1 the president is a stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure

2 SCOAMF!

3 could soon start to come back

Now if we only had a business environment that wasn't openly hostile to making an honest profit. That could might transition to a will.

4 Obama is a hero and slayer of tyrants. The Dow is soaring, all is well.

5

If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country?

This is the "race to the bottom" dilemma. Hopefully, manufacturers would tire of the issues rushing around to save 30 cents an hour and simply return home. And, of course if China does teeter and wages start to slide, manufacturers could overlook a little counterfeiting here and there.

Here is where I diatribe on the minimum wage and how it slows the return of manufacturing. That is because I hate the workers and am a wrecker.

6
bollocks!

There is not one single indicator that points positive.

7 This post violates the Law of the Conservation of DOOM. Five yard penalty, repeat second down.

8 ...wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country?

Heh, yep.  It's not like that hasn't happened in the past.  If you are like me, once I find a shirt or pants maker for dress clothes that I like, I tend to buy from them over and over through the years.  Go and look at the location of the "Made in X" and see how it follows the rise of the cheap labor markets vs. the year bought.

9
How hard is 16-18% unemployment to understand?

No jobs = No money = No expansion in GDP

And this cycle feeds on itself.

10 if only birthrates were the determining factor...

11 Barack Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

And this kind of news could explain why everything still looks all doom-y but the stock market keeps going up.

12

"The gap in "productivity-adjusted wages" will narrow from 22pc of US levels in 2005 to 43pc (61pc for the US South) by 2015. Add in shipping costs, reliability woes, technology piracy, and the advantage shifts back to the US."

In other words, the Chinese workers are lazy, incompetent crooks. Now that they are also becoming greedy, they are almost as unpalatable as American union workers.  Hooray!

13 So instead of "Spending our way out of debt" as Obama has advocated, the new mantra is to "F*** our way out of debt"?


I'm in!

(and I mean that in every way that it can be applied!)

14

Draw a Venn diagram.  Label the first circle "Fertile Americans."  Label the second one "Productive Americans."

The two circles are still touching, but their commonality is quickly shrinking.

15

No depression or recession lasts forever; eventually there'll be some combination of events and circumstances that'll produce growth, by accident or design.

It may not pleasant, and it may take a hundred years, but it'll happen. 

Probably.

 

16 If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country?

Well, yes, but (don't look now) all things considered: that's us, after China.  Well, maybe ROK, but only maybe.

17 Assembly of hair-dryers... Ok, better than nothing.

18 I want what this dude is smoking.

19 Ambrose evens-Pritchard, what a fucktard. Same guy that claims OK city was an FBI plot. Jesus, who can't get a mention here.

20 spongeworthy, I donÂ’t think itÂ’s so much the 30 cents an hour, or even the $8 an hour, but the difference in how much non-core work businesses have to do in order to deal with the regulations involved in hiring domestically. Everything from complicated taxes, the complicated health takeover and all of the other mandates the government puts onto employers; to all of the lawsuits waiting to happen, are all liabilities that make overseas employees more desirable than they would otherwise be.

21 I don't think we're jumping into a huge recovery, but I do see some companies "re-onshoring". Some will jump to other countries, but I think they're beginning to realize that wages are shooting up faster each time in every country they off-shore too.

22
Remember when the experts predicted a fantastic 3rd, 4th qtrs in 2009?

And then predicted a booming 2010?

Our economy is shell-shocked. Every time it tries to correct itself, the government interferes and meddles and beats the shit out of it. Now it's in a coma.

23 "Rebound" .  Snow White.  Seven Dwarfs.  Hansel und Gretel

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

---What?  What ain't no country I ever heard of.  Do they speak English in What?--

24
if only birthrates were the determining factor...

Posted by: shoey at October 24, 2011 01:57 PM (m6OUa)

No kidding. If birthrates were the main determining factor then the Islamic world would be rolling in industrial manufacturing money rather than just figuring out the flush toilet.

25

If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country? It's not like China is the only country capable of producing widgets

not really, china backed up it's cheap labor with no regulations and unlimited cheap power. Most cheap labor countries don't have a big check book like China to fund building of new power plants or subsidise the cost. China also attracts a lot of manufacturing by demanding that companies buying rare earth metals manufacture in China. We have two new rare earth mines coming on line now. Shipping is also a problem in manufacturing overseas.

States with right to work laws and reasonable regulations will start attracting manufacturing back here. The feds could help by lowering corporate income tax.

26 Oh so companies don't like the fact the the Chicoms don't respect intellectual property and copyrights? Gee shock. And yeah lets drill baby drill Oh and I upgraded to Lion on my Mac and been having some problems..anyone else?

27 increasing energy production through frakking

Oh, I'm all up for frakking our way to energy independence. It'll help with that low birth rate, too.

From DOOM to BOOM.

28
Nice to think we're not doomed. 

On the other hand, nope.  Too much debt.  Far too much stupidity.

29
♪ Don't stop thinking about tomorrow

30 could soon start to come back,
The gap... will narrow...  by 2015.
Boston Consulting expects... mid-decade


lots of could soons and maybes in there.

31 The 'news' is getting more and more surreal; hence any commentary about 'news' becomes more and more surreal.  Vicious cycle

It's not just the economy which has fallen, and can't get up;  reality, also

32 Jesus, who can't get a mention here.

Yea, I meant to talk to Ace about that.

33 32, LOL

34 I can see some high tech coming back, esp. communications devices if industry picks up on the controlled cradel to grave firmware requirements that government is moving towards.  But hair dryers - they will move down the chain to indonesia or africa.

35 Craziest of all, he notes that America is the only Western economy with a fertility rate above replacement level, and so could, conceivably, grow its way out of debt.

That's if we could conceivably get rid of the deficit. So let me get this straight, we have a deficit driven mostly by entitlements to individuals, and, genius boy here thinks having more individuals solves the problem? Hey I'm not a mathematician but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. If your problem is giving money to people, doesn't having more people make that worse, not better? Ok I know that growth at a certain rate makes it so there are more youngsters than oldsters who actually get federal entitlements so it does help some. What growth rate would we have to have to make SS/MC break even? Is there any hope of achieving that growth rate short of banning contraceptives, abortion, and making Tuesdays official "Bang a Stranger Day"?

Reasonably accepting that our debt problem can only be solved by restructuring entitlements, what objective, F* I'll even accept subjective, evidence can you provide to suggest some politician might actually be able to accomplish this before our debt destroys our currency?

I WANT TO BELIEVE! Help me out!

36
Well?

37 If the Republicans win in 2012, repeal all the regulations the Dems have forced on this country, get spending under control, repeal Obamacare, and a few other things I can't bring to mind at this very moment, then yes, America will take off.

Is that what the guy had in mind? Probably not.

38
So does this means the stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure will take the credit and be re-elected?

39
hahahahaha @ your puny hopes for recovery

I am the Juggernaut, bitttttchhhhhhhh!

40
Dude with a hyphenated name turns out to be a fuckstick retard.....how surprising.

41 I agree with him. In Obama's attempt to destroy America, he sabotaged the oil and coal industries. If the next president took away the worst regulations crippling our energy sector, jobs and the economy would take off like wildfire.

42

The long term demographic problems and decay in innovation are universal, but its true that the US might come out comparatively pretty good if we play our cards right.

Meaning no SCOAMF.

43
Recovery?

hahahahahaha!

44

To go to another cheap labor country you have to have stability and security.  China could offer that.  I don't think there are many other places that can do the same.  I can't think of any place in Africa or any Islamic country that would qualify. on that last point.  Cheap labor?  Heck yeah.  Stable and secure? Heck no.

45 "Made in America, Again" - a report this month by Boston Consulting Group - said Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap. China is no longer the "default location" for cheap plants supplying the US.

This is a strawman argument. Business leaders have been saying for decades that "wages" have not been the driving force for pushing industry out of the country. The high cost of regulations is what is killing buisness.

But even at that, if you go back and look at total manufacturing before the great collapse in 2008 the US was beating the crap out of China. It wasn't even close.

46 Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade

that like 6 months worth of jobs in... 5 yrs?

47 If by "about to" he means "starting in January 2013", I'll buy it.

48 Is that what the guy had in mind? Probably not.

Possibly. He was a big critic of Clinton and has written books for Regnery. An opponent of the EU mega-state, too.

49 In some regards, he is correct -- there is substantial opportunity and resources here in the US. If we shipped our entire political class off to the moon, it's a sure thing that people would apply themselves to improving their lot and the nation would prosper.

Unfortunately, this political class is in the position of a parasite that is killing its host. There's no way to "grow our way out of the problem" so long as it continues to prey.

50
I will be fully implemented in 2013.

I will kill 1/6 of your economy, puny humans.

51 come out comparatively pretty good if we play our cards right. Meaning no SCOAMF. Posted by: Emperor of Icecream at October 24, 2011 02:06 PM (epBek) If Europe implodes and the China bubble pops, we only need to compete with India and Brazil.

52 "The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. " Didn't we see this movie? GodFather 3?

53 Not to belabor the point (while all this theoretical talk of rebound is nice and all), I think it's really just a distraction from the fact that Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

54

Craziest of all, he notes that America is the only Western economy with a fertility rate above replacement level, and so could, conceivably, grow its way out of debt.

He must be working off some old figures. ....They were talking about the birth rate here, last week on FoxBusiness....and how the US birth rate has gone down since the downturn in jobs and the suckage of the economy.

 

55 But even at that, if you go back and look at total manufacturing before the great collapse in 2008 the US was beating the crap out of China. It wasn't even close.

That was before "Energy Prices Will Necessarily Skyrocket" SCOAMF.
I've put this out many times before. The reason US manufacturing is largely tolerant of US wages is because of US efficiency, e.g. automation. This makes a lot of labor in the US done by machines. Machines want energy. Energy goes up, our cheap labor (robots) prices go up.

56 'Hansel' is the kiddie name for Hans, btw.  Like 'Johnny' for John

and yes, until clusterFuck gets out of office, we're doomed.

57

I sure as hell hope a rebound is in the works.  But it won't take off until the regulatory burden is lifted, and Obama's war on Cheap Energy ended.

America WILL rebound.  When Obama is gone.

 

58 High birth rates=progress.
This is why India is the techno-utopia it is.
It's also why Afghanistan and Haiti produce so many more inventions per capita than non-fertile backwards country like Japan.

Oh wait. Never mind.

59 40 Dude with a hyphenated name turns out to be a fuckstick retard.....how surprising. Posted by: IllTemperedCur at October 24, 2011 02:05 You know I was going to go that route but you never know who has an hyphenated name. But yeah, it's a give-a-way.

60
Of course we are on the precipice of a boom!

Why, all we need to do is raid more companies such as Gibson Guitars.

And punish the job creators.

And make more "good bets" on companies such as Solyndra.

And hire more teachers!

61 ^India
China
VietNam

62
_{He must be working off some old figures. ....They were talking about the birth rate here, last week on FoxBusiness....and how the US birth rate has gone down since the downturn in jobs and the suckage of the economy.}


Que?

63 This is why India is the techno-utopia it is. Posted by: Clubber Lang at October 24, 2011 02:10 PM (QcFbt) Due to low regulation, it is becoming that, rapidly. Ironically its birthrate is shrinking too. We wasted all our time kissing up to the ChiComs. Should've partnered with the Indians if anyone.

64
Seems Mr. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has something in common with Newsweek.

65

If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country?

The problem is finding a country with a large supply of HIGH-IQ low-wage labor.

In the 1960s & 1970s, that was Japan.

In the 1970s & 1980s, that was South Korea & Taiwan.

In the 1990s & 2000s, that was Mainland China.

About the only remaining country with a known supply of [very] HIGH-IQ  and [extremely] low-wage workers would be North Korea.

Everywhere else has been "discovered".

[BTW, the other thing that's about to be "discovered" is just how precious HIGH-IQ workers really are, especially when they stop making babies and their fertility rates drop to extinction levels...]

 

66

"It's not like China is the only country capable of producing widgets."

They make a shit load of computing stuff.

We educate a whole lot of Chinese here in our Universities.

 

67 Machines want energy. Energy goes up, our cheap labor (robots) prices go up.

Don't you know Skynet is listening? If it knows energy is getting expensive? ROBOT UPRISING?

68 40 Dude with a hyphenated name turns out to be a fuckstick retard.....how surprising. Posted by: IllTemperedCur at October 24, 2011 02:05 I STRONGLY resemble that remark and will be sending you a letter of remonstrance FORTHWITH.

69 I bet this guy is the same guy that coined Sheriff Joe's phrase for him - Recovery Summer.

70

 Cheap labor? Heck yeah. Stable and secure? Heck no.

Posted by: Mikey NTH at October 24, 2011 02:06 PM (hLRSq)

 

This.  The world has an abudance of cheap labor, but a shortage of clean water, good roads, political stability, law and order, etc.  Plus, the cost of migrating production facilities around is not zero, especially when you consider the bribes involved.  Then there's the damage to your equipment when it is shipped, requalification of the process once it's in the new place, finding people in the West who are willing to go to these hell holes, etc.

The costs of doing business in China have been underestimated for a long time.  Losing the New China is a book by an American business expat who worked in China for quite a while and saw what goes on.  Any round eyed barbarians who have pull with the home office are quickly co-opted into making the Chinese enterprise look good, via access to dope, chicks, and general sleeze and easy living.  (I wish I could get a gig like that!)  You can't trust the numbers coming from the Chinese branch office.

71

And China has been outsourcing to Vietnam for quite awhile. We may be able to employ some Mexicans yet, and give them a reason to stay at home, if we could just figure out a way to topple their corrupt narco-government without creating a Communist monster to our South. On the other hand, is there really any reason to anticipate that the greatest technological country, us, would not use technology, and I mean principally robotics, to fill vast portions of this manufacturing up-tick. Why would we continue to use inefficient, unionized, call-in-sick workers when we can get a much greater return on investment from smarter, easily trained, healthcare-free machines. Ooops! Guess what China will do to lower it's costs of labor. Yeah, I'm with you .... Doom!

72 69 I bet this guy is the same guy that coined Sheriff Joe's phrase for him - Recovery Summer.

Yea, I wanted to go with, "Why Do Ice Cubes Melt in July?"

73

what does swearing in the future have to do with energy production?

74 If not for AIDS, Botswana would be the wealthiest nation PER CAPITA south of Switzerland, east of the US and West of Bahrain. Shit comes up.

75
Guess what China will do to lower it's costs of labor.

Yeah, really. This buffoon talks as if China doesn't have complete control over it's labor force.

76 73 what does swearing in the future have to do with energy production? Posted by: Ben at October 24, 2011 02:15 PM (wuv1c) It's what happens if you drop a solar panel on your foot.

77 "Within 5 years or so", that timeframe makes me leery. Close enough to get your interest but far enough away to avoid blame if it doesn't happen.

78 He's just an Obama voter that's looking to turn the tables back to the positive to mien fuhrer..

79

>>If Europe implodes and the China bubble pops, we only need to compete with India and Brazil.

 

How does one compete with Brazil? They DQ themselves every couple of years.

 

80

They were talking about the birth rate here, last week on FoxBusiness....and how the US birth rate has gone down since the downturn in jobs and the suckage of the economy.

You have to include Black & Mexican Indian fertility rates to account for the [sub-replacement-level] White fertility rate.

Without Blacks & Mexican Indians, you have Blue State White DEMs with European-style fertility rates [sub-1.50] and Red State White GOPers just struggling to stay near replacement level [> 2.00].

 

 

 

 

81 What pray tell does the phrase "manufacturing jobs" mean?

82

Lest we forget.  Companies in the USA have been hoarding a shit-load of cash and capital since the SCOAMF and the dems came to power.  There's a lot of money just waiting to be re-invested into businesses.

83 Don't you know Skynet is listening? If it knows energy is getting expensive? ROBOT UPRISING?

Posted by: The Robot Devil at October 24, 2011 02:13 PM (136wp)

No machine oil, no peace!

84 Fortunately, This will help Romney the most.

85
Skynet is my bitch.

86

>>>Lest we forget. Companies in the USA have been hoarding a shit-load of cash and capital since the SCOAMF and the dems came to power. There's a lot of money just waiting to be re-invested into businesses.

A lot of that money is overseas and would like to come how if not for the repatriation taxes.

87 i do a lot of business with China and it is getting increasingly more difficult to deal with them.  prices are higher, and their need to increase wages to reduce conflict with the people and their desire for more environmentally friendly manufacturing will lead to more business moving back here.  Just a question of how much.

88 How does one compete with Brazil?

By not looking at their cheerleaders.

LOOK AWAY!!!!!

89 "So let me get this straight, we have a deficit driven mostly by entitlements to individuals, and, genius boy here thinks having more individuals solves the problem?" It does if you're planning on fucking the next generation.

90
I almost forgot!

Obama decreed the job-market to improve. So, yeah, good times are ahead.

This right here is sound economic policy:

"It is time for companies to step up [and hire]."

-President Nifty Slogan
May 2011

91 We are going to need three-a-day Doom!s to offset this.

92 I don't believe him. I side with Monty and DOOM.

I'm a bit in the middle.  I  think there is a very slim possibility of recovery - the absolutely critical first step is getting rid of Darth Zero - but that will not be enough, and I fear Romney will fall short. 

Nothing less than full embracing of conservatism (economic and social) will save the Republic (what is left of it).  With that kind of freedom, we can find a way out.  But the least little bit of "social engineering" will lead to the inevitable ascendency of the Dark Side.  Re-election of Obama will hasten the end, but only a return to full economic and social freedom will prevent it.

93 By not looking at their cheerleaders.

LOOK AWAY!!!!!

Posted by: EC at October 24, 2011 02:21 PM (GQ8sn)

Too late!

94 Meanwhile....

69% of Americans says the US is in a permanent state of decline

*serious down twinkles*

95 One of the Ten Million Great Ironies of the modern world is that the left bitches *endlessly* about how Western Imperial Powers are raising the standard of living in third world countries, like the dastardly dastards we are. Wait, what? Seriously, are they saying people's lives, in the aggregate, are worse in India and China now that we've invested hundreds of billions or more and their wages and standards of living have risen? What are we supposed to do to satisfy the rabid left, other than cease existing?

96 Ben,

They have DQ in Brazil?  I did not know Dairy Queen was popular there.  Ya learn something new everyday.

97 What are we supposed to do to satisfy the rabid left, other than cease existing? Posted by: Merovign, Dark Lord of The 1% at October 24, 2011 02:24 PM (bxiXv) That is the whole point for them, I thought.

98 dude's name is Ambrose and he uses a hyphen.  Thats all I needed to see.

99 But the least little bit of "social engineering" will lead to the inevitable ascendency of the Dark Side. Posted by: Roger at October 24, 2011 02:23 PM (tAwhy) Hey.

100 The stock market will really soar the more Obama looks like a one-term-wonder, and the more peope get a belly-full of his OWS "base".

101 96 Ben, They have DQ in Brazil? I did not know Dairy Queen was popular there. Ya learn something new everyday. Posted by: mpfs at October 24, 2011 02:25 PM (iYbLN) There's probably a joke about big butts to be made here but I'm too tired to think of it.

102 But, but, there will be a United States of Europe!  Don't let your hearts be troubled, all is well!  *sarc*

New euro 'empire' plot by Brussels

103 I've read in the tech media that many smaller companies are moving back to the US because the costs are rising, and if you're not a mega company like Intel or Apple that can guarantee volume and dictate terms, they'll shunt you to their second rate manufacturers who can't handle the volume, screw with the quality control, and steal the intellectual property (like via the "gray shifts"). So when the "hassel" factor is weighed in, China becomes too expensive. 
I'd like to know where this guy thinks we'll get energy independence given our current administration. I guess he figures Barry's 1 termer and the next Prez won't be so drill phobic.

104 Good points about IQ.

China isn't a manufacturing power-house because it has cheap peasant labor. It's because the cheap peasant labor has universal literacy and an average IQ north of 100.

And yeah, North Korea has the most underachieving population on the planet. Getting rid of the Kim family would do more to help the planet than getting rid of, say, Mugabe.

India, on the other hand, has an average IQ lower than Mexico. Widespread malnutrition accounts for some of that. But that can't be fixed overnight. Once you malnourish a child the lower IQ is permanent. Eating well as a teen-ager or adult can't make up those lost IQ points.

105 dude's name is Ambrose and he uses a hyphen.  Thats all I needed to see.

Posted by: California Red at October 24, 2011 02:26 PM (7uWb

What's that supposed to mean?!?

106 I read this and think of the penguin in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Remember the sound it made? It sounded like: "SCOAMF! SCOAMF! SCOAMF!"

107 There's probably a joke about big butts to be made here but I'm too tired to think of it.

Posted by: joncelli Doommonger-Frakstick III at October 24, 2011 02:27 PM (RD7QR)

I'm a fan of the ass.  I'm an ass man.......go on.

108 quality control... china haz not...  especially in terms of metalurgy...

109 About the only remaining country with a known supply of [very] HIGH-IQ and [extremely] low-wage workers would be North Korea.
And they'll work for grass clippings. Hmm. We can start a product called Soylent Green® to pay them.

110

Sure is a glass half full kinda guy.

 

111 "If the Republicans win in 2012, repeal all the regulations the Dems have forced on this country, get spending under control, repeal Obamacare, and a few other things..."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!1!

Listen, I'm not going to do anything crazy like that when I become President. For one thing, we have a serious healthcare problem in this country. I started to fix it with RomneyCare, and I intend to do everything in my power to give ObamaCare the necessary tweaks to make it the best provider of healthcare in the universe!

112 Tell 'em, Mitt!

*swallow*

113

I work for a large corporation in supply chain logistics and we have been bringing back our "china" business for the last couple of years. Poor quality and ever increasing costs are slowly forcing business back home.

114 I like this guy's thinking.  But the time frame, 2015(?), may be just a bit optimistic. I'd say give it a 4 year term.

115
re: the topless tarts

OWSAttentionWhore

116
OccupyMyAbsenteeFather'sConscience

117
OccupyDaddyDoesn'tLoveMe

118
OccupyLookAtMe!LookAtMe!

119
I have boobies!

I am raising awareness for important causes that I cannot explain!

120

I work for a large corporation in supply chain logistics and we have been bringing back our "china" business for the last couple of years. Poor quality and ever increasing costs are slowly forcing business back home.

Posted by: Hey You! at October 24, 2011 02:41 PM (XGLac)

 

I believe it.  You should see the Chinese-built molding tooling that our customers transfer into our shop.  It's a disgrace.  They can't even drill and tap bolt holes that are perpendicular to the surface.  The steel is crap, the functionality is primitive, and the craftmanship is something you'd expect from an American 1st-year shop student.

121

Manufacturing could well come back; the thought we could grow our way out of our debt is laughable, especially after all the budget debates and debt ceiligng debates this year leave us with a higher deficit than before.

We need real pain before we'll change.

122 If you are looking for a fix of demographic pessimism, Spengler has some for you - he has a new book out called "How Civilizations Die".  But even he says that the USA fertility rate of +2/woman is a Good Thing and puts us in a Good Place compared to, say, Europe and the Muslim countries.

123 ""I work for a large corporation in supply chain logistics and we have been bringing back our "china" business for the last couple of years. Poor quality and ever increasing costs are slowly forcing business back home.""


My wife works logistics for a major corporation. She told me a few years back that the whole outsourcing thing was a fad and will eventually reverse itself because of the reasons you listed. She also mentioned china are bootlegging cocksuckers, and you have to expect that for every one they make for you they'll make one for the black market.

124

She also mentioned china are bootlegging cocksuckers......

Once during a plant visit we caught the cocksuckers stealing parts off the assembly lines and stuffing them into thier pockets. Their answer when confronted " We need them so we can give you quotes at a lower price". We won't let the assholes out of the conference room when they visit now.

125 The US white fertility rate is barely above European levels. We seem to be resting our hopes on the idea that the high-school dropout 2nd-generation Mexicans are gonna save our bacon.

Maybe. I think in the future we are going to have a lower-IQ, less productive population. Which means we will be poorer.

Wealth comes from productivity. Productivity comes from IQ.

Occasionally you get a natural resource windfall. But many African nations have shown that if your population IQ is low, that windfall won't help all that much. It's really hard to operate a modern society if the average IQ is 80.

High IQ countries can impoverish themselves with bad governments -- ie North Korea. But low IQ countries have few options for generating wealth and prosperity.

126 Sure, birthrates may be up, but when they're all offspring of Clevon and Clevon Jr, it doesn't help much economy-wise.

127 The new hotness! Un-Doom!!!

128 US avg IQ is heading from the high 90s to the mid to low 90s. Remember, our Mexican immigrants tend to come from the lower IQ segments of Mexican society. The Spaniards who run things in Mexico City aren't sneaking in to pick apples.

Mexico has been exporting their racial problem to America.

On the plus side our India immigrants are pulled from the high IQ strata of India. But that will revert to the mean as they use chain migration to help their idiot cousins to come here. Chinese migrants seem to be pretty avg Chinese, maybe slightly above. We get Chinese engineering students, but we also get the cousins of the Chinese waiter and laundromat lady. Still, average Chinese is better than most.

And immigration from Africa is up sharply. And the pickings there are just grim.

We need to move to a skills based immigrations system like Australia uses. The problem is the Left will attack this as racist since it will disproportionately exclude black Africans. Meanwhile we'll keep importing more semi-retarded, illiterate, gang-raping Somalis.

129

I sell DC rotating automotive parts (starters and alternators) Were a pretty big operation...I return up to 2skids a month of Chinese automtive product. We NEVER sell Chinese made units for Heavy Duty applications; only new OEM mfg(which is still done overseas and in Mexico with tight mfg controls or our own rebuilt product in which we can closely QC. 

 

130 One more thing about their "manufacturing" to the Morons - NEVER buy cheap Chinese rotors for your brakes. Never.

131 What about the plethora of other third-world hellholes where semislave labor is willing to work for next to nothing?

132 Like your mom, Greg?

133 "Craziest of all, he notes that America is the only Western economy with a fertility rate above replacement level, and so could, conceivably, grow its way out of debt."

Hmm. I look at my kids and think we'll be lucky if we get one grandchild out of either of them.

134

#132.

Are those places stable and secure, such that a multi million dollar facility can be opened and won't be looted and burned to the ground by the natives?  If that can't be provided business is not going to go very far in those places.

135

I want to believe this, I really, really do. I even linked it over at my little slice of Intewebs Heaven this morning.

Our recovery begins when the stuttering clusterfuck of a miserable failure and his band of Merry Marxists are removed from office, hopefully in November of 2012, if not before.

Hope springs eternal...

136   Of course the country will take off again if we elect a conservative who will de-regulate as appropriate, plus all the other items talked about.

 Question being, do we have such a qualified individual in the current crop of nominees?

137 We can talk about "deregulation" but no President has ever succeeded in that. Not even Saint Reagan was able to accomplish the promised killing of Carter's Dept of Education.

Even Perry will have a tough row to hoe with all the damn RINOs we have in the Senate and the fact that we will not have a 65 vote margin.

138 Obama is a stuttering clusterf*ck of a miserable failure.

139 @14

I don't think there's any overlap at all.  My wife's sammich productivity was way down when she was pregnant. 

140 The hispanic immigrant birthrate boosts America's birthrate level to positive growth. Among whites, the numbers are not so rosey, and the birth rate among blacks has fallen over the last decade. Speaking of Doom, Derb's book "We are Doomed" is really worth reading.

141 Wait.. There's more..

Behold, the Affordable Refinance Program

I've been on the Planet long enough to know, when a plan is prefaced with the word "Affordable" hang on to your wallet.

142

This Guy Right Here Says, "Romney still sux."

143 Don't get confused by the difference in manufacturing activity and manufacturing jobs.

The US has manufactured around 20% of the worlds goods for the past 50 or more years. We still do.

We do it with a lot less labor. We use machines, not unskilled labor.

And that is a good thing. I wonder how many of the commenters here have spent much time in a manufacturing plant? Some, I am sure but probably a minority.

If you had spent time in a manufacturing plant you would realize that most of the jobs going offshore are low or unskilled jobs. Most of them don't pay a whole lot more than minimum wage.

A lot of them are not as good a job as working in a McDonalds or a GAP.

John Henry

144 Thanks for sharing, please keep an update about this info. love to read it more. i like this site too much.

145 "If Chinese labor became too expensive, wouldn't out-sourcers turn to the newest cheap-labor country? It's not like China is the only country capable of producing widgets." Here's the thing about China...it had access to Hong Kong and Taiwan's industrial experience along with its own industrial base. This means that in China there were tons of factories waiting for your OEM orders that knew what they were doing. Most Chinese exports come from these kinds of factories and not those set up by foreign companies (those usually serve the domestic market.) You just don't get the breadth of suppliers in Vietnam - they have a much smaller population, many Chinese don't speak the language so are less willing to invest there, they don't have access to all manner of parts, and their infrastructure really sucks. Hell, almost all of the furniture factories there just do bedroom furniture because China had anti-dumping duties on theirs. Now consider Bangladesh. Sure some Chinese or Taiwanese might invest there, but not very many, and even less Westerners. India is an insane place to run a business, but it does have the population, so maybe it could take over the export model, but I am doubtful somehow.

146 I have been quite impressive with your posts, keep up the great work.

147 "how much non-core work businesses have to do in order to deal with the regulations involved in hiring domestically" Bingo. I will note that if you invested yourself in a Chinese factory, you would have some of those headaches as well. In fact, all of their super strict laws are applied enthusiastically to foreign invested firms, while local firms are often allowed to slide or just shut down when caught. This is why Apple does not open factories in China but out sources instead. It also points to some ways to create growth for free - deregulation or maybe a better term would be regulation reform and simplification. Unfortunately the Libs mantra is that if you touch a single line of regulatory code or don't pass 2,000 page bills, you are planning to chain kids to the looms.

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150 Right now, the Obama regime--with its socialistic, tax-and-spend, anti-growth, class warfare agenda--is sitting on the shoulders of this economy like a rucksack full of Olympic barbell plates.  On the day after Obama is defeated, and a Republican majority elected in the Senate, that weight will be lifted, and the economy will take off like a rocket.  Just you watch.

151 I worked in a factory in my late teens just long enough to find out I was extremely ill-suited to such work. ADD runs very strong down my mother's side and I got it in spades. Doing the same operations over and over all day is trouble waiting to happen with me.

This was a Burroughs plant, back when there was such things, installing wiring harnesses on refrigerator sized hard drive cabinets. (I have more storage capacity on my keychain these days.) I have no lack of respect for the people who were getting this work done but I could never be one of them, even if it was the best paying gig in town.

Yet I am by some measures a high IQ type. (Usually around 145.) With some serious self-sabotage defects but I'm not completely useless. But the idea that a strong manufacturing sector requires a high average IQ population is silly. Only a small subset of factory personnel need the cognitive wattage associated with creating new products. Part of what the manufacturing engineers do is create processes that minimize the number of high IQ personnel on the production line. You need the line workers to be competent but not bored out of their minds.

The high IQ aspect of China isn't about the manufacturing side. It's about shifting the engineering department over there, too. Like at the box for the Apple iPad. It proudly announces that this widget was 'Designed in California.' Not engineered. Not made. Just designed. Which calls for a very small number of exceedingly smart people in Cupertino and a legion of lesser minds over in a Foxconn plant in China.

152 When this guy talks about the fertility rate, he means that in a generation, China is going to have a big, big problem with the amount of workers to retirees, much bigger than ours just because of the larger number of people involved. Whereas by then we will have presumedly (the weakest part of his blog post) gotten our house in order and repeated the Reagan boom, or something. And also Europe will be weak (duh) so the only big game in town will still be America thanks to the weaknesses of everyone else catching up to them at the same time general time the advantages we do have should be kicking in.