China Bets Big On America

Forbes ^ | 3/5/2010 | Gordon G. Chang

[familyop]

"An old timer once told me - “You can either have goats or a garden”"

Yep. ...no outside gardens here, and greenhouses will be protected by high fences. Goats also require high perimeter fencing. They tend to favor the weeds that we want to get rid of, though, and will leave the hay for the calves later on.

[familyop]

"You phony conservatives think bigger government will make things better."

Actually, many of us are looking forward to the default, small government and new, old fashioned leadership in business, government, academia, and even our military forces. Our leaders are confused in more ways than one.

dennisw had written:
"If your consumers are so wealthy how come they aren't spending like they did a few years ago?"

Toddsterpatriot replied:
"Why don't you ask them?"

One former consumer to another? We're in it together, and we're not buying.

"You do understand. You can be wealthier and spend less."

We can be poorer and spend far less, too...and build and produce.

dennisw had written:
"Lenders are wary of them. I wonder why."

Toddsterpatriot replied:
"Lots of deadbeats. No wonder."

Irrelevant in that sense, IMO. They should have saved rather than borrowing. Granted, though, anyone who wouldn't get under a car and swap out of transmission in order to get to work is a deadbeat, IMO--the kind of deadbeat preferred for employment by the effete (now being deposed).

[familyop]

The homosexual linguistic activists would include new words like dumbass in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, if they weren’t so busy with anti-family entries for media sponsoring, free traitor alumni and their anti-competition social programs.

[familyop]

Little tongue-in-cheek there. See my last two taglines before this one.

[1rudeboy]

It’s the fault of homosexual linguistic activists that “dumbass” isn’t in the M-W dictionary. Good one.

[Erskine Childers]

It seems to me that what gets lost in these discussions is that there's a reason for free trade - increased productivity for all due to increased specialization. It's really just an extension of the 18th century discovery of factory production. That is, when you break down the process of making a widget into a lot of small steps then you have huge increases in the number of widgets you can make in a day.

Free trade simply applies this principle to nations. By allowing nations to specialize, productivity goes up, we all earn and so can consume more. Life is good.

The problem that we have with China is that we don't get the benefits of specialization because the Chinese (and our own government's deficit spending) aren't allowing the economic signals that would result in greater concentration on our respective competitive advantages to be transmitted.

The US is a powerhouse in agriculture, but the Chinese don't buy nearly enough of our pork, beef, poultry, etc., thus preventing further investment in these industries. The US is a powerhouse in R&D, yet the Chinese engage in industrial espionage on a vast scale, preventing payments for patents going to the research labs where they belong, thus sending the economic signals for the US to continue to specialize in R&D. The US is a powerhouse in aviation, yet the Chinese insist on building their own airplane industry from scratch, instead of sending economic signals in the form of money for Boeing et. al. to build more planes. The US is clearly the world leader in computer software, popular music, movies, video games and on and on, yet the Chinese pursue massive copyright theft as a matter of state policy.

The list could go on and on.

You can't have one country stealing your stuff and generally playing by mercantilist rules and call it free trade.

The US gets its own payoff here via cheap stuff at Wal-Mart, but we also pay a huge, albeit not immediately apparent, price. That is, we lose skills in manufacturing on a massive scale. Our predominance in our natural competitive advantages - most painfully, R&D - is undermined. Our artists and creative computer people are not paid and their skills atrophy.

This cheap stuff is like a drug. I'm all for free trade, but running over two hundred billion in trade deficits year after year after year ain't free trade.

It is crass mercantilism.

We need to insist that China stop stealing our IP and really throw their markets open to all of our agricultural products, airplanes, machine tools and so on. If not, then we need to cut them off until they figure out that free trade is in their interests, too.

Oh, and meantime we need to punish our pols for letting the Chicoms steal from the Chinese peasants and workers and finance our budget deficits.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

I'm all for free trade, but running over two hundred billion in trade deficits year after year after year ain't free trade.

Imported oil is a big part of that deficit. One might argue that we buy this oil at a cheap price, but with a real unemployment rate (including those who have given up) of 16-17%, we need to produce our own energy. And solar panels and windmills are not a good solution, at least not yet.

[familyop]

"And solar panels and windmills are not a good solution, at least not yet."

Not for grid hookups, while the various groups of banditos consume revenues from energy companies (contractors, local board members in both gas and electricity, local governments, and even public school teachers in Alaska). ;-) But then no energy technology will solve that problem until after the default. PV and turbine systems can work well off of the grid for a technically inclined bargain hunter with the right climate.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

I am for research and improvements in new and traditional forms of energy. The problem is that the extreme left acts as if using carbon is sinful, and that extreme position hurts our trade balance and economy overall.