Posted on 06/25/2003 4:32:48 AM PDT by WaterDragon
Edited on 04/22/2004 11:49:15 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
The Federal Reserve will announce today whether it will cut interest rates once again. In an effort to stave off deflation and boost the economy the Fed has already cut rates 12 times since January 2001, pushing the funds rate down to 1.25%. These measures, combined with the passing of President Bush's growth and jobs package, have had a stimulative effect. As Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan recently noted, the financial markets are already signaling a revival of U.S. growth. Indeed, the stock market is up more than 20% since March.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Microsoft is outsourcing software developmnent and replacing Americans with H1b visa holders and contactors coming in under the L1 visa program.
Free trade bump.
I am afraid that is the entire point my friend.
The stock market can gain back lost ground on the strength of profits made from cheap off-shore labor (and I was personally involved in that in the Far East, the sub continent and eastern Europe - have seen it with my own eyes and got the heck out of it as a result). Although such gains paint a rosy picture for the corporations involved, it is getting more and more difficult to shield or hide the fact that millions of Americans are either out of work as a result or doing things much differently than what they were trained to do, and what they worked at for decades.
We are reverting to Gore's Service Economy which in the end is an economy of servants.
I have personally done alright. I used to design/develop and engineer computer, power and DOD products. I then managed and then directed teams that did so. Then went into consulting.
Got sick of the outflow and now I service individual and small business computers from my own home, write books and develop web sites. It provides money enough to meet our needs...but I am not making anything!
Our nation is headed more and more down that path where manufacturing, product engineering and development, software development, financial services and even more and more agriculture is shifting off shore. A lot of it is going to nations who are our ideological and political adversaries now, and who could easily become our military adversaries.
This is one of the primary reasons I am writing the Dragon's Fury Series. To use a fictional story to perhaps show where it could all lead...and it's not a pretty place.
Sorry for the rant...but thanks for the opportunity to vent.
But Euro-taxpayer-subsidized Aerobus Industries is NOT a 'violation' of 'international trade rules'?
Should those nations achieve the near monopoly status they seek in these industries we will be unable to provide the tools necessary for ourtroops in the field to prevail without massive sacrifice of lives and even then the issue will remain in doubt for far longer than it should.
Should those nations achieve the near monopoly status they seek in these industries we will be unable to provide the tools necessary for ourtroops in the field to prevail without massive sacrifice of lives and even then the issue will remain in doubt for far longer than it should.
Given the current trade rules, a resoubnding no is the answer to this question. Anyone who tells you Americans can't compete in the current global economy is just saying Americans can not win a game whose rules are designed to make them lose. At least in a casino the house does not always win and the percentages are a little better for the player than the current global economy is for the average American.
Even if that consumer base does eventually develop, I don't see how it can possibly benefit Americans. They won't need to import anything from America. We're already stuck in a one-way deal by the export of our capital and technology. Even the machine tool industry has gone offshore.
When we are completely drained of wealth, we won't be able to rebuild our factories without machinery and tools from China, and that will require sending them more of our capital, or letting them take possession of a few west coast states.
The optimistic assessment is that we're doomed.©
The bad news is that we still have millions of idiots, some here on FR, singing the praises of globalism.
And that is one of the major points of Dragon's Fury.
I still believe we have the will, the moral foundation (once all the mush is cleared away in the bright fire of such times) and the ability to prevail should such events arise...but it is being cast into doubt, and in many (perhpas) most) instances by our own.
Your are right. And it will NEVER happen. All the major managers and Chinese 'company heads' are 'princelings' i.e., children of the most-reliable communist cadre leaderships. And the labor force is kept union-free at gun point, and forced to work for slave labor wages. Literally pennies per day. Which of course is both a calculated ploy to suck in Western capital, and drain us of yet more technology and manufacturing ability...AND also keep a middle class from forming which would become restive and overthrow the communist autocracy. [ All under the rubric of 'political stability' ]
And a lof of the 'free-trader' globalists have yet to account for the fact that much of this labor force...is forced to work in the factories...they most definitely aren't making 'a free choice.'
Indeed, the deafening silence from this lousy crew of apologists hearkens back to the old confederate apologists for slavery, whose insistence on the principle of 'freedom of association' and state's rights, conveniently over-looked the glaring contradictory fact of the slavery underpinning their society.
The same type of thing exists in India, even though they are a Republic of sorts, where the caste system is still very much in play and the lower echelon is still held down, though India's masses have a significantly better chance than China's IMHO.
Will/can the two (China and India) ever get together? While it is unlikely and they have long standing political/cultural/military differences...no one would have predicted an alliance between Stalin and Hitler in early WW II years either. We already know China has abetted our Mid East enemies, it is not too great a stretch IMHO seeing them come together, and given the right economic incentives and geo-political situation, India could be pulled ito that mix.
I still believe that underneath the mush of current political/economic/moral thinking at the higher levels of our society here in the U.S. (not all of them for sure, but far too many), that there is an indomitable will and commitment to our traditional moral foundation still alive in our people. I have seen and experienced in my travels. I am afraid that that short of a miraculous revival of some sort, that it will take such horrific circumstances as you describe to bring that all to the fore.
As you know, that is another reason I am writing Dragon's Fury, out of a conviction to that faith I hold in the everyday people and the Hand of Providance that has supported us through to this time.
Best regards.
At some point the US will have to respond to this economic war against us. Any tightening of the money flow from the US could be just the catalyst for an India/China alliance.
As you and others have pointed out, India and China both will have a fairly easy time preventing the rise of a middle class in their societies. Their poor will most likely welcome any slight economic improvement. America, on the other hand, faces an increasingly nasty situation as millions of our middle class are pushed into a third-world existence.
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