Have you ever heard of the Federal Minimum Wage? Also, the market for labor takes care of itself. Supply and demand. You wonder why American car companies weren't competitive? They were priced out of the market. It worked for a while, but evenutally it was goodbye, Detroit. Why do you think the foreign car companies went into right to work states when they built their auto plants? Are those companies paying minimum wage? As an aside, I'm not sure you know, economically speaking, what an externality is. As for trade restrictions, I'm in favor of reciprocity. Whatever the tariffs are on one side, you apply to the other. The real issue with China is they won't let the yuan float, so items remain too expensive for the average Chinese citizen. Saving rates are too high in that country. It's time some of that surplus the government has to be used to make lives for their citizens better.
When I think of the mythological Hell I seriously picture China. When I see China in documentaries I honestly think that's the closest thing to hell on earth. The one child policy is actually a good thing. I wouldn't want to bring a child into that environment. Hell, why not sterilize? Unethical, yes, but so is China.
Dude, London was exactly the same when they were going through the industrialization (trust me, I'm a time travel master). The Chinese won't obliterate themselves, they won't even come close, you could destroy this whole planet and there would still be a Chinese man making boxes for a bag of chips. The only difference is that in the modern day we live in we have digital cameras, journalists, and high publicity. We used to throw our own shit into the River Thames!
Of course, the difference between the UK, Germany and the US vs. places like Russia and China is that the people decided to change their environment where the government would have to be responsible for changing it in those countries. Note the countries in which these cities exist, and then ask yourselves how free they are: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1661031,00.html Of course, the other theme is poverty. Take those two factors, and you have hell on earth.
Another thing to consider when comparing the US or London to modern day China, there is no way either country could have produced nearly the toxic waste or moved it nearly as effectively as China can today. Nuclear power did not exist. Cars and trucks were in their infant stages. Trains were about the best way to get around. Yes, our two countries were definitely doing some messed up stuff, but you could take everything the US and Britain has done, added it together, and you STILL wouldn't be able to match up with China.
An externality is a way to take a price and move it off the expense side of the account is it not? Such as you have higher wages you put that pricing into the consumer price tag as an externality. That's my understanding. I might be wrong I admit. I was certainly STREEETCHING the term to meet my point, a bad habit I have. Just looked it up. Yep it's far more specific then just a cost it's an "outside" cost. The federal minimum wage doesn't work in the pro-globalization world we have. Labor is a cost, you want to reduce costs = you go to china. Same goes of course with environmental laws hence our current conversation. Since there aren't laws prohibiting the sale of goods that are environmentally destructive either of themselves or through manufacture it's a race to the bottom. I would rather cut our economic bonds entirely with China rather then race them to the bottom. We would have to abolish the Federal Minimum Wage to compete with China. Don't think that you or anyone you know would be spared by the sudden lack of wage protection. Most industries would immediately start paying slave wages and we would have deflation if we were lucky if not outright collapse as all prices became skewed by the freefall in wages. Similarly it would be madness to roll back existing environmental laws to compete with China which is what you are implicitly suggesting. We should "remove the fetters" of Capital and deregulate. You can only take that argument so far before you have children dying by the dozens in factories nationwide as we had in the 1900's. After all some work is best done by small hands and we don't want to limit free enterprise right? I realize you aren't suggesting a return to child labor, but that is what would occur if we attempted to match the Chinese on Labor and Environmental laws. No, we must take the high road and I think we need to insist that the Chinese change their ways. Diplomatically at first and then with sanctions and tarrifs if need be. They should be isolated like Iraq was and Iran is becoming. There is far greater reason to think China is dangerous then Iran. We know they have nukes, we know they have no regard for human life and they are annihilating the planet where ever they set up industry. Of course we would need to behave in this manner ourselves for it to carry any weight. And that's the rub. US corporations behave much like the Chinese when outside of the "restrictive" laws of the US. This statement: is Keynesian insanity at it's worst. I would argue that in fact it is THIS country - along with much of the west - that has too much of something and that something is DEBT. Only in a bullshit fiat currency madness world does someone make the statement savings is bad, debt is good (money creation is debt creation as the dollar is an interest bearing debt obligation from the US to the Federal Reseve). "One who goes borrowing, goes sorrowing." as Benjamin Franklin would say. Even if the Chinese started spending, the US would continue to be further under their thumb as we rely on them to finance our spending. Rather then creating real wealth here in America we borrow from the Chinese. To say the Chinese are bad for working hard and saving is simply stunning. I do not understand folks who are right leaning and buy into Keynesian fiat madness. The saving grace of the right wing is its fiscal restraint, ever since Reagan and much more so with Bush jr. the Republican party has bought into Keynesian madness. Whether it's jauntily racking up vast military expenditures or Dick Cheney telling the party not to worry about Debt fiscal insanity is rampant in the Republican party. When it comes to fiscal restraint obviously the Democrats continue to have an even worse track record. Again it's a race to the bottom, this time between the parties. If we had taken our medicine in 1999-00 we might be getting better now. Instead we slashed rates and flooded the market with cheap money and now our situation is insanely bad. We face either deflationary depression, hyper-inflationary depression or a Japan style multi-decade stagflation with zombie banks. I agree by the way, that the Chinese should spend money to improve the lot of their citizens for sure. However, this would best be done by investing Trillions in clean energy and manufacturing process'. The biggest hardship of the Chinese poor person is not the poverty (This has been the same for Millenia), but the horrifyingly scarred and destroyed Chinese landscape. At least in the 1800's you could drink water from a stream and breathe clean air. Now for 100's of millions of Chinese they have all the crushing poverty of 1600's Chinese peasantry with zero natural beauty. They do however, have lots and lots of heinous pollution. Ronan: You say that it's no big deal because the British did it? Well the Salmon used to run in the Thames but went extinct in the 1830's. I know they are trying to reintroduce Salmon, but it is not equivalent to wild runs. What's more if we just sit back and watch every country repeat the mistakes of the Industrial revolution (Industrializing is fine, but it should be clean industry that is built) in the West, then this planet won't be very pleasant for the remaining humans to say the least.
The only thing I can take from this post is that you believe Mercantilism to be a legitimate economic system. It was rightly discredited in the 19th Century. The wealth of the people should not held as savings. There should be some savings, but an economy grows based on investment and consumption. On the flip side, you also only purchase what you can afford, and we've been long past the point of affording anything we want from the government for quite a while.
Its funny how quickly this thread is getting bumped down when "the bodacious blazer babes of S2" is stickied. Pity. This should be a must-read, especially for a forum with so many active users.
