The root cause of the desire most people have for extreme cost reduction is the following vicious cycle. During the period from the end of WW2 until the 1990s, expectations regarding "normal" material possessions, home decor and other things which generally cost a lot of money increased dramatically. In order to deal with this, people increasingly allowed themselves to sink deeper and deeper into debt. As this obviously self destructive death spiral hit a point where it threatened the global economy in 1997, the Fed embarked on its current insane policy of lowering the prime to a point where negative appreciation of assets is not out of the question. And in a remarkable and ironic twist of Communist strategy, the PRC used the obvious demand for low cost manufacturing sites, set forth by material goods sellers who needed to further appeal to debt ridden material addicts via drastic cost reductions, to seize both the means of production as well as the means of debt financing. So now, we, the Capitalist West, have lost the two things we always had (and which Lenin set forth his bile to castigate) and they are being turned against us by the Communists. The Communists are now buying what is really bad debt, since the assets of those currently "repairing" their credit via refis will never be able to cover the principle, let alone the total loan costs, within the debtors' lifetimes. Is this like a game of Go or something?
19-"Is this like a game of Go or something?"
Exactly, as I said years ago - It is a giant game of 'GO', which the Chinese invented, and at which they are experts.
Few Americans even know of the game, and haven't got a clue that it is what we are playing.
And we will lose, unless we figure this out.