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Originally Posted by Kaefer
American workers work longer hours, and accomplish more than any other worker in the world. The average American works 45 hours a week; the average Japanese works 36; the average German works 37.
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And you think that's a good thing?
100 years ago the average American worked 80 hours per week. Even young children worked back then. Perhaps we should go back to those days? Were we more productive back then?
Perhaps I look at the world a little differently than most, but the problem with the typical capitalist measure of the size of an enconomy (GDP), is that it does not account for anything except dollars. If someone pays me $500 tomorrow to dig a ditch in the morning and fill it in during the afternoon, most economists would say I had a very productive day -- $500 productive. The fact that I did nothing of any benefit to anyone does not seem to matter in their formula. So when our entire country spends its time doing eachother's laundry, as long as a decent amount of money exchanges hands, American economists will continue to say that our economy is growing and doing well.
Try not measuring productivity in paper dollars and instead in actual productivity, and you will find that our place in the world is falling fast. My prediction is that within 20 years, the American dollar will be worth about what the Mexican peso is worth.
The only reason we are not seeing big big problems is that we are such a large consumer market that foreign companies are bending over backwards to keep prices of consumer products low enough for Americans to afford. But in the very near future, they are not going to be able to do that anymore and prices of goods are going to start increasing rapidly as the dollar continues to drop. As wages are not increasing as fast as cost of living, much of our middle class is going to disappear.
As far as the computer technology, ever heard of companies like Samsung, LG, NEC, Toshiba, Sony and HTC (just to name a few)?