Posted on 07/20/2005 10:20:20 PM PDT by remember
CAN AMERICANS COMPETE?
Is America the World's 97-lb. Weakling?
In the relentless, global, tech-driven, cost-cutting struggle for business, America isn’t ready—here’s what to do about it.
By Geoffrey Colvin
It’s a crisis of confidence unlike anything America has felt in a generation. Residents of tiny Newton, Iowa, wake up to the distressing news that a Chinese firm—What’s it called? Haier? That’s Chinese?—wants to buy their biggest employer, the famed but foundering Maytag appliance company. Two days later, out of nowhere, a massive, government-owned Chinese oil company muscles into the bidding for America’s Unocal. The very next day a ship in Xinsha, China, loads the first Chinese-made cars bound for the West, where they’ll compete with the products of Detroit’s struggling old giants.
All in one week. And only two months earlier a Chinese company most Americans had never heard of took over the personal computer business formerly owned—and mismanaged into billions of dollars of losses—by the great IBM.
"Can America compete?" is the nation’s new No. 1 anxiety, the topic of emotional debate in bars and boardrooms, the title of seminars and speeches offered by the liberal Progressive Policy Institute, the conservative economist Todd Buchholz, and countless schools and Rotary Clubs. The question is almost right, but not quite. We’re wringing our hands over the wrong thing. The problem isn’t Chinese companies threatening U.S. firms. It’s U.S. workers unable to compete with those in China—or India, or South Korea. The real question is, "Can Americans compete?"
(Excerpt) Read more at fortune.com ...
It’s time for a massive, urgent American response to the global challenge. As Cisco chief John Chambers says flatly, "We are not competitive." Where to start? Venture capitalist John Doerr, one of America’s most passionate competitiveness campaigners, calls education "the largest and most screwed-up part of the American economy." He’d start there. GE chief Jeff Immelt has attacked America’s newly restrictive student visa rules. Others focus first on R&D spending or the broadband infrastructure. But the greatest challenge will be changing a culture that neither values education nor sacrifices the present for the future as much as it used to—or as much as our competitors do. And you’d better believe that American business has a role to play—after years of dot-com-bust- and scandal-driven reticence, more corporate leaders need to summon the courage to lead.
While optimism has always been the best guide to predicting the U.S. economy, today’s situation is unprecedented. Global product markets have been with us forever and continue to expand. Global capital markets are still developing—watch out, Unocal and Maytag. But global labor markets on a broad scale are a new phenomenon that could, for better or worse, transform the country. How we respond—in our businesses, our government, and our culture—will shape America in the deepest way.
Yes.
China uses slave labor and is an environmental disaster.
And they still have a billion people to feed; what is the per capita income in China?
Full Disclosure: Can you say "corruption" and "no intellectual property rights"?
Second Disclosure: Now can you say "Cisco, Microsoft, and others contribute to keeping the Chinese gulag in place by helping them censor the internet"?
Third Disclosure: Now can you say "dumping" and "artificially low currency value"?
Can you say "The robber barons were stopped in the US, and then discovered they could transfer operations to the third world, or import the third world to the US" ?
Sure it can. Yesterday, Unocal accepted US-based Chevron's bid over the Chinese bid. Also on the same day, US-based Whirlpool entered a bid for Maytag, which made China's Haier fold its bid.
America is not just competing, but its winning.
Unfortunately for Fortune, they posted this article one day too late.
I'd start by doing away with seniority in the unions. No longer would simply being around long enough cut it. In order to win work, you'll have to do it better, faster and cheaper. (Even two out of three would be a step in the right direction.)
The main reason America cannot compete in the global market is because our stuff is more expensive and not any better quality (sometimes worse, in fact) than overseas goods. And what's worse, we have avoided trade wars like limp-wristed pansies. Whenever China or another third-rate dictatorship threatens trade wars, we cave.
Enough is enough. It's time to cut the legs out from under the anti-competitive union legacy, bring competitiveness back to capitalism, and bring the cost of our goods down so we can put China into a trade deficit for once.
Yes, we won a couple of the battles lately...but don't for a moment believe that we're winning the war. Take one look at the trade deficit and note which way the money tide is moving.
Easy answer.
First we voluntarily slash rents or the sale price of our homes and a lot of other things by 90%.
Then American workers can afford to slash their salaries by 90%.
Then we can compete.
Simple.
Over the higher Chinese bid.
Can't say much for our current trade defecit, but we've had one for decades, and you and I are still able to pay the rent and burn the electricity to post to one another over a $30/month Internet connection. So I'm okay and you're okay.
As for the money tide, the dollar bottomed out seven months ago and is at the high for the year. It means people are buying dollars and selling other foreign currencies.
Yeah...enjoy it while it lasts because if it keeps up, China's gonna end up owning this nation.
Perhaps Unocal believed that the Chinese bid was based on worthless Yuans.
Interestingly, they don't seem that attracted by real estate, like the Japanese were. They like intellectual property.
Several years ago on FR, the brilliant Freeper named Commontator mentioned that foreigners can own the paper on this country, but they can neither own the guns nor the hands that carry the guns here in America. Which would you rather own: Worthless american paper or the Americans who'll hold those guns? Foreigners can buy the former, but can't buy the latter.
In other words, just chill.
Can you translate that?
Enough Chinese own the paper and the land and have enough guns, get ready to kiss the ass of Mao, pal.
And don't tell me to chill. That's so juvenile.
If you have to ask, you can't afford the merchandise.
"But the greatest challenge will be changing a culture that neither values education nor sacrifices the present for the future as much as it used to—or as much as our competitors do."
That sounds about right. We have become spoiled and lazy, and as a whole, are unwilling to make sacrifices in order to achieve a larger, longer-term goal.
Yet, FRiend.
Yet.
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