why we're f'd

That's the thing about it, aboutready.

I can't afford to work for a client, for $730 a month. Even if I wanted to.

Truth: you can, if everything massively deflates.

If that happens: I'm off to Italy A.S.A.P.! Why wait to retire? Why work at all?

First the good news...Mr. Pinto will be able to get Chinese food delivered even faster than Manhattan.

Now the bad news...The Chinese version is being groomed, as we speak, to take Mr. Pinto's job.

Come on Mr. Pinto....where you bean? You can't see this comimg? First they make you move then they watch you carfuly then, they take your job and spit you out.
They burn you out then, they throw you out.

That's how you make REfried beans.

Welcome to the global economy. In the end this is positive. For companies in any country it's succeed or lose business to enterprises. U.S. is more about marketing and design these days than actual production. Business opportunities better in China than U.S. so why not create more of a presence?

sure, RS. just get rid of osha, minimum wage, child labor laws. lower the cost of everything and the quality of life and we'd be right up there with china.

china is at their standard oil moment, and will be for any number of years. in the meantime we're dust, including likely your condo when protectionist acts increase to prevent easy purchase of property by foreigners. and likely, the jobs of many, including those in finance, unless they're willing to move overseas (actually in the end probably india and brazil, but for the next decade or so china).

grow up and think.

I know two medical doctors that are already preparing to leave the USA!! One has her children learning Mandarin!

Champagne socialist

yeh, but no be doctor there, everything different, everything sideway....everything.

Bullshit rs. grew up poor. much more socialist back then

gated community libertarian

"U.S. is more about marketing and design these days than actual production. Business opportunities better in China than U.S. so why not create more of a presence?"

Maybe that is because the Chinese are soo good at copying our stuff and having no respect for patents and copyright laws. And you can't base an entire economy on design and marketing. Production is wha provides the jobs to people. Your just a corporate shill who loves China because of its slave labor.

Bottom line the u.s. has maintained more manufacturing than Europe, but now that we're keen on emulating them, I'm not so sure we'll maintain this relative advantage. And China is not attracting a high tech manufacturing company because of lax labor laws.

The personal wealth will always be far greater in the United States than any of those stupid countries.

Don't forget the whole freakin world was built on slave labor over the last 10,000 years. Don't knock the human heritage.

what i find disgusting is how readily most american consumers will purchase goods that are made in china. this is what allows companies to offshore their production. one example: try and go into brooks brothers and find something that ISN'T made in china. it will take over an hour. Next, go to Armani and find something that isn't made in Italy

Yes, for quality clothing consumers will gladly pay extra for Italy, U.K. and/or made in U.S.A , but not at the low end. And low priced goods benefit the consumer and keep inflation low. Also that $500 42 inch high def plasma TV is only possible because it's made overseas(and Sony can't even compete in that!).

isn't brooks brothers high end? or at least doesn't the name sort of imply a certain level of inherent quality (and americaness)? i actually try my best to not buy things made in china where and whenever possible, because the quality isn't the same.

I asked a girl I was dating from China for a little 69 and do you know what she said?

Beef and broccoli? this time of night????

Meet the new boss.............same as the old boss...only Chinese.

I feel like it's 1988, except China is now Japan. The biggest problem with China taking over manufacturing is their currency being held artificially low. If the US smacks that on its head (and suffers the short-term consequences), it's not so clear that China can dominate the market given the fact that its goods would be 30-40% more expensive.

On the $730-a-month churned-out engineer, have you ever considered the phrase "you get what you pay for"? Where do you think the $10K-a-month just out-of-school engineers come from and eventually end up?

we were f'cked the second monkeys learned to type.

here's the scary part...
chain landcomm1 (or whatever today's username is) to a type writer for an infinite period time and it types all of Shakespeare greatest works.

True

Meanwhile, likely way before that infinite period of time in which I type Shakespeare, aboutready will blame someone else for the world's woes and contribute no solutions.

i'm just waiting for w67th to chime in and say i am him

No Jim, w67th thinks brokers are low. But if I'm doing my job on behalf of aboutready and columbiacounty, I'm even lower.

when you buy china, you buy something for 1/4 of the price that last 1/4 of the time. you just got to get out before it breaks.

same as software development sent to india. the software is so bad that it takes 10 times longer to get it to market without 1 million bugs. even microsoft can teach them something.

if you want quality, you have to look for it. if you want cheap, you'll end up paying the same or more and have lots more headaches.

ab_11218
3 minutes ago
ignore this person
report abuse when you buy china, you buy something for 1/4 of the price that last 1/4 of the time. you just got to get out before it breaks.

same as software development sent to india. the software is so bad that it takes 10 times longer to get it to market without 1 million bugs. even microsoft can teach them something.

if you want quality, you have to look for it. if you want cheap, you'll end up paying the same or more and have lots more headaches.

my issue is when an american company doesn't charge a quarter of the price for a product that will last a quarter of the time. they are trading on their name and delivering a something inferior and i personally am not buying

here's a perfect example. i lived in a coop that had a great kitchen faucet (Delta). after i renovated the kitchen, i installed it. i then purchased a new place and renovated the kitchen i went and purchase "the same" faucet. that piece of crap lasted less than 2 years. the owners of my previous place are still using the 15 year old product as if it was new.

"if you want quality, you have to look for it. if you want cheap, you'll end up paying the same or more and have lots more headaches."

agree. quality will prevail.

Also, look at the Google/China issue. Who wants to live in a country with that type of censorship? China still has a long way to go.

What a classy title to this thread. Of course that came from aboutready.
She is such a chicken little with everything. Once Congress changes after this year's election, and after a pro-business government replaces Obama's anti-business administration, the U.S. will lead the world again. Let's hope this happens.

"We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YH-A1yBtVGA&feature=player_embedded

The Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia is about as direct as one can be in the following Bloomberg interview: "We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman -- I mean I think that [his] advice [to push China to revalue the Renminbi] is completely wrong.” Well, somebody had to finally say it. So instead of pointing the scapegoating finger somewhere else, which seems to be the norm these days (cue G-Pap and his quadrillionth repetition that Greece is perfectly solvent and that unless somebody bails him out (ignore the lack of logic for a second), he will start playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun), Roach looks in the mirror: "America does not have a China problem. America has a savings problem. America has the biggest savings shortfall of any leading country in modern history, When you don't have savings you have to run current account deficits to import surplus savings from abroad and run massive trade deficits to attract the capital... Isn't it the height of hypocrisy that America can articulate a particular position in its currency but the Chinese are not allowed to do that." Also some not so kind words about Senator Schumer: "He always has a view no matter where the Renminbi is, that it is 27.5% undervalued."

nada, we get crap. but that's what we're being offerred. no alternative. if it's not the chinese, it will be brazil or india. my point is it won't be here.

the corporate world seeks profits. period.

sad
pitiful

As long as the marxist Obama is President we are screwed. It is as if Obama is destroying the country on purpose.

Silly comments. Companies should not seek profits? And if consumers did not want cheap products they would not buy them. It's clearly a tiered market. Some value low cost goods, and others high performance/quality, which is why the world has BMW/Mercedes, Hyundai & Chevy. Companies seeking profits are the best way to allocate capital. It's when the government distorts the market mechanism that we have things like tech bubbles and housing crashes.

"China still has a long way to go."
@dwell- The understatement of the day. They are a humane rights, environmental nightmare from hell. Funny we cant travel to little Cuba, but we court a country that still has Mao on it's currency. Would we trade with Germany if Hitler was still on the dmark? Maos political purges are said to have cost up to 70 million lives.I guess the buck don't stop here...

Hilarious. U guys f'king for real?
1) every time I cook up beef and broccoli, the Chinese would like their 10% cut;
2) Julia. Do us all a favor and fly an airplane into an effigy of Obama. Take one for the tea party will you hon?
3) yes yes riversider. The damn govt intervention and mkt manipulation, that caused your re in NYC to percolate but NO NO NO 'MY' unit's price will never never never ever go down! It's not that your penis is so small, it's that other Men's are too large!

pitiful
sad

Flmao. One other thing. When they charge you $6 for a small bucket of popcorn, does anyone here say, The theatre is manipulating the popcorn futures/mkt, we need govt intervention!? The fact of the matter is, we fat salt lovin Americans can't say no to popcorn even if our bmi is 400. So f u america, me included.

Is that the aboutready Yale degree spelling of the word beytch?

Haven't been to a movie theater in years. Huge rip-off

plus...why go to the movies when you have unlimited youtubes?

Please type louder

Hy cc! Nice weather. Jim/ Landcomm got another ISP address. It's like a f'king coachroch!

Riversider, you cheap bastard! Don't you know you have to support california? American cinema is the only thing we export.

We also export anger and bitterness.

That toilet seat that aboutready's husband broke ... where was it made? Where was the replacement made?

The OP article is what if you have read any of my postings is exactly what I've been saing for a very long time. We are totally f**k*d.

I'm in tech manufacturing and our business model for a very long time is to not make ANYTHING here. What really pisses me off are all financial and broker types that exist by sucking off what remains.

If you have capital perserve it. If you don't good luck!

From the WSJ "Vice Commerce Minister Zhong Shan, in an exclusive interview Thursday ahead of a visit to the U.S., said that the profit margin on many Chinese export goods was less than 2%.

Most exporters absorbed the appreciation in the value of the yuan that followed its revaluation in 2005 by boosting innovation and cutting costs, but many were forced to close, he said. A further rise in the currency’s value would endanger more exporters’ survival, which China can’t afford, he said."

Some spin surely, but some truth as well.

Yes, their margins are terible but only comparred to what we in the west expect. Chinese have no problem operating and doing well in this enviorment. I think that they are many years away from having to deal with the social realities that we live in and way before that happens we're toast.

Andre The Giant says - OBEY

"Don't forget the whole freakin world was built on slave labor over the last 10,000 years. Don't knock the human heritage."

I have to second that. It's easy to criticize China for using Child labor while the US built itself using African slaves in fileds and Chinese on railroads 200 years ago. Not saying using Children for work is a good thing but one shall look at its own mistakes before denouncing other's.

Of course, keep in mind what happens next... wages start to rise in China as well. The wage gap narrows for these highly skilled workers and companies shift.

Its what happened with Indian programmers. They're actually getting a bit expensive.... so companies looked at the Ukraine for a while... then Vietnam... and so on.

Its not such a horrible thing that other economies in the world are improving.

Also, don't forget that regulation has something to do with it. Americans haven't made vacuum tubes for years because they are VER bad for the environment and the workers. So the Chinese make 'em. It again is a case of doing something we just don't want to do.

"Yacht Sales Are Suddenly Going Crazy As The Rich Start Spending Again"
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-five-pieces-of-bullish-micro-data-you-completely-missed-2010-3
They aren't F'ed. Middle class and the poor are F'ed.

http://www.commoneo.com/ManhattanSail/pictures/Main/Oyster/origin/Oyster_07.jpg
American empire is sailing into the sunset.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/03/greenspan-in-2001-on-the-debt-and-taxes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+EconomistsView+%28Economist%27s+View+%28EconomistsView%29%29

sledge, no doubt. but the result is what it is. we are a dying empire. hey, julia, you didn't notice the economic world exploding in 2008? obama is just pushing the dirty pieces around on a dirty floor with a dirty mop. because we're broke, and we let (encouraged, even) the chinese buy the control of our future. good times.

pulaski, one has to wonder who will control the spoils down the road, however. i can't see the emerging countries being content with the notion of the developed countries managing all the wealth.

but essentially i agree with you. it's the middle class that's disappearing. and history teaches us that ugly things can happen in countries where the middle class disappears.

Hey neverready... Obama is pushing the dirty socialist mop all around the floor. His policies will create more misery for all. Obama should be pushing the Milton freedman mop. Didn't the Soviet Union try this socialist crap.

This is where the free market dogma runs into cold, hard reality. Yes, in the long run it is best if everybody specializes in what they are good at and production goes to the low cost manufacturer. But in the short term you have pain and just because somebody sells something for less does not mean they are the lowest cost maker.

China has an industrial policy and part of it is to take businesses away from other countries. Read the news on Q-Cells today. They may not always pick the right industries to back but woe to those operating in those industries.

"On the $730-a-month churned-out engineer, have you ever considered the phrase "you get what you pay for"? Where do you think the $10K-a-month just out-of-school engineers come from and eventually end up?"

Here's something that should make you VERY afraid.

My father is a nuclear engineer. He designs nuclear power plants and nuclear waste regeneration facilities that are currently being built in countries like Spain, Russia, and India. His employer -- a firm based in Pittsburgh -- has discovered that thanks to the Internet and email, rather than having a team of six $100,000 engineers working on drawings in Pittsburgh, he can "outsource" that work to a team of engineers in India at a fraction of the cost.

One page of a typical schematic generated in Pittsburgh costs about $1600. That same page can be generated out of India for ... get this ... $100. So what the company is doing is using my father and his colleagues in Pittsburgh as glorified "copyeditors" to "edit" the Indian schematics.

Believe it or not, however, they have to send the drawings back to the Indians close to a DOZEN times with corrections and revisions -- and often the PIttsburgh team has to re-draw every schematic from scratch anyway. In the end, it's costing the company the same, and often MORE due to the delays of correcting the work from the cheap labor.

The scary thing is that these aren't dresses for Donna Karan or toasters for Black & Decker -- they're NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS.

Another worry is the considerably less-stringent building standards in other countries. Once those plans have been signed off by my dad's office, the client is free to make any cost-cutting changes he wants. Case in point: there's a nuclear power plant being built right now in Spain, where the general contractor has "altered" the plans that call for 48 pilings (the heavy beams that go into the ground that support the entire structure) to only NINE ... because he found out it was going to cost more than he realized to blast into the bedrock under the plant.

So there is an as-yet unoperational nuclear power plant somewhere in Spain that is sitting on NINE pilings instead of 48, because the local "engineers" signed off on the revisions that my father personally vehemently begged him not to.

This is a disaster that could be eight times larger than Chernobyl ... and there's not a damn thing anyone HERE can do about it.

"The Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia is about as direct as one can be in the following Bloomberg interview: "We should take out the baseball bat on Paul Krugman -- I mean I think that [his] advice [to push China to revalue the Renminbi] is completely wrong.”

If a Wall St. shill wants to take on an ivy league Nobel Prize economist, I'm here to watch.

"If a Wall St. shill wants to take on an ivy league Nobel Prize economist, I'm here to watch."

Well, given that the Nobel Prize has been so devalued (Barack Obama), I really don't think that it holds much weight anymore.

It's a political award, much like an Oscar.

Arafat wins a Noble for putting bombs in school buses.
Gore wins a Noble for a hoax.
Obama wins a Noble for a a a a a a nothing.
Krugman wins a Noble for his economic theory of 2 +2 =5.

Nobel.

Sorry, but misspelling just drives me nuts.

Thanks

some companies should do what my friend does. he gets the design from china for his faucets. reviews it. changes at least 50% of the parts to the ones made in Germany and Israel. gives a lifetime warranty. all this brings his cost up 100%, but at least he knows he's selling a quality product. he just takes the loss of profit and does not raise the price. he still beats Moen/Delta/etc on similar designs with much better products and prices.

Obama and Krugman both won entirely different Noble prizes that are awarded by different committes.

The Nobel prizes are completely corrupt. There is no objectivity anymore.

Krugman won for his work 30 years ago on international trade, and the real reason he won is because he is a high-profile (due to the NY Times column) critic of George Bush. Obama also won because he is not George Bush. The Nobel has become devalued.

well said licc

Krugman won the Bates Clark medal for most promising economist under 40. It was awarded every two years and is often looked at as predicting who will win the Nobel. That all happened long before the NY Times picked him up. Sorry to blow up your conspiracy theories but he is a world leading economist who happens to be a liberal with a blog at the Times.

Krugman's polices are a gigantic government, massive deficit spending, and a vast expansion of the welfare state. If you like an oppressive clunky Soviet style government with less individual liberty than Krugman's your man.

"Krugman's polices are a gigantic government, massive deficit spending, and a vast expansion of the welfare state. If you like an oppressive clunky Soviet style government with less individual liberty than Krugman's your man."

Well said, julialg. And, now comes the health care vote. We are officially Orwellian.

How, as a nation, did we come to the point where our reps are voting on major bills & they don't even know what's in the bill? And, what is with this voting on Sundays & X-Mas eve? I think the next generation may be living in a dictatorship & they won't even know it.

Well, seems a majority of states will sue the fed gov based on the 10th amendment if healthcare passes & that means we are in a constitutional crisis.

The entitlement welfare state is the "progressive" or marxist trojan horse into the free market capitalist system. 60% of Americans pay no income tax. The politicians pander to the masses with "programs" that only the evil rich pay for.. America is on the edge of a dictatorship . ( Companies and industries nationalized, government criminals confiscating wealth and property, laws to enslave the citizens, and thugs running your life)

"Gore wins a Noble for a hoax."

Climate change is a hoax....okay, now take off your tin foil hat, turn faux news off and stop trying to get your "news" from Rush, Hannity and Beck. You will instantly become smarter.

waverly.... ipcc- no global warming since 1995. Look it up.

malthus, what is your point? And Roach is a world-class economist who as actually applied his work in the private sector and not just in academia. Fact is that Krugman would never have won the Nobel if he didn't bash Bush in the NY Times every week. Dissect Krugman's economic positions and you see how politically partisan they are.

And global warming is a social political movement against free-market capitalism, disguised as science.

I just think it's funny that Krugman won a nobel prize writing about the housing bubble, then promptly bought an apt on the UWS.

julialg - So funny! Educate yourself and try to wrap your brain around the concept that climate change is real and man has a real impact on it. You probably go around telling people that global warming is a hoax because it snowed 20" in DC.

What a joke!!!

Al Gore said global warming is settled science. Can you imagine that statement, The IPCC faxed data... Why???

julia, if you hate America so much, why don't you just move to another country?

But not Iceland -- it'll all be melted before you have a chance to settle in.

Hey alanhurt... I was thinking about New Zealand.

Even Einstein's theories are not "settled science".

"ipcc- no global warming since 1995. Look it up."

You could not be more wrong. From the IPCC:

- There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the past 50 years is attributable to human activities.
- Human influences will continue to change atmospheric composition throughout the 21st century
- Warming of the climate system is unequivocal.
- Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.
- The probability that this is caused by natural climatic processes alone is less than 5%.

Apparently Beck and Rush were too busy being junkies to finish college (hannity couldn't hack it in college either), so it is understandable that they are too dumb to grasp climate change, but that doesn't mean you have to be ignorant too. Aspire to learn from smart people, not junkies and college failures.

March 19 (Bloomberg) -- Chubb Corp. Chief Executive Officer
John Finnegan, who shunned investments in subprime loans, said
government bailouts punish the best-run companies and impede the
functioning of markets.
“The opportunities for financially strong companies to
absorb the business of weakened competitors were initially
compelling,” Finnegan said in the Warren, New Jersey-based
insurer’s annual letter to shareholders posted yesterday on the
company’s Web site. “This is as it should be in a free market
unimpeded by federal intervention. But the willingness of the
federal government to prop up weakened competitors by
artificially injecting capital is troubling.”

waverly,,, the British CRC Philip Jones resigns because of the e-mail scandal of fake data....Oh, but the Nobel Laureate Al Gore said warming is settled science.

waverly,,, the British CRC Philip Jones resigns because of the e-mail scandal of fake data....Oh, but the Nobel Laureate Al Gore said warming is settled science.

Didn't some of the experts at EastAnglia fake the data?

My feelings: Of course we should do much, much more to protect & preserve the environment & be fuel efficient. However many, like the oil companies & car makers, have a vested interest in the status quo. So, that fight continues. The situation reminds me of the film "The Man in the White Suit": An altruistic chemist invents a fabric that resists wear and stain as boon to humanity but both capital and labor realize it must be suppressed for economic reasons. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044876/

Nonetheless, I think global warming is super hyped.

ORLANDO, Fla.—Policy makers need to end the concept of "too big to fail," including revising Senate legislation unveiled this week that could still allow for industrywide rescues, a top regulator said Friday.

Sheila Bair, chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., told a conference of community bankers that her agency supports efforts to prevent government assistance to individual institutions, as both the House and Senate have considered. Still, she said legislation released this week by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D., Conn.) contains loopholes that need to be fixed.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904575131462323522590.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLETopStories

dwell I agree.

Hey waverly.... Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out of college.

Yes, there is no way that all of the pollutants and other crap related to human activity could possibly have any affect on the climate. 5 scientists dispute climate change and 400,000 others wants to educate the world on why it is aoccuring and what we can do to change it....so, of course those 5 must be right and not the other 400,000.

There's nothing to see here...just want to be ignorant...there's nothing to see here.

yeah and Copernicus' theories are all bunks as well...Ptolemy was right the Earth is the center of the universe...
Oh and this whole Evolution thing is an attempt to squash Christianity...can't be proven

"Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both dropped out of college."

And yet they both believe that climate change is real and they are politically progressive...so that shows you that there is some hope for you after all.

Step 1 is to realize how the far right is going to twist and distort the facts and then lie to you about climate change and package those lies for you in some nice, neat talking points. Step 2 is to use your brain power and realize what smart, educated and even "sort of smart" people know...climate change is real and human activity affects it.

So moxieland you think global warming is "settled science"?

If Global Warming was settled science, there wouldn't be a cover-up/climate gate scandal.

Oh, the people who drop out of college and agree with you are smart.. But, the people who drop out of college and don't agree with you are idiots and "college failures". If the data for global warming is irrefutable why did the "experts" have to fake data?

don't forget to add your man Milton F. to the list of those not deserving a Nobel...in fact much controversy has always surrounded the award but I'm afraid you have the slant for Economics wrong..

"To date, the Chicago School of Economics has garnered eight Nobel prizes -- an odds-defying achievement, given that there are thousands of economic departments around the world. "I'm astonished," said Robert Lucas after he picked up his prize. "They keep coming back to us. I'm sure there will be more." (1)

There will be more if Assar Lindbeck has anything to do with it. Lindbeck is the Swedish economist who has chaired the Nobel selection committee for economics since 1980. (He has been on the committee since its inception in 1969.) At the start of his career, Lindbeck's politics were slightly right of center, but over the decades he has become increasingly conservative. His working papers today make arguments typically associated with the Chicago School's. In 1994 he published a book entitled Turning Sweden Around, which called for drastic cutbacks in Sweden's welfare state. (2)

As Lindbeck's politics have marched to the right, so has the selection of prize winners. In its early days, leftist economists like Paul Samuelson and Gunnar Myrdal could occasionally win the prize. But between 1990 and 1995, the Nobel has gone to someone from the University of Chicago five out of six times."

How Milton Friedman got recognized by the Nobel prize committee is beyond me, they almost never give it to those who deserve it!

moxie, waverly: stop confusing the issue with facts. Know your audience--keep it stupid.

julia should pick up a copy of The Shock Doctrine. nice folks in the chicago school of economics.

moxieland The country should be governed by the Chicago School.... Freedman,Hayek. etc