General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsYou have missed the most important economic story in the past 20 years
It was not the fall of socialism. It was not the expansion of finance. It was the lightning-fast expansion of the Chinese and Indian middle classes.
Literally 3 billion people passed from less than $2/day to more than that over the past 20 years.
McDonalds is planning to open 1000 new locations in China, and 400 in India.
The entire world economy is changing, starkly, and we need to accept that fact.
NCjack
(10,279 posts)money more than USA.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)you are so generous with the livelihood of you fellow americans
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)It's really disappointing how this conversation usually works out.
you really think neoliberal economics is about lifting the world out of poverty? if you want to share the wealth let's start be redistributing from the top down not the bottom up
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The past 20 years have seen the largest global reduction in poverty in human history.
Do you just kind of shake that off, or do you actually care?
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)we are increasing poverty in this country. that is important to me. our government has a responsibility to the citizens of the US first. If we weren't spending the overwhelming majority of our budget on killing, then maybe we could liberalize trade and finance while actually enhancing the well being of our own citizens at the same time. and maybe if we didn't actually let the major beneficiaries of globalization siphon all the profit to the top it would be even easier.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's a lie.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)Poverty Facts
The Population of Poverty USA
In 2014, 47 million people lived in Poverty USA. That means the poverty rate for 2014 was 15%.
The 2014 poverty rate was 2.3 percentage points higher than in 2007, the year before the 2008 recession.
This is the fourth consecutive year that the number of people in poverty has remained unchanged from the previous years poverty estimate.
Source: Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2014, U.S. Census Bureau; Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014, U.S. Census Bureau
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Fine, it's "increasing"
This is absurd.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)7 years in the past?... for my 8 yr old son that's a long time, but for me it's a blink of an eye
Hassin Bin Sober
(26,308 posts)HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts). . . that somehow works when WE'RE the victims of zero-sum free trade and when it's OUR wages that are moving to third world standard and it's OUR livelihoods being sacrificed lovingly by the wealthy for "the greater good".
It's never the wealthy's money at stake. In fact, zero-sum free trade only gains them stock value, bonuses and perks.
Always funny how that works. Or not.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)It's never, ever existed, except in your imagination.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)while the Wall Street crowd pat each other on the back over caviar and champagne about how altruistic they are
Recursion
(56,582 posts)That's for your own conscience to work out.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)I like caviar, though. How is it there, where you depend on the wages of Indians and Chinese being kept low?
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)H1B workers to diminish the power of civil service union technologists while enriching firms that bill those workers out at at least 5x what they pay them?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)You asked; you can actually get it, I can't. So, how's the caviar?
(Also, governments can't hire H1-B's, no matter what you've heard.)
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)do they carry it at Stop and Shop?
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Next to the frozen shrimp, usually
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)btw... how do you see the H1B situation I described? is it right for "bodyshops" to make a killing on hiring out IT workers simply because they sponsored the visas?
if we really need these people give them green cards and have them compete for the jobs without the corporate contractors that pay the campaign donations making money off their work
Recursion
(56,582 posts)You said your government hired them; governments cannot hire H1-B's. So I stopped reading at that point.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)through contractos known in the industry as "bodyshops." Not a lie
Recursion
(56,582 posts)You're changing your story, I see. Tell the story again truthfully and I'll read it.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)I myself have interviewed many of these H1B developers. There is a contract in place with a "vendor" for this purpose. The value provided is almost always not worth the effort but the hiring happens anyway
Recursion
(56,582 posts)It's incredibly hard to be an H1-B-dependent company and get public contracts at the state level; Infosys can't do it. Tata can't do it. None of them have state-level contracts. I'm very curious who this mystery vendor was.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)If you really need proof from me I can pm you the contact details
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Indian firms have wanted US muni IT contracts for decades and can't get them.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)This contract is not only used for project teams but also for individual hires which is more troubling to me than projects.
I also had an experience during the dot com days where i was required to down size my development team that was bloated by the of control management in order to have the company sold off to a Wells Fargo subsidiary. The remaining developers didn't want to stick around after that and the deal would have tanked if I was unable to convince a core group to stay on. I negotiated a minimum 6 mos severance for the remaining team members, and just as everyone suspected they were jettisoned within a year and development moved to India. This all happened in NYC right after 9/11... i quit over it.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)The Nationalism and greed exhibited here is disgusting.
If a Mexican, Indian, etc., gets a decent job some folks look at it as money out of their pocket. It's damn disgusting. Sorry.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Search me how taking money away from the workers that drive an economy 2/3 reliant on consumer spending helps that economy. I imagine a magic formula is in there somewhere.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)because of trade. We lost out to foreign cars, because we made crummy, gas guzzling, expensive cars. Similarly, they beat us with electronics. We lost these kind of jobs the minute the first foreign car came here, along with transistor radios and Japanese finger traps.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)There seems to be some stark denial about lower labor costs in right-to-work climes and Asian/Latin nations killing our progress here (which management, of course, writes off as "the price of remaining competitive" . Like our workers somehow aren't suffering due to un/under-employment thanks to job offshoring. There seems to be some stark denial here that the American worker always pays the price for the sins of the managers.
We're somehow asserting that US Steel Roll Turner pay is equal or better than Target shelf stocker pay. That's where these workers are going to, not another Roll Turner job. Either that, or they go into massive debt to retrain for a career that may or may not be there for them when they get out. Or try and win the small business lottery.
Is this the new grand scheme for an economic success going forward?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)past your own pocketbook. We live in a big world, not somewhere where America is Galt's Gulch or El Dorado.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)No economy should have to make such concessions. That is NOT a free market if that's happening. That is not what SHOULD be happening. Your blatant dodge of that proviso is getting old. I don't give one INCH to the argument that workers here have to suffer to accommodate a neo-liberal Thomas Friedman-championed race to the bottom.
If you cannot see that job offshoring and automation are going to have enormous ramifications in a country that's never going to graduate from "Protestant Work Ethic" and will never lift a finger to accommodate the millions that are going to suffer from it . . . if you cannot see that this is and will be a major problem that's going to lead to catastrophe, then that is NOT on me. We are doing absolutely NOTHING for displaced workers. NOTHING.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)wealth, and you want more. Greed, Nationalism, and hatred are the main reasons we spend so much on the military.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Name it right now.
$18,000/year? Where would you live? How would you educate yourself? How would you drive yourself around? How would you pay bills? What if you had kids? How would they eat? Would they dumpster dive or steal from orchards?
Hey, let's go even lower, since apparently, America's homeless are the world's Larry Ellisons . . .
How about $5000 a year per family?
What bridge would they be living under? That sure wouldn't afford them anything but a used van to camp in.
Would that satisfy you? How low should we go?
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)The US won the 20th century, and got to write the rules. Nobody, including the UN, can tell the US Government no. The countries in Europe don't have to spend much on their own militaries anymore, because the US taxpayer is paying for what is basically the developed world's military, and so more of their money can go toward their own social programs. For the most part, all involved are ok with that setup.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)Octafish
(55,745 posts)Japan protected its markets and subsidized its industries -- automobiles, electronics, cameras...
The USA, thanks to Congress and various Presidencies, have failed to do so.
Get the story on cars: http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/03/detroit-s-collapse-the-untold-story/
brush
(53,726 posts)Well done.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)we would be talking about a wealth tax to support things like infrastructure, health care, clean energy and jobs
pampango
(24,692 posts)You are right that people that were REALLY serious about it would enact a wealth tax to tap the wealth of the 1%. Along with the world's poorest 70% who have benefited greatly in the last few decades, the global 1% have prospered too. Serious people interested in lifting the third world out of poverty would not be harming the system that has played a role in those gains, but going after the 1% to fund infrastructure, health care, clean energy and jobs that will help the Western middle class that has suffered.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)The problem for medieval traders was finding anything the Chinese wanted from Europe in order to buy their goods at the end of the Silk Road. This was really only solved by the massive gold and silver finds in the Americas. Of all the precious metal Spain grabbed from the New World, China ended up with the most by a country mile. It was only the foolish insularity (ironic that) of the later Qing emperors and the military superiority of the West that temporarily moved the balance of economic power westward over the last century or two. And even now people piss and moan about the imports from China, then ignore the $150B in US exports. Same with "our" jobs over there (what exactly made them our jobs in the first place?) and the 1.7T in foreign investment, but forget the 1.1T in Chinese investment in return. Sure there is a negative balance in both, butthat's what happens between richer and poorer trading partners. Ironically, the very wealth transfer they decry will eventually lessen, and perhaps even reverse, that imbalance and the Chinese will worry about "their" jobs, which will still be a silly notion in either direction, going to the US service and capital goods sectors.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)I want to preserve this post in amber
1939
(1,683 posts)They began to sell opium to the Chinese for gold and silver and sucked all the precious metal right back out of China and impoverished the place.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)If he'd just said ok go ahead let's share the Opium trade (it was already popular before the eponymous wars) and ooh by the way can I buy some war-ships and guns while we're at it, China probably wouldn't have had the horrible 19th and most of 20th century that it did. Again the irony is it was China's reluctance to allow foreign trade (except when forced to by wars it could never win because other than a decade or two in the 19th Century it wouldn't buy foreign military hardware, a practise it stupiudly abandoned with the doomed self-strengthening movement) that weakened it both economically and politically, a lesson our own isolationists should note closely.
Opium "balanced" the trade. Before that, the Brits had a net outflow of precious metals to pay for Chinese tea.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)would have been to accept that trade and not get into an unwinnable war against a far superior military. China's insistence on silver only for trade doomed them.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)I share and cooperate through open source software projects. why should our country enter in deals that force people to give up their livelihoods?
and btw... i don't believe for one second that Goldman Sachs, et al capital investments are about sharing the wealth in the least.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)Always have. Since white people first came here and genocided the brown people who were living here. And for that matter their lives depended on trade too, at least since the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex started ca. 1200 AD.
We can wish for a return to the magical 1950s (when the poverty rate was 5% higher) or we can accept the reality of the current world.
tk2kewl
(18,133 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)We are actually making the world better
revbones
(3,660 posts)Rather than lifting all boats, you want a race to the bottom. Nice.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)to the rest of the world 80+% of the people in this country are the world's 1%ers. The greed is amazing and a big reason we have to spend so much on our military and similar crud.
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)Hoyt
(54,770 posts)What you guys are saying might be considered "progressive" here, but to some Vietnamese who only got fire bombs from Americans, it's very right wing.
awake
(3,226 posts)"Communism" fell but not socialism you just have to look north to Canada to see it. Good point though about India and China
pampango
(24,692 posts)He proposes that we have to take a chunk out of the hides of Mexico, China, India (THEM) in order for US to prosper.
My neighbors' prosperity does not make me poor. And I do not want my neighbors to be poor so that I can be rich. We are all in this together, no matter what conservatives profess.
I grew up in a world in which practically the entire populations of China and India lived in abject and almost universal poverty. The same was true of much of Africa. The US had the world's highest standard of living and Europe and Japan, initially recovering from war devastation, eventually caught and passed the US' middle class.
As an older person now it is hard to adapt to a world in which Asia may one day soon be as prosperous as we are. It reminds me of when, as a young person, older people would wax nostalgic about how much better the world used to be whwn that were young, when it seemed to me that the past was worse than the present.
Part of my brain (I consider it the 'Trump' part) tells me that my neighbors' recent prosperity must be responsible for my recent economic troubles. The other part of my brain (the Bernie part which thankfully is in control) tells me that it is my own bosses (the 1%) who are responsible for my problems, not the poor/middle class family living next door.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)It may, or may not, be human vs. human, as it can also include non-human life.
pampango
(24,692 posts)Or do we figure out how all prosper within the limits of a finite planet?
In general I believe a society and a world with a healthy middle class (rather than extremes of rich and poor) is healthier. Shared sacrifice to preserve our environment is preferable to having one group that sacrifices a lot and another that does not and reaps the benefits of the others' sacrifice.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)We're not good at figuring out who gets to tell who what they can or cannot have or do. Shared sacrifice sounds great, but it's tough to get anyone to sacrifice the things that they don't want to sacrifice. We can't get 10 random people to agree on everything, let alone a few billion.
pampango
(24,692 posts)to be negotiated internationally like so many global problems require.
Sacrifice will happen. It's a matter of whether it is negotiated and shared OR just allowed to happen in which case it will be skewed against the poor since the rich can protect themselves from sacrifice much better than the poor can. As someone who lives in a Western country, just 'allowing it to happen' will probably result in less sacrifice for those of us in the US so there will be even less support for a negotiated approach.
The2ndWheel
(7,947 posts)What would you be willing to sacrifice for the greater good? Not something you don't have, not something the 1% has, not something you don't really want anyway, but something you like having and use in your own day to day life.
pampango
(24,692 posts)I think that is one of the distinctions between conservatives and liberals.
Conservatives want lower taxes so they can buy more stuff for themselves. Liberals are generally willing to pay higher taxes (as long as the revenue is used to help the needy) and sacrifice some of the things they might otherwise buy for themselves. That type of liberal approach is typical in progressive countries with high taxes and strong safety nets, a lot rarer in conservative America with regressive taxes and a weak safety net.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)I have ever read. Thank you.
pampango
(24,692 posts)lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Bradical79
(4,490 posts)Need some context, because $2.00 seems like an arbitrary number. Honestly, I'd heard about it, but it was only in the context of a pro-free trade agreement article with lots of misdirection and misleading statements surrounding it.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Like, tripling their income.
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)Last article I'd read had it at $1.98 to $2.01.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Please, tell me your "source" first.
Bradical79
(4,490 posts)I didn't save a link because the article was no good. No reason to be hostile. You're the one trying to convince us of... something. I just want the same information you have. Why do you think that's too much to ask?
Csainvestor
(388 posts)Are we Supposed to be happy that the billionaire class double their net worth over the last eight years, that they quadrupled it over the last 20. collectively they are worth almost 3 trillion dollars but the middle class has shrunk in the US.
You represent the worst of neoliberal economics, bring wages down for the middle class while we create robber barons.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)said. It is not the small rise in middle class workers in China that are to blame for our problems. And as you say Walton Family are the ones taking all the profits. The Walton family and a lot of other 1%ers who are getting filthy rich off of both the Chinese and India and us.
Trust Buster
(7,299 posts)There's no reversing that trend. Rising wages across the globe will be our only salvation IMO.
pampango
(24,692 posts)from me. Donald: Walls, tariffs and mass deportation will do the trick. Perhaps the conservatives were right.
Liberals build bridges. Conservatives build walls. Perhaps the conservatives were right.
Liberals care about poor people no matter what they look like, what language they speak or where they live. Conservatives care about themselves, those people who look like them, speak like them and live like them. Perhaps the conservatives were right.
Conservatives with their divide-and-conquer, us-vs-them BS have nothing positive to offer. They want to hold on to their dominance in a changing world, just like they want to hold on to their dominance in our changing country. Perhaps the conservatives were right.
To clarify: the conservatives were and are not right. Liberals were and are right. Going conservative-lite now will not win us anything.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Certainly those interested in foreign affairs, economics, social sciences, or environmental issues, or just have the thirst for knowledge typical of many on the left, or perhaps have a special interest in the lands of their own heritages, have been noticing, accepting, and in some respects very pleased, even with all the new problems to solve.
I am among the latter. If it weren't for global warming and disappearing fresh water, big if-onlys, I would be fairly sure we were on the cusp of a wholly unprecedented global golden era. As it is, good people around the planet are busy using the medical and technical revolutions to increase the wellbeing of literally billions of people. Which brings new problems, etc, etc.
Nice try...I give it to you, you never give up on that neo-liberal dogma.
tenderfoot
(8,425 posts)Where has socialism fallen since 1996? I'm not following. Canada? Sweden? Finland? Where?