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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ksbird/foxranch" data-source="post: 1546481" data-attributes="member: 37413">It is interesting that most of the posts here ignore the really obvious conclusion to this series of "production steps". First you have a USA or UK based company like Heiland or Honeywell assisting a non-USA manufacturer like Pentax, to find out what the USA markets need. Then eventually Pentax dumps the Honeywells (insert Zen, Promaster, Hawke etc) and sets up its own distributorship in the USA and its only competition after that is other non-USA makers. Along the way, the assistance of the Japanese government who helped Fuji, Yashica and others to survive the hard times and do research on behalf of the Japanese makers (which would be much too expensive for each individual company alone), allows them all to compete as Japan Inc against Kodak, Wollensak, 3M etc. Eventually it becomes too expensive for individual USA companies to try to compete making products against Japan Inc, China Inc etc. Even Germany is willing to assist its manufacturers by requiring that the German military buy its binoculars from a German maker, while the USA buys its binoculars from Fuji.When governments support a manufacturing base, the products become more expensive for "home country" consumers and cheaper in other countries. When times are bad, these governments step in to prop them up (like we just did with USA banks, although this may also have been for world economic stability). Capitalist companies in the USA or perhaps England have only bankruptcy regulations available to force down wages. Chinese manufacturers can get their own government to maintain peace while wages go down and the cost of living goes up (look at how one of the previous Chinese examples of superiority has dissolved - 10 years ago there were only 2 classes of health care, the Communist Party members and everyone else. Now this has fragmented and many, many people in China get no health care at all. So we have the Chinese government/military protecting capitalist exploitation of their own masses, so a few benefit while many lives are destroyed.). As much as trade unions can get out of control (ex: USA and UK), they do serve the middle and lower classes allot and the upper classes not at all, SO you won't be seeing them in China ... ever. This also keeps costs low for countries like China.All the teachers who went to China to give them the know-how to undersell non-Chinese companies will have played a part in destroying those non-Chinese countries, in return for getting cheaper products in the short run. But the situation always turns around. Once the countries that transferred their technology out, can no longer compete making those same products, the Japanese/Chinese etc. companies no longer need to charge low prices. They were just charging loss prices to put their non-Chinese/Japanese competitors out of business anyway. Once that part of the business plan is completed, they move to the next step, which is to maximize profits at the expense of these non-Chinese/Japanese countries, thereby piling up even bigger foreign exchange reserves.In the 80s there were many economists who were aghast that the Japanese companies like Sony, were able to buy up large chunks of real estate in the USA with many major locations being bought out. The Chinese approach may be even more surprising. Why buy Rockefeller Center, why not have 500,000 small Chinese businesses buy out 500,000 USA homes in a slow real estate market? The USA government might hail this as a way to "stabilize the housing market in the USA". But sadly it would really mean that with the jobs being China, and the foreign exchange reserves being in China, and the newest and latest production equipment and plants being in China, the Chinese would set up their own product distributorships (without all that capitalist in-fighting, by just having the Chinese government hand out the favors of who gets what themselves). That would effectively make the USA a colony of China, unable to ever get the momentum to restart their own manufacturing base, and doomed to have wages lowered (with the standard of living) to the lowest common denominator in China, or in lesser markets China exploits now (like Sudan).I know for a fact that many Chinese companies sell $20 cost items for $5 now, with the government subsidizing their losses to keep up employment and put more steam into the economy as a whole. The Chinese government actually owns most of the major Chinese oil and cigarette companies for example, giving them huge internal profits as well as huge US$ and Euro reserves. Eventually in the USA it will (hopefully) be like Japan (which has decided to throw its lot in with China for many reasons). Graduate engineers in the USA of the future will feel lucky to get assembly line jobs making Hondas or Sony TVs or products being made in Chinese owned factories. Being a front-line capitalist country the USA will allow open competition by Chinese subsidized companies, or at least whatever version of that the Chinese can get away with in the WTA. The human rights of Chinese workers (or any workers) will be of no consequence. Chinese pollution of the world's water and air will matter not. Remember China is #2 in greenhouse gas production, so when all the interesting birds migrate to the north and south polar regions due to climate change, it will be very difficult for any of us to see them.</blockquote>

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