The Problem with Beijing and/or Washington
Has China peaked? Without far-reaching political and economic reforms, yes:
The most serious long-term obstacle to Chinese growth is its state capitalist system. In the last decade, Beijing has largely reversed pro-market reforms and embarked on a decidedly statist developmental path. Consequently, state-owned enterprises have gained enormous clout in the economy and enjoy monopolistic privileges. The financial system favors such firms at the expense of private entrepreneurs. Household income, at 43 percent of GDP, is too low to support a higher level of consumption, a critical factor in rebalancing the Chinese economy and providing a source of future growth. Without systemic reforms, according to an influential World Bank study, growth in the coming two decades will fall well below 7 percent per annum. But reforming state capitalism is almost impossible politically because that will undermine the very foundations of the Communist Party’s rule.
That’s Minxin Pei, writing for The Diplomat. China has reached the end of the road for “state capitalism,” and the communist-in-name leadership hasn’t figured out what to do about it, other than to dial reforms back.
Well, and why not? We’ve been trying that very thing in this country for years now, and just look at how far we’ve come!
That last line hurt, just typing it.
If there’s any good news out of China, it’s that the current leadership might end up regretting investing in all those street lamps.
Anyway, if the seeds of Chinese communism’s doom were sown long ago, so were the seeds of American renewal. Here’s Paul Rahe in Ricochet:
In my opinion, none of the psephologists mentioned above has reflected on the degree to which the administrative entitlements state – envisaged by Woodrow Wilson and the Progressives, instituted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and expanded by their successors – has entered a crisis, and none of them is sensitive to the manner in which Barack Obama, in his audacity, has unmasked that state’s tyrannical propensities and its bankruptcy. In consequence, none of these psephologists has reflected adequately on the significance of the emergence of the Tea-Party Movement, on the meaning of Scott Brown’s election and the particular context within which he was elected, on the election of Chris Christie as Governor of New Jersey and of Bob McDonnell as Governor of Virginia, and on the political earthquake that took place in November, 2010. That earthquake, which gave the Republicans a strength at the state and local level that they have not enjoyed since 1928, is a harbinger of what we will see this November.
No, I haven’t been drinking the Mitt Romney Kool-Aid. I rather doubt such a thing even exists. But the broader trends show a fundamental shift — or shifting; it ain’t finished yet — in the American electorate. But our system is geared to respond to that shift, even if with frustrating sluggishness.
“If there’s any good news out of China, it’s that the current leadership might end up regretting investing in all those street lamps.”
Awesome line.
One of the nice things about China’s crash (and there will be a lot of hideous things about it) will be what it does to the reputations of the sleazy “Communist China” lovers here in the US. (Friedman, Warren, etc.)
Yes, an awesome line.
You sound young, though, Greg. No bad accrued to the reps of Soviet lovers or Japanese corporate planning enthusiasts. Heck, that Paul Ehrlich “Population Bomb” guy is still considered wise.
If there’s a crash, pray it’s a gentle one. The People’s Army of Liberation is still the world’s largest employer. Remember the guy who confronted the tank, huh?
I was going to say the same thing to Greg, but Retlaw, maybe it’s us who are too old. Remember, when those ridiculous people were excused and kept their position and honors, there was no internet.
It’s instructive to realize that all of the near-instantaneous means and methods of communication that we enjoy today can vanish in a heartbeat at the behest of a totalitarian state. Cell phones, regular phone lines, the internet – all ridiculously easy to shut down.
The internet might be a bit harder to kill than you fear. Unlike most systems, the princpals underlying the bones of the internet (TCP/IP and HTTP) are public, non-proprietary, and well-known. In the event of governmental attack, ad-hoc DNS servers can be erected in less than a day will equipment available in any Office Depot. To cut access woould require confiscating every device with a chip in it, since everything from game consoles to phones can go online.
I assure you, if the old men running China are willing to run over university students with tanks, they are certainly willing to tell the ISPs that run the routers to power them down. They might even have tanks parked outside when they give the order- just in case the consequences of refusal are unclear.
No routers = no internet connectivity.
Not only are they the world’s largest employer, but they are loaded with a lot of perfectly expendable, frustrated youngmen who have no prospects for anything better thanks to their leadership’s insane one child policy coupled with their cultural preferences for boys. How do you get rid of a bunch of hopeless young men in an army? I’m afraid the world may find out to everyone’s detriment.
China is moving to a smaller, professional and volunteer military. They’ve learned, like us, that draft armies are strictly second-rate. Your fears don’t mesh with the facts.
As Stalin pointed out, quantity has a quality all on its own…..
Only, as I just said, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army is shrinking its manpower.
And anyway, that was Lenin, who also famously predicted that business practices would become so simple that running one would become a mere matter of filling out the proper forms.
Christianity is also exploding in China…amongst the Eastern immigrants, businessmen and workers alike.
100-ish million and counting.
“China is moving to a smaller, professional and volunteer military. They’ve learned, like us, that draft armies are strictly second-rate. Your fears don’t mesh with the facts.” The possibilities run from you being inarticulate to being without a clue. A sizable portion of the Union Army was of draftees, who served with dedication and compassion. The calamities came from the professionals! A drafted US Army ended WWI in short order! A primarily drafted military SAVED the WORLD in WWII! Then there is their service Korea and Vietnam! In each case, when things went off the tracks it was the Politicians or the Military PROFESSIONALs who drove it there! NOTE: I speak here only of the US. The wisdom of, “a smaller, professional and volunteer military,” for the US, in the current circumstances, is debatable. It seems you defame that which you do not know. Or are you just repeating what you have been told by the Professionals?
As a counter poise. It should be noted the German SS was, “a smaller, professional and volunteer military,” organization, as were the Russian Political squads.
Robert –
The only time the draft has really worked in this country, is during wars that were popular enough to hardly require one.
You want to try comparing the US Army of 1972 to the US Army of 2012? Any you’ll hardly find a single officer who would be willing to go back to a large, draftee force.
Also? Draftee armies suck at being high-tech armies. For one, it’s just too expensive. But mostly, you don’t keep draftees long enough to turn them into high-tech warriors. A WWI-era Springfield ain’t a digitized armored vehicle.
As armies increase their tech edge, they decrease their numbers — and eliminate the need for a draft.
Finally, draftee armies usually do just fine — fighting other draftee armies. Against a high-tech, professional foe? Not so well.
And that may be the primary reason China is following our lead to a smaller, professional force.
Mr Green,
Since you required 3 posts to attempt to clear up your initial statement it is clear you were inarticulate. Since your posts contained only assertion/talking points, I assume you have no personal knowledge of the topic, as in you never served with conscripts. Having been a member of that irresistible force I am well aware of its capabilities and its deficiencies. The end of the second gulf war clearly exposed what happens when you have insufficient manpower to securely occupy a defeated country. Occupation troops do not have a great need for high-tech. We put states at risk by stripping them of critical National Guard, Katrina!
Just for the record, when the US entered WWII Germany was considered to have the BEST Professional Army in the world. At the end they were throwing children, cripples and old men in, a conscript army brought them to that. So that you understand, the only time you draft is when you can’t get enough volunteers. In a popular war volunteer is not the same as draftee.
I call your attention to Israel where military service is required (draft), exemptions are authorized. I’s say they do quite well.
If you have a response, provide examples, if you don’t mind. No liberal talking points.
Oh, lawdy.
This whole thing got started when you claimed the Chinese would use millions of young men as cannon fodder. In fact, as I’ve stated repeatedly, China is shrinking the PLA. And if you’ll click the link, they’re raising the NCO-to-Officer ratio, to become even less like the mass, Communist armies of old and more like the modern, professional, US Army. They have watched our performances since 1991, and have taken careful notes.
If you want a large, occupation army of draftees, why didn’t you say so? The needless loses taken by Task Force Smith came to my mind, but maybe you were thinking of something else. Or maybe you meant Kasserine Pass. Fact is, in opening opening battles, conscript armies sometimes really get the crap kicked out of them.
I’m curious about your inclusion of the German Army, tasked with the world’s largest offensive against an opponent with twice its population, trying to take Egypt from the British, defending France and Italy. Meanwhile, Hitler graciously declared war on the world’s biggest and most advanced industrial nation. If you’re saying Germany made some poor strategic choices, well, I’m not going to argue. But what’s this about Hitler’s professional army? Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht was officially established — and conscription re-instituted – in 1935. I know Wikipedia isn’t always the most reliable source, but I’m pretty sure WWII didn’t start in Europe for about four more years.
And Israel? It’s not too much of a stretch to say Israel “enjoys” a slightly different situation from ours, what with being outnumbered by a circle of enemies, by about nine to one.
Also, I don’t know where you got it in your mind that I was smearing draftees. Far from it. Americans have always made some of the best soldiers in the world, whether draftees or volunteers. Now, I happen to think today’s Army is too small, by at least two divisions’ worth of combat battalions. And you’re right about the National Guard — the regular Army has been relied on them too heavily. On paper, since at least the ’80s, and in real combat these last 11 years. But I wouldn’t send in a mass of conscripts just to inflate the ranks of regulars. The Army doesn’t want that, either.
I’ll assume here you’re a good conservative and pose a question for you: What do you suppose the liberals would do, exactly, with all that extra (and cheap) manpower? Don’t they get enough chances at indoctrination in our schools and universities?
As for being inarticulate… each of my posts was perfectly clear. The problem was, I just kept noticing more ways you were wrong, after hitting the Reply button. But, honestly, that kind of thing could keep me here all day.
Finally, you lose all credibility when you accuse me of repeating liberal talking points. It’s a well-established fact that it’s almost only liberals who muse about re-establishing the draft. It’s almost entirely conservatives and libertarians who are against it.
311,000,000 vs 1,344,000,000+ (mostly males)
Even a “smaller” volunteer army would be much larger than a U.S. volunteer army could ever be. And, given the lack of available women and possibly jobs, there might be a lot more men willing to volunteer for an army that isn’t actively at war with multiple countries.
And, who’s to say that they won’t just conscript 1 billion Chinese when in need of a quick land grab.
The US Army trained to fight and win in a “target-rich environment” for almost 50 years. That’s Pentagon-speak for “damn Reds are everywhere!”
There’s a reason our way is still in use — and being emulated by the Chinese, and even now by the Russians.
The draft is involuntary servitude and has no business in a free society. It is morally indefensible. If enough people will not volunteer to fight for their freedom when it is truly in jeopardy, the freedom of their society is not long for this world in any case. Only a un-American statist and an enemy of freedom would argue for the draft. Shame on those who do and call themselves American Patriots. You are hypocrites of the worse kind!
Your hysterical response does in fact resemble that of a liberal. So that you get this clear, I demand that you stop denigrating American Fighting Men! The Draftees who found themselves in Vietnam performed as well as their, “Professional” peers. I consider talking point to be a liberal ploy. You also mis-characterize, and project as liberals do. At no point did I muse about re-instituting the draft. You also blame defeats caused by the alleged PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP, on the troops. How dare you!
It should be noted, deactivating the draft was not a military decision based on performance, but a political decision based on election prospects.
Black Jack’s boys would be quite comfortable in the 3rd ID, the weaponry is surprisingly similar. Boots on the ground win wars.
Robert, just…. stop.
You asked me for citations, I provided you with many. You accused me of bad-mouthing our soldiers, I corrected you and praised them. You said the German army was professional during the first half of WWII, I pointed out that Hitler had reinstated the draft four years before the war began. You shout in all caps like Charlie Rangel about bringing back the draft while accusing me of being hysterical.
For your own sake, please, just… stop. The hole is plenty deep, mmmkay?
Draftee armies have their place. If we, the US, were to be invaded, then rapidly mobilizing everyone under age 50, as they did during WWII, would provide one heck of a citizen resistance to the invasion. The Swiss have figured this out. The citizen army is still valuable, you just don’t want to use it for the wrong purpose.
It’s not so much a question of what young men in the military/the military itself will do (as the PLA is inextricably intertwined with the Party in both ideology and leadership), but rather, what those millions of frustrated, unmarried, umeployed and/or impoverished civilian men will do. The demographic unbalance is a serious cause for concern, but it’s more likely to lead to some kind of populist uprising than an organized military assault on some regional neighbor.
Along with Paul Ehrlich, Rachel Carson was deified. Her ‘research’ was subsequently found to have been a scientific error, and by suppressing the use of DDT, has caused the deaths of millions of African children. Interestingly, she is cited as a prominent scientist in American grade school science textbooks, despite having published mainly popular rants rather than any scientific papers in a peer-refereed environment.
Move the capital out of the Northeast, say to Idaho.
The problem will the rectify itself.
What do you have against Idaho?
Leave those nice people alone!
Washington was built upon a fetid swamp, a land that is just about insufferable during the summer months.
It’s poetically perfect as a locus for our government.
Unfortunately, they found a cure for malaria and someone invented air conditioning.
Maybe we should move the capitol to somewhere in Wyoming. It needs to be in a place the politicians will find unpleasant, and altitude sickness is probably something that will take a long time to find a cure for.
And as a bonus, the thin air should cut down on the gasbaggery.
Not a bad idea, maybe it should be moved every so many years, to prevent the water from getting stagnant. There is a reason that the largest percentage of wealthiest zipcodes surround DC. Like a tsunami, DC is the big wave of pseudoprosperity that was stolen from the rest of America, leaving an exposed ocean floor. I doubt we will ever be able to stop the redistribution of wealth to the powerful, but moving the capital may keep it moving a bit more.
Three words: The Hunger Games.
How about somewhere on another planet? That way it wouldn’t cost the taxpayers so much for Nancy Pelosi to move.
How ’bout inside a Schwarchild radius?
How about somewhere in northwestern Alaska?
I can see it now, the Greens waging culture-war on congress for simply being in the middle of a pristine natural wilderness. Maybe that will tie up their attention enough that they will all leave the rest of us alone…
… ah, sweet daydreams!
As well as China’s and our “experiment” with something for nothing, the Eurozone is also near death. The politicians keep sending more voltage thru it and see the corpse (not corps!) jump and assume they’ve revived it, but it’s just the electricity talking.
Articles have recently appeared predicting the end of the fiat money system. If people are writing it, bet a lot more are thinking it. Governments will either fix their self-imposed problems or be rendered irrelevant. What cannot continue, ends. This cannot continue.
“The Democrats will be waving walking around money like there’s no tomorrow — and in a sense, for them there isn’t.”
No kidding. Check out what’s going on in Mass:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/editorials/view/20220809a_true_voting_scam/srvc=news&position=also
If they’re in trouble here they have no prayer in any sane state.
The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 needs to be repealed.
Indeed. With citizenry comes responsibility. If a person is so ignorant of basic civics that they do not know that it is their duty to vote in each and every election, that in order to vote they must present themselves to the local town clerk for registration beforehand, that it takes effort to learn the issues of the day and how each candidate stand upon those issues then that person should not be voting.
I am not saying prohibited from voting, but rather they should recognize that they are no more ready to vote than they are ready to play in the NFL.
These people know to present themselves at the welfare bennefit office.
China is in decline and the Tea Party is on the rise … the Republican Party has been exposed; they’re just as clueless as the Dems. This is going to be an interesting Summer/Fall and I’m a happy man! Change has indeed come.
“The trend line in American politics looks good.”
It does? The democrats take over and we lose about 1,000 feet of altitude, then the Republicans take over and we lose about 250 feet of altitude, then the democrats take over and we lose about 2,000 feet of altitude, then the Republicans take over and we lose about 500 feet of altitude and so forth and so on. I think the long term trend line looks like before too many more years we will be going splat – not flat – splat!
Terribly well put. We have the government we deserve. We are a fat, happy and debauched people. Our reconciliation would require a level of pain we are not capable of not only withstanding but conceptualizing. We would have to treat our children like your average farm kid of two or three generations ago. Or the present day children of asian small business owners. Impossible.
The idea that nags is, Why not move outsourced jobs to northern Mexico. Considering the reduced transportation cost, the cost would be about the same. Plus, the prospect of hundreds of thousands of jobs in northern Mexico would give the government added incentive to extirpate the predatory drug gangs there.
By Northern Mexico do you mean Texas? Jus wonderin
I have been predicting economic failure for about as long as Glenn Beck has. It has not yet happened! The can has been successfully kicked down the road for a long time. At some point, the road will end and the world’s economy will collapse. I suspect that the time will be carefully coordinated to be after 6 November, 2012.
Well, all things being equal, I don’t think that the world economy will collapse. The DEBT will collapse. I personally believe that Washington will inflate us to the point where it can pay the debt. American citizens will be screwed again and their net worth will drop precipitously like it did under Øbama. The key will be to not hold any debt at all but rather own property outright in a growing/red state. Property = wealth in the coming worldwide debt day of reckoning. My 2¢.
I personally believe that Washington will inflate us to the point where it can pay the debt.
Yup. The Feds can’t default, so what’s left on the table are inflation and devaluation. Our significant trading partners will devalue right along with us, so it’s going to be inflation.
My plan is to get some real estate while it’s cheap and lock in those historically-low mortgage rates for the next 30- hopefully, the rent generated by the property will cover my retirement, because what’s left of Social Security is going to be pillaged by the Boomers.
Optimists, both of you. >:)
The US will survive the collapse, and the subsequent attacks
of the Four Horsemen, but at a terrible cost in lives lost,
and with an authoritarian government, hopefully one like
that in Heinlein’s ‘Starship Troopers’.
100 years of mistakes, I think.
We have plenty of big corporations in this country that are thoroughly invested in a centrally planned and politically directed economy organized around Sustainability that envy the statist Chinese model and have said so. We have this Big Business/Government Higher Ed Alliance that has been told repeatedly in meetings we were not invited to that they are to be the drivers of the 21st Century economy.
For every higher ed admin who is solidly Dem, you have Republican politicians at the state and local level who see the local school district (with all its targeted federal aid) and the local college that now gets to call itself a university because it has added a doctorate in education as the primary sources of jobs in the rural community. Apart from the medical center that is.
We have Republicans in love with all the money technology companies can make off a digital learning push. Completely unaware that the radical ed professors love digital literacy precisely because it can be used to prevent the development of rational thought.
I wrote about all these Corporatist conflicts and a bipartisan idea that sees controlling behaviors and mindsets as politically useful and lucrative for certain constituents.http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/blending-sustainability-and-education-to-gain-arational-nonlinear-minds-and-new-behaviors/
The one constant through all this research is how well all these different initiatives fit together a la engrenage. How hard that is to see as everyone focuses on their discrete sliver or gear wheel. And how all the initiatives are politically funded in ways designed to create temptations of corrupting influence. An orgy of taxpayer dollars too enormous to turn away and too needed by bloated government for officials to focus on the attached terms. Which always amounts to further subjugating taxpayers to bureaucrats and cronies.
My main prerequisite to retiring was to have 0 debt and own our home outright. I had to work until I turned 66 but it has been worth it. My only downside is I live in Kalifornia and I am sure the Sacramento Politbureau will figure out a way to steal even that.
Unfortunately, in the US no one owns their own property outright, we just lease it from the government with your property taxes being the rent check. Miss a few payments and they have no compunctions with seizing your property and putting you out on the street.
The main reason i like as flat an income tax as possible.
Flat income tax?
I would just prefer a Federal and State sales tax on new goods and services.
As important as it is for a tax not to be progressive, it is equally wrong to design a tax which is so easily avoided and also is regressive, and is also so relatively expensive to collect.
You are correct that we don’t really own it outright. I am also familiar with the state’s right of eminent domain to take your property and give you “low ball” money for it so some developer can build yet another mall or maybe a bogus hi-speed rail system. Having agreed with you, I’d still rather have just the property taxes to pay than adding credit card debt and a healthy mortgage to it.
Although Bush deserves some blame for the current fiscal malaise Clinton, Pelosi and the Democratic Party are not receiving their share of the blame.
If bin Laden had been taken out after he declared war on the United States in 1996 then the devastation of 9/11 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would never have happened.
Despite the wars, the deficits in the Bush years did not balloon until after Pelosi became Speaker. And it was the CRA interference in the mortgage market that created the banking crisis.
Props for referencing “Ludicrous Speed”.
They’ve gone plaid.
Comb the Desert!!!
When will then be now?
Soon!
The problem in China is that the Communists have gotten a taste of the free market and the government wants to keep it for themselves on the backs of the people.
The problem with the US is that the Communists have gotten a taste of destroying the free market and their government operatives want to finish the job….on the backs of the people.
The difference between the two, is that the Communists in China tell their citizens that they are actually Communists and everyone knows the state run media is simply a propaganda tool.
And, there is no courage to go up against the brutish government in a mass uprising in China. Hmmm. Maybe that isn’t so much of a difference between the two after all. The leftists here are acting as if they are in a war…our side is acting as if it’s in a pillow fight at a sleepover.
Can we at least make s’mores?
The left is acting as if it’s in a war? Really?
Where have the shootings been?
When one is the aggressor the first thing to do is denigrate the enemy. The second thing is to manufacture a fake cassis belie. The third is the shooting.
It looks to me like we are between second and third and I can’t see home plate from here.
Where were the shootings with the Soviet Union? Where have the shootings been with Iran?
Never believe that an enemy will only engage war with you by pointing a gun. They can propagandize away your morale. They can plant people in your state department, have agents disrupt your economy, rape your information stream, indoctrinate your youth.
Only a fool believes that war is waged simply with bullets.
Not only bullets, especially when all the citizens weapons have been seized. Gun control is such a wonderful thing for tyrants.
The liberals have worked for the destruction of the Republic for many years. Don’t think it is only chance that has held the US together so long. Only now is Obama showing that the executive can rule by fiat with no resistance.
Any time you use the word “liberal” when referencing the US left, please put it in quotes. The left’s tactics for the last few hundred years has been to label yourself the opposite of what you really are.
Abso-freakin’-lutely.
G-d, I miss Andrew Breitbart.
Odd decision to conflate China with the US in this way. Nothing new about the weaknesses in China; the problem, as so often, it the crappy reporting by anti-American MSM. If you want to stay current, read Michael Pettis.
As for the rest, God, where would we be without pundits?
Per Green:
Remember, one man winning one election isn’t enough to fix everything overnight, doubly so if that one man is Romney.
…did your life just change with that insight? It’s far from clear that Green understands we face a career-length struggle that will last for decades.
Per Paul Rahe:
That [Nov 2010] earthquake, which gave the Republicans a strength at the state and local level that they have not enjoyed since 1928, is a harbinger of what we will see this November.
…dream on — and how smug. That ‘strength’ accrues to the GOP in name only, in reality it belongs to the tea parties. The RNC/congressional leadership have already lost control of us rabble. The harbinger Rahe detects is actually a spiked wrecking ball swinging free. The main decision post-election will be to suck out and spit away what’s left of the blood in the leadership, then rebuild from within. Or to start afresh with a third party. There’s so much disreputable dead wood at the country-club and lobbyist/MSM levels that it’s probably more effective to start afresh. The good news is that the best and brightest in the GOP — plenty of them, all potentially part of the solution — are likely well aware of the choices ahead.
Note, the issue will catapult to the front burner whether or not Romney wins. The task will be easier if he does win, preferably in a landslide; our country will come out ahead.
I’m not sure how a piece contrasting Beijing and Washington amounts to conflating them. I’m also uncertain how recogninzing a problem amounts to… not recognizing it.
Have another cup of coffee, or perhaps a Xanax.
Do you ever read your own stuff?
We’ve been trying that very thing [statism, probably, in some vague form or other] in this country for years now, and just look at how far we’ve come!
You say the effort of typing that made your fingers hurt, poor baby, which at least suggests a lack of irony — or maybe just sloppy punctuation, to compound the lack of clarity. As comparison or contrast, let alone as a weather vane, it’s about as useful as comparing/contrasting chalk with cheeze.
As for the attempted analysis of the US, you seem to be saying (it is necessary to guess at your meaning) that spotting elephant plop on the floor is the same as seeing the elephant. In your world, given the sloppy-assed tone of it all, including the sophamoric insults (meds, coffee, oh dear!), it probably is.
Next time I’ll use the tag and help with your reading comprehension. Everyone else got it.
Meanwhile, while gratuitously insulting your host — and I’m very lax about that sort of thing — I’m putting you on a two-week timeout.
Ta-ta.
Great comeback, Steve.
There wasn’t really anything to come back to, other than sneers. Forgive the typo-of-omission, though — I’d forgotten to use display-friendly brackets around my SARC tag above, so it remains invisible. Not feeling quite ambitious enough to fix it.
Since early in campaign season (which IMHO is waaaaaay too dang long) I’ve been trying to reassure conservative friends all in a tizzy about Mitt, or this or that RINO.
If Mitt is able to pull it off, and R’s manage to take the Senate, I predict there will be enought Tea Party influence in Congress to nullify the big spenders from both parties. There is enough pent up capital in the private sector, immobilized by fear and uncertainty, to produce a recovery like we “ain’t nevah seen befoah”. All that is necessary to unleash it is to put the brakes on the nutbag enviro-regulatory community, simplify and flatten the tax code, adopt a sensible monetary policy, and then get the hell out of the way.
A recovery based on what?
We don’t produce in this country. We consume. We are not creating wealth and prosperity. We push paper. We have no frontier left. We have no children bold enough to learn a foreign language and go overseas to gain their fortune.
Why do you think the gubmint pushed housing to the point of absurdity and collapse under GWB? Because it employed millions of people actually turning raw products into finished goods. Well now untold thousands of houses stand empty. Same with commercial real estate.
The engine ground to a halt and rusted shut. Welcome to the Third World.
What a spectacularly FOS sad sack you are. I work in industrial automation and know we are still a manufacturing nation.
In the right to work states, we are among the more efficient.
And they aren’t competitive because wages are so much lower, either. Rather, it’s the lack of stringent work rules.
Look at the UAW contract with Ford (or Chrysler, or GM), and it’s just thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of work rules — who may do what, when. It’s impossible to run an efficient and flexible factory floor with those restrictions. All in the name of featherbedding, too.
Germany and Japan compete with well with very high labor costs, because their union relations allow them to focus on quality. Our non-union plants (many of them German- or Japanese-owned) do the same thing.
I once had a union man tell me he’d break my fingers if I picked up a screwdriver. By me, every mother’s son of them can go to hell.
Exactly, Stephen. I’ve been the Administrator for a small town in NW Ohio for the last 14 years. In 2007 when one of our Tier 1 automotive suppliers (400 jobs) moved out of town, I asked the plant manager why, when they were moving the production to another union plant. His reply – the local in the other town agreed to relax the work rules.
Subsequently a non-unionized Japanese company bought the plant and equipment in our town, re-hired many of the good skilled employees that worked there previously, and are making money and growing. They pay their line workers and skilled machinists union scale wages, but pay janitors minimum wage, and all jobs are interchangeable.
I do agree with neuces that we have let far too much manufacturing slip away, especially the heavy variety. I already see some movement toward repatriation, however, and if we can get rid of the Lisa Jacksons, Harry Reids, Pelosis, and Obamas of the world we can compete with anybody in the world.
I think I’d be happy with two washing-machine factories in the USA. Right now, there is one. There is one patch of the lid that rusts. When just about every knitter and mom blog can talk intelligently about that one single spot of rust on their washing machine, in the same place, and know that it comes from the same factory….that’s too few factories. It’s the upper-left area, next to the lid- hinge. They don’t make big household washing machines in Europe. They don’t have big families, or even big kids, I think. It’s gotta be local.
Really, it’s a regular large capacity Kenmore, for three kids, and I’ve had visitors go into near vapors about how industrially gigantic it is. It’s not.
Or the big household fridge, which is the same size as everyone else in suburbia.
Or, say, a handbag manufacturer in Florida. They’ve got python; they ought to have $9,000 python bags selling at Nieman’s.
Or those pregnancy pillows from Detroit.
Or, a shoe manufacturer, for every sort of style in the USA, not just international cool-hunting styles.
Or even a car factory that made short-runs of trendy cars for 20 somethings. They have them in Japan. I’d love to be entertained while driving by things other than bumper-stickers and billboards.
Or, Australian-style clothes-lines. Or even nice American ones, instead of housing project style ones. Wooden ones, with bolts for hammocks, and retractable awnings, like Martha Stewart’s custom-made one.
Or even window manufacturers? Or blenders….
there are so many things not being designed and made, that ought to be. Not just for serious, for pleasure and ease and joy.
The US labor agreement paradigm manages to combine all the worst possible influences. Mass industrialization for war production set many of the patterns. Most WWII production was done under union contracts through arrangements that we’d now call a “project labor agreement.” The union didn’t organize the workers, they organized the government and the price of the government contract was the union contract(s). The prototype of the no-strike clause in exchange for grievance arbitration was set in this period and the War Labor Board arbitrators set the pattern that survives to this day.
Even after organized labor’s wings were clipped by the Taft-Hartley Amendments in ’48, the industrial unions particularly continued to thrive so long as the US had no competition. The UAW and IAM can’t take all the blame for the featherbedding and lack of flexibility in auto and aerospace contracts; the management had to agree to those contracts. In the fifties it was just pattern bargaining. GM didn’t care much what its labor costs were so long as Ford and Chrysler’s were the same. Likewise, Boeing, Lockheed, and McDonnell-Douglass and the economic power of the three bigs allowed them to stifle competition from smaller or start-up companies just as the “Big Three” had eliminated their smaller competition and prevented start-ups in the auto industry. But then the paradigm changed with first the impact of imports and then the beginnings of the foreign owned, non-union or RTW shops in The South. As industries tried to compete with lower cost competitors, they responded by trying to escape unionization. The unions responded with changes in the bargaining law to make it more difficult to close plants and with changes in labor agreements to provide both better union security and more job security for the employees, both of which damaged the competitiveness of the effected industry hastening the decline of industrialization in the US.
Today there is essentially no true private sector unionization. Where there is unionization outside the public sector, it is in the “Third Sector” of companies that exist solely to do business with government, e.g., defense/aerospace and heavy public construction, are regulated monopolies, e.g., utilities, which are heavily regulated, e.g., airlines, other transportation, oil and other energy in union states, or which require major permitting or public funding, especially in union states, e.g., any major project that can be held hostage politically.
Now all the labor agreements are in a non-competitive economic environment where the unions’ political influences allow it to dictate practices to management. Even a big rich company like Boeing isn’t going to take the NLRB to the Supreme Court when somebody from the Administration is telling them to come to heel or they won’t be doing business with the Government or the FAA/NTSB will suddenly find that the new 787 is an inherently unsafe design. Having worked in one for awhile, I can testify that a Democrat government wholly owned by a union is a truly evil thing.
The public sector is a different animal though not so different as it once was and it has adopted all the worst of the private and third sector patterns but with the added twist of being even more political than the industrial and trades unions.
It doesn’t look like you need a lot of help on this board, but you are rockin’.
Well done.
“The last dozen years”
You got that right. Lets add in the previous dozen as well. That gets us back to the only sane administration since Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Wilson Reagan. But let us not delude ourselves and pretend that politics is the font of our problems. This nation is sick. It is sick from a severe lack of free market capitalism. ( Stemming from a lack of common sense, common decency and true religion I must add. ) A nation that sells itself on the idea that prosperity comes from the slave labor of foreign manufacturers or that paper pushing equals wealth creation is a nation of fools. A nation of parents that require little or nothing from their children is utterly doomed.
“Washington is a massive cargo ship top-heavy with other people’s money, covered in barnacles, and with a demented and dangerous captain at the wheel. It won’t be easy to set it right. But it can be righted. Just watch out for icebergs along the way.”
There’s no setting it right short of expelling most of New England from the New United States. Put the new Capital in Wichita Kansas or better yet Oklahoma City and start over. Maybe our grand children will have a better world.
Maybe Jesus of Nazareth, King of Kings and Lord of Lords really did dictate The Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John.
Hey, watch it about New England!! There are A LOT of good conservatives in Maine, but we are run by the hippy-dippy-libbys in Portland. NH would be very conservative except for the influx of massholes over the last 20 years…..
Sell to a masshole and get out. There are lots of states that are still more free than facked. I’m sure you’ve thought about it. You know the massholes are ruining the place anyway. You can own twice the property, if not more, with the proceeds of your sale there, in most red states.
Anybody who thinks the problem is “the last dozen years” is not just part of the problem, they are the problem.
This crap started in the 60s when JFK meddled with the Fed and our fate was sealed with the Humphrey-Hawkins Act. There is no “right” way to have a credit-fuelled expansion. No if, and, but, or maybe.
“There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.” Von Mises
IMHO there is a probability, better than 50-50, that China will overwhelm America by 2030. How this will happen is unknown, hopefully they will peacefully buy US out. China is behind us on every key technical strength but she has gained several centuries in the last decade, and is becoming dominant in a few advanced technologies. China produces eight engineers for every one US engineer. (This is a “soft” number, as there is no universal definition of engineer. If you ignore choo choo engineers, the ratio drops; if you only consider Professional Engineers, the ratio increases.) America produces lawyers. The Chinese make things, we argue about who owns them.
Their great weakness is their political system, all power is held by a few. Unfortunately, America mimicked this since our disarmament after WWII; all power is held by our Congress, bureaucracy, bankers, and the K street Lobbyists. Today, it is infinitely more important who you know, than what you know. Our economy is centrally planned and suffers the same characteristics which collapsed the USSR.
There is an optimum balance between vertical and horizontal organization; it varies in both technology and time. A committee does not make a champion Olympic swimmer, but they can plan the construction of a bridge. The key is to find the right talent mix, and get out of their way, let them perform. America’s fatal weakness is that oceans of experience do not exist in Washington D.C. Most of our energy experts have trouble replacing flash light batteries; they have never accomplished any thing, on time, and on budget. Would you permit a brain surgeon to open your child’s skull, if they had never accomplished anything except read reports? This is the situation in D.C., has been for two generations. Many key government executives, and now, corporate executives, have only months of experience in the industry they control. We see this in unintended unexpected consequences: trains that can not go, oil wells that blow up, and banks which have no money. Lawyers design wind mills, that cost far too much, and we are amazed.
One unintended unexpected consequence may be the end of our nation.
Sure, they produce 8 times the “engineers” — but have you worked with them?
If what you say is true, it will be because of the marxist takeover of the US, not because of anything that China does.
Assuming that the US survives as it was before say 1992 (a BIG assumption) China will continue to trail the US because of two major reasons.
1. Statism is in China’s blood. It isn’t just marxism; it goes back thousands and thousands of years. It has been a command and control culture forever. 20 years isn’t going to change that. Centuries is more like it.
2. The language and writing system limits them. It’s like a 10% tax on their mental processes. They won’t change it and they can’t overcome it.
The Chinese make things, we argue about who owns them.
This. It’s a fitting epitaph for the old American Republic.
The Chinese might make things, but they typically only reproduce what already exists – there’s very little innovation in that country. Very little is “created”. Children are not taught how to think for themselves, it’s just not part of their education system. Groupthink, social harmony and slavish memorization to a set set of ideas has been a feature of their culture for thousands of years. They’re one of the biggest offenders for stealing internationally copyrighted technology specifically because of this. The West innovates. China copies itself.
This difference may not sound like much, but remember, the Chinese discovered gunpowder, but the Europeans figured out how to turn into into an effective weapon…
…current leadership might end up regretting investing in all those street lamps.
My small town recently re-did Main street, including replacing all the street lamps. They took out all the old ones with horizontal arms and replaced them with purely vertical ones. A little pre-emptive redecorating, I guess.
China has reached the end of the road for “state capitalism,” and the communist-in-name leadership hasn’t figured out what to do about it, other than to dial reforms back.
China’s astronomical GDP growth rates were amazing. But consider the low economic state from which the new China economy sprang. There were two lessons here: how low Marxist political economy took China, and how high free market policy took it. Pent up, yes, but explosively good results once unleashed.
An even more amazing thing to me is how it’s been handled by the Western news entertainment industry. The conversion to free markets there was an open admission that communism, and even a blended socialism, doesn’t work. I don’t recall hearing that from anyone in the media. You’d think that such an improbable thing would be trumpeted to us repeatedly as a proved object lesson in Economics 101, with Karl failing and Edmund winning, but this salient point has been studiously ignored.
The same goes for the partial but significant desocialization of Canada, Germany and even Sweden. These moves were made for a reason, but what reason, and with what results? Is there no lesson to be drawn from these major recent shifts in political economy?
True, Mitt is not a serious candidate. One of the many examples of this is his failure to make repeated compare-and-contrasts of America versus Canada. Or the EU, much less China. This ain’t intellectual professor garbage, it’s a practical thing of great importance. But Mitt has not done this in any way. The lesson of Canada would be especially telling, but the “campaign” is being conducted as if it doesn’t exist.
Absolutely spot on…except provisionally regarding the optimism.
The republicans are better only in contrast to the bone-deep statists, and 90% will have to go shortly as well. The only reason they are better, btw, is that they are ONLY bone-deep statists, rather than dedicated marxists on top of bone-deep statism.
The problem IS THE STATE. The trillions are too much for anybody to resist, even many who start out with the best of intentions. Ultimately (like within a decade), the state has to be dismantled. Right down to where the founders thought it should be: i.e., national defense, the justice system, and free commerce among the states (NOT forcing things on the states in the name of commerc).
I’m no big fan of state government either. Plenty of corruption and statism exists there as well. The difference is that the eager thieves only get to play with billions, not trillions, and perhaps more importantly…you can move to another state if the crooks become unendurable.
If any of this confuses you, just keep one rule in mind. Everything a Democrat proposes, no matter how wonderful it sounds, is destructive to your freedom and your pocketbook. Everything a Republican proposes is the same, except those proposals that dismantle something in the government.
(ps: apply that rule to Romney and understand why he will have to be a one-term president; replaced by a Rand Paul or similar in 2016.).
“Washington is a massive cargo ship top-heavy with other people’s money, covered in barnacles, and with a demented and dangerous captain at the wheel”.
I love this sentence. It reminds me of the Los Angeles Unified School District.
Stephen Green: And do you think that this ship of the Republic can still be righted with four more years of an Obama Presidency, considering, that he rules by edict, and unelected bureaucracies. And we have a Republican Party that will not stand up to his lawlessness, perhaps because they see big government as in their best interests also. Also consider what more justices appointed to SCOTUS like Sotomayor and Kagan would do to the Constitution. I don’t trust Roberts anymore either, after his vote on Obamacare.
The latest polls show Obama pulling ahead with independent voters. I would like to think that the polls are wrong, but thats what I thought in 2008 and turns out they weren’t wrong. My personal feeling is that we are on the edge of the end of America as we knew it and as the Founders intended it to be, sold out by politicians of both parties.
The politicians are the messengers and errand boys and girls, they reflect the voters, the politicians are a mirror image of those who elect them and who put them into office, that’s where the root of the problems lie, the politicians are just giving us what we put them in office for…
Romney is a prime example of that. We had great Conservatives to elect and we do what, choose Willard the Rat. We deserve the worse and Willard will dish it out to us too…We are the problem!
We are part of the problem. The other part is the politicians, who once they get to Washington, do what benefits themselves and their parties, instead of what they promised to do before getting elected.
Chinse factories are being squeezed right now.
Many were started on a wing and a prayer and the hope to reap the expor whirlwind.
Exportners prefered to sell to Europe and the US because these developed markets demanded a slightly higher quality product that yielded decent gross margin.
Africa, Latin America, & South Asia largely wanted the cheapest product possible –low margins for the factories.
Now Europe is dead and the USA is flat.
But guess what — workers are demanding higher wages or they will jump to another factory.
Unless a Romney victory can avert catastrophe here and pull us out recession, the rest of the world is screwed too.
Stephen,
I am a long-time fan of yours, and a fellow Coloradan. I linked you here: http://bobagard.blogspot.com/2012/08/psephologists-among-us.html
test
“Always remember that Jesus Christ, a descendant of King David, was raised from the dead. This is the Good News I preach. And because I preach this Good News, I am suffering and have been chained like a criminal. But the word of God cannot be chained.”
2 Tim 2:8-9
The Chinese Christians put us to shame
I’m not disagreeing with you but there is that quote about ‘shaking off the very dust of their town from your feet’. Evangelization doesn’t work so well in the industrialized West at the moment. Minds are closed tight. That may change as conditions deteriorate rapidly now. But real liberals/progressive/totalitarians will ‘call for the rocks to fall on themselves’ before they will bend the knee and bow the head.
China conversely is a field ripe for harvest. Most there are likely very very disillusioned with communism and Christian philosophy and the Truth of Christ would be real food to them.
Group urges convention delegates to ‘Dump Romney’ Posted August 10, 2012
http://augustafreepress.com/2012/08/10/group-urges-convention-delegates-to-dump-romney/?fb_comment_id=fbc_10151189914073203_25696262_10151190071898203#f1a99aee7b89e
The Supreme Court which is supposed to be fighting for Individual and States Rights against a power hungry central government has been a miserable failure. This is because the Justices are chosen by the executive branch of the government and agreed to by the legislative branch, which makes the Justices beholden to the other 2 branches of government instead of being an independent branch representing the people and the states.
I think the Supreme Court and its lower courts need to be reformed. Justices should be chosen by the governors yearly to serve a 9 year term, and then agreed to by national elections. In order to be a separate branch of government, and provide protection from the power hungry central government, the Federal Court system must be beholden to the People and the States, not to the other 2 branches of government. When the Chief Justice says he’s supposed to give the benefit of the doubt to Congress, instead of fighting for the freedoms of every American, it’s time to fire the cronies.
Mr. Green,
I have to disagree that there were ‘mistakes’ over the last dozen years. There has been collusion amongst politicians to subvert the Constitution and ruin the country. Starting with Reagan, who became more tractable after the assassination attempt on his life which followed the release of the Grace Commission Report. All the way up to the oath breaking communist in the White House. There are NO altruistic people in the federal government. The poetic justice will be that all the money they have been receiving for betraying their oaths and their country will be as worthless as my pitifully small savings.
There are some misconceptions in this article;
China operates using 5 year plans, guiding political, economic and social programs to provide structure and goals. These 5 year plans are inherent in the economic and political development of China and continue uninterrupted from 1953 until 2015.
When someone states that there is a “new direction”, or reverse of reforms, etc, it indicates either wilful ignorance of how China operates, or hoping readers do not understand China and not call out author on their statement. Consider this calling author out on this statement.
“It does not matter if the cat is black or white as long as the cat catches mice”
Deng Xiaoping
The above statement should be fully understood by anyone trying to comprehend what is occuring in China today. Looking at figures and statistics means nothing if foundation and environment of politics and economics are not understood.
Chinese have great affection for Americans. I have visited villages all over China and listened to stories from Chinese grandparents of US soldiers that fought with them against Japanese invaders, they never forget the sacrafices made by Americans to save them from attrocities Japanese were committing. This is History most Americans simply do not know. It should be known and recognized.
Finally, There are Billions upon Billions of trade contracts turned away by the USA due to ridiculous U.S. beaurocracy. I see it every year here in Northern China.
Germany, France, Chile, Brazilian, etc, embassies and trade delegations work with Chinese business and government with mutual respect and constructive business approach while US embassies turn Chinese business inquiries away.
Americans wonder why there is a trade deficit with China..?? Look no further than your US state department.
>>”The trend line in American politics looks good.”
Yikes! So does Death Valley in bloom. But it don’t last long and you wouldn’t call it a trend. I won’t give a ride to the polls to any neighbor unless they swear in writing – in blood – that they will vote straight Libertarian. Our problem is not the Dems or Reps per se, but rather a political class that has neither honor nor humility. Giving the electorate whatever it wants no matter how vile or stupid (e.g., reckless obscenities like Obamacare or morally bankrupt insanities like the Drug War) is their time-honored and virtually unbeatable modus operandi for re-election. And so it will remain as long as we reward them with our votes. I’d rather think long term.
This business of citing some profound shift in the electorate is the 21st-century version of Red baiting; in fact, the American electorate was pretty much swept aside in August 1974, when the new breed of establishmentarians, acting superficially on behalf of the US of A, forced out of office the criminally negligent but duly elected Nixon & replaced him w/ the decidedly unelected Ford. The nation’s not been the same since; even before that, w/ the killing of a President.
Regardless of how discredited the two parties are, they’ll continue to force on their “electorate” more of the same Wilsonian interventionists & (sigh) state capitalists. The pending “choice” between the pious & humorless Obama & the even more pious & humorless Romney continues the almost 40-yr tradition of blatant disregard for the citizenry & its “electorate.”
I can’t take three neighbors without enhancing Obama’s chances. I live in Marin. (I would though if I lived in a normal part of the country.)
Why not take them out for pizza that day, instead? A very, very long lunch.
“There’s no pizza in here! Hey wait! Let us out!”