← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 19328 | Posts: 14 | Started: 2005-07-29
2005-07-29 09:34 | User Profile
China-Mart Takes Over
By Paul Craig Roberts
My poor beloved country, trapped in a Middle Eastern quagmire and tricked by Osama bin Laden into subsidizing to the tune of $300 billion (spent or appropriated) a training ground for Muslim terrorists and insurgents while our once fabulous economy disintegrates.
If the US were still rich and just wanted to throw several hundred billion dollars at bin Laden as a good will gesture, that would be one thing. But we are borrowing the money that we are using to train Muslim terrorists to kill and maim our troops in Iraq and Londoners in England.
The money is being lent to us mainly by Asians, especially the Chinese. China has so many dollars to lend to us because we send so many dollars to China to pay for the goods and services that patriotic American corporations have decided to supply to us from China instead of from America.
US corporations decided that the way to get rich was to destroy their American consumer base by closing their American factories, throwing their US employees out of work and hiring Chinese instead. The Chinese work for less, you see, and free trade economists say lowering costs makes us better off.
What US corporations and the free trade economists overlook is that giving Americansââ¬â¢ jobs to foreigners raises foreign incomes and lowers American incomes. When credit cards and home equity lines are maxed out, there will be nothing to support the US consumer market. The American corporations who moved their capital and technology to China will have to find new customers.
Maybe the Chinese government will let the relocated US firms sell to Chinese customers, or maybe the Chinese government will let the US firms go bankrupt. The latter favors Chinaââ¬â¢s strategic interest. Chinese businessmen will purchase the bankrupt firms, and Chinese businesses will sell to Chinese customers.
Americans are pouring so much money into China that China can finance our wars while it buys up our companies. Everyone was shocked that a Chinese company could outbid Chevron for Unocal. China has already purchased IBMââ¬â¢s personal computer business, and is now after US appliance maker Maytag (whose appliances are made in Mexico).
The outsourcing mania has hit the Pentagon, and China will soon be supplying the ships for the US Navy. The Pentagon, seeking lowest cost, is pushing defense contractors to outsource offshore for more materials, components and systems.
This means the end of US shipbuilding capability. Component suppliers to American shipbuilding are already skeletal thin, with most components only having sole suppliers. For example, Manufacturing & Technology News (July 8) reports that 80% of the components for the Virginia Class submarine come from sole sources.
With not enough US Navy ships being built to support even an industry of sole suppliers, Asia is fast becoming the only source for US Navy ships. While President Bush spends $300 billion recruiting and training terrorists for bin Laden in Iraq, US Navy ship procurement has fallen 33% since 2001.
Meanwhile China is on a rip. China is now the third largest shipbuilder after South Korea and Japan. In five years Chinaââ¬â¢s submarine fleet will be twice the size of Americaââ¬â¢s. In 10 years Chinaââ¬â¢s navy will be larger than the American fleet.
This is amazing performance for a country that as recently as 1989 had essentially no shipbuilding industry.
This year the US is producing 6 ships, one-tenth of South Koreaââ¬â¢s output. In 2006 the US is scheduled to produce only 4 ships, because China has outbid us for the steel. The US "superpower" can no longer afford to compete against China for essential materials.
Cynthia Brown, president of the American Shipbuilding Association says that "the manufacture of entire components and systems will migrate to China in the next several years under current Department of Defense policy with respect to outsourcing."
But, hey, we will get ships cheaper, and it is making us rich!
Dr. Roberts, [email him] a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He is the author of The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050725_china.htm
2005-07-29 18:22 | User Profile
A delegation from China came to the US sixteen years ago and saw the advantage of using wind power and are now constructing hudred's of wind turbines and doing the same with their dams in order to create more power.
Where China is adavancing forward we (the US) are frozen in place with nowhere to go, where we spend billions at war China spend billions in their economy for the improvement and welfare of their country and of their people.
China is also openning more fields in order to produce more food, will they be the next suppliers of food for America? You must remember that the US stopped exporting food in June of 2004.
The whole of the US is becomming one large Walmart but pretty soon the people wont have the money to buy even from there. According to the report that I read today the US economy is doing great and thats why interest rates for home buyers went up again (if it isn't broken then why fix it?).
I feel a dark cloud descending on all of us, makes me feel more sad than angry.
2005-07-29 20:42 | User Profile
I just finished reading that the Russians has a torpedo that travel at 360 kilometer an hour, what's that in miles? about 260 mph?, the torpedo is called a SHKVAL.
The torpedo has a blunt nose that creates an air tunnel ,or gas bubble, that dosen't let the water touch the torpedo itself in other words a "cavitation" or "supercavity"
Only thing is that it dosen't say how it is powered of how much power it takes to do the above.
In the 1920's a monkey bent a wire in order to get out of his cage hahahaha, believe it or not.....this info comes from New Scientist (July 16-22) in the UK, one year for $12.00 and it includes mailing, oh yeah....it comes once a week.
A few months ago I sent them a comment about an article and they wrote back asking what was my college degree and requesting more comments, I wrote back telling them that I was a dumb Cuban refugee with a 10th grade education hahahaahahahahahaha :smartass: (yes Tex?)
Get it, you wont be sorry, regular price in the US woud be of $4.95 per.
2005-07-30 02:26 | User Profile
Cavitation, IIRC, is the formation of bubbles around moving objects in water that causes "drag"; this is why there are severe energy penalties for trying to make things go faster in water; even the fastest torpedos are very slow compared to what equivalent energy output could achieve if moving through air. Likewise, speed of ships is limited; speedboats get as fast as they do with stepped hulls that get as much of the boat up out of the water as possible.
I believe the Russian weapon to which you refer is an actual solid fuel rocket; something at the front of the weapon breathes out a thin coating of air that sticks to the surface of the weapon, allowing it avoid the drag caused by cavitation, and thus move much faster than a torpedo can in water.
I've heard rumors that the wreck of the submarine Kursk supposedly had something to do with testing this weapon. That might be a false fumor though.
This is a scary weapon for US submariners, if it becomes practical.
Chinese also are now using, I have heard, a 65cm torpedo, that should definitely worry the USN. Even the old Japanese WWII Long Lance torpedos were only 61cm diameter. A 65cm torpedo of comparable length-to-width ratio as the Long Lance would have a potentially huge warhead. I believe (AFAIK) the USN still uses 21inch, or 53.3cm, torpedos.
Watch this PBS documentary on Walmart for truly scary info about China:
[url]http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walmart/[/url]
2005-07-30 03:22 | User Profile
I notice many more Chinese containers on semi trucks and more Chinese (with explicit chink references in the company name) trucking companies lately than ever before. Looks like they move up the value chain more and more, and take more direct control over the trade.
2005-07-30 11:09 | User Profile
The Chinese scare the hell out of me, but I also admire them in a way. While the US is committing suicide via imperial dreams and egalitarian delusions, China is rationally (and ruthlessly) taking steps to ensure a strong future for its own people. We should be doing the same.
2005-07-30 15:04 | User Profile
The Managerial Welfare state makes a lot of hay out of keeping the populace in a tremor of war axiety. The war against terror is adequate to the task of keeping the population subdued, but a little fright about China is also a good ingredient in the mix. China presents no military threat to us and we are not going to get into a shooting match with it. An economic war is another thing. Scoundrals of course rule at the top in China just as they do here and policy will be decided by them to the detriment of peoples in both countries. China will benefit from current trade policy and has no interest in getting into a mess with the usa. The fast torpedo has no real targets anymore worthy of interest,just as Trident missles have no nation base at which to attack. About 13 boomer subs are on station at any one time, and are a complete waste of money and personnel in today's world. Much the same holds with the fast attack sub. What nation will they savage? What enemy has a Merchant fleet or surface navy worthy of its attention?
2005-07-30 16:31 | User Profile
What you people don't understand is that this so called fair TRADE with other countries WILL NOT WORK because they (the people) don't have or make the money that we here in America make.
Like I posted elsewhere "we can afford to buy what they make but they cannot afford to buy what we make". :whlch:
2005-07-30 19:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE]This is amazing performance for a country that as recently as 1989 had essentially no shipbuilding industry.This is amazing performance for a country that as recently as 1989 had essentially no shipbuilding industry.[/QUOTE] This is just one more reason to reject the Wall Street internationalist capitalist fanatics that see capitalism as the end all of end alls. These clowns built up the Nazis, the Soviets, and now the Chicom. They can never make enough without screwing everyone else. They need to be reigned in, not given more laissez-faire crap.
2005-07-30 20:12 | User Profile
VDARE.COM - [url]http://www.vdare.com/roberts/050726_behind.htm[/url]
July 26, 2005 US Falling Behind Across the Board
By Paul Craig Roberts
Yesterday I reported that the US, formerly a superpower until afflicted with "new economy" syndrome, has lost so much manufacturing capability that it can scarcely produce one submarine every two years and one aircraft carrier every five years. US manufacturing capability is so reduced and shrinking so fast that the president of the American Shipbuilding Association recently said that in the next several years "more and more manufacturing of ship components and systems will migrate to China."
Not to worry say free trade economists. Shipbuilding is just one of those old manufacturing things that the nanotech US economy is better off without. Alas, according to Manufacturing & Technology News (July 8), so much manufacturing capability has already left the US that American nanotechnology capability is largely limited to pilot-scale, low-volume manufacturing.
In testimony before the House Science Subcommittee on Research, Matthew Nordan of Lux Research, Inc., said that any American nanotech ideas are likely to "be implemented in manufacturing plants on other shores."
Nordan says that in some fields of nanomaterials "the manufacturing train has already left the station." The US may even be falling behind in generating nanotech ideas. Last year China led the world in nanotech research, producing 14% more research papers than the US. Even South Korea and Taiwan spend more per capita on nanotech R&D than the US.
Sean Murdock, executive director of the NanoBusiness Alliance, told the subcommittee that the US could not live on ideas alone. Intellectual property is fine, Murdock said, but "if you look at the total value associated with any product, most of the value tends to accrue to those that are closest to the customerââ¬âthat, in fact, make it."
Murdock also pointed out that an equally important part of intellectual property is manufacturing process knowledgeââ¬âthe manufacturing ability to turn a new principle into salable things. Without the ability to commercialize and manufacture products based on the new ideas, we not only lose the ability to capture most of the economic rewards but also eventually lose the ability to think up the ideas. Without process knowledge from manufacturing, it is difficult to recognize promising nanotech innovations.
In recent years I have stressed the erosion of the conditions on which the case for free trade rests. Production functions based on acquired knowledge lack the uniqueness required for the operation of comparative advantage, and the international mobility of capital and technology allows those factors of production to seek absolute advantage abroad in skilled, disciplined, low-cost labor. The real conditions in the world today no longer conform to the assumptions of free trade theory.
Thus, once world socialism collapsed and the highspeed Internet was up and running, first world living standards were no longer protected by unique accumulations of capital and technology. The changed conditions made it possible for American companies to use employees drawn from large excess supplies of foreign labor as cheaper substitutes for American employees.
The difference in labor cost is massive. Anyone who says the difference is irrelevant has no idea what he is talking about.
Nevertheless, as I emphasized three decades ago prior to Asia becoming an alternative manufacturing location for US companies, the US is severely disadvantaged for tax reasons as well. Because of tax reasons the US has a high cost of capital.
The American Producers Council Coalition recently stated the problem to the Presidentââ¬â¢s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. Every major trading partner of the US, including every other OECD country and China, relies on border-adjusted taxes that abate taxes on their exports to the US, while taxing US goods imported from the US.
This discrimination is reinforced by the US tax system, which imposes no appreciable tax burden on foreign goods and services sold in the US but imposes a heavy tax burden on US producers of goods and services regardless of whether they are sold within the US or exported to other countries.
The solution is to abandon the income tax and replace it with a value-added or sales tax or even tariffs.
The Founding Fathers based US finances on the tariff. They did this because they understood that an income tax was a form of enserfment or slavery. A free person is a person who owns his own labor. Income taxes mean that the government owns a share of each personââ¬â¢s labor, just as feudal lords owned a share of the peasantsââ¬â¢ labor.
Tariffs also help a country develop its industry by protecting its products from competition from lower cost producers abroad.
The Founding Fathersââ¬â¢ system of finance was overturned by those who believed tariffs fell heavily on the poor while benefiting rich manufacturers. An income tax was seen as a fairer distribution of the tax burden and as the way towards more equality in the distribution of income. A long political-ideological struggle ensued that overthrew the tariff system and re-enserfed the American population.
Today the income distribution is more unequal than ever, but every person who earns is enserfed to the state. If you, gentle reader, think you are not a serf, see what happens if you claim the products of your labor as your own and refuse to pay income tax.
No rational purpose is served by the present US tax system.
A real tax reform would no doubt save some remaining parts of American manufacturing, some US jobs, and some union representation.
However, just as free trade economists have turned a conditional policy into a dogma, the liberal-left have made the income tax a fighting matter. US prosperity is unlikely to survive a wrong-headedness that exists across the political spectrum.
Testimony from the June 29 hearing of the House Science Subcommittee on Research is available online.
Dr. Roberts, [email him] a former Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former Contributing Editor of National Review, was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during the Reagan administration. He is the author of The Supply-Side Revolution and, with Lawrence M. Stratton, of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice. Click here for Peter Brimelowââ¬â¢s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Copyright é 1999 - 2005 VDARE.com
2005-07-30 20:31 | User Profile
[COLOR=DarkGreen][FONT=Arial][B][I] - "This is just one more reason to reject the Wall Street internationalist capitalist fanatics that see capitalism as the end all of end alls. These clowns built up the Nazis, the Soviets, and now the Chicom."[/I][/B][/FONT][/COLOR]
As Lenin put it:
[I][B]"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."[/B][/I]
I advocate a proper mixture of conservatism and libertarianism, and this is definitely a case where a smack of protectionism on [I]laissez-faire [/I] stooges' head is in order.
Petr
2005-07-30 20:48 | User Profile
Petr,
I was listening to a broadcast featuring Walter Block of the Mises Institute where he is trying to peddle this laissez-faire crap. This guy stated earlier before I got disgusted with him that the Federal Reserve is a government entity as verses a private bank, which it really is. These folks need to spend more time in the real world instead of some brain laundry coocoon.
2005-07-30 23:34 | User Profile
[QUOTE=solutrian]The Managerial Welfare state makes a lot of hay out of keeping the populace in a tremor of war axiety. The war against terror is adequate to the task of keeping the population subdued, but a little fright about China is also a good ingredient in the mix. Actually it is not the State that is spreading "war anxiety" about China. Bush only rattles the cages of the small guys - Iran, North Korea, etc. When it comes to China, these people go very quiet.
It's independing thinking observers who are anxious about China - and we aren't talking about war tomorrow, but maybe war 20, 30, 50 years from now, when the USA is imploding. > China presents no military threat to us and we are not going to get into a shooting match with it. Not today, no of course not, not when both sides have nuclear tipped ICBMs. China is perfectly capable of picking the bones of the USA corpse once we collapse, however, and our nukes are out of commission or "up for sale" - and I could easily see them paying to get our nukes off the market like we did in the former USSR.> An economic war is another thing. Scoundrals of course rule at the top in China just as they do here and policy will be decided by them to the detriment of peoples in both countries. China will benefit from current trade policy and has no interest in getting into a mess with the usa. Of course not, but observe who can actually make the latest high tech weapons, and who can not, and extrapolate from there. We aren't talking about war tomorrow, but rather much further down the road when conditions will be radically different.> The fast torpedo has no real targets anymore worthy of interest,just as Trident missles have no nation base at which to attack. About 13 boomer subs are on station at any one time, and are a complete waste of money and personnel in today's world. Much the same holds with the fast attack sub. What nation will they savage? What enemy has a Merchant fleet or surface navy worthy of its attention?[/QUOTE]The Chinese are interested in our aircraft carriers, not our submarines. We don't dare nuke them because they can nuke us back. Rather they want to neutralize our carrier groups if there were ever a confrontation over Taiwan. They don't actually have to use the weapons, they just have to convince the USN that it has no defense against these new weapons, and therefore typical American "aircraft carrier diplomacy" goes in the crapper for once.
2005-07-31 01:08 | User Profile
Posted by Petr.....As Lenin put it:
"The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."
And as Ponce put it..... "The Capitalists will give us the dollars with which to buy them." :whstl: