AL_DA_GREAT
amour absinthe révolution
The problem was the unfair competition. The asians weren't better, they competed with low wages, horrible working conditions and few environmental laws. We don't want a race to the bottom here.
The situation in Greece is nearing the final climax!
- Thread starter Cheetah
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The problem was the unfair competition. The asians weren't better, they competed with low wages, horrible working conditions and few environmental laws. We don't want a race to the bottom here.
I see it as money flowing out of the over-privilieged western labor aristocracy, the global 1%, and towards the oppressed masses of the third world, the 99%.
Why do you complain, comrade? It's wealth redistribution on an international scale.
Don't you people like to "spread the wealth around"? There you go. Celebrate.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
@Luiz
Well, if that were your reasoning, what would you say when the developed countries then said "OK, but we'll place 100% tariffs on goods imported from the developing countries."
Well, if that were your reasoning, what would you say when the developed countries then said "OK, but we'll place 100% tariffs on goods imported from the developing countries."
Yeah, like oil, iron ore, soy and its derivatives, etc etc? I'm sure the average citizen of the developed nations would be thrilled to see the price they pay for all the stuff dependant on that suddenly double... it's a funny world we live in: the rich world is actually entirely dependant on the poor world (and vice-versa).
But you should know that's not my reasoning at all. I just get a bit sick when I hear phony socialist rhetoric complaining about the "poor getting screwed by jobs moving to the third world". Well, if the phony socialist was indeed concerned with the poor (the real poor), he'd be happy.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
I said goods, meaning manufactured goods, not raw materials.
Not all socialists subscribe to internationalism and global solidarity. We might call them national socialists, but this term doesn't have the best of connotations
What I am pointing at here is this - no other civilization is so economically suicidal as the West, or at least some parts of it which are not only doing nothing against de-industrialization, they welcome it with open arms, babbling nonsense about a post-industrial, service-based economy. At the same time, the likes of China are flooding the world with dumping prices products, destroying all competitors that don't have the balls to protect their own industries, while it's own market is well-sheltered from foreign competition.
How is that fair?
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Laos? I hope you don't mean the country, otherwise you must truly be desperate 
Yeah, well it is worse than the country, since La.O.S stands for Laikos Orthodoxos Synagermos, which means "popular orthodox alarm" :/They have a couple of serious people though, one of them was made main minister of Transportations, and another deputy minister with special charge in matters of Sea-transportation (a field where Greece is in the lead)
OK, so the developed nations impose a 100% tariff on manufactured goods, and the developing world doubles or trebles the price of all raw material exports. Oil crisis squared. Nobody wins in this sort of nonsensical trade war.
My point, which is a solid point, is that the developed economies are completely dependant on continued trade with the devoloping economies. If that trade was to halt, or even be severely diminished, living standards would collapse.
They don't get to claim any moral high ground if their notion of solidarity and wealth distributions stops at their national borders. That's a very...selfish.... position, no?Not all socialists subscribe to internationalism and global solidarity. We might call them national socialists, but this term doesn't have the best of connotations
I disagree. China made us all much richer with their cheap products and also their demand for our products and expertise. There are winners and losers in trade, but the winners outnumber the losers.
I don't see embracing the rise of the developing world as "suicide". What I see is a normalization of the international balance. The scenario where some countries with just tiny part of the world population managed to dominate global economic affairs was a historic abnormality, created by the fact that Europe pioneered capitalism. The rest of the world is merely catching up, and on per capita terms there's still a looooooong way to go for the likes of China before they can compare themselves even with the likes of Portugal or Greece.
I think the West, and Europe in particular, is now looking at an external source for its internally-created problems. It was not the rise of China that lead to your bloated and unsusteinable welfare states, to your extremely rigid and inflexible labor markets, to a very strike-happy culture (in the case of France and some other countries), to political systems as broken as the Italian or greek profligacy. It was not the chinese that made europeans stop having children, turning their pension systems into nuclear time-bombs. It was not the chinese that made you embrace a radical notion of multi-culturalism, creating large scale ghettos in the middle of your capitals, full of frequently resentful and hostile people not integrated to general society. All of that was self-imposed. So who's to blame?
onedreamer
Dragon
Well first of all developed economies aren't completely dependant on continued trade with developing economies but the contrary is true instead, so I don't agree that your point is that strong. They sure are dependant... but the problem with the liberal market philosophy isn't trade of goods or resources among countries which happens since when the word "liberalism" didn't remotely exist, ie from thousands of years, the problem and epic fail of the liberal market has been and continues to be the exportation not of goods or resources but of the industry itself, which is unprecedented in History and that is self destructive for countries but obviously very lucrative for capitalists.
No, both sides are completely dependant on each other. How long would Europe function if it had no access to the oil, iron ore, rare earth minerals, and other raw materials from the developing world? If any side needs the other "more", it is the developed world.
As for "exportation of industries", it's just about doing stuff where it's more efficient. Hardly a "failed" concept. As I said, there are winners and losers, but it's self-evident the winners outnumber the losers (after all, industries are only "exported" when it's economically efficient to do so). There's a reason why the global income per capita has increased so much in the last decades.
Marla_Singer
United in diversity
Luiz, sorry to say so but your vision really starts to look dated.
As a matter of fact, Europe is the world region relying the most on open markets. The ECB is the only fully independent central bank in the world, having as sole purpose to limit inflation and not to support growth. The result is that Eurozone countries have to rely almost exclusively on open markets to finance themselves, something which is not true in Britain or the US.
Furthermore, China is not an open economy. And its fantastic development strongly relies on a non-convertible national currency pegged to the dollar at a strongly undervalued price.
Now of course, my point is not to complain about others always. I just refuse the false dichotomy between lazy interventionist Europeans and hard-working liberal rest of the world. Europe has strong structural issues preventing it to be as dynamic as many other regions, but it's not only about government interventionism.
As a matter of fact, Europe is the world region relying the most on open markets. The ECB is the only fully independent central bank in the world, having as sole purpose to limit inflation and not to support growth. The result is that Eurozone countries have to rely almost exclusively on open markets to finance themselves, something which is not true in Britain or the US.
Furthermore, China is not an open economy. And its fantastic development strongly relies on a non-convertible national currency pegged to the dollar at a strongly undervalued price.
Now of course, my point is not to complain about others always. I just refuse the false dichotomy between lazy interventionist Europeans and hard-working liberal rest of the world. Europe has strong structural issues preventing it to be as dynamic as many other regions, but it's not only about government interventionism.
onedreamer
Dragon
Ahah, this reasoning is completely fubar and far from reality. I do not know why you mention Europe, but it seems to me from your stereotypical comments in another post above that you are biased against it, since we're talking of the developed world. Anyways, said world depends partly on foreign supply of raw resources because it can process more than what they have directly access to and that's why it's called "developed" world. The developing world has extra raw resources which it exports because it can process less of what they have directly access to, and that is why it is called "developing" world. If the developed world would lack the supply of extra raw resources, its processing efficiency would lower, even lower much, but not be leveled to zero as you claim, and they would still be higher than those of the developing countries who would be left with all their resources and no immediate way to process them plus no income from exportations to support their growth.
Once the developing world would reach the status of developed world, it would suffer the same issues, but this won't happen because continual growth can't happen since resources aren't growing, on the contrary they are consumed. Remember that in order to reach these levels, the "developed" countries have pillaged the so called third world and there isn't a fourth or fifth world to pillage for the third one to do the same. So it is obvious and natural that there must be a de-growth once we hit the apex of worldwide production:resources ratio, like all things that belong to nature. The Roman Empire fell when there wasn't anything left to pillage, plus other factors that aren't dissimilar to what happens nowadays.
Anyways, back to the point, claiming that the developing world can continue developing without money from the developed world and without a third world to pillage is a big joke.
not at all. It's about doing stuff where it's more lucrative. It's more efficient for a few men, the capitalists, not for humanity. And it has failed, or better it has worked until it could but it has failed in its theory of continual growth. If you can't see it, well... you'll have to wake up from your wet dreams pretty soon.
Marla, I don't see how the fact that the ECB is pursuing some ultra-inflation-hawkish policy (that even an inflation hawk like myself consider counter-productive and extreme) changes the fact that Europe has a bloated welfare state, a severe problem with its pension systems (generational imbalance, if you will) and a rigid labor market.
I know China is not an open economy, but it's the "derivative" that matters. China was an almost entirely closed economy. When it started to liberalize, the "opennes derivative" became, and still is, very positive. That's why they're growing, and they're increasingly open to the world. In fact I just read on Bloomberg that they dropped one of their protectionist barriers against high-tech products that will enable GE to sell them several billions of dollars more per year.
Eh, no. The short answer is your completely wrong.
The reason Europe (or Japan, to not focus just on Europe) don't have nearly as many raw resources as some other places is not (mostly) that they developed before and already consumed it, it's that they never had. Natural resources are not spread equally. Europe and Japan never had, at any point, as much oil as the arabs or as much iron ore as the Brazilians. Never.
The developing world exports raw resources because its profitable to do so. Some rich countries also export them, like Australia and Norway. The US was a big exporter in the past as well.
The notion that you have to "pillage" someone to become developed is completely false and shows the marxian taint of your reasonsing. Who did Korea or Taiwan pillage to become rich? And they sure are rich now. I don't think you understand at all how development works.
I never claimed that. The developing world needs the developed world almost as much as the other way around. This is an inter-dependant world, and Winner's notion that the developed world could somehow inflict a lot of pain on the developing nations without suffering a crippling backlash is plain wrong.
Ah, yes, it is failing miserably. Miserably.
Per capita income of the World, in constant dollars:
1970: $781
2010: $9216
Oh, what a failure! What a catastrophe! Someone, please stop this madness!
Marla_Singer
United in diversity
It's funny how a general statement about the independence of the ECB leads you to talk about "ultra-inflation-hawkish policy". The world is not as binary as you imagine it to be Luiz.
I don't understand what you mean. I am just echoing the very general criticism that ECB could and should have done more to ease the situation of peripheral economies, as it is doing now to Italy.
You said it yourself that they only target inflation. I don't see why they can't have a dual mandate like every central bank in history.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
The point is they can't, since they depend on selling raw materials to those filthy rich Westerners. If developed countries resorted to protectionist trade barriers in industrial goods (while maintaining free trade among themselves), there wouldn't be much the developing countries could do about it.
Everybody is dependent on foreign trade. The thing is, most of the stuff developed countries are buying from the poor ones are raw materials and low tech products, which can easily be imported from elsewhere if one country or one bloc of developing countries decided to raise prices.
Ask them.
That's simplistic. I am not against free trade, but there must be one set of rules for everyone. China (and before it, Japan) are using unfair practices to destroy certain industries in developed countries, while protecting their own industries from competition. Not to mention that they don't protect intellectual property, which of course harms those countries which depend on selling know-how (=USA, Europe).
So, who gives a damn that we get cheap T-shirts, toys, and whatnot when we end up paying the cost of massive unemployment among people who can't easily be employed in the "new" economy, and when even our hi-tech industries suffer because technologies they developed are being illegally copied by the Chinese?
That's not what I said or meant. I am all for the rise of the developing world, but not if that means the end of the developed world.
Nobody is blaming China for stuff they didn't cause. I don't even blame China for the stuff I blame it for (
) - after all, they're just exploiting opportunities we're giving them. I am simply saying that the West needs to get real about how to deal with the emerging economies. Quid pro quo, and all that. If they don't want to play fair, why should we? If they don't want to protect our intellectual property, then let's impose tariffs on their manufactured goods. And so on and so forth.What really happened was we promoted the kind of capitalism that was interested only in making money for a very small group of people, who in the process outsourced our industries to China, India, and gods know where, made money on that, and we the majority pay the price. The politicians - always willing to be bribed - let China do that, because they were afraid of making enemies. Now we ended up in the pathetic situation when we're asking for Chinese, even Brazilian, money for the Euro bailout fund. Wonderful.
I hope that when this crisis passes, we'll finally get realistic about how the world works.
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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There wouldn't need to be any halt of trade. Only a change in the composition of trade, as each state chose its bets and started influencing trade through tariffs.
In fact the developed nations still produce most of the manufactured goods, export those and import raw materials. China is really the only elephant in the room. And its mercantilist position in world trade is unsustainable because it is accumulating credits (and its trade partners, deficits) too fast. Such things always must stop. Not doing anything (which, essentially, means applying tariffs) to close widening trade deficits just means that when the whole ting blows, it'll blow harder! What people have described, long ago, as cyclic crisis resulting from foolish beliefs in laissez-faire capitalism...
Not at all. Socialism, as any other political force, must work within the available political frames. We don't live in a single-government (or no-government, anarchic or communist) world. So party politics, socialism as a practical party political agenda, does stop at national borders. That's just being practical. The goal of each socialist party is to advance socialism in its country, first and foremost. Anything else is folly. (and isn't that stalinist of me?)
In the international arena, governments are the actors. And governments can and do show solidarity across borders, especially when they are socialist. For example: haven't you attacked Chavez for providing loans to Argentina when they defaulted? For providing low-cost oil to other countries? But that's a governments role, something to do after being in power. And to do carefully, lest the domestic goals be compromised.
That's a list of false problems. Welfare states and social security are by themselves (meaning: if no externally created crisis impacts them) quite healthy, and will need only some periodic adjustments over time, as it has been happening ever since they were created. There is no population problem, as industrial productivity gains far outstrips the relative rise of the elderly, and unemployment proves that there is no lack of working age people. There is no multi-culturalism problem, it has been excessively praised in my opinion but the dangers of it are wildly exaggerated: Europe has never been more homogeneous that in the last few decades, we're far, far from the ethnic mosaics and hatreds of pre-WW2 days. And there is no problem with strong (I oppose the use of the term rigid, it's propaganda) labour laws or a strike-happy culture, especially if you want to use France as an example: how were the french harmed by their "strike-happyness"?
The problems in Europe were financial (too much lending, because lenders were foolish) , and political (lack of will to default, take some pain for closing deficits, and also punish that foolishness of lenders). Trade was part of what enabled the massive lending. In fact, continued trade imbalances and excessive international lending are the same reality: they require each other. The fix will be to either regulate trade (through tariffs), or regulate lending and borrowing: either tightly regulate banks (until the bankers bribe their way into deregulation again in a few decades) or just nationalize all finance and control it directly (that way there would be no international flows of capital purportedly outside of governments regulatory abilities).
I'll address innonimatu's post tomorrow as he is arguing from a different position.
Again, that's not to say that the developing world is awesome and self-sufficient. It is isn't; it's poor and dependant. But the developed world is rich and dependant. The Oil Crisis showed the potential disruption that a signe cartel can cause in the rich world. We're all interpendant; and on this post-crisis world I don't see any extra commercial leverage on the side of rich nations. I think nationalists in Brazil and China and etc exaggerate how much leverage the major developing nations have; it's mostly an even playing field. It's no coincidence that the global GDP is split roughly 50-50 (naturally the developing world will overtake the developed by a big margin in a few years).
Maybe Africa depends on selling raw materials, but the major emerging economies? Not really. Exports are only 10% of the Brazilian GDP, and our main trading partners are China and South America. Place high tariffs on our manufactures and it would be a discomfort; OTOH we could annihilate your steel industry (and all the connected industries) with the stroke of a pen.
Again, that's not to say that the developing world is awesome and self-sufficient. It is isn't; it's poor and dependant. But the developed world is rich and dependant. The Oil Crisis showed the potential disruption that a signe cartel can cause in the rich world. We're all interpendant; and on this post-crisis world I don't see any extra commercial leverage on the side of rich nations. I think nationalists in Brazil and China and etc exaggerate how much leverage the major developing nations have; it's mostly an even playing field. It's no coincidence that the global GDP is split roughly 50-50 (naturally the developing world will overtake the developed by a big margin in a few years).
How many countries export iron ore on large scale (two)? How much oil can you get outside of OPEC/Russia (not nearly enough)?
I agree the same rules should apply for everyone. I believe in free trade even when the other side is being protectionist; but I also believe China & co. should be given incentives to play by the rules, and those incentives can come in the form of additional tariffs as long as they continue to protect some industries. I do not oppose an approach based on reciprocity, so I think we're in agreement here (though as I said I believe that even in the current status-quo the winners in the developed world outnumber the losers).
Good thing the rise of the developing world means exactly an opportunity for the continued growth of the developed world. Of course, it's up to them take that opportunity...
You seem to be blaming the european malaise on outsourcing to the third world. That's wrong on many accounts. No doubt some troubles arose because of outsourcing, but by and large that's not the predominant factor. The real trouble are those I mentioned.Nobody is blaming China for stuff they didn't cause. I don't even blame China for the stuff I blame it for (
What really happened was we promoted the kind of capitalism that was interested only in making money for a very small group of people, who in the process outsourced our industries to China, India, and gods know where, made money on that, and we the majority pay the price. The politicians - always willing to be bribed - let China do that, because they were afraid of making enemies.
What's really outrageous is that the Brazilian government, in charge of a country that lacks everything, from decent schools to sewer systems, has the audacity to consider offering money to bail Europe out. If Brazilians were not such slugs they'd hang those traitors.
I hope too. For instance, Greece in the Euro = bad. Italy running a deficit of 120% of their GDP = bad. Strikes every other week = bad.
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