In article . com, wrote:
Brent P wrote:

Unemployment is near historic lows, GDP is growing at 3.5%, inflation
and interest rates are both low, real estate is at record highs, and
more Americans own homes today than ever before. No reasonable person
and certainly no economist, would call that a collapsing economy.

I didn't call it a collasping economy. I called it an economy of short
term thinking. That is unless you think that 9 trillion in debt and
several times that in future liabilities is something you can shrug off.
Then there is the clever calculations that produce some of those figures
you quote.

So, it's better to rely on personal opinion, than to look at decades of
real economic data that is readily available?

Why don't you pay attention to people from the World Bank, Federal
Reserve, etc and so on if you don't believe me?

It's not clear what
exact "$9 trillion in debt you are referring to." If it's the US govt
debt, an absolute number doesn't mean much by itself.

Well if you want to play games with the currancy.

Ask grandpa what
he paid for his first house. Does that mean everyone who pays 10X that
for a house today is doing something wrong? If you look at govt debt
as a percentage of GDP, today it's about the same as it was in the mid
90's and also about the same as it was in the mid 50's. During WWII,
it was twice as high. We survived that, didn't we?

So you want to make the debt smaller by inflating the currancy. That
appears to be what is being done. Sure, the only problem is that it wipes
out the savings, the hard earned money of the people. If you don't think
that has consquences you're deluding yourself. Or maybe you just don't
care because you have no savings?

As for low cost products doing low income people no good, that is
absolutely false.

In the long term it doesn't. For the short term, get the crap now sure.
But in the long term no. Unless they are always supposed to be poor.

Of course it benefits them in the long term, by low income people being
able to conitnue to buy good cheaply. That continues on.

But work as slaves... like in china. What happens to those chinese goods
once your plan to inflate the currancy to solve the US debt problem is
put into action? Oh, that's right, they are suddenly incredlibly expensive!

But if you don't want to listen to me about the danger of economic
collaspe, maybe you'll listen to this guy:

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/1...obel_2001.html

I mean he's only been chief economist for the world bank and has a nobel
prize in the field.... and he's not agreeing with you...

Look at who shops at Kmart, Walmart, etc. Those
products would cost much more if it were not for foreign low cost labor
producing them.

Funny how I can find even in those stores, in corners and places made in
USA goods that cost no more and even less much of the time.

And do you think you'd find them at those prices if you eliminated
foreign competition?

Strawman.

These low cost products are of tremendous benefit to
everyone, including the low income. As someone earlier pointed out,
China is planning a $7000 entry level car. Do you think that is of no
benefit to low income families here in the USA? You're so biased only
looking for negatives that you can't see the forest for the trees.

I don't think you understand the long term game.

I don't think you understand economics, the great benefit of free
trade, and the huge problems that get caused when you try to have govt
correct perceived imperfections in free markets. Free markets aren't
perfect. Sometimes they are even brutal. But they are far better to
solutions of protectionism, that result in govt management of the
economy and trade wars.

There is no such thing as free trade. It doesn't exist. Maybe we'd have
free trade if the US had no labor laws, no environmental protections, and
completed it's move towards a police state. Then, maybe we'd be on an
even footing with china and then it would be 'free trade'. Do you really
want to live where you can see the air? Where it is so thick and brown
that it's as if you could cut it with a knife?

Or do you feel it's perfectally ok that people live in such sesspools
working more or less as company slaves under an oppressive police state
that controls access to information and forbids things like freedom
speech to make you cheap goods?

China is playing a long term game while the US is playing a short term one.

According to you, because you focus only on the negatives. There are
many US companies that lead the world today today in many areas. Would
you rather have MSFT, INTC, Boeing, etc, or a country with unskilled
laborers making shirts?

You don't seem to grasp the whole picture. Guess who's going to be
building Airbus aircraft? Guess... you think any job is safe? You're
deluding yourself. It's not just no-skill low-skill or 'dirty-jobs' that
are going to china. In fact, with the manufactruring now much of the
engineering is going too...

The knowledge drain from the US to China has been monumental as well. US
company starts manufacturing over there, next thing they know they have a
new competitor using everything they learned from the US company.


Guess who benefits
from this in the long term? China will be the super power and the US will
in many respects be third worlded. Or do you think it is a good thing to
have people in the USA compete for jobs with china?

What works is a free economy.

There is no such thing. Then again you probably don't know about China's
local content laws either. If a given percentage of your product isn't
made in China you will suffer high tariffs selling it in China. Maybe in
the name of a 'free economy' the US can be like China in that respect?

And in that scenario, each country
makes products that fit their workforce and capabilities. Everyone
made your argument 40 years ago, when Japan was the boogey man. Then
is was supposed to be Taiwan that was going to ruin us all. Then
Korea. Funny how we are still here and by any reasonable
interpretation of actual economic statistics, we're doing quite well.

Japan was never a boogey man. That is a false argument, Japan doesn't use
slave labor, Japan has been an industrialized nation since before world
war two, it has labor and environmental protections. It's companies
competed with US companies on a more or less even footing. What is going
on with China is that US companies are relocating their manufacturing to
a police state where it can pay people next to nothing. That's
considerably different and only those people with no grasp of the
realities of the situation make such a comparison.

If we're failing anywhere, it's because we have a segment of the
population that doesn't get educated, doesn't even finish high school.
The solution to that is to work on that problem, not try to compete in
making shirts or baskets on the theory that the solution is to have
more no skills jobs to compete with foreign low cost labor.

Again you have no grasp of the situation. It's not just such things being
done in China. I suggest you start paying closer attention to things
around you. Maybe even check the tag on the back of your computer
monitor.

Nice set of strawmen you write.

Just simple economic fact.

I suggest you learn what a strawman is.