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Immelt: Communist China 'Works'
The Weekly Standard ^ | Dec 10, 2012 | DANIEL HALPER

Posted on 12/10/2012 8:35:09 PM PST by DaveTesla

Immelt: The one thing that actually works, state run communism a bit– may not be your cup of tea, but their government works."

(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government
KEYWORDS:
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To: yldstrk
oh yeah, slave labor, these people are demons

About slave labor, it's instructive to review the observations of a noted US private equity specialist concerning Chinese labor camps, the nature of the inmates, their long hours, the packed conditions under which the live, the direction in which the barbed-wire fences are oriented, and, come Chinese New Year, the length of the arbeit-macht-frei queue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge03Sys8SdA#t=6m35s

61 posted on 12/10/2012 11:10:06 PM PST by cynwoody
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To: Sherman Logan; DaveTesla
[ There are numerous existing and possible varieties of totalitarianism. Communism refers to the variety that is ideologically focused primarily on enforcing human social and economic equality. In theory, of course, not practice. ]

Communism "IS" socialism, its not like socialism it is socialism..
All mannar of micro socialist and macro socialist systems but they are the same.. meme..
They are also basically democratic..

Democratic meaning MOB Rule by mobsters..
No democracy has ever been democratic.. Marx knew that..
Democracy is a lie.. a scam.. a boon doggle..
Always an elite rules in a democracy.... like communism..
------------------------------------------------
Democracy is the road to socialism. -Karl Marx

Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism. -V.I. Lenin

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism .-Karl Marx

62 posted on 12/10/2012 11:17:33 PM PST by hosepipe (This propaganda has been edited to include some fully orbed hyperbole..)
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To: DaveTesla

Yes, remember seeing this guy on TV. These are monsters. And Obama is cold enough to enact this....not to mention he didn’t grow up as an American no matter where he happened to be born. To him we are the enemy.


63 posted on 12/10/2012 11:27:03 PM PST by Aria ( 2008 & 2012 weren't elections - both were a coup d'etat.)
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To: DaveTesla

From the top-down this administration is one worthless asshole after another.


64 posted on 12/11/2012 1:08:24 AM PST by Psycho_Bunny (Thought Puzzle: Describe Islam without using the phrase "mental disorder" more than four times.)
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To: Gay State Conservative

Lots of folks there live like folks did here in the days of Jackie Gleason’s “The Honeymooners”.
Not like animals, very modest by modern US standards.
A lot like I lived the last couple of years working through college...


65 posted on 12/11/2012 1:27:53 AM PST by muffaletaman (IMNSHO - I MIGHT be wrong, but I doubt it.)
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bflr


66 posted on 12/11/2012 1:46:32 AM PST by Captainpaintball
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To: DaveTesla

1. All property is no longer held in common in China. As I said in my original post, this is the true definition of communism and what sets it apart from other varieties of tyranny.

2. This definition is not unique to Communism, as it applies equally to Nazism, Fascism and other varieties of tyranny. It, sort of, applies to all historical monarchies if you aren’t overly strict as to what constitutes a “political party.”


67 posted on 12/11/2012 2:15:41 AM PST by Sherman Logan (Brought to you by one of the unpopular pale penis people.)
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To: Jacob Kell
Take a look at the current constitution of Communist China to see what they’re really about.

LOL. As if the Constitution of any tyranny has ever meant a thing in practice. The USSR and most other commie countries had quite lovely constitutions. It's just that they were never more than window-dressing.

68 posted on 12/11/2012 2:18:54 AM PST by Sherman Logan (Brought to you by one of the unpopular pale penis people.)
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To: Jacob Kell
Even the USSR had millionaires.

I'd like to see a reference to millionaires who legally owned private property of that amount.

69 posted on 12/11/2012 2:21:19 AM PST by Sherman Logan (Brought to you by one of the unpopular pale penis people.)
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To: hosepipe
Always an elite rules in a democracy

An elite always rules in any society other than an anarchy.

That elite is chosen and perpetuated using a wide variety of methods.

70 posted on 12/11/2012 2:28:16 AM PST by Sherman Logan (Brought to you by one of the unpopular pale penis people.)
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To: DaveTesla

Bullets beat ballots any day of the week for dealing with pesky peons and peasants, doesn’t it Immelt?


71 posted on 12/11/2012 4:17:47 AM PST by mo (If you understand, no explanation is needed. If you don't understand, no explanation is possible.)
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To: DaveTesla

If 51% of U.S. voters want Communism, the least we could do is let the ChiComs control the country. They are certainly smarter and more efficient that the affirmative action crowd we have stinking up the joint.


72 posted on 12/11/2012 4:22:51 AM PST by txrefugee
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To: DaveTesla

Add the tens of millions of unborn children murdered....

Leftism, by any name, ALWAYS fails economically and morally.


73 posted on 12/11/2012 4:26:07 AM PST by newfreep (Breitbart sent me...)
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To: DaveTesla
So when does Jeffrey Immelt intend to move all of General Electric’s holdings to China along with corporate headquarters so he doesn't pay U.S. taxes any more on anything?
74 posted on 12/11/2012 4:28:35 AM PST by MasterGunner01
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To: PieterCasparzen
This is why Traditional Judeo-Christian Small Business is best.

It's called the principle of subsidiarity. (a matter ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized authority capable of addressing that matter effectively)

75 posted on 12/11/2012 4:31:13 AM PST by ThomasMore (Islam is the Whore of Babylon!)
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To: DaveTesla
This is why China "works" so well, and why globalist progressives admire it so much.

The elites can make you obey them, or they'll kill you.

That's why Obama and Immelt admire China so much. They are jealous.


76 posted on 12/11/2012 4:46:59 AM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: tet68

Immelt sees himself as a high-ranking Commissar, not a slave of Communism.

He sees himself in the same billionaire’s mansion as ever, well hidden from the proles, pulling the levers of power.


77 posted on 12/11/2012 4:56:59 AM PST by Travis McGee (www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com)
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To: DaveTesla

And Mussolini got the trains to run on time.


78 posted on 12/11/2012 5:27:31 AM PST by mort56
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To: cynwoody

well I am ok with factories with volunteer workers; what I am talking about are those manned by government prisoners


79 posted on 12/11/2012 5:43:35 AM PST by yldstrk (My heroes have always been cowboys)
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To: DaveTesla

Immelt is “glorifying” China because he bet large segments of his company on China by moving there. But his short term myopic view may be a bad bet....

MOVE OVER, MICHIGAN, CHINA IS THE WORLD’S NEXT RUST BELT

Six cities in Liaoning province, including Shenyang and Anshan, recently announced they are converting abandoned industrial sites to farmland. Dongguan, once a booming factory center, is on the verge of bankruptcy as companies close, leaving the local government severely cash-strapped.

Just two years after China overtook the U.S. to become the world’s largest manufacturer, the country faces the prospect of decades of de-industrialization. And there is little Beijing can do to arrest the slide.

Globalization once propelled China. Hong Kong manufacturers flocked to that country’s coastal regions in the early 1980s largely because labor costs were low and regulation lax. Later, companies had little choice but to move to China because their competitors had already located there, and soon suppliers congregated around assemblers, forming efficient industrial communities. The country became an integral link in the production plans of manufacturers, large and small.

As a result, China made itself the manufacturing powerhouse. From nowhere, it became the world’s biggest producer of steel, cameras, toys, sporting goods, shoes, garments, textiles, televisions, cell phones, pens, you name it. One enterprise, Shenzhen-based BYD Co., grabbed more than half the global market for mobile phone batteries. One city, Datang, produced more than a third of the world’s socks: about a pair and a half for each man, woman, and child on the planet each year. The country manufactured eight out of ten of the world’s microwaves and nine out of ten of its DVD players. China churned out 70% of all counterfeit goods.

But as the Chinese say, “no feast lasts forever.” Various trends coincided to erode their country’s competitive advantages. First, Chinese authorities started enforcing environmental rules as citizens took to the streets to complain about metals in the soil, pollutants in the water, and soot in the air. Now, no one in China wants to live in a “cancer village,” and people are routinely blocking projects, especially in the prosperous coastal regions of the country.

Second, smaller foreign investors began to pull back as they realized that manufacturing in China substantially increased the risk of loss of their intellectual property. Beijing did little to stop rampant theft.

Third, Chinese political risk, once thought to be minimal, became a factor. Beijing attempted to use its considerable economic leverage to achieve geopolitical goals, and this involved the targeting of companies from countries that had, in one way or another, angered China. Since the middle of 2010, Beijing has gone against Japanese, Norwegian, American, and European Union businesses. Chinese leaders, in the process, started to make their country an unreliable part of global supply chains.

Fourth, changes in the market convinced companies that there were significant cost and time-to-market advantages in manufacturing close to customers. The friction in dealing with faraway Chinese factories, once ignored, is now a big consideration in plant-location decisions.

Fifth, the most important factors in eroding China’s competitive position involved the labor force, the reason why foreign companies moved to the country in the first place. For one thing, the world’s most populous country, paradoxically, began to run out of people. The size of the workforce peaked in 2010, six years before Beijing’s official demographers said it would, and rural residents are increasingly reluctant to move to the cities to work in dreary factories and live in squalid conditions.

Labor shortages helped drive up wages, which are now rising faster than both inflation and productivity. Last year, urban wages were up 14.3% in the nonprivate sector and 18.3% in the private one.

And Chinese workers have become restive, showing discontent from strikes to suicides. Labor issues became so serious that Foxconn Technology Group, which now employs 1.2 million workers in China, decided it had to automate. Last year, this electronics assembler had 10,000 robots in that country. In 2014, there will be a million of them making products for Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Microsoft, and Sony, among other brands.

Automation, however, essentially eliminates the advantages of China as a manufacturing platform for the world. Robotized production in China is no cheaper than robotized production in, say, Texas or California, where Foxconn maintains manufacturing facilities. And so it should come as no surprise that, as Foxconn replaces humans with machines, Apple CEO Tim Cook told NBC’s Brian Williams on Thursday that next year his company will manufacture one of its Mac computers in the U.S.

Even though Cook’s announcement could have been “political”—a “token gesture” as one observer in Hong Kong sniffed—it nonetheless is part of a broader narrative of factories fleeing China. After all, Apple is not the only company to recently announce it was “onshoring.” Lenovo, China’s largest maker of PCs, in October said it would move some computer manufacturing to its North Carolina facility, and General Electric has been transferring production back to Appliance Park in Louisville. Small- and medium-sized manufacturers are started to return to the U.S. as well.

American manufacturers, in short, are gaining on the Chinese. Boston Consulting Group has predicted that around 2015 it will become more economical to manufacture in the U.S. than China in seven industrial sectors. American workers are more productive and less likely to strike than their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, as suggested above, transportation costs are much lower and delivery times far shorter when goods are made here. And energy is substantially cheaper in America.

Of course, these trends do not mean all manufacturing will come back to America. “As far as my industry is concerned, I don’t see production moving out of China to the U.S. in the foreseeable future,” said Willie Fung Wai-yiu of undergarment maker Top Form International to the South China Morning Post. “Our trade is labor intensive.”

Yet some labor-intensive garments are now being made in the U.S., as my wife’s stroll around our local Walmart, located in Manville, New Jersey, revealed yesterday. There, for instance, she found Mainstays bedding with U.S. labels.

Chinese goods were hard to find. She saw that every piece of clothing in Walmart’s house brand, George, was made in Bangladesh. Items with the Hanes label came from Guatemala and El Salvador, Wrangler jeans from Nicaragua, Fruit of the Loom from Honduras. Danskin apparel was imported from Jordan, Egypt, and Kenya. If you want to know where Simply Basic sleepwear comes from, fly to Cambodia.

My wife, after some searching, did find one garment label made in China. It’s called “Faded Glory.”

Article link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2012/12/09/move-over-michigan-china-is-the-worlds-next-rustbelt/

GE, in my opinion, is no longer a true corporation that thrives on inventiveness and meeting market demand. They are the essence of crony capitalism, dependent on governments like the US and China for survival. If Immelt blasted China he would basically destroy GE’s operations that he moved to China.

GE isn’t nicknamed Generally Expensive for nothing.


80 posted on 12/11/2012 6:36:08 AM PST by CharlesMartelsGhost
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