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To: Proud Deplorable who wrote (159074)	5/18/2009 8:20:27 PM
From: Rocket Red	Respond to of 312809

Sure China and India can contain themselves in a circle by themselves if need be.But still the Americans are the biggest world consumers today maybe not in the years too come as things unfold but in x amount of years all be gone too so today matters

To: Proud Deplorable who wrote (159074)	5/19/2009 5:22:48 AM
From: E. Charters	4 Recommendations Respond to of 312809

Well North America/Europe may be sideshow, but we are still a sideshow that has 75% of the world's technical innovation, the largest energy usage, and the worlds largest per capita technical products and metals usage. We still, with our increasingly burdened two income families, have the highest incomes and highest standard of living in the world. More televisions, telephones, flush toilets, roads, cars, skidoos, boats, computers, luxury items, etc.. Are these advantages disappearing? Yes, but slowly. China still has only 25% of the US economy and 3.33 times the population. Their citizens have to be 13.2 times worse off than Americans. We in Canada have been falling behind the rest of the world in relative terms. In 1960, the economy of Canada was greater than that of Japan. Now Japan is one of the largest economies in the world, and Canada is number 11. The vector is ominous. Should we tell ourselves that we are outpopulated by Japan, that we cannot compete? The reason for our wealth was/is pure geography and geology. We are living right next to the largest wealthiest nation in the world. We are afflicted with numerous transportation corridors into their economic heartland, the Great Lakes, and numerous roads. We use common shipping lanes into our industrial heartlands. We have numerous high quality raw materials and are uniquely positioned to deliver them far cheaper than other can. Our sole problem is capital, energy and organization. If we make the decision not to supply or allow access to these materials at a slight economic advantage we lose a valuable march to others who will all too eager to do so. In Canada we forsook manufacturing emphasis because delivering raw materials with basic manufacturing for these industries was so profitable and cheap. Secondary manufacturing using the raw materials meant we would have had to control access to retail markets in Europe and the US with large scale distribution enterprise. We had high labour rates after the 60's, relatively, and our enterprises were small. In effect we were predated for resources, and our distribution and manufacturing/services enterprises being small and fragmented could not compete in larger pools of distribution. Japan consolidated its industry, already centralized in the small nation, into organized trading pools. Mitsubishi, Sony, and their other companies really formed subsidiary enterprises to the nation as a whole forming the worlds largest trading delegation and manufacturing enterprise. They gained favoured access to markets, and took maximal advantage of this to tailor their products to the consumer market. Canada having all the industrial, demographic, geographic and educational advantage had none of the realization of marketing, manufacturing, capital or research and organizational skill. We were like 200 corner grocery stores open 3 days a week trying to compete with Loblaws. It ain't gonna work bubie. Mitsubishi and other Japanese giants won the technical/distribution/research race in a walk. They were ready, we were in decay the minute we entered. Our skeleton collapsed a mile from the finish line. Sans and auto, mining, fishing industry, and constricted by ever higher labour rates, ever more controlling unions, and ever more restrictive environmental and other regulation we are waiting burial. The flesh has long rotted off the corpse politic of our industry and technology in the hot sun or worldwide dedicated competition. EC<:-}