Made in America

[SuaveX5]

Made in America

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN) for 6 A.M. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor (MADE IN HONG KONG). He put on a dress shirt (MADE IN SRI LANKA), designer jeans (MADE IN SINGAPORE) and tennis shoes (MADE IN KOREA). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet (MADE IN INDIA) he sat down with his calculator (MADE IN MEXICO) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio (MADE IN INDIA) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN JOB. At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day, Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals (MADE IN BRAZIL) poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can't find a good paying job in.....AMERICA.....

[JonK]

Manufacturing Jobs are still overated in this global economy. We are not actually doing that bad, check Catapillar, Boeing, etc. We are still ahead.

[ifly]

Originally Posted by JonK

Manufacturing Jobs are still overated in this global economy. We are not actually doing that bad, check Catapillar, Boeing, etc. We are still ahead.

Not sure about the **Ahead** part as we are running a huge deficit and that causes us to borrow from other countries to maintain our debt. Therefore the need for treasury's and other financial vehicles.

We need to sell more than we buy and its a little ass about face.

Simple fact: At the current living standards of the US it would take the known utilizd reserves of 5 earths to bring the rest of the planet up to our living standards.

[Quicksilver]

Hmmmm. Easy conclusion to come to as long as your not one of these folks. Two years ago Monster paid the city $6,000,000 dollars for the naming rights to Candlestick Park - now it's laid off more than 100 employees. Most of those let go are immigrants and over the age of 50. They say the jobs they held have been outsourced overseas for cheaper labor. Let me be clear on this. I believe that some of the folks in this case should have learned english long ago. But time is a vicious enemy that can get us in the end. Never the less being responsible is the personal responsibility of us all but sometime we get eaten alive by other factors.

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?sec...cal&id=4826784

Originally Posted by JonK

Manufacturing Jobs are still overated in this global economy.

[the head]

Economic analysis from the 70's indicated that the next evoloution of our economy would be a shift into service based industiries (intangable goods and distirbution) people bitching about it is essentially (in my eyes) equivilant to someone standing on train tracks and wondering why they got hit by a train...it's economic darwinism kiddies adapt or die.

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by ifly

Simple fact: At the current living standards of the US it would take the known utilizd reserves of 5 earths to bring the rest of the planet up to our living standards.

Not true at all. If the wealth of the entire planet was evenly divided among the population, everyone could have a standard of living even higher than the average American.

Latest figures are that 2% of the world's population owns half of the world's wealth, while the bottom 50% of the world's population owns barely 1% of the world's total wealth.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6211250.stm

That means that just redistributing the wealth of that top 2% would double the standard of living of everyone else.

As far as the standard of living here in the US, we are slipping...

From the encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standar..._United_States


On the Human Poverty Index the US is ranked worst among the selection of 17 wealthiest countries, scoring bad on all counts but long term unemployment.

The United States has more people below the defined poverty line than 26 other countries; however, the measures used to establish a poverty line are controversial and may not always be comparable among countries. What is clear, however, is that the United States has the widest rich-poor gap of any high-income nation today, and that gap continues to grow.The ten percent of Americans with the highest incomes earn 15 times more than the bottom ten percent. In Japan, for instance, the ratio is only 4.2:1. While the exact reasons for this extent of economic disparity are complex, some analysts and critics regard the imbalance as a product of the United States' long policy of having more of a free market economy, while other countries have enacted policies which may sacrifice net wealth in favor of economic equality.

[ifly]

Originally Posted by Eric5273

Not true at all. If the wealth of the entire planet was evenly divided among the population, everyone could have a standard of living even higher than the average American.[I]

Eric, unfortunatly I would disagree (and the Robin Hood/ puritanical view) with you including the UN, World Bank, World Watch, GreenPeace and several independant studies over the last ten years. This forum is not long enough to quote all of them but here is a snippet from World Watch, this is from 10 years ago BTW and look what has happened to commodities prices in those last 10 years and tell me we are not stretching resources as Living Standards increase across developing countries! I have a friend who works in Copper and demand for Copper in the last 10 years has increased by 278% in the previous 10 years it increased by 46%, they are projecting an increase in the need for Copper over the next 10 years just from China & India alone of over 320%.

Worldwatch Institute – August 27, 1996 – 11:00pm
HOLD FOR RELEASE
12:00 noon EST
Wednesday, August 28, 1996


CHINA'S CLAIMS ON EARTH'S RESOURCES
OVERTAKING THOSE OF THE UNITED STATES
China's surging economy is placing growing pressure on the earth's natural systems and resources, says the Worldwatch Institute in "China's Challenge to the United States and to the Earth," an article that will appear in the September/October 1996 issue of World Watch magazine. In the consumption of grain, meat, fertilizer, steel, and coal, China has already passed the United States to lead the world. In its use of oil and emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, it is fast catching up.

Although the United States still leads the world in consumption of many resources, and is far ahead of China in per capita terms for most resources, China's economy has expanded by two thirds since 1990, and its use of resources is growing apace. Multiplying even modest consumption levels by a population of 1.2 billion people-- more than the United States, Europe, and Russia combined--could have a potentially decisive effect on the global environment.

"If China attempts to replicate the consumer economy pioneered in the United States, it will become clear that the U.S. economic model is not environmentally sustainable," noted the article's authors Lester R. Brown and Christopher Flavin. "If the average Chinese consumed as much grain and oil per person as an American does, prices of both commodities could go off the top of the charts. And carbon dioxide emissions would soar, leading to unprecedented climate instability."

Using purchasing power parity to measure output, China's 1995 GNP of just over $3 trillion exceeded Japan's $2.6 trillion and trailed only the U.S. output of $6.7 trillion. If the Chinese economy continues to double every eight years, the pace it has maintained since 1980, it will overtake that of the United States by 2010.

For several decades now, many have observed that the United States consumes a third or more of the earth's natural resources. But this is now changing. Already China's grain consumption is nearly double that of the United States, and consumption of red meat, mostly pork, is more than double that of the United States.

In steel production, a traditional indicator of industrialization, China has overtaken the United States, averaging 92 million tons of steel output per year in recent years compared with 91 million tons.

In computerization, perhaps a more relevant indicator for the information economy of today, there is no contest. The United States has 71 million computers compared with 1 million in China.

In transportation, the contrast is striking. In the production of bicycles, China led the United States by roughly 40 million to 7 million, while in automobiles, the United States leads by 6.6 million to 239,000. China is, however, planning to boost its automobile production dramatically over the next decade.

China's experience provides convincing evidence that the industrial development model that evolved in the West, and is perhaps best illustrated by the United States, will not work for the world as a whole. Carbon emissions in China are climbing rapidly, reaching 807 million tons in 1995 compared with 1.39 million tons in the United States. If China's rapidly rising use of coal continues, it will before long overtake the United States in carbon emissions, replacing it as the principal source of the greenhouse gases that are destabilizing the earth's climate.

U.S. oil consumption per person today is 25 times that in China. "If China were one day to use as much oil per person as the United States does," the authors note, "it would need 80 million barrels daily--more than the 60 million barrels daily the world now produces, or is ever projected to produce." Already, China has gone from exporting 500,000 barrels of oil in 1990 to importing 300,000 barrels of oil in 1995.

With pork consumption, China has closed the gap on the United States, consuming 30 kilograms per person annually compared with 31 kilograms by the average American. But its beef consumption of 4 kilograms per person lags far behind the 45 kilograms of the United States. "If China were to close the beef gap," write the authors, "its people would eat an additional 49 million tons each year. Produced in feedlots, this would take some 343 million tons of grain--the entire U.S. grain harvest."

Historically, as the pressure of population on the land intensified in Japan, its 120 million people turned to the oceans for animal protein, consuming 10 million tons of seafood in 1995. If China were to consume as much seafood per person, it would need 100 million tons of seafood, the entire world fish catch.

The extraordinary rise in affluence in China in recent years will force the entire world to rethink population policy as it becomes clear that the world cannot have both more people and U.S. resource consumption levels. Already land scarcity and water shortages in China are forcing China to import massive quantities of grain, boosting food prices worldwide.

China's modernization is forcing the entire world, including the United States, to rethink the development strategy based on fossil fuels. Most immediately, a world moving toward U.S. carbon emission levels would have an enormously destabilizing effect on climate. Over the longer term, there simply is not enough oil for even the Chinese to have a car in every garage, much less for the rest of the developing world to do so.

The alternative to fossil fuels is solar power, harnessed both directly in the form of solar/thermal power plants and photovoltaic cells and indirectly in the form of wind power. Fortunately for China, it has an abundance of both, including enough harnessable wind energy to easily satisfy its current electricity needs.

The western industrial model based on a throw-away economy with industries producing waste that pollute air and water will not be a viable one for China either. With most of China's 1.2 billion people squeezed into a thousand-mile strip on the eastern and southern coasts, an area roughly the size of the United States east of the Mississippi, traditional industrial technologies would produce overwhelming amounts of pollution. Only a zero emissions industrial strategy, one designed so that one industry's waste becomes another's feedstock, is likely to be viable over the long term.

In summary, the authors said, "China, with its vast population, simply will not be able to follow for long any of the development paths blazed to date. The country that invented paper and gunpowder now has the opportunity to leapfrog the West and show how to build an environmentally sustainable economy. It will be forced to try and chart a new course. If China succeeds in charting an environmentally sustainable course, it could become a shining example for the rest of the world to admire and emulate. If it fails, we will all pay the price."

[Eric5273]

Originally Posted by ifly

....and tell me we are not stretching resources as Living Standards increase across developing countries!

Over the last 10 years, the average standard of living in most developing countries has declined. Yes, in China and Vietnam the standard of living has increased quite a bit, but those are communist countries where the wealth is divided among the population. In most other developing countries, whatever wealth is flowing into these countries is being aquired by a very small elite percentage of the population and this has no affect on the standard of living of the average person. Mexico and Indonesia are typical examples of this -- countries where manufacturing jobs are flowing to, but where the average standard of living has actually declined. What has increased in those countries is the number of billionaires.

As far as citing the demand for raw materials, many of these commodities are not needed, but an artificial demand is being created by the corporations that control them. Oil is a perfect example, and how the oil companies have gone through great lengths to squash research and development of alternatives.

Breathing air would be a commodity and they would charge you for it if they could figure out a way to put a meter on how much you breath, and if they could figure out a way to limit the amount of air that was available for breathing at any one time, in order to keep the price high. You would have companies claim ownership of the air and then economists would write articles about how the supply of breathing air is limited and there may not be enough breathing air to support the population of the entire world.

When increasing the average standard of living becomes an objective of the governments of the world, it will happen with no problem at all. But currently, the objective of most of the governments of the world, and organizations such as the World Bank and World Trade Organization, is to create a situation where the wealthy can continue to acquire more wealth at the expense of the rest of the population without the rest of the population being aware that they are being raped. As long as that continues to happen, the wealth gap between the rich and poor will continue to grow worldwide. Eventually there will be a breaking point, but who knows when that will happen....

[JonK]

Originally Posted by the head

Economic analysis from the 70's indicated that the next evoloution of our economy would be a shift into service based industiries (intangable goods and distirbution) people bitching about it is essentially (in my eyes) equivilant to someone standing on train tracks and wondering why they got hit by a train...it's economic darwinism kiddies adapt or die.

That's exactly what I meant. I feel for those laid-off workers. I know it is very emotional, and yet it is just the way economy is heading toward equalibrium in global economy in my opinion.

[E61Silver]

The service economy is great for cities like NYC but large sections of the country no longer have any reason to exist. More and more the largest employer is the Hospital.