchased a wood splitter after researching what was available. I didn’t buy the cheap, poorly designed, import unit with components of questionable quality from a big-box store. Instead I spent 10% more and bought a Canadian designed and manufactured unit with a significantly better compact design and top quality components.
I would rather see Canadian taxpayers keep their jobs, feed their families and keep a roof over their heads. Sending my money overseas benefits nobody here.
@North of 60
Essentially, yes, the government did outsource them – indirectly, by instituting (and continually raising) a minimum wage.
Quite simply, not all jobs (and not all laborers) are *worth* the mandatory minimum wage. Since labor is one of the biggest costs of production, the government with one move ensured that American manufacturers could never compete with products from overseas.
Needless to say, it’s also a large part of the reason we’re now facing such high unemployment.
while I still try to buy Canadian or US of A, I cannot honestly justify paying up to double for a grapplegrommet just because it was proudly union made, or more likely, Chinese made and packaged by proud union folk being paid skilled craftsmen wages for pushing a button. There, that got most of the points out.
There’s a lot of nonsense here, too much to rebut in one post. A small selection: Chongqing doesn’t have 35 million people; it has fewer than 29 million, down almost six percent in a decade. And it’s not a “city” as we understand it: its area is larger than that of South Carolina. More important: to those hysterically blaming Walmart, consumers, and free trade – Chinese imports comprise less than 3% of US consumer spending. They are manifestly not the problem.
PabloNH, go through your house and see where things are made. Go shopping. What does the tag say?
Yes, trade with a country that employs slave labour IS part of the problem. A huge part.
Part of it is minimum wage but mostly it is simply regulation.
I was running a metal fab shop and the Health and safety gal came in and told me she would shut me down. Why? because the rollers on my metal roller were unshielded….
Okay says I…”How can I shield that and still use it?”
Easy she says….”put a slot in the shield..the metal goes in one side and out –t’other…”
Straignt through? says I…
Yep she says..”it’s so simple”.
I held up a finished hoop about 24″ across…and asked heh? How do you get this out a slot on t’other side?
I summoned my guy over to make one…she objected because her shield was not in place but then relented….”just this time”…
When the hoop had been rolled…she blurted out…”I didn’t know”….
I sez…”then what the hell are you doing here?”
She then decided it needed an “industrial” METAL switch rather than the light switch…..for a fractional horsepower motor with less output than an big angle grinder or a chop saw….which involve plastic switches….
I then directed her to the competition, whose painter worked without a booth right next to his welders. She declared she had inspected “Achmeds” shop and found no problems….just then we heard an explosion and emergency sirens from “Achmed’s” direction….
At that point, I said “okay everybody, show’s over…back to work”…and she wandered away…
Achmed moved to another town, hired fresh fools, and opened another shop.
About that time, an associate of “Achmed” started a different business, removed the safety devises, automatic reversers etc from a machine, to raise production, and promptly mangled a worker’s arm. There was a bit of excitment, and an inquiry and then that guy reopened elsewhere when the dust settled…
Me? After I while I just decided life was too short….and retired more or less.
Osumashi, sorry to inject an actual fact, but no matter where my stuff (or yours) sats it’s “made”, less than 3% of our money ends up in China. Not least because that something says “Made in China” does not imply that anything like its purchase price gets across the ocean.
@ PabloNH
Could you give me a link to where you got your 3% information ? Everything I am looking at indicates a much higher figure.
Let me dispel some more myths here. North America (and Japan) is where you buy quality equipment and machinery. More Manufacturing happens ($ value) in N America than China. Walmart has raised the living standard of more people than any organization in the history of the world (my opinion).
FOLKS, Whenever you hear Walmart being bad mouthed remember one thing,Walmart ISNT unionised!Big unions and regulation put more North American businesses out of business that any other factor.