Jon,the guy I bought my truck off of buys all his
groceries from me! I go to Kroger and buy a cart of
what I think he'll need,and he stops by my house twice
a week and buys what needs! Talk about symbiosis (real
word?) :)
Jon,I cannot,I repeat,CANNOT accept your
propagandizing! :) Why try to confuse me with facts??
No,seriously,over the last thirty years I have seen so
many factories close and move to China (or wherever.
Mostly China.) Factories that used to make
boots,glass,TVs,shelving,clothing,etc. all GONE. And
the loss of manufacturing jobs isn't the end of it.
With drastically cheaper prices comes the disposable
nature of the products we buy. So now the TV repairman
is not making it (this I know from friends still in
the business),the shops that fix shoes,watches,lawn
mowers,computers,bicycles,etc. are all downsizing or
going out of business now. And these are people unable
to get a job on Wall Street or get a great education
and go work for Intel. Many are in their fifties,and
they've been doing their type of work their whole
life. Now they have to flip hamburgers or mop floors
at the mall and make nothing. I have listened to
people like George Will say that this is better for
everybody,but it's funny that exactly what other
economists and pundits were saying would happen (at
the time of Nafta's passing) has happened (the giant
sucking sound...),and worse. I can see that in Silicon
Valley where everyone has a high-tech job and has the
resources that they can devote to re-training should
they lose their job,it may be fine. But I can't see
how a country that doesn't manufacture anything
anymore can last,and the menial,monotonous jobs that
used to employ millions of people who,shall we say
"aren't highly educated" haven't really been
replaced,esp. with anything substantive. I see the
education required to obtain anything decent rising or
at least constantly changing (which is expensive),and
our money being worth much less. And other countries
right now are beginning to kick our lifeboats back out
to sea,because they no longer feel we can repay our
debts.
Other than ALL THAT though,I agree. Things are really
going very well,and it is all peaches and pears! :)
Thanks Jon!!!!!!!!!!!! :)
Steve P.
--- jon@dakota-truck.net wrote:
>
>
> Steve Preston <steveophonic@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Jon,are you sure??
>
>
> Yep. :-) Its another one of those funny things
> in life that we
> all "know" but it just is not so. :-) It really
> does seem like
> everything in the US is made in China, and although
> China is one of
> our largest importers, they only make up a small
> fraction in the grand
> scheme of things. Many thanks to Dustin for that US
> Census link; I
> had not come across that particular one myself, I
> was working off of a
> couple of other Census reports (China to US exports
> and total US
> imports) and extrapolating the 7% figure. The link
> that Dustin posted
> shows that the 2007 (through November) imports from
> China were just over
> 12% as opposed to my calculation of just over 7%,
> the reason for the
> difference is the import numbers I was using were
> for both goods and
> services, and the 12% is for goods alone.
>
> Had I not done the research, I wouldn't have
> thought it true
> myself. I stumbled across a statement a year or two
> ago while reading
> an economics book that said China only accounted for
> about 10% of
> total US imports, and I thought there was no way - I
> HAD to check that
> out. However, using the US gov't data, it is pretty
> easy to verify.
>
> My assumption is that most of what China is
> exporting to us are the
> everyday type of consumer goods which have a great
> deal of constant
> visibility, and hence create the illusion of a
> larger than actual
> percentage.
>
>
> > I thought that we keep running trillions of
> dollars in trade
> > deficits with China? I keep hearing that.
>
>
> Its true that we are running a large trade deficit
> with China,
> though it isn't trillions yet. For 2007 (through
> November), its just
> under $240 billion. (We exported about $60 billion
> to them and they
> exported about $300 billion to us.
> http://tinyurl.com/34hxq7)
>
> However, this once again is one of those things
> that people like
> to wring their hands over but is actually not a
> problem in the least.
> It may be helpful to compare it to your own personal
> life. You have a
> huge trade deficit with your local grocery store or
> car dealership.
> Think about all the money you spend in a grocery
> store, and when was
> the last time your grocer purchased an item from
> you? How much stuff
> have you sold to your car salesman over the years?
> Lets say you are a
> farmer and you buy a $30,000 truck from the owner of
> the local Dodge
> dealership. He might buy a hundred dollars worth of
> tomatoes or bacon
> from you over the course of the year, but you don't
> worry about your
> personal trade deficit with that one party do you?
> Of course not,
> because many other people are purchasing your goods
> or services, and
> they are all trading with each other. (Or in the
> case of working for
> a company, that one company is purchasing your
> services, and you have
> a huge trade surplus with them.) It all equals out
> and the money you
> spend eventually comes back to you. Some actually
> say that a 100%
> trade deficit with every other country would be the
> best possible
> scenario. This would be like buying goods and
> services from another
> country, and they never purchased any of your goods
> and services,
> ever. You get all of the goods and services that
> you need, without
> having to give your own goods and services in
> return, all you have
> given the other countries are little scraps of paper
> with pictures of
> dead presidents on them, which are really cheap to
> produce. If that
> country never buys any of your goods and services,
> you never have to
> send anything of material value outside your border.
> You've got the
> benefit of the other country's goods and services,
> and you get to keep
> all of your own too!
>
> The reasons for a trade deficit or surplus
> between the US and any
> other country is simply that some countries produce
> a lot of items we
> want to buy while not really needing a lot of what
> we produce, while
> other countries want a lot of what we produce but we
> do not need much
> of what they are selling. This is actually a good
> thing because a
> major underlying reason for it is specialization.
> If every country
> was able to produce everything that it needed at the
> lowest possible
> price, there would be no reason to trade with
> others. Bringing it
> back to a personal level, if everyone had to grow
> their own food, make
> their own clothes, build their own cars, we'd still
> be in the dark
> ages. By specializing in certain areas, individuals
> (or countries)
> can get really good at doing certain specific
> things, and if that
> thing is a good or service desired by others, you
> have something of
> value which you can trade for the things you want,
> which are made
> better or more cheaply than you could do it
> yourself. The net result
> is that everyone gets a higher quality product at a
> much cheaper price
> than if they did everything themselves, and they
> have a lot more free
> time on their hands to boot. Another aspect to this
> is, think about
> the kind of stuff we are buying from China - cheap
> consumer goods. To
> create those kinds of items requires mostly
> unskilled labor. Assembly
> line, repetition, etc. Frankly, they are welcome to
> keep doing that
> stuff, this frees us up to do the higher paying,
> skilled labor jobs.
>
> Hmmm, I get the feeling I've rambled on for too
> long again. My
> apologies for anyone who actually read through all
> of that. :-) I
> just find the topic somewhat interesting; a big part
> of what makes it
> such is all the pap I see in the general media,
> parroted by the
> talking heads who don't stop to think about what
> they are saying.
> Every now and then I will stumble across a gem that
> chips away some
> incorrect "conventional wisdom" and these are really
> fun realizations
> to experience. Its like draining away a little bit
> more of the sea of
> murkiness and confusion which pervade everyday life.
> Its quite
> refreshing to come across things like that, and it
> makes me want to
> share them with others, in a regrettably long-winded
> fashion. ;-)
> The non-issue of trade deficits is just one such
> revelation which I
> have been fortunate enough to experience. Who
> knows, maybe someone
> will read this and something of what I wrote will
> spark a doubt in
> their mind, or at least make them think twice before
> blindly accepting
> some drivel that a news anchor or newspaper headline
> would have them
> believe.
>
> --
> -Jon-
>
>
=== message truncated ===
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