Re: OT: Taxes

On Nov 23, 2:16 am, John Larkin
<jjlar...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:50:54 +0000, ChrisQ <m...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Larkin wrote:

By "reigning in business practices" you must mean trade barriers. They
are mostly illegal by international treaty.

Not trade barriers or protectionism and have no problem with
competition. It improves the breed :-). However, the current disparity
between the labour costs between the west and east means that there is
no chance of competing in many areas of manufacturing at all, where
labour costs dominate. It's not enough to say that we win in design, or
high tech skills, because the rest of the world is catching up fast in
that area as well. There will be nothing left for the west to trade with
eventually, so what happens then ?.

We sell them food.

As you imply, the real problem is what to do to keep employed all the
mid to low skill part of the population that have had their work
exported. They are a majority, btw, so it's not a trivial problem to
solve long term. High tech workers are only a small proportion of the
total population.

Taxing employment and investment just makes it worse.

Scrimping education and social security also make it worse.

Do you always buy US-made products, even when they cost a lot more
than imports? Are all your cars and appliances and tools US made?

I live in the England, but yes, I do try to buy uk or european made
stuff where possible and yes, even if it costs more, but only if it's
better design and quality. We should be capable of competing in that
area at least. In many cases, you have no choice anyway, because nearly
everything seems to be made in the far east, even where it doesn't say
so. It can be difficult to find stuff that's actually made locally.

What do you mean by "overtake" ? Should the rest of the world stay
poor and uneducated and hungry so we can still be NumbahOne?

John

No, A more equitable distribution of living standards would be a great
thing for humanity, as would education so that they might see through
the lies of politics. Ideally, it should be dependent on a background of
democracy, not what exists in some of the countries that we seem all too
ready to do business with. Remember, countries like China are not a
democracy, but a police state. In any reasonable scenario, we shouldn't
even be doing business with them, never mind handing over our
manufacturing industry lock, stock and barrel. With the Chinese currency
being held artificially low to give them a competitive advantage and the
us national debt to China accelerating at an ever increasing rate,
what's likely to be the result for the us ?. You may not be worried by
this, but I definately am.

The Chinese debt doesn't bother me much. It's not as if we'll ever pay
it back. What the Chinese leadership (and their relatives who own all
the companies) should have done is pay their workers better, and let
them buy more American stuff, instead of shipping us terabucks worth
of cheap products and investing the profits in US treasuries. We'll
keep the stuff.



I know i'm not explaining this very well and don't have any simple
answers, but I see a western civilisation in decline, quite happy to
feed undemocratic regimes just so the party of cheap goods from cheap
labour can continue. We are just sowing the seeds of our own demise,
long term...

I think the world will gradually, fitfully, become more uniform and
more democratic.

The USA will eventually get universal health care, and enough
electoral reform to stop the rich buying votes (non-stop vote-for-me
ads on TV)?

The sooner, the better.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Inland
    ... > knockoffs of our little boats are being sold everywhere here. ... > both by competing with an improved product and by exploring new ideas. ... > The Chinese can sell $10 boats while we sell $100 ones. ...
    (rec.crafts.glass)
  • Re: Inland
    ... > knockoffs of our little boats are being sold everywhere here. ... > both by competing with an improved product and by exploring new ideas. ... > The Chinese can sell $10 boats while we sell $100 ones. ...
    (rec.crafts.glass)
  • Re: the natives of Solomons threw Chinese race out of Solomon Island .
    ... There are many reasons for this. ... Competing with Westerners is a different ball game to competing with ... Westerners are much tougher to compete ... Chinese power groups tend to be clannish. ...
    (soc.culture.china)
  • Re: Inland
    ... both by competing with an improved product and by exploring new ideas. ... The Chinese can sell $10 boats while we sell $100 ones. ...
    (rec.crafts.glass)