Tech cold war is a fact. China tells government offices to remove all foreign computer equipment

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

On 12/25/2019 at 11:56 AM, Lotech123 said:

In my own unlearned way, I have read and tried to absorb the arguments presented over these pages, but to me, an ‘ordinary joe’ if a manufacturer, from wherever, can produce an good egg whisk, car or computer at a price I am prepared to pay, then they get my money. 

It is proposed in a book called ‘1421’ by Commander Gavin Menzies, ISBN: 9780553815221, that this was the year (1421) that China discovered the known world by the deployment of 3 mega fleets of sailing ships.

The bibliography supporting his assertions is/are very comprehensive and the content of the book might shatter a few myths, leading perhaps to a consideration of China as a nation who paddled in the murky waters of geopolitics long before most modern nations had even reached the amoeba stage.

I have that book and read it when it first came out. Recognize there are many (legion) who oppose his contentions, but I am willing to accept them all. Given that, and the world's greatest fleet launched by the world's greatest superpower (of the time), what went wrong? Why are we having this conversation in English and not Cantonese? There was a new emperor and he decided to sht can the entire wildly successful enterprise and even burned the fleet. 

And to remake it and his two handlers waxing loquacious on this forum here is the fundamental weakness of China. Chinese governance always skews towards 100% authoritarian unaccountable leaders. After hundreds of years of Chi ku, they've finally had enough and there's a big revolt, with a new boss, same as the old boss and a few million more corpses added to the pile. Always doomed to failure. It's also why Chinese make horrible gamblers. Can't properly evaluate risks and rewards. 

[remake it + 288]

27 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

And to remake it and his two handlers waxing loquacious on this forum here is the fundamental weakness of China. Chinese governance always skews towards 100% authoritarian unaccountable leaders. After hundreds of years of Chi ku, they've finally had enough and there's a big revolt, with a new boss, same as the old boss and a few million more corpses added to the pile. Always doomed to failure.

If that is what you put forward as some sort of analysis of what's happening in China then good luck trying to actually post on topic.

[SERWIN + 749]

On 12/23/2019 at 9:02 AM, Jan van Eck said:

Not really.  What you are overlooking is that it is not a "war" at all.  The USA is simply going to disengage with China and the two can go heir own way, and I can flat-out guarantee you that the people in the USA are not even going to think further of or about China.  The attitude already is:  "So, who cares?"  And the answer to that is: basically, nobody. 

The whole "go to China and get your stuff made cheap" is an idea that has come and gone.  The big shift comes with Donald Trump, and while he pontificates (a lot!) about "trade war," in fact it is not a trade war at all, although the Chinese are trying to make it into one.  It is a de-coupling, with the Americans (and Canadians) simply sourcing in other places.  Or doing their sourcing "at home," which is what is happening already in the USA.  And all that is the result of the energies of one man, Mr. Trump.  Like him or loathe him, you have to acknowledge that he is making a huge, tectonic shift in the China trade pattern. 

Now the Chinese reaction is to try to strike back by such acts as stopping imports of US and Canadian products, and (of course) by seizing and imprisoning two Canadians, businessmen who were stupid enough to be inside China on purchasing expeditions when China decided to go grab someone for leverage against the arrest of Mrs. Meng, she of Hauwei fame.  But that just backfires. I put no success on any of that.  

To demonstrate just how involved China trade patterns have become, at least in Canada, I invite you to ponder the case of Goodfellow Lumber, a large (probably the largest) Quebec wood processor.  Those guys buy raw logs from Quebec and even next-door Vermont, then mill the logs into planks and sections, for sale into the furniture and construction trades. One item they got into was hardwood flooring.  So oak and maple logs are milled into final shape as tongue-and-groove flooring, then put into containers and shipped from Montreal all the way to some finishing plant in China, there taken out of the containers, and finished by the addition of stain to color, then the polyurethane coatings to make them resistant to wear.  There might be as many as  12 coatings of poly on each plank.  The poly coating is dried between coats, and then the entire finished product is bundled into large boxes of about 78 sq. ft. of product each, then the boxes are put back into sea containers and shipped back to Montreal, then trucked to the plant south of the city.  From there, the finished product is shipped by truck out to the retail outlets, such as "Lumber Liquidators," and "Home Depot," and then sold to consumers. 

Now, this is poor management, of course; lazy management, done to avoid having to do the work on-site in Quebec or have some local entrepreneur do it.  The Chinese were able to snag that work by offering it at lower prices.  So "price" becomes the determinant of retaining that business.  But if the USA now duties that flooring at 25% or more because it is effectively a product of China, do you seriously think the price advantage will remain?  Of course not.  So then all that sea-trade shuffling of product in and out of China to get some re-finishing work done is going to disappear.  It will not go to Vietnam; it will come back to Canada.  And if there is a duty on it to get into the US market, then the finishing and packaging will go to Vermont or the USA.  That much is inevitable. 

Now, what does that Chinese finishing plant do to make up for the lost work?  Well, there is not much they can do, except perhaps push for the same work for European customers.  But Europe has little hardwood trees, and what they have, those logs are sold for gold.  Europe imports its woods, softwood from Finland  (and probably Sweden), and hardwoods are not to be found, some stand left in places such as France and the Carpathian Mountains.  Not enough to satisfy the demand for hardwood flooring, unless you start bringing in mahogany from the Congo.  But African hardwood is difficult to source, those countries unreliable suppliers. So the logical supplier becomes - the USA and Canada. 

And this is how markets shift.  You will see this disengagement from China as a source, both for products built "from scratch," such as bicycle gears, and in intermediate finishing, as you see in the flooring business.  As those Chinese plants lose that work, you will have loss of employment in that segment of society, which will be a destabilizing factor internally, and is the big reason you see these Bots  (such as "remake it") showing up on Western internet forums, and even their primary human handlers (such as marcin) who had this carefully constructed cover story of being an economist in Poland.  But no economist in Poland is going to be endorsing the prattle of some robot in China so consistently, that is out of the question, so Marcin has blown his cover.  One more human handler of Chinese propaganda, paid for by their military.  

Why are the Chinese so upset by this de-coupling?  Because so much of their commercial structure is premised on manufacture for the Western markets.  They can talk big about "emerging markets," places such as Africa and Kazakhstan and Iran, but those places do not have the rich consumers of the USA, Canada, and Western Europe.  So the volumes are not there.  And China is, above all, a place of volume. 

So, what Can China do for an encore?  the business model is based on selling their surpluses, including items such as steel sheet, plate, and product, and aluminum in ingot, plate and product, and lots of finished goods to the WalMarts of the world, to absorb their surplus capacity - of which they have lots.  Now the China supporters all have this idea that there is or will be this rich Chinese internal market.  that is not so.  First, lots of Chines are poor.  Second, the place is in a population implosion.  Now the govt has to divert resources, and lots of them, to support old people, and unless you do a Stalin and starve them to death to dispose of that surplus population, you have to have both the bodies of trained workers and the women to reproduce them or the whole thing collapses.  And you need free access to foreign markets to provide the outlet for that production.  And that is going away, except for the European marketplace  (which is large, but all of Europe taken together still does not equal the US market alone, which is some 25% of the world marketplace).

So the US can simply ignore China.  And they will.  China wants to go spend their coin on building artificial islands in the South China Sea?  To what end?  To capture offshore oil drilling?  To what end?  There will be no market for that oil, because without the mercantilist market for goods you don't need a source of oil.  OK, a little oil, but you can buy that a lot cheaper from Venezuela.  Or the USA, for that matter. 

China simply cannot hold it together.  The idea that the US is going to go back to its old ways if the Chinese stop buying canola and soybeans and lobsters is laughable.  This is the USA, home to nimble entrepreneurs; new uses for those products will be found, or the land and sea will shift to other production of other grains.  Don't kid yourself; in the USA, nothing is static.  The place is far too dynamic for that. 

So, once again, the US simply disengaging from China will lead to the collapse of China.  And that is why the Bots are so fierce.  Cheers.

 

   And every time one of those Chinese factories shuts down? You have people that are now unemployed starting a domino effect. They can't spend money they no longer make and so on and so forth, effectively crippling the giant internal buying machine that I am seeing spoken of here. If there is too much competition for open jobs then the wages will go down accordingly, correct?

   We have needed this so badly, bringing manufacturing back to the US is imperative to the security of our nation. If we are at war with someone god forbid, how would we manage to make the things we need? WWII is a perfect example that we couldn't even dream of matching right now, everything was coaxed off shore with crappy policies made by wealthy politicians. And our population is how much bigger than in the 40's? We need skilled blue collar workers more than ever before. When I was younger the average age of a machinist in America was around 35, and now where is it? I would guess closer to 50-ish by now. We can't use the college educated for this, to many of them it would be demeaning to waste a sheep skin on using their hands to make something..... They need to keep getting their degrees in gender studies and art and leave the manufacturing to the skilled and motivated.

[remake it + 288]

27 minutes ago, SERWIN said:

If there is too much competition for open jobs then the wages will go down accordingly, correct?

The West thinks of China as economically monolithic and it is not so because within the country enterprises can relocate to regions affording increased profitability in the same manner the USA transfers production to other nations to derive greater profit.

[Marcin + 519]

3 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

here is the fundamental weakness of China. Chinese governance always skews towards 100% authoritarian unaccountable leaders. After hundreds of years of Chi ku, they've finally had enough and there's a big revolt, with a new boss, same as the old boss and a few million more corpses added to the pile. Always doomed to failure. It's also why Chinese make horrible gamblers. Can't properly evaluate risks and rewards. 

What is "Chi ku" ?. About always going to 100% dictatorship, I do not know because do not know history of China, but if you refer to modern times, after WW2 you seem to be spot on. First Mao since 40s to 70s.  And now Xi Jinping since he scrapped term limits in 2017 and is now emperor for life.

[Marcin + 519]

1 hour ago, SERWIN said:

We have needed this so badly, bringing manufacturing back to the US is imperative to the security of our nation. If we are at war with someone god forbid, how would we manage to make the things we need? WWII is a perfect example that we couldn't even dream of matching right now, everything was coaxed off shore with crappy policies made by wealthy politicians. And our population is how much bigger than in the 40's? We need skilled blue collar workers more than ever before. When I was younger the average age of a machinist in America was around 35, and now where is it? I would guess closer to 50-ish by now. We can't use the college educated for this, to many of them it would be demeaning to waste a sheep skin on using their hands to make something..... They need to keep getting their degrees in gender studies and art and leave the manufacturing to the skilled and motivated.

But to have blue collar workers you need high taxes to have much more public goods than are now in United States. I will give you example of Sweden. You can have a good life even being shop assistand or cleaner or machinist. There is high minimal wage and very high personal income tax and additional tax for social security and health care (again as % of your wage). They have this sort of social agreement and it works, but the cost is the state is a great equalizer of incomes, pure communism for me.

In Poland (my country) or US you do not have this. Blue collar workers meet their ends with difficulty. In US pension, decent vacation (minimum 26 days in Poland, over 5 weeks plus 12 bank holidays), full healthcare are not universal although people are much richer.

[Marcin + 519]

@Tom Kirkman:

...  "The US should use coordinated action with allies to confront China's trade malpractices … should pursue targeted decoupling of the US and Chinese economies, mainly in order to protect its defense capabilities rather than seeking a comprehensive rupture."

That is what I am preaching on this forum, constantly and since joining in September.

1. US is too weak to go alone against China ( I have shown raw numbers many times here presenting Chinese juggernaut)

2. Need to clean its house or loose to dictatoship

[remake it + 288]

7 minutes ago, Marcin said:

What is "Chi ku" ?. About always going to 100% dictatorship, I do not know because do not know history of China, but if you refer to modern times, after WW2 you seem to be spot on. First Mao since 40s to 70s.  And now Xi Jinping since he scrapped term limits in 2017 and is now emperor for life.

Mr Smith believes that Chinese people have been persisting through hardship and that this is leading to internal dissent predicated largely on dictatorial governance but he has overlooked the reality on the ground where most Chinese are exceptionally happy with where the current leadership is taking the nation and are now many times removed from past hardships.

 

[Marcin + 519]

Just now, remake it said:

Mr Smith believes that Chinese people have been persisting through hardship and that this is leading to internal dissent predicated largely on dictatorial governance but he has overlooked the reality on the ground where most Chinese are exceptionally happy with where the current leadership is taking the nation and are now many times removed from past hardships.

 

No @Ward Smith intention was different. He is not disputing the fact that Chinese are blindly following authorities ("are exceptionally happy with where the current leadership is thaking the nation"). He points out that the very fact of not contesting the wrongdoings of strong dictators (called emperors or gen secretaries of party) leads to great suffering of people and collapse of Chinese state. This collapse&suffering could come from internal dissent (when people do have enough), foreign occupation (like in late Qin dynasty or civil war in 30s) or directly from disastrous policies of emperor ( great leap forward)

[remake it + 288]

12 minutes ago, Marcin said:

No @Ward Smith intention was different. He is not disputing the fact that Chinese are blindly following authorities ("are exceptionally happy with where the current leadership is thaking the nation"). He points out that the very fact of not contesting the wrongdoings of strong dictators (called emperors or gen secretaries of party) leads to great suffering of people and collapse of Chinese state. This collapse&suffering could come from internal dissent (when people do have enough), foreign occupation (like in late Qin dynasty or civil war in 30s) or directly from disastrous policies of emperor ( great leap forward)

Then his analysis would be flawed on that basis as Chinese empires have come and gone over the centuries and those empires were no different to the rest of the world where Kings were ordained by god and could do no wrong and even today there is absolutely no guarantee in a democracy that the wrongdoings of a leader are brought to account as they will often be overridden by nationalism rather than justice.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

Chi ku means eat bitterness. 

The Chinese are a resilient patients people but eventually they reach their limit. 

@remake it plays whataboutism with democracy, as if it is some magic wand that solves all problems. It isn't, but in places where it's legitimately a democracy (and not, for instance Saddam Hussein claiming he was duly elected), the odds are considerably better that at least some malfeasance gets caught and corrected eventually. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

Might as well drop this here

China's biggest move in oil markets to date

[remake it + 288]

8 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Chi ku means eat bitterness. 

The Chinese are a resilient patients people but eventually they reach their limit. 

@remake it plays whataboutism with democracy, as if it is some magic wand that solves all problems. It isn't, but in places where it's legitimately a democracy (and not, for instance Saddam Hussein claiming he was duly elected), the odds are considerably better that at least some malfeasance gets caught and corrected eventually. 

Please learn to translate better (read this  post for correct sense) but moving to you ideas about democracy you only need to look at the poor decisions of the USA eg Vietnam to understand why your claims are puny.

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

14 minutes ago, remake it said:

Please learn to translate better (read this  post for correct sense) but moving to you ideas about democracy you only need to look at the poor decisions of the USA eg Vietnam to understand why your claims are puny.

Lol, I like my translation just fine. Maybe your system needs tweaking on the classics. 

[Marcin + 519]

1 hour ago, Ward Smith said:

Chi ku means eat bitterness. 

The Chinese are a resilient patients people but eventually they reach their limit. 

@remake it plays whataboutism with democracy, as if it is some magic wand that solves all problems. It isn't, but in places where it's legitimately a democracy (and not, for instance Saddam Hussein claiming he was duly elected), the odds are considerably better that at least some malfeasance gets caught and corrected eventually. 

A few observations:

 @remake it seems to act in line with Communist Party manual of interracting with outside world. But he also seems to believe in what he presents, like if he grew up in Mainland without access to outside, critical information about authorities and party and without the right to critisize this very government. But on the other hand his knowledge about the outside world means he was educated at Western university, more like Australia, less UK or US but also probable. And he returned to Mainland at least mentally cause he presents this official line and is actively trying to convince others to this system of beliefs,not aware that it is so alien to our worldview and background that we find it strange. He is definitely not from Taiwan or Hongkong or overseas Chinese, at least not by origin as was subject to indoctrination.

It is also interesting that you both have so much in common cause speak Mandarin, so understand Chinese culture on a level not available to most of us.

 

[remake it + 288]

5 minutes ago, Marcin said:

A few observations:

Please try to stay on topic as while it's fun to read what you observe there is a bigger picture that your analysis here reflects on with sound commentary and supporting data (except that @Ward Smith has never yet displayed any understanding of Chinese culture while you need to think more flexibly about what makes your worldview superior).

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 12/25/2019 at 1:05 AM, remake it said:

That does not square with a major reason that the average daily spend by Westerners on consumables is reduced due to the manufacturing base-costs being predicated on what China has achieved and that those savings factor significantly into one's quality of life.

to elaborate - I believe that quality of life can not be measured in how much you can buy. Having the latest iphone (or any other gadget, clothes etc) is in my book not a very good metric  for quality of life. My point with this is that using tarifs as a form of wealth re-distribution, can add to quality of life for the average citizen. Clearly, it should not be the only one. Personally, I favor taxing capital over salary, but that is another discussion. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

4 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

to elaborate - I believe that quality of life can not be measured in how much you can buy. Having the latest iphone (or any other gadget, clothes etc) is in my book not a very good metric  for quality of life. My point with this is that using tarifs as a form of wealth re-distribution, can add to quality of life for the average citizen. Clearly, it should not be the only one. Personally, I favor taxing capital over salary, but that is another discussion. 

Did you know that in the United States, up until 1913 there wasn't a Federal income tax? The government received the vast majority of its "income" from tariffs. Everyone keeps looking at these tariffs as if they were this massive cost item, but they're more akin to lottery revenue. Don't want to pay the "lottery tax"? Don't buy the ticket. 

[remake it + 288]

7 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

to elaborate - I believe that quality of life can not be measured in how much you can buy. Having the latest iphone (or any other gadget, clothes etc) is in my book not a very good metric  for quality of life. My point with this is that using tarifs as a form of wealth re-distribution, can add to quality of life for the average citizen. Clearly, it should not be the only one. Personally, I favor taxing capital over salary, but that is another discussion. 

Your communistic tendencies are noted with thanks but your logic may have suffered from what was helping you enjoy your Christmas pudding.

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

7 minutes ago, remake it said:

Your communistic tendencies are noted with thanks but your logic may have suffered from what was helping you enjoy your Christmas pudding.

Fair enough

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

14 minutes ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

Fair enough

Just remember, Rasmus, that you are talking to a Communist robot.  Not exactly an intellectual exercise, now is it?

[Marcin + 519]

7 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

to elaborate - I believe that quality of life can not be measured in how much you can buy. Having the latest iphone (or any other gadget, clothes etc) is in my book not a very good metric  for quality of life. My point with this is that using tarifs as a form of wealth re-distribution, can add to quality of life for the average citizen. Clearly, it should not be the only one. Personally, I favor taxing capital over salary, but that is another discussion. 

You are right, because we have large reserves of resources to be spend to satisfy basic needs of society.

All upper middle income and high income countries can decide to source the merchandise they consume in more expensive countries, even domestically without significant decrease of level of life.

Developed countries are spending only about 3-4% of GDP for basic food security. Less than 5% of GDP to secure energy. In balanced society, with wisely regulated real estate, enough supply of housing, without real estate bubbles we have in Scandinavia or United States: small % of GDP lets say 10% could satisfy decent living conditions.

So we have vast reserves to spent not 10% of our consumption on basic consumption of sh*tty stuff offshored (together with our jobs) to some low income country, but for example 20% or even 25% on products manufactured domestically.

And this in democratic country is the choice of society. We care about climate, we could care about more sustainable and less globalized economy.

 

 

[remake it + 288]

1 hour ago, Marcin said:

And this in democratic country is the choice of society. We care about climate, we could care about more sustainable and less globalized economy.

Semantically you failed to address "quality" and continued to subsume it into disposable income so what you may have missed is that the poor in society do not get to choose so when their average spend on every-day consumables has been reduced as a result of internationally lowered base costs then their ability to choose is enhanced and commensurately so to their quality of life.

[Anthony Okrongly + 114]

The fact is that China is going to exceed the U.S. in innovation and useful technology.  The U.S. has gotten grandfathered into restraints from land to financial systems to cost structures to regulations. 

Case in point Between 2009 and 2017 San Francisco built the Presidio Parkway... which is an access tunnel to the Golden gate bridge.  I think it's about 2 miles long. It took 18 years to build!!  It's still not complete.  The park on top won't be done until 2020 I think.  That's over 20 years to build a 2 mile road. To give some perspective on how America USED to be... The ENTIRE golden gate bridge was built in 4 years BY HAND in the 1930's. 

http://www.presidioparkway.org/construction_info/

In less than half that time China built a new high speed rail (from inception to completion) to every major city in China. They already had high speed rail since the 1990's.  Where is ours?  But they built thousands of miles of rail and infrastructure plus all the equipment to go 200 mph from city to city in the time it took San Francisco to build an onramp.  Technically China built the world's longest high speed rail system to connect every part of their country by trains the go hundreds of miles an hour in HALF the time it took a city in the U.S. to build a road and a park. Well over 10,000 miles of useful infrastructure in a fraction of the time it took San Francisco to build 2. 

While our bridges decay and our roads are clogged with no room to grow Chinese citizens are going 300 miles between cities in 60 to 90 minutes.  Good luck commuting home in that time.

"

The Wuhan–Guangzhou high-speed railway (Wuguang PDL), which opened on December 26, 2009, was the country’s first cross-regional high-speed rail line. With a total length of 968 km (601 mi) and capacity to accommodate trains traveling at 350 km/h (217 mph), the Wuguang PDL set a world record for the fastest commercial train service with average trip speed of 312.5 km/h (194.2 mph). Train travel between central and southern China’s largest cities, Wuhan and Guangzhou, was reduced to just over three hours. On October 26, 2010, China opened its 15th high-speed rail, the Shanghai–Hangzhou line, and unveiled the CRH380A trainset manufactured by CSR Sifang started regular service. The Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway, the second major cross-regional line, opened on June 2011 and was the first line designed with a top speed of 380 km/h (236 mph) in commercial service.^[49][50]

By January 2011, China had the world’s longest high-speed rail network with about 8,358 km (5,193 mi)^[51] of routes capable for at least 200 km/h (124 mph) running in service including 2,197 km (1,365 mi) of rail lines with top speeds of 350 km/h (217 mph).^{[dead link][52]} The MOR reportedly committed investment of ¥709.1 billion (US$107.9 billion) in railway construction in 2010 and would invest ¥700 billion (US$106 billion) in 2011 on 70 railway projects, including 15 high-speed rail projects. Some 4,715 kilometres (2,930 mi) of new high-speed railways would be opened, and by the end of 2011, China would have 13,073 kilometres (8,123 mi) of railways capable of carrying trains at speeds of at least 200 km/h (124 mph).^[53]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China#Early_planning

China is ahead of us on 5G - which will revolutionize communications, on electric vehicles and infrastructure, on transportation, on adoption of virtual currency, and on most other technological fronts.  We develop APPs and gizmos while they develop a 22nd century society. There are entire cities with 10 million people in China that do not use cash, check or credit/debit cards.  Every transaction is done on a phone!  People in the U.S. have absolutely no idea what has happened in China over the past 20 years. And they can't imagine what will happen in the next 20.

So, yes. This matters.  Unfortunately we already lost. We're locked into arguing about gender rights and the migration patterns of butterflies while they create a new reality. The only ways we are better than them, at least for the moment, are financial engineering to exploit markets and military technology. The cold war has come, it's more than half over... we lost.  We just don't know it yet like the Soviet Union lost the cold war in 1980 and didn't know it.

P.S.  Here's the really hilarious part of this.  China builds trains for the U.S. that go 55 mph. ROFL While they build trains for themselves that go 300 mph.  I know this because I drive next to the commercial train tracks in Texas.  Commercial trains go 55 mph. In China they transport people and things 6 times faster than we do. (But America is #1 and China is backwards.) Can you imagine working at that factory... "Why are we building such a crappy train? " "It's for America..." "OH!  Makes Sense.. you don't want to go too fast in your size 40 blue jeans."... oops I forget we in America can't imagine working at any factory.  We haven't had any factories of note for 20 years.  "But people in China are oppressed and can't vote."  Yep, oppressed by a good job in a industry that will last their lifetime in a rising economy with a more technological life than we have... But you're right, they can't vote for a choice between Creepy Uncle Joe Biden and Grab em by the P*&^! Donald Trump. They sure are missing out.

Here's a link to the current Chinese Rail... Map. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Rail_map_of_PRC.svg

Here is what living in China looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqkLWk_VEbI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gl1WnsAbJ0

This proves the point that it's our "system" that will make us lose this cold war. While China spent over $200 billion making a train system we spent about $800 million arguing about it because of politics and other issues.

https://qz.com/1761495/this-is-why-the-us-still-doesnt-have-high-speed-trains/

High speed trains is just one example of how the U.S. system is mired and incapable of modernization.

Edited December 31, 2019 by Anthony Okrongly
typo

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 12/27/2019 at 9:30 PM, remake it said:

Your communistic tendencies are noted with thanks but your logic may have suffered from what was helping you enjoy your Christmas pudding.

 

On 12/27/2019 at 11:51 PM, remake it said:

Semantically you failed to address "quality" and continued to subsume it into disposable income so what you may have missed is that the poor in society do not get to choose so when their average spend on every-day consumables has been reduced as a result of internationally lowered base costs then their ability to choose is enhanced and commensurately so to their quality of life.

I disagree that being able to buy more stuff makes one happy... atleast once you reach a certain level.