*** Cutting costs ***
Jay, I was pleased to see you didn't include cutting communications in your list of cuts, preferring to cut silly baubles for XX chromosome people, sushi and Club Med style vacations in favour of self-generated wave functions in the ocean. That augurs well for QUALCOMM and phragmented photon profusion.
But you raised something that just this evening I was discussing with my 84 year old mother in law.
<I suppose if all the guys are cut, as in neutered, the economy will literally wilt due to dissipation of raw animal energy and primal basic enthusiasm>
I didn't discuss said neutering but rather the energy that testosterone and XX chromosome-seeking behaviour creates and what it means for China [and us]. Perhaps the real reason you cut the XX expenditure first was that it really is NOT the first thing which will be cut in the cost-cutting drive - merely top-of-mind. Booze, baccy and birds are the holy trinity of life and soar through recessions and depressions while other expenditures go the way of the dodo. These 1-Child Little Emperors are now not so little and are surging into adulthood.
My point, which is a question, is what the heck does it mean when China has had a one child family for decades, successfully, has had a very rapidly growing economy, [despite the nonsense currently fashionable that it's all statistical mumbo jumbo - we need only count the Made in China labels to know it's true] and the demographic shape of China is now smoothing into similar numbers in each age group and that males outnumber females in the Generation X and Y categories by a significant amount? I believe it means something serious and you have put your finger on the essential point - young, testosterone-laden and sexually frustrated males [usually] will make things happen. I assume not in the nature of armed belligerence, but that would not surprise me.
On the other hand, Japan has had a similar low birthrate but starting earlier and I think part of the economic slowdown in Japan is that the wildly energetic post-WWII decades are over and those people are entering their dotage. They are rich. Rich people in their dotage do not go all out to produce.
So, what's China going to do? Work like crazy and get rich? Buy CDMA by the hundred million and cerf cyberspace? My grandfather colonized China on behalf of Standard Oil and now I'm doing the same with Standard CDMA. Plus ca change.
Seriously, what do you think it means to have vast swarms of 20-something males surging? They will surge somewhere. Where will they surge?
Mqurice
PS: I recall I've asked this question before. At the risk of boring those who don't like repetition, please reprise your thoughts. |
