Thanks for the share. A lot of the world's progress has occurred because of changes in much larger countries, say China. I am selfishly patriotic, I expect more from us and the wasted potential is shameful.
Who is the Us in this case?
- Consumers who were looking for ways to save money?
- Retailers who were looking for ways to save costs and continue to make profits?
- Factory owners who were looking for ways to save production costs and found China?
- Governments who bow to corporations who wanted easy ways to move factories, industry and other consumption to lower-cost labor markets?
America lived by the economic condition and may eventually die for its own capitalistic nature of trying to earn profits (at all costs) by finding the cheapest ways to make something. China is large in both economic and military conditions because they have to be - we made it large and now they will want to protect that condition. China has also suffered and lost millions of jobs to Indonesia, Vietnam and India in some cases. Marginalized workers around the world are the true consumption of this process.
Automation had made US-factories far more productive, but the need to be producing even-cheaper goods caused them to eventually be sent overseas. One number I've seen is something on the order of 70,000-100,000 factories in N. America were sent to overseas locations since 2000 alone. That is through two 8-year administrations and the patriotic years following 9/11/01. Certainly the great recession made the exodus even worse. Next time we shop Walmart or order most things from Amazon, think of the past 20 years, the blossoming US debt and the continuation of the inability to earn-it-down again through actual progress. And then the idea of tariffs comes up as a way to try to offset things a little but won't do much other than slow the economic condition a little more. I think actually the only way "America" fixes this is with a huge program of immigration to push the population past 450M (growing tax base, GDP pump) and start to de-union and de-regulate.
If we retaliate against these countries, like China, with tariffs, it's our own fault. We sent the work there in the first place. The real retaliation happening is against the US people who must pay the extra prices the tariffs create, as well as facing the possibility of lowered exports to those countries tariffs are against. And if we do this against Canada and Mexico, it seems to have gone too far (IMO).
Past 20 years - interesting. Next 20 years - even more interesting. By 2040-2050, US national debt should hit ~$40 Tillion and there may be insolvency of SSI and Medicare. Be prepared. Those with financial means - shouldn't have a lot of problems. But it'll still be your gardener, your pool boy and your dog walkers who all will be facing constant pressure.
Now, is the world getting "better" overall? Yes. In the macro scale. It's a very-safe world (no more world wars). The wars are now on-paper. Financial, economic trade and petty. World is "better" all through the printing of fiat currencies and tracking that with population growth. But the one macro trend that is very critical. Population growth. If that falters, stops or reverses - on a worldwide macro scale, things could become increasingly hard to support the economic conditions and instead of Venezuela going bad, it's Brazil or Mexico or Canada or ...
It's now a world war of paper cuts. Tariffs, taxes and trade. When the state you live in urges another 1% sales tax raise or your school tax goes up a few more hundred per year, who is enduring these "advances" in doing better? The people hurting aren't those buying a $3 Organically-grown, hand wrapped, carefully shipped head of lettuce. it's the ones growing, picking, shipping and stacking it. Your store cashier probably has a student loan to a good college for their fine arts degree. And they're probably living at home with parents or getting money from parents to support them and they may never get a mortgage or own a home other than through inheritance.
Regarding the bad loans... How about those "analysts". The rating agencies. As shown in "The Big Short" - they were complicit, culpable and cause of much of the 2008 crisis that could have been stemmed with proper oversights to financial instruments. Greed bubbles burst. They have to because they are not natural economic conditions. Anything un-natural gets reset to the mean eventually.
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