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Pastimes : Clown-Free Zone... sorry, no clowns allowed -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MythMan who wrote (401092)	2/14/2010 9:59:11 PM
From: Terry Maloney	Respond to of 436258

Yep, probably. You got a problem with that? <g>

To: MythMan who wrote (401092)	2/15/2010 5:09:42 AM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	13 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

great story. there are huge huge huge projects in china. like the mag lev train. on a 3 hour drive to another city from shanghai you could see hundreds upon hundreds of massive concrete pylons as big as a small office building to hold the tracks for this project. the line from shanghai to beijing will run nearly 1000 miles. where the line was placed, at times once stood large factories or other structures. the owners were simply told to move. end of story. the government owns all the land. what's also historically interesting, is a canal that runs from shanghai to beijing.. also around 1000 miles long.. hand made. i forget during which historical period. of course, who actually built the railroads in the early USA? in Zhenjiang huge triple wide thoroughfares in new parts of the city..... going to, as yet, no where. entire hills/mini mountains, being leveled literally to make land for development. on the other hand.. it is said, a product made by machine (automated), cost many times more, than a product made by people. at least for now. i toured a tiny factory in Zhenjiang. the owner makes two or three components (basically the size of a large bolt) for car and truck brake assemblies. he's got people sitting a little tables with 40 year old machines metal working these parts by hand. the smell of burning oil (lubrication) all over the place with fans at each table just stiring the smoke in the air. the guy has made some millions, and by chinese standards, is "very" well off. his biggest machines were feed/cut/stamp monsters taking coils of steel feed and pushing out the raw "bolt" forms on the other side. quality control was a metal board with precise holes into which every X number of parts, one would be inserted for proper size etc, and then documented on a sheet of paper at each work station. the factory owner has NO industrial education or engineering background at all. people adapt. they'll do anything in many places in china. if one kind of job ends, they move onto another. people don't strike. they get replaced!!!! my driver in shanghai is employed by a friend's company. his job is to drive the company car or van. he is available, all the time. he makes somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 USD per month (and i'm probably way over stating his pay). an english speaking (perfect) 32 year old trained engineer was assigned to take me around for a day. he makes somewhere around 500 USD per month. its considered a good job. in Zhenjiang, we met a woman whose husband owns the lexus dealership. she studied law and human resources (whatever that means). she used to work for huge japanese auto parts company that buit a giant factory in Zhenjiang. she is now the human resources director for the local vinegar company...but it is the largest vinegar company in china. the company will go public in the near future. when that happens, this woman will become a millionaire many many times over. western populations just don't realize what a massive very determined force is the chinese production machine. where you see people working, they are really working, and hard. one of my first mornings in Shanghai, we walked maybe a mile to a little area at about 6 in the morning for chinese crepes. the city was still very quiet. little market area with various stalls, fish market (fresh fish) etc. the crepe guy had his griddle set up on the side of a building, outside. one ladle of batter, spread paper thin across the griddle, girlfriend/wife grabs egg/cracks egg onto batter/ guy spreads eggs paper thin across the crepe/wife sprinkles chopped green onion and some hot sauce/guy folds up crepe/she holds plastic bag/he drops it in. she gives it to us/we pay her. whole thing took about 2 minutes. then we move on for some fried dough at one stall and at another some sweet warmed soymilk in a container with a straw, warmed out of a water bath. so a couple of crepes, some fried dough and some soy milk for two, total cost maybe a little over a buck. all of it delicious. around 7pm we drove by this same place on the way to a karoake bar catering to japanese business people. the crepe people were still at it. shanghai is filled with thousands of 20-30 story apartment highrises. you can see on the outside of the building, the compressor and fan for the air conditioning. its a box that hangs on the wall of the building all the way up to the top floor. hundreds of them. i asked how they are repaired. some guy is sent up to dangle some how off the building while he fixes it. i asked what happens if he falls. the answer was, they get another guy. everywhere you go, someone has a push cart and a broom, cleaning the city streets. the only beggars i saw were in Zhenjiang. individuals completely alone. there is no relief. what you see, are people in their very last days. so is the birds nest a "make" work project? in some ways it is a make work project, and now serves little productive purpose. it costs 450 million USD. how much does one american, non productive, U.S. fighter jet cost? how much doesn one american, non producing, battleship cost? how many US government workers make well above 100k/year, though they produce nothing? how much has the US government workforce increased over the last decade? how much was spent during the US presidential election? the "on the books" US defense budget is 640 billion dollars. it produces nothing. it is dead money generating zero wealth and zero infrastructure. if you built a 100 bird's nest stadiums in china, how would that compare with the above? the last night in Zhenjiang was spent in the karoake bar at the government owned hotel. sometime around 2 in the morning, it was decided to get a foot message. the local mafia guy takes us in his car and we drive for an hour to some building, and walk up two flights. you can hear everyone being woken up. the three of us get our foot treatments and somewhere around 4:30 am we're at some version of a fast food restaurant. there's something like 15 or 20 people behind the counter working in the dead of nite. we buy crepe like stuff and who knows what else, for breakfast. by around 6 am, in bed. not a soul on the streets during all of this driving around in this small town of over 4 million people. i have a friend who is originally from Algeria. works in physics. super smart. his brother is super super super smart with double phd's and an mba. their family decided to build a kind of mini shopping mall in their algerian home town. the project has been under construction for i'd guess, around 7/8 years. my friends brother moved back to algeria. at the time his son was around 4 years old. maybe two years ago, he and his son were walking past some big construction project nearing completion. total build time something like 14 months. his son asked him when the shopping malls would be finished, and pointed at the big construction project.. which was a chinese joint venture being built with chinese laborers. when it comes to world GDP i do not yet think i would be wrong in guessing that USA contribution to that GDP will shrink over time by 30%... and with all the attendent consequences. sad day for lawn care. why? because most people will be mowing their own lawns from here on out, if they have one.