Hello Mary, I am quite familiar with what is happening in China as regards to education, competition and skill acquisition. I am aware of what is happening in India, and by China proxy, can imagine what could be taking place in India.
I am guessing that <<more skills ... foreign workers cannot do>> ... is possible if and only if there is application of massive capital that is not immediately available in other economies.
But the capital available to the US is idle, dissipated, mistreated, and mispriced in the US, and so what you are hoping for cannot be, until and unless capital is priced (i.e. 12% on the 10 year bond is as good a number as any) correctly and treated well (i.e. indiscriminately do away with all the constraining regulations enacted in the past 30 years would be a good start).
Before respect for capital is once more, the capital gods must be appeased, and that appeasement always, invariably, takes the market clearing price down, way down, say P/E of 8 and dividend yield of 6%;
... and before that happens, the way we get there, I am guessing, by way of dissolution, confiscation, repudiation, redistribution, and evaporation, because the mob electorates will demand nothing less.
The simple facts of the matter is that the US workers do not work more diligently than their competitors elsewhere, are not better educated or trained, and are too expensive and spoiled for their employers to stomach. The US workers had simply been better supplied with capital, the system had been friendly to folks who were smart to apply the capital correctly, and everyone had a peaceful homeland environment in which to work, while others elsewhere were busy with dissipating wars.
Now, the US is busy with wars, Mars, missile defenses, 'free' this (drugs), 'give-away' that (housing downpayment), 'zero percent' financing the other, and the ability to eat his own house via Bank of America issued home equity line of credit, and the mob electorates are still not realizing that there is no free lunch.
California, the trend setter, will perhaps show the way forward, one way or another, and we will simply see whether the applicable model is Argentina, Japan, Russia or 1929.
We will find out what 'flexible economy' actually means. I am guessing that all economies of the world are flexible, sooner or later, either before or after the sh*t hits the spinning fan. Take Hong Kong for example, we are the ultimate in flexible economy, according to the Heritage Foundation, year after year, and flexibility in HK means precisely this Message 19753935 .
In HK we do not have one person one vote mob democracy, and so we collectively must bow before the capital gods, and be flexible. I am guessing that in a one person one vote system, the electoriates would want to sacrifice each other before submitting to the inevitable.
In other words, the electoriates would first scam the rich, then screw the poor, soak the stupid, reward the undeserving, and then fall into financial coma.
Now we watch to see how California will do. My guess is California will reach for a helping hand in Washington, and pick the pockets of the other 49 states, et cetera, so on and so forth, ad infinitum, ad nauseam, and then once again, until there is no more free lunch.
As to the comment <<... the Chinese and Indian drones in their software factories ...>>, for your information, the reason there are drones and factories where there were none before is that the two societies are doing the heavy, as in diligent, lifting for the entire world's systemic revolution and structural reform, led by wise leaders, with full blessing of the eager-to-learn and enthusiastic-to-work populations, and happily doing so, looking forward to their day in the sun driving in a topdown ultimate driving machine.
Chugs, Jay |
