Posted on 01/01/2015 8:20:15 PM PST by Lorianne
BTTT
Good point; I wasn’t overly impressed with taking 21 days to get from Red China to Spain (as far as labeling it “high speed”).
I agree that Red China is still desperately poor in terms of sanitation and infrastructure; the stories touted that benefit millions ignore the squalor of hundreds of millions.
These stories should simply serve as a warning to the West, that their manufacturing bases are being destroyed by this stuff.
Another poster compared it to the Silk Road; unlike that route, this is seriously detrimental to the West. The falling standard of living and birthrate can attest to that; fifteen hundred years ago Westerners would have destroyed these routes to preserve their way of life.
I disagree.
China was desperately poor a generation ago.
Now, China has the foremost manufacturing base on the entire planet.
Largely because WE SENT OURS TO CHINA.
We really need to support American industry, and bring back American jobs.
Even with that manufacturing base, they are in bad shape; when companies have to require employees to sign contracts that they won’t kill themselves, something is very wrong.
Having our jobs delivered to them on a silver platter hasn’t improved the standard of living for most Chinese; it has benefited a few, but the rest are miserable.
I’m all for bring back American jobs, but unions played a big role in chasing them out to begin with; without major changes, it would just happen again.
All I am saying is, in order to be against unions in America, we have sent American industry to China, whose entire system is one massive (more than four times America’s entire population) trade union.
The People’s Republic of China.
We have opposed a union, by making a bigger union, even stronger.
Now it is the largest union on the entire planet. With more production than even America.
And it is rapidly growing.
Yet we continue to buy, and buy, and buy from China.
American industry has sold us out.
You misunderstand my comment. It was directed at Salon's mischaracterization of the accomplishment as "high-speed rail". It isn't. At least, not yet.
On the other hand, your point is well taken. Under the axiom that "the flag follows trade", the development of a Trans-Eurasian rail route has important foreign relations and nation security implications for the US.
Red China is not a “union”; like all “People’s Republics”, it pretends to represent workers while actually just benefiting a different elite than it initially displaced. Do you know any union members in the US that have clauses prohibiting suicide?
Red China serves as a hard labor penal colony for the world, and its convicts are starting to get the picture.
China actually owns, 51% of all the businesses there. To the best of my knowledge.
Including “American” businesses. And Americans have zero rights there, except as tourists.
Just saying.
We need to rebuild. Right here. America needs to support America.
“American” businesses in Red China apparently have the right to pay minimal wages to people with few rights, and then to sell the products where they wish; why do you think they are there?
American companies (still in America) are using the same mentality that drove others to Red China; they are looking for low costs and less-regulated, more business-friendly areas. That is why the “recovery” is limited to areas like that (TX, for example); nobody is looking at the NYC metro area as a place where businesses can flourish.
If you want it fast, ship it by air.
If you want it cheap, ship it by sea.
If you want to compromise, ship it by truck.
I’m not sure there is much of a revolution going to happen by incrementally speeding up trains. At the global scale, trains are the local delivery option.
Interesting factoid: the biggest container ships carry about the same as a one hundred mile long train. Of course that would actually be about one hundred, one mile trains.
Exactly!
Well said.
The article is biased and anti-American, but, as you say has truth in it. I don’t see how we can go on the way we are with no introspection or self criticism. The Chinese have internal problems. As do the Russians. And the Middle East, as per usual, is a basket case. But all that doesn’t mean that we should sit back and be complacent.
This development plus China’s big presence in Africa and its upgraded sea power are huge developments at which American’s scoff at their folly.
Thanks.
Well, America didn't do to their ancestors what Russia did - I actually believe some of Germany's emerging foreign policy has as one of its foundation stones the knowledge of what can happen if you f*** with the Russians.
I also believe that Putin may have up his sleeve an offer that Germany can't refuse.
We'll see. 2015 promises to be a very interesting year, from Danzig and Pressburg all the way to Lemberg.
Happy New Year.
Velocity depends upon the commodity. Priority intermodal travel times are significantly lower.
I doubt that you will see raw coal shipped by high speed rail anymore than you will see electronics shipped by tramp steamer.
China needs jobs more than we do. They have more people. We have had a monopoly on jobs long enough.
We need to stop buying American products and ship jobs overseas.
Let them deal with the pollution and crime that jobs cause. Unions are a direct result of employment. Let them deal with unions.
Send American jobs abroad.
The reason China is no longer desperately poor is that we helped them with our jobs. We need to be generous.
They have nukes. They might start a war if they are hungry.
Send American jobs to China, then they won’t nuke the planet.
Do it now.
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