Re: China's growth is not due to trade


"The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dihs8s0301h@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> "Jim Blair" <jeb@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:dih63s$ea$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > "The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

> >> Yep. Hoola hoops made in China are much less expensive.
> >> But the necessary stuff like health care and housing have
> >> increased dramatically and continue to do so.
> >
> > Food isn't "necessary stuff"?
>
> Do you remember Dr. Food?

Hi,

Yes. He was a nut case.


>.....He claimed, with much justification,
> that economics was about food and that since no person can
> starve in the USA then we did not need to observe economics as
> the allocation of scarce resources.

Whle starvation is not a serious problem in the US, it IS one world wide.

And I keep reading about how people in the US "can't afford food". When I
sent a letter to the author of one such atricle asking why I see so many
overweight and obese people (especially the poor), she replied that she sees
them too, but it must be some sort of optical illusion since the surveys say
the poor can't get enough to eat.


>.....As he observed: Food
> just is not part of the puzzle any more.

Of course it is "part of the puzzle" just not as big a part as it was in the
past.

>....Technological innovation
> and capital development have overcome the food monster.
> Food as a part of the overall budget has not been a major cost
> for a very long time. That era (of food being a major part of the
> family budget for the vast majority of Americans) ended long
> before 1980.


The original definition of the "poverty level" was in terms of the income
needed to buy enough food. If that definition had not been changed, there
would be almost no one in the US today that was below the poverty level.
Can't permit that, so the definition of poverty was changed.


> > At any rate your claims that the professionals must be wrong because
you
> > don't like their conclusions sounds to me like the Bush/"Conservative"
> > claims that the scientists must be wrong about evolution and CO2/Global
> > Warming. Because they don't like the conclusions. And (like you) they
jump
> > on the few who dissent to claim the whole thing is an open question and
the
> > scientists are biased.
>
> Oh, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....
> This opinion of the "data" being crap is based on my own real
> world observations such as the stagnated minimum wage .....

How about the higher real wages and higher family incomes? The "minimum
wage" is a legal thing, not what people actually earn.

>....and
> the increasing illegal immigrant count and the increasing H1B
> visas.

Er, aren't they comming here BECAUSE of the higher wages and better living
conditions?

>.....The dissenters are very few, but I most certainly am
> one of them.

Yes on both counts.

>
> >> >> And when we actually LOOK at the numbers we see that
> >> >> these wages DECLINED under Reagan Bush and that _ALL_
> >> >> of the wage gains occurred under Clinton.
> >> >
> >> > ??? I thought you said there were no gains? Now its the gains were
when
> >> > Clinton was in office? My claim is that real wages are higher now
than
> > in
> >> > 1980 (your year of choice).
> >>
> >> These are APPARENT wage gains. I am saying that the
> >> "data" tells us that there has been a gain but that the
> >> "data" are probably quite flawed.
> >
> > Just like the Global Warming data?
>
> Yet another failed analogy. It is almost impossible to "fake"
> data from the physical world, Blair. Economic data simply
> does not fall into the same category.

Actually there is a lot of uncertainty about past temperature data. Cities
creating local "heat islands" and expanding out to the airports where
weather data is collected, etc.

>....Yet, the rightards were
> STILL able to lie and perpetrate their fraud and smoke screen
> for several years, disavowing global warming as an invention
> of the, so called, "liberal media".

Er, they still do this. I claim that that is like denying that the economy
has been improving for decades. Make that centuries.

jeb:
>
> > I mean that even if there was no increase in the "average" income, every
> > individual could have an increase.
>
> ????? Now that is some _real_ Bushonomics!!!
>

Isn't that claim obvious?
Like just because everyone gets one year older every year, the average age
in a country does not necessarily increase. Duh.

>
> >> The aging force increases the aggregate and the per capita
> >> wage but not the wage of the individuals that are performing
> >> at a given age or experience level. And as people retire
> >> LATER and LATER this skew in wages becomes more
> >> and more prevalent.
> >
> > I agree, this is likely the case.
>
> I should hope so.
>
> > And it also means increases for the individuals that were doing those
jobs
> > then.
>
> This "observation" is either nonsensical or redundant.

jeb:
>
> > Each individual can have increased real incomes even if the average
> > changes little.
>
> And now we see the textbook obfuscation of swapping to
> "incomes" as opposed to wages.

OK. Substitute "wage" for "income".

>...Yet the statement is even
> then nonsensical.

???? No, obvious.

jeb:

> >> > Non-productive? You mean retirees? Those getting Social Security?
> >>
> >> No. I mean the privileged.

jeb:
> >
> > Aren't the retired "non-productive"?
>
> Why do you now try to exchange non-productive and
> privileged?

??? You said "non-productive" when you apparently meant to say "privileged".

So I repeat: are retirees "non-productive"?

PS: I'll probably be off-line for a few weeks

,,,,,,,
_______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________
(_)
jim blair (jeblair@xxxxxxxx) Madison Wisconsin USA.
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