The following comes from an article written by Scott Burns, a syndicated columnist and Chief Investment Strategist at AssetBuilder. (The entire article can be read by following this link, or you can peruse the main thrust of it here...)
George Friedman holds up a recent Fortune magazine, his face a portrait in incredulity. The cover declares that China is buying everything, much as the Japanese were doing nearly two decades ago. The inside story is titled “It’s China’s World. (We just live in it.)”
“If China is so healthy, why is everyone there not investing in China?” he asks.
“The obvious question is: Why are they doing this? Fortune doesn’t remember that we saw this before. It’s called capital flight.”
Mr. Friedman, the founder and prime mover at Stratfor, goes on to point out some basic facts about the size of the U.S. economy relative to China. While we bemoan the loss of industrial capacity in the United States, for instance, we still manufacture more than China and Japan combined. And the United States still produces 25 percent of the world’s output. And our output is larger than the combined gross domestic products of the next three largest economies, Japan, China and Germany.
We simply don’t know our own strength.
“If we grow at 2.5 percent a year, China would have to grow at 8.2 percent just to keep the absolute gap steady. It will take generations for the Chinese to catch up,” he says.
Nor do we understand the deep poverty of China. He points out that China has a population of 1.3 billion people. But of that number, 600 million have an income under $1,000 a year. Another 440 million have incomes of $1,000 to $2,000 a year. Only 60 million people have incomes of $20,000 a year or more.
“In the U.S. we have ignored the numbers. So we say all industry has left the United States. That’s rubbish,” he declares.
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4 comments:
I have been saying for years, and on this blog too, it is well worth the money to subscribe to Stratfor. I personally have never found a resource which will tell me what is going on ALL OVER this world, every fucking corner, without any political bias, left or right. These people have sources in the Russian Duma and Kremlin, in Hezbollah, Nigeria, everywhere.
I also find it telling, csm, that you found this out in the financial press. I did too, in Barron's years ago. That was the best thing about financial news, you got the straight scoop and faster than from anywhere else mainly because alot of money is riding on it.
Also, they reside in your territory, Dallas, I believe. One more reason to go to Texas to visit besides that big sloppy kiss I'm gonna give ya(and hey I just happen to be home sick today!). :)
Damn, I thought you'd forgotten about that kiss...looks like its a steady diet of garlic for me until you get down here.
I read this article on the same subject a couple days ago.
Untrue Beliefs by Walter Williams
The mantra of "losing manufacturing jobs" is to placate the unions, part of the Democratic base. Of course other countries will make our textiles and sew our clothes, we wouldn't buy them if they were made here because who the hell wants to pay $30 for a regular ol' tee shirt. When are unions going to get it. I doubt any company today would even try to get away with the working conditions like they were in the early days of unionization. With the press and the Internet and picture taking cellphones it would be impossible to keep a company like that under wraps. Hell, look how long it took for a D.C cop to become famous on the Internet by brandishing a gun during a snowball fight.
And I still can't get over how our government, lead by our illustrious leader, can play favorites over citizen's lives and livelihoods by subsidizing American-nameplate automobiles over just as American-made autos made by foreign-nameplates. Oh, that's right, the foreign-nameplates aren't unionized. Just how are those American workers in Alabama and Tennessee supposed to feel? Like chumps, I'll bet.
Unions here had there time of necessity; I won't argue against that. But that time isn't now; it is long past. If we are to stay competitive, and I don't doubt we will as long as the government is kept at bay, it will be our ingenuity and our relative freedoms to pursue our dreams which will serve us well, not some archaic relic from our past. Let me ask any of you this, Why aren't any of our cutting edge industries unionized?
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