Posted on 03/11/2007 1:15:26 PM PDT by grey_whiskers
Actually, a good respose. Saved it with the first.
Hope I'm not turning into Willie Green :-)
Cheers!
You left out the part about Anna Nicole Smith.
Cheers!
Interesting.
Hi G_W,
Interesting piece. FWIW, my 2 cents.
China and India were like 50%+ of world GDP upto the 1800s and had been so for centuries. The industrial revolution changed that for a time. Is it reasonable to believe that this ‘anomaly’ in wealth creation+distribution given population and resource distributions worldwide would be permanent?
Secondly, before grudging Chindia, consider that their combined economic output even now, after a decade of assiduous offshoring, tech transfers etc is still in the low single digits as a percentage of world GDP. They are projected to overtake the OECD decades later. The OECD could manouvre to slwo them down, create rifts and turbulence, grind them to a halt and IMO, the OECD retains such an option to exercise later at an ‘appropriate’ time, perhaps. A sudden banking system collapse in China or the volcano of the HIV crisis in India suddenly erupting is actually more a matter of focusing press attention at the right parts of the Chinadia edifice than of anything else.
Thirdly, is it reasonable to believe that a McKinset would sellout for whatever peanuts some impoverished indian state could hand out? The downside is that iof McK activities are exposed, what happens to their 98% or some such number of business that resides even today in the OECD?
Fourthly, how does our wealth transfer to the mideast for its oil comapre to that to India? China i actually pumping wealth back into the US by buying US bonds in return for tangible physical goods.
Things to ponder and think about. Whatever the outcome, I wouldn’t grudge India’s rise. A billion aspirations cannot be forever kept pinned down. They’re only now discovering the joys of capitalism and entreprenuership. I wish them well. China’s rise I would be a tad more suspicious about, though.
JMTs. Have a nice day.
Cheers!
This could take anything from a vanity up to an entire textbook to cover.
I'll give not just Cliff's Notes, but the Cliff's Notes to the Cliff's Notes.
During the time you speak of, there was no industry--everything was at a handcart/oxen/small farmer level.
So the countries with the biggest populations, had the biggest GDP.
You are correct that the Industrial Revolution changed things, but that sounds too much like the liberal "oh, woe to the poor indigenous peoples, cruelly repressed by the evil capitalist exploitative Christian white males who are probably heterosexual, too" (OWTTPIPCRBTECECWMWAPHT).
Several other things come in, too, such as:
A strong system of law to allow intellectual and physical property rights.
Well-maintained systems of transport for trade.
An educated populace.
Enough food.
Willingness on the part of the government to get out of the way and not regulate and crony-ize things out of existence.
Access to capital to wield, given the above factors.
China and India have until *very* recently, not had all of these things--e.g. Robert Erlich in his ecofreak bible The Population Bomb predicted in 1974 that India would be cut off from food aid by the United States by the new millenium. He was wrong, of course, but the fact that one of the cognoscenti, the annointed, thought so, indicates that they weren't necessarily on very good ground.
And of course the Socialist or Communist governments did not do much to encourage economic efficiency.
...The OECD could manouvre to slwo them down, create rifts and turbulence, grind them to a halt and IMO, the OECD retains such an option to exercise later at an ‘appropriate’ time, perhaps. A sudden banking system collapse in China or the volcano of the HIV crisis in India suddenly erupting is actually more a matter of focusing press attention at the right parts of the Chinadia edifice than of anything else.
You are quite right; but again, this sounds like OWTTPIPCRBTECECWMWAPHT. There are structural flaws in the societies of India and China; the question is if those countries can become economically self sustaining rather than low-cost cesspools, before the societal problems overtake them. (In China's case, with the surplus of unmarried young men, and their extreme nationalism, I think that they will shift from Communism to Fascism, if they have not already done so. All of their economic growth is geared towards militarism, and they are far more xenophobic and racist than David Duke ever drreamed of being. See here and here here for examples. (Thanks to FReeper Lucius Vorenus for the latter link.) (*)
Thirdly, is it reasonable to believe that a McKinset would sellout for whatever peanuts some impoverished indian state could hand out? The downside is that iof McK activities are exposed, what happens to their 98% or some such number of business that resides even today in the OECD?
Pushing India is not "selling out" for them; this is touched on in one of the Vanities below, "A Falling Tide Grounds All Boats"--it is more like an "old boys network" of executives from companies who first started the outsourcing wave, cashing in on their connections.
Fourthly, how does our wealth transfer to the mideast for its oil comapre to that to India? China i actually pumping wealth back into the US by buying US bonds in return for tangible physical goods.
Two points. First, the old saying, "If you owe the bank $1000 and can't pay them back, you are up the creek. If you owe the bank $200,000 and can't pay them back, the bank is up the creek."
What if you the Chinese DUMP all the US bonds, causing a financial crisis in the US, just as they take all their Clinton-acquired missile technology and go for Taiwan, combined with biological warfare attacks (see the link above, and consider the recent pet-food debacle with, say, H5N1 laced into HUMAN foodstocks) combined with a massive internet attack from all of the Lenovo-created PC's which had trojan horses installed at the factory?
Second point, going to the Adam Smith's "hidden hand" argument. From what I have read, China requires 5 times the amount of oil for a single unit of GDP produced, than does the United States. This means one of two things--either the US does much more "finished product" and value added work, or China is grossly inefficient.
If the former, good for the US, except if we suddenly need manufacturing capacity--one strike on Boeing and most of the US airforce is out of business. IF the latter, it means US executives are screwing with the hidden hand, by forcing everyone *else* to pay the price of inefficiently manufactured goods and higher oil prices, just so they can save a few bucks on cheaper labor, and so get higher bonuses.
Whatever the outcome, I wouldn’t grudge India’s rise. A billion aspirations cannot be forever kept pinned down.
I don't grudge India it's rise--I am upset that the US executives lie through their teeth that they cannot find qualified US workers, and then force the US workers who are being fired to train their own replacements. If the US workers were really unqualified, they would be asking the Indians for training. I could give many other examples, but it is clear that it is not the talent of the Indians which is driving this, but merely wage arbitrage by the executives.
Cheers! (*) I have a series of vanities on outsourcing and such; and another series on the decline of the west.
(Vanity) Another Look at Outsourcing
(Vanity) A Falling Tide Grounds All Boats
(Vanity) The New Colonialism, or, Out of One, Many
(Vanity) As the World Turns, or The Wild, Wild East
(Vanity) As the World Turns, Part II, or Back to the Future
(Vanity) As the World Turns, Part III, or, The Year of Lipstick on a Pig
Bump! Great post and more links - thanks!
(Blush). Thanks.
Sorry, poor writing on my part. I was thinking modern industry, i.e. mechanization.
These two were also at the forefront of education, then they stagnated for various reasons. The US should NOT allow the same to happen to itself.
We need to reinstate compulsory Latin and plane geometry classes like the Brits used to teach. That's how they took over the world.
Cheers!
well,it’s worked for IBM — they now have 154,000 employees there, but are winning contracts from Indian companies — 3 years ago they won the Bharti Airtel IT outsourcing contract and others
to my comment These two were also at the forefront of education, then they stagnated for various reasons. The US should NOT allow the same to happen to itself. -- let me add this, they stagnated as they created a fixed class system where intellectuals remained intellectuals and didn't interact and also where people stated that "the best is already reached, we can't improve on that"
I don't see the US falling into that ditch, but into another ditch -- we mock smart people. "Big bang theory" is an exception, but in every other show watched by kids and young adults, to be smart is to be a loser.
The anti-intellectualism has hit the black community the most, but is also hitting the rest of America.
and, sorry to say, but this election showed that -- both candidates had to simplify their stands
3 years, eh? Time flies when you're FReeping.
I don't see the US falling into that ditch, but into another ditch -- we mock smart people. "Big bang theory" is an exception, but in every other show watched by kids and young adults, to be smart is to be a loser.
I'll see you and raise you one -- not only do we mock smart people (at least, in the larger culture); but we are substituting (through Bill Maher, John Stewart, David Letterman, and Jay Carney) snark and posturing as a substitute for intelligence: "Well, you can't challenge ME. I went to HARVARD." (That is, borrowing prestige from where you went to school, regardless of your major, GPA, or how well you learned; and regardless of the faddishness or PC content of the courses. Recall that in the mid-1840's, one had to be able to read Latin at the level of Cicero to be *admitted* to Harvard.)
That, coupled with the disdain for "Dead White Males" (who conceived, designed, tested, built, and maintained almost anything of value in the wider world today) in favor of gender feminism, together with the solipsistic regard for single motherhood, bodes ill for the United States and the West.
My FR vanity on dumbing down:
(Vanity) Getting the Point on Ayers, or, An Act of War
And the inimitable Dr. Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College, from a piece at Ricochet on the decline of the US:
The Deepest Source of Our Troubles.
NO cheers, unfortunately.
true
The anti-"Dead White males" is senseless as if one is really non-racist then they should see that the discoveries of say Pasteur is the property of all, and at the same time Chinese, Indians, Arabs made discoveries -- all are not "racial" or "national" properties....
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