Originally Posted By: Tempest
Quote:
"The U.S. has a huge productivity advantage in that it produced only slightly less than China’s manufacturing output in 2010 but with 11.5 million workers compared to the 100 million employed in the same sector in China," Killion says.
http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Chin...1#ixzz2OD36qjSk
And people wonder why Chinese workers make less than US workers.
You got it backward. It is the cost of labor that drives to productivity, not productivity drives the increase in income per employee.
Do you want to know the best way to increase productivity? Fire the bottom 20% of the workforce and ask the remaining 80% to do the rest of the work or cut down the less profitable 20% of the work. That's why productivity increase during recession: unpaid overtime for salary workers.
Originally Posted By: javacontour
Yep, it's OK when we do it, but it's bloody murder if other nations do what we've done.
Originally Posted By: Shannow
Originally Posted By: mechanicx
So in other words China and others should get all the work, sell all they want in the US market, block exports if they want, and Americans' wanting to work tough luck. But dumping is bad because that's the only thing that effects someone, a capitalist. I think I got it.
Seemed pretty good when the US was exporting that paradigm on the rest of us, opening our markets, floating our currencies, dumping product into our markets, then buying out our businesses and resources.
There is no such thing as "free trade", but only "leverage" to bargain.
At the moment China has the upper hand as it has a huge population of peasants that would work for food, dorm room, and $400 USD a month. They are getting more expensive than before and they are starting to complain that pollution and inflation is hitting them hard. They are suppressing their currency to keep their export market by buying USD based bond.
However, we counter that by printing money and they end up writing off the money they borrowed us. We also block the solar panels they dumped on us with government subsidized production capacity and they end up losing their shirt on the deal (Suntech just filed for bankruptcy).
Other than buying off some assets that they earned rightfully (which would increase their currency and reduce ours), over time it would reach a balance and jobs will move to the next lowest cost nations and start over again.
The point is, we've bought so much with an artificially inflated currency for so long that we wouldn't be affordable in the world market until either the lender (China, Japan, etc) forgive their debt because we printed money, or we end up so broke that we are working for less.