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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TobagoJack who wrote (145679)	1/25/2019 7:31:49 AM
From: stsimon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 217842

China may be over estimating its own policies as the cause of its economic successes. During the great Depression in the USA, FDR put in place many reforms that were designed to benefit the workers and average citizens who were suffering. These included reforms benefitting unions. The unions and their members prospered as WWII and the destruction of USA's economic competitors during the war led to about 30 years of prosperity for workers. Once the rest of the world recovered, the owners of the means of production in the U.S. were now challenged with lower cost competitors and a deteriorating pollution filled environment. Coming to the rescue was Richard Nixon. While he shepherded in environmental regulations he also began the engagement with China. Big business now had an opportunity to break the union grip on their costs without messy strikes, and avoid the new environmental regulations as well by moving production of goods off shore. Two dollar an hour labor would replace twenty dollar an hour labor. What the American politicians did not envision was that China itself had the ability to create its own industry and export to the United States. The U.S. politicians could have erected tariff barriers before the jobs left and the factories were dismantled, but they chose not to do so. Now the factories are gone and the jobs that are left require skilled training and education. The unskilled jobs that used to be well paying are either gone or now pay very little. Too late to erect tariff barriers. The work could be brought back but it would mostly be done by robots. China deserves great credit for its skill in lifting so many of its people out of poverty, but it should give some significant credit to the American politicians and capitalists who helped it happen. History will decide whether the environmental catastrophe created by the West, and accelerated by the East, so the World can drive Buicks, was worth it.