Sorry V that I didn't respond to this sooner. First off let me preface this with the fact that I'm no economist. In fact I subscribe to the theory that if you laid all the economists in the world end to end you would never reach a conclusion. If the Chinese let their currency float it would raise the price of their goods and therefore make Chinese goods more expensive and allow for other countries to compete with the Chinese. Literally a supply and demand issue. When the supply of a good or service increases the price (in theory at least) should drop and when the demand increases the price will increase. The downside for the Chinese is a decrease in demand for their goods and also a major drop in the dollars that they will receive back from all the money they've lent to our friends in Washington. My take on China is that there is no way any American company can compete on a price basis with any country that pays its workers a few cents an hour, has no unions, has no safety requirements, and has basically no pollution laws.
International Exports I found this interesting: Rank Country Exports Date of information — World $12,461,000,000,000 2009 est. — European Union (minus internal trade) $1,525,000,000,000 2009 est. 1 People's Republic of China $1,202,000,000,000 2009 est. 2 Germany $1,121,000,000,000 2009 est. 3 United States $1,057,700,000,000 2009 est. 4 Japan $581,000,000,000 2009 est. 5 Netherlands $499,000,000,000 2009 est. 6 France $475,000,000,000 2009 est. 7 Italy $405,000,000,000 2009 est. 8 Belgium $370,000,000,000 2009 est. 9 South Korea $364,000,000,000 2009 est. 10 United Kingdom $351,000,000,000 2009 est. — Hong Kong $330,000,000,000 2009 est. 11 Canada $316,000,000,000 2009 est. 12 Russia $304,000,000,000 2009 est. 13 Singapore $270,000,000,000 2009 est. 14 Mexico $230,000,000,000 2009 est. 15 Spain $218,000,000,000 2009 est. The data is from the World Trade Organization. Who would have thought Germany would rank higher than the U.S. in exports? And why is little tiny Belgium, with a population of 10 million, kicking my Canadian butt?
We shouldn't, we should concentrate on competing with countries like Germany (computerized machine tools), France (nuclear power stations), Japan (high tech, generally) and even South Korea (ship building), on the big ticket items and forget about making shirts, or even assembling electronics- any of those things that can be done anywhere, by anybody- and stick to things that are hard to make, and involve great skill in design, engineering and construction. Brewster, thanks for taking the trouble of looking up the numbers, exactly, on exports by nation. Although I was wrong in the detail, the point is still made: the U.S. is a big exporting nation. Here in Cancun, for example, you can see that the UltraMar Express ferry boats are manufactured in Louisiana! Anyone that's seen these in operation could not help but be impressed; and, recently, the plastic garbage can I preferred for use in my home, and purchased locally in Home Depot, was also "Made in the U.S.A." I chose it solely on the combination of features and price, over the other models. Perhaps you have to go abroad to notice that we still make, and ship, a lot of stuff, we just need to do even more! For those who like wines, you'll be happy to know you can find California wines in shops around the world, where they have a fine reputation, and perhaps even more appeal, when imported. ____________________
rdubnpk Where are we at politically? We have three main candidates for governer in Florida. One made his fortune from being the CEO of a hospital chain that was indicted for Medicare fraud and had to pay a substantial penalty after being caught. It is also rumored that indigents were denied treatment at his hospitals and at least one person died after being refused. Then we have the career 30 year politician and former lobbyist for the financial institutions that thrived on the derivative scandal. Followed by the guy who made his fortune betting against the derivatives when he figured out they were going bad. The presidential election pitted Obama, promising change and hope after 8 long years of Bush, against McCain who picked Palin as a running mate. Enough said. The country was ready for a change but the change hasn't come. Obama lost me when he proposed drilling off the coast of Florida to try and appease/ salvage a few moderate Republican votes going in to the elections. And, as someone else mentioned, with all the other BS going on, now was not the time to shove medical reform down everyone's throats. Something needed to be done, but I don't think we have solved anything. Iraq should have never been invaded and Afghanistan is another Iraq. So, where are we politically? Screwed as usual.
Let me throw a further curve to how screwed we are by Obama and company in what they did with our health care system: The president promised that his plan won't change a thing for people who already get health insurance through an employer... but it looks like someone forgot to tell the employers that, because corporate America is already planning to cut you loose. The new law gives most employers a choice: Fund health insurance for your workers, or pay a fine. Sounds great for the workers -- until you run the numbers. Don't bother getting out your calculator, corporate America has already beaten you to the punch. It took them all of 12 seconds to figure out that it would be cheaper to kill their insurance plans and pay the fines. Just look at AT&T. They might provide lousy phone service, but they're pretty good with math -- they've calculated that ditching health insurance for employees would cost them $600 million in ObamaCare fines, according to the Wall Street Journal. But since they paid $2.4 billion in health care costs last year, that's the quickest and easiest $1.8 billion they'll ever make. Thank you, Mr. President. Caterpillar, John Deere and Verizon are all crunching their own numbers, according to the Journal... and I'll bet your employer is as well. Remember, once they drop your insurance you will be required by law to buy your own -- and don't think for a moment that it'll be cheaper or better. Some of my middle-class friends will have to pay $1,000 a month or more for their "free" ObamaCare. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office said a few months ago that discretionary spending for the first decade of ObamaCare would be $55 billion. Now, they're saying it'll be $110 billion. In a few more months, who knows? Whatever it is, you know who'll be stuck with that bill. YOU
I'm convinced that corporations, and those politicians who are supported by them (are there any left, who are not?), have succeeded- through years of applying the most skillful "marketing of idea" tools that clever minds can devise- in twisting the population's thinking, and the political discourse, in a direction that they saw as advantageous to themselves. You can point to many examples, and the tobacco industry led the way, with others picking up the methodology along the way. One of these was to create doubt in people's minds about the work, and work product, of scientific research, so that people would be encouraged to doubt things like the connection between deadly diseases and a loss of years of productive life through smoking, or the connection between climate change and the technologies man had adopted. Another was to push the idea of individual choice being paramount over considerations of national interest, or benefit to society as a whole. In the context of smoking, the implication was clear, it was your right to choose to smoke, but the individual choice concept was pushed further, to undermine any efforts to control the activities of corporations through the implementation of regulation. Then, the concept of "free market" was pushed, with many of the same implications- little if any regulation, and no effort to make companies pay the true cost of disposal of their waste products; instead, the public was made to pick up this bill, through projects like the "Super Fund". Free markets, like individual choice, are phases that sound imminently logical and appealing, yet are totally lacking in specific content, making them convenient buzz words which can conceal a lot of selfish interest by those who promote these slogans. As rdubnpk implies in his post, the political atmosphere in the U.S. is toxic, and if the country fails it will be because its people couldn't tell the difference between thoughtfulness, and genuine attempts to solve problems, from the great volumes of air generated by their politicians as they "cheerleaded" their followers to wrong solutions to wrongly identified problems.
rdubnpk The biggest and most successful ploy the politicians have been able to pull off is the polarizing of Americans along political lines. When everything is said and done, there is little difference between what I want for myself and my children and the desires of those of other "beliefs". The parties have been able to manufacture these differences in order to further their own agendas and keep the voters from throwing them all out. On another note, for those who are following the BP fiasco (another failure for government oversight), my beautiful white sand beaches here in Okaloosa County, FL were victimized yesterday by the appearance of our first tar balls and subsequent closure of a portion of our beaches. I can't write this without tears in my eyes.
This has been a great thread with a lot of good opinions and information. I'm glad we can show the world that we appreciate solid political discourse along with the bare boobs that TTR has so gratefully given us. As Brewster stated, the toxic atmosphere of politics in America courtesy of the media makes any intelligent person shy away from politics leaving us with the slim pickings we currently have and the Florida elections are a perfect example of what our elections have become. As for corporations owning politicians, well, I think some of the unions would need to sell theirs first, such as the UAW, teachers' unions, and public employee unions. Whole industries seem to have their own personal puppet politicians and that really is despicable. I've really gotten to the point where I don't care what political party someone belongs to. If you have been there, you need to be gone and get a real job. Politics was meant to be a service to your country not a career sometimes passed on to your children.
Sanctions, as a tactic Sanctions were sought by the administration previous to Obama's, too, but unsuccessfully, for the most part. The most recent round of enhanced sanctions was the product of Obama's approach, and could be called, "Obama's sanctions", if you wish, but they can't be called ineffective, since they were just approved, after gaining the accent of Russia, and China. What they offer, in the case of Iran, is an opportunity to greatly slow down progress towards a nuclear weapon. While you can't directly influence the actions of Iranian leaders, you can directly punish those outside of Iran who deal with them, in violation of the sanctions, making it that much harder for them to move forward. There are few alternatives to sanctions, frankly speaking, so getting them, and getting more powerful ones, like Obama has succeeded in doing, becomes of utmost importance. In agreeing to the sanctions, both Russia and China became constructive participants in the international effort to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. As for the permanent stationing of antiballistic missiles in Eastern Europe, this was always controversial, and ignored both Russia's and the U.S.'s mobile antimissile systems, which could be deployed in Europe, and near the borders of Iran, if there ever arose a true threat from Iran. ____________________
Afghanistan This is the foreign policy initiative most likely to fail, in my opinion, though many- like he- thought there was no choice but to adopt this risky strategy. __________________ If there ever was a time when we could have subdued the country, rebuilt it, and put it on a firm path to development, that time probably passed about seven years ago. The Taliban were given the chance to regroup when we shifted our resources and attention away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq, and that was that, so far as Afghanistan was concerned, it seems to me. The Taliban were never our enemies because they practiced Islam, and permitted and fostered abuse of women's and children's rights, and human rights generally: so do the Saudis, and they are not our enemies. The Taliban were our enemies because they sheltered and protected Osama Bin Laden, and his Al Queda, and they still do, which shows just how little the previous administration was actually concerned about capturing and dealing with Bin Laden, in spite of the rhetoric. Now, President Obama, fearing that Afghanistan is about to slip back under the Taliban's control, has greatly increased our military effort there, far beyond that of the previous nine years; but, even at this early stage of the effort, a pattern is appearing that has an erie resemblance to what happened in Vietnam during the time we were trying the hardest to come out on top in that struggle: you'll recall that there, our forces, along with the S. Vietnamese, would "free" a village, only to have the Vietcong slip back in and kill those who had cooperated with us. This pattern is being repeated in those territories recently captured by U.S. and Afghan forces, even as you read this post. Sadly, this is probably a contest that will not yield to either the President's supposed charm, nor to what's left of the U.S. military's might, after all those years in Iraq. _______________
