[kingu]

What I'd really like to see is how much investment Americans are doing overseas in these companies that we're importing from. With the huge amount of money people pour into the markets, I would almost believe that we're at a net surplus when all accounts are adjusted.

I've no idea how an accounting like that could be accomplished, but the data would certainly go a long way to understanding where America fits in the global economy. We might be paying ourselves for these imported goods.

[demlosers]

You have touched on something that just doesn't get much notice by the money pundits. When US companies move off shore,
I'll bet much of the profits do come back to the U.S.

[JustAnotherSavage]

" Already, the U.S. has to import $1.8 billion in foreign savings every day to pay for our appetite for imported goods. "

[LS]

Well, first many Americans (that is, stockholders---average people) own the companies that are investing. So any returns come right back into American pockets. Second, I have seen studies from the late 1990s--and, unfortunately, I don't have anything more recent---that showed that virtually all of the growth in the former Soviet Union and in China was coming from labor factor inputs. In other words, they are not increasing productivity, but simply putting more hands to the wheel.

Now, I'm sure that's changed some. But how much? How advanced, technically is China now? They are buying tanks and missiles from Russia that are 25 years old. Yeah, they got "advanced" stuff from Hughes in the 1990s (not since) meaning that at best their stuff is 10 years behind ours. Proprietary stuff, like computers and so forth, is likely 30 years behind ours.

But say it is within five years: the nature of closed or quasi-closed societies is that ideas do NOT percolate. Very quickly, "cutting edge" technology becomes obsolete. I am extremely skeptical about "threats" from societies like China, or even Japan. We saw how quickly the Japanese "threat" unraveled.