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On Reddit, somebody named eivarXlithuania has posted his map of “U.S. metropolitan areas by GDP (2022).” The size of the circles equal the number of jobs in each metropolitan statistical area (e.g., Los Angeles includes Orange County but not Ventura, Riverside or San Bernardino counties).
The color equals the per capita GDP per worker. In general, the bigger the metro area, the higher the GDP per capita.
So the richest larger metro areas per capita appear to be (judging by color of their dot):
1. San Jose
1. San Francisco
3. Seattle
4. New York
5. Boston
6. D.C.
The richest per capita mid to smallish metros are in the oil-rich Permian Basin near the Texas-New Mexico border, such as Midland TX, maybe some tiny dots in North Dakota’s oil fields, a few tiny blue fracking dots near the West Virginia-Pennsylvania-Ohio border, Napa, Princeton or maybe Bucks County, Boulder, and a couple of old money places in Connecticut.
You can explode the map to a huge scale and look at a lot of tiny MSAs, few of which are quite wealthy but tend to be microscopically small.
No doubt some wealthy small MSAs in between huge metro areas are covered up by big dots. Princeton, NJ, for instance, appears covered by the NYC and Philadelphia disks.
English
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Hebrew
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Princeton is that smaller green disk between New York and Philadelphia. For whatever reason, the OMB considers Mercer County (home of Princeton and Trenton) to be its own metro area separate from New York and Philadelphia. However, when forming the larger 175 Combined Statistical Areas, Mercer County is part of New York City’s, just like Los Angeles’ includes Ventura, Riverside or San Bernardino.
Nielsen, which computes television ratings, includes Mercer as part of Philadelphia, not New York.
As for Bucks County, it is not on the map, as it is part of Philadelphia’s MSA on the map along with Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.
The parts of the US with the most Asians and Jews (as a percentage of the total population) are also mostly the richest. What a shock!
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=Share%20of%20value%20added%20to%20the%20gross%20domestic%20product%20of%20the%20United%20States%20in%201990%2C%20by%20industry&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2FPreview_Images%2Fmanufacturing_USGDP.gif&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2Fontarget%2F18-03-21-1.php%3Fcid%3D13920&docid=H6VxNX9jjkaetM&tbnid=DRUX8JF55oZsGM&vet=12ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA..i&w=750&h=410&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA
Most of the wealth is being created today by bit twiddling and not by producing physical goods (except agriculture and energy) as in the 1960's.Replies: @Prester John
To be clear, “old money” isn’t why the Hartford metro is green, at least not directly. That would take a lot of old money, and it would also have to be reflected in the area’s GDP which is not a given (Martha’s Vineyard has a red dot.)
Hartford is green for the same self-perpetuating reason as most other above-average metros: good jobs (famously insurance) -> high human capital -> high cost of living maintaining a population shifted to higher earners -> good jobs bc of high human capital -> and so on.
In comparison, Raleigh NC from 57,615 to 119,675; Jacksonville, FL from 61, 519 to 119,762 during the same period.
Seattle, WA also has 10 years of fast growth, from 267,472 to 517,803. But the question is whether it can keep up the growth rate with Boeing currently getting in deeper trouble.
(Wikepedia has combined the 2022 GDP map with some older data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP)
It seems just to be the places with the biggest companies (except for DC, which is because of politics). Certainly not the best places to live in the fast fading USA.
This map could definitely benefit from more clearly delineated state boundaries, especially since it’s not even by county but by CSA/MSA. Perhaps the original map is better and more interactive.
There’s some discussion on the Reddit thread about how large the economies of LA, the Bay Area, etc. are relative to entire countries but, as always, it’s important to keep in mind that those cities prosper in large part because they are economic centers of the greater US, with a common labor pool that attracts industry and talent from all across the US (and the world). Facebook is based in CA, but Mark Zuckerberg grew up in New Jersey. Larry Page grew up in Michigan, Sergey Brin in Russia & Maryland, John Warnock (Adobe) in Utah, David Packard in Colorado, etc., etc. If California were still part of Mexico – or its own country – it wouldn’t magically still be as rich (though I’m sure it would do well). The center of the US tech and entertainment industries would simply be somewhere else.
Dominant economic centers can often have a negative effect on surrounding areas. Facebook actually started in Cambridge, MA (no slouch on its own) but quickly moved to Silicon Valley. The almost inevitable consolidation of industry often (usually? always?) ends up with the headquarters of the consolidated company in a larger city. New York-based Macy’s has gobbled up many smaller department store chains all across the US. Boeing was started in Seattle, and McDonnell-Douglas was based in St Louis. Their consolidated headquarters eventually wound up in Chicago (larger than either of those cities), and is now in the D.C. metro area (now larger than Chicago). Our nation’s capital now seems increasingly efficient at siphoning resources from the rest of the country for its own benefit.
Speaking of St. Louis, I noticed during the whole Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney fiasco that many Anheuser-Busch execs appear to now be based in New York, not St. Louis, at an office they built not long after the Ferguson riots initiated by
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Why really? Because the new boss didn't want to leave the London housing market or perhaps the job market. ICI, the UK's biggest industrial firm (now gone) for 70 years at the time was enjoying embarassingly large profits and no one more senior cared. I have yet to see a rational location decision but that was the worst.
While it doesn't change your thesis, a major reason Silicon Valley became a thing, and I think the reason it "defeated" all would be US competitors, is because by long standing public policy non-competes are unenforceable, which I assume also had some good effects in LA. See Zuckerberg refusing to sign on to Steve Jobs' big company no poaching scheme, as a newer company he needed talent more than the ones that agreed.
That should have been harshly punished by the authorities, instead of a not much more than a slap on the wrist of a $145 million class action lawsuit settlement spread across Apple. Google, Intel, and Adobe. Damn, Jobs' threatened Palm with a patent lawsuit WRT to poaching, was rebuffed.
This bears on the issue of these concentrations, because the authorities allow the entities inside them to grow pretty much no matter how much they break the law. No doubt in part because the most recent generation of web tech giants have been suborned by the Deep State, and that's perforce tolerated by these companies because of the stark object lesson when the Deep State threw into Federal prison Joseph Nacchio because he wouldn't spy on Qwest's users (they bought Baby Bell/RBOC US West, were later bought by CenturyLink). I'll add governments often prefer big companies because that reduces the number of throats to choke to achieve some policy goal, gain money, etc.
Dayton-Hudson did something similar, buying Marshall Fields and taking their name. Across town around the same time, little-known Norwest bought Wells Fargo, and took their name-- and moved into their HQ in San Francisco. Does that make WF a California corporation, or a Minnesota one in exile? The Lakers of banking!
All these are probably incorporated in Delaware, anyway.
My prediction for the next 50 years, assuming that nutjob Bibi doesn’t kick off WWIII in the interim, is that this map becomes highly decentralized, as remote work becomes dominant for service work that is done at a computer, ie most well-paid jobs, and people mostly move to currently mid-sized towns all over the country.
Of course, that means US GDP will also decline as a share of world GDP, as the US is currently to the rest of the world as NYC is to the US, the creative and financial capital of global business. That was inevitable as the rest of the world caught up after WWII and caught on to the benefits of freer markets, but the internet is going to greatly accelerate that decentralization, both internally in the US and globally.
Philly area gdp appears to be much higher than NY area gdp per capita
https://twitter.com/PoleConnection/status/1781934737617027491
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarSimilarly, Colgate-Palmolive makes and sells products all over the world, but it books its revenue and profits in NYC where is does probably 0% of its production and <1% of its sales.
Tesla's gigafactories are in Red-states Nevada and Texas (and Shanghai), but Tesla books revenue and profit in Blue-state California.
The accounting conventions of large corporations (and national governments) give a very misleading impression of where value creation occurs.
——
Edit: I see Tesla moved its legal HQ to Texas a couple of years ago, but you get the point I’m sure.
This map is obviously including the FIRE sector as part of GDP. An argument could be made that that sector is a net negative rather than the gigantic positive shown here.
What you do not see are big circles where all the old Midwest industrial Rust Belt towns are. The factories there are gone.
According to David Stockman, this happened because of the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Due to inflation, the cost of American labor increased 310% between 1970 and 2020, making American workers less competitive on the world labor market. The factory losses were slow at first but when Deng introduced reforms in the eighties it threw a large pool of cheap, industrious, high IQ Chinese workers on the world labor market.
Deng was influenced by seeing the success of the former British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore and American occupied Japan and South Korea. He strengthened property rights, which then encouraged foreign investment. Foreign investment plus cheap labor in China and bad Fed policies in this country explains Chinese economic growth.
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Inflation during 1990 - 2020 has been low.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Fig-1.jpg
Much of the globalization in traditional manufacturing occurred after 1990 after China joined the WTO. Before that, only certain sectors like auto, steel, consumer electronics were subject to globalization pressures. After 1990, most of the traditional manufacturing economy became subjected to globalization pressures and relocated abroad. This is classic economic efficiency seeking (i.e. search for low prices and high profits - raison d'etre of all business) rather than Federal Reserve policies.Replies: @Anonymous
Google OntheMap and Census will let you get an incredible amount of demographic and economic data on any area you define yourself.
It’s always a hoot when the cost of some tatted up dyke with a face full of fishing tackle selling blue check-marks for $7 a month on X is included in GDP.
Very little of what happens in cities is “Production”.
We need a new category: Gross Domestic Parasitism.
The only thing produced in Washington DC is political sausage. U.S. GDP is wildly inflated because it includes massively over-priced Health Care (18% of GDP), $1.3 Trillion shoveled to the National Security State which is flushed down the toilet in Wars to Nowhere, hyper-exploded Federal Deficit money and Trillions in Financialization Services in which GDP is notionally incremented with each turn of the Derivatives Crank but zero-real value is added to the American economy.
Stick a fork in America – because it’s cooked…
Thanks, but I must be doing something wrong. I see plenty of geographic possibilities, but no demographic or economic data at all.
then on Getting started
But Search function, needed to focus on an area, does not seem to be working now
According to David Stockman, this happened because of the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Due to inflation, the cost of American labor increased 310% between 1970 and 2020, making American workers less competitive on the world labor market. The factory losses were slow at first but when Deng introduced reforms in the eighties it threw a large pool of cheap, industrious, high IQ Chinese workers on the world labor market.
Deng was influenced by seeing the success of the former British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore and American occupied Japan and South Korea. He strengthened property rights, which then encouraged foreign investment. Foreign investment plus cheap labor in China and bad Fed policies in this country explains Chinese economic growth.Replies: @Twinkie, @epebble
You keep peddling this libertarian nonsense.
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980s
It wasn’t your libertarian fantasy of “free market” that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.
Well South Korea is more libertarian than North Korea and Deng moved China in a libertarian direction so I am not sure it is entirely wrong.Replies: @showmethereal
The members of this medical cartel largely remained silent during the authoritarianism of the Covid epidemic. Few of them said anything about the mandatory masking, lockdowns, and vaccinations. They did not want to go against the government that has given them their monopoly status. They are corrupt.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @SafeNow, @Twinkie
Tesla’s gigafactories are in Red-states Nevada and Texas (and Shanghai), but Tesla books revenue and profit in Blue-state California.
Tesla has a huge factory near San Francisco. It’s a former GM/Toyota facility and has about seven million square feet of production space. The Gigafactory in Austin is somewhat larger, about 10 million square feet. Tesla’s solar panel factory is in New York, a state even bluer than California.
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
From my understanding of what happened in Asia, you are right, and that is not free-market capitalism. No matter what ideology the people running the U.S. claim to be following it says nothing good about them that they would destroy the economy for so many Americans to favor themselves, people in other nations, and migrants coming to the U.S. If that’s not a form of treason, then the legal definition of the word needs to be changed.
Now the inevitable questions: Does productivity cause progressivism, or does progressivism cause productivity? Or is there any relation at all?
Then of course there is the little matter of how you measure GDP. Isn’t it true that in many cases American productivity is things like moving money around, and not just actually producing things I mean, it’s both, but don’t we put heavy emphasis on that compared to countries that have more recently developed?
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
“It wasn’t your libertarian fantasy of “free market” that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.”
Well South Korea is more libertarian than North Korea and Deng moved China in a libertarian direction so I am not sure it is entirely wrong.
Hartford is green for the same self-perpetuating reason as most other above-average metros: good jobs (famously insurance) -> high human capital -> high cost of living maintaining a population shifted to higher earners -> good jobs bc of high human capital -> and so on.Replies: @ltlee
The problem with Hartford as well as Bridgeport metro, both NH, is slow growth from 2012 to 2022. From $92,791 to $114,887 million and from 81,498 to 104,368 respectively. WHY?
In comparison, Raleigh NC from 57,615 to 119,675; Jacksonville, FL from 61, 519 to 119,762 during the same period.
Seattle, WA also has 10 years of fast growth, from 267,472 to 517,803. But the question is whether it can keep up the growth rate with Boeing currently getting in deeper trouble.
(Wikepedia has combined the 2022 GDP map with some older data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._metropolitan_areas_by_GDP)
Las Vegas seems rather low given that jobs in the gambling casinos pay well. Possibly it’s due to relatively low pay in tourism-related jobs in venues other than the casinos. Indeed, look at the low rating for Orlando, the country’s other top tourism destination. Disney World has 75,000 jobs but most do not pay well.
Nielsen, which computes television ratings, includes Mercer as part of Philadelphia, not New York.
As for Bucks County, it is not on the map, as it is part of Philadelphia's MSA on the map along with Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.Replies: @Anonymous, @prosa123
Federal Employees based in Mercer County receive New York locality pay and not Philadelphia locality pay. Bucks County would get Philadelphia locality (if there are any Federal Agencies located there.)
But culturally Mercer County is more attune to Philadelphia in terms of accents and sports allegiances. I think the Neilsen and sports being more Philadelphia-centric is a relic of over-the-air TV-antenna reception prior to Cable. Most of Mercer is closer by maybe 10 miles to the larger Philadelphia TV antennas. NYC’s were broadcast more Northerly from midtown on Empire State building, making NYC reception even tougher. When cable took hold, Mercer got both Philly & NYC stations, but the ties were already established.
I know some old-school Italians who loved the Yankees due to their family’s love of DiMaggio probably, but more folks are Phillies fans like Samuel Alito.
Bucks also has a lower property tax and over the past 30 years has benefited from NY/NJ relocations/ NJ Transit-Amtrak (picked up ridiculously during 2020-2022 and telecommuting.) Also a lot of Mercer County native whites were said to have moved there due to the South Asian and Asian takeovers of the nicer suburban towns on the Mercer/Rt 1 corridor side.
Of course, that means US GDP will also decline as a share of world GDP, as the US is currently to the rest of the world as NYC is to the US, the creative and financial capital of global business. That was inevitable as the rest of the world caught up after WWII and caught on to the benefits of freer markets, but the internet is going to greatly accelerate that decentralization, both internally in the US and globally.Replies: @QCIC
Such decentralization would be nice. However, I think single people prefer larger cities, other things being roughly equal.
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I've been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.Replies: @QCIC, @Frau Katze, @The Anti-Gnostic, @showmethereal
https://sfstandard.com/2024/04/21/best-day-ever-420-stud-swift/
It would be nice to have a map disaggregated by where GDP is actual stuff made or extracted vs. where it is mostly ethereal BS, like IP, legal, advertising, and government “services.”
Speaking of Orlando (red-orange dot in the middle of FL)… :
Here are some of the city’s rising young stars:
Katherine Altagracia Guerrero De Aguasvivas,
Jordanish Torres-Garcia
Giovany Crespo Hernandez
Jordanish was the triggerman for the assassination of Senora De Aguasvivas.
“According to police, Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ husband is not a suspect in the case despite his involvement in criminal information leaking.”
“Why Torres-Garcia, who is wanted in Puerto Rico on gun charges, was allegedly after Guerrero De Aguasvivas is still a mystery.”
“Police on Friday also named Giovany Crespo Hernandez as a person of interest in the case after identifying him as the person Guerrero De Aguasvivas Facetimed as she drove through downtown Orlando, shortly before her murder.”
“Hernandez had allegedly told Guerrero De Aguasvivas’s brother that she was in the area — which was more than three hours from her South Florida home — to deliver money and “other stuff to a friend.”
“Orange County Deputy Francisco Estrella, a family friend of Miguel Aguasvivas, is accused of providing him with details of the investigation, including the lead detective’s home address.
There are still various unknowns in the baffling case, including why Guerrero De Aguasvivas was driving so far from home, why she didn’t call 911 and why Miguel could be holding onto some secrets, as police suspect.”
Baffling!
These are the ethnics Boomers are counting on to pay their pensions, buy their mutual fund shares, join the military, and be first responders and guardians of the civil order.
Leave it to you, "counselor", to offer up a sweeping generalization and scare tactics. And you should talk, considering you have squatty Guats at your beck and call at your posh Virginia country club.
Here is what is happening.
https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2023/09/15/hispanic-owned-business-brings-flavor-to-orlandohttps://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2021/11/hispanic-entrepreneurs-and-businesses-are-helping-to-drive-the-economy-s-entrepreneurial-growth-and-job-creationReplies: @The Anti-Gnostic
Just saw a webinar on using it last week, but am trying it now. Will let you know if I find out how to get into geographies and data.
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
Twinkie here likes government intervention in the economy and hates the idea of a free market economic system. His family financially benefits from the government enforced medical cartel in this country. This medical cartel sucks up 18% of GDP every year, far more than most other countries. Yet, we are not even in the top forty countries in the world in average life expectancy.
The members of this medical cartel largely remained silent during the authoritarianism of the Covid epidemic. Few of them said anything about the mandatory masking, lockdowns, and vaccinations. They did not want to go against the government that has given them their monopoly status. They are corrupt.
The kokutai policy practiced in Asia as described by Twinkie worked like a charm, because the chaebols and the zaibatsu actually served the interests of the Japanese and Korean people, who were... get this, you'll never believe it, actually Japanese and Korean. Diversity was, quite noticeably, NOT their strength. They didn't have a hidden cabal of spiteful, vindictive, hateful non-Asian racists secretly running things for their own interests and to the intended detriment of the Asian peoples. They weren't besieged with a huge hostile criminal underclass from a thuggish, sullen, ever-resentful non-Asian race. They weren't splintered into a thousand warring special interests, each of them angling for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
Question: when do the Boston Red Sox work better as a baseball team: when all the players play in sync, in the interests of team victory? Or when each of the players is a separate individual, pursuing his own ends and interests, and some of them secretly play for other baseball teams, they are forced to let the locker room staff play as well, and about half of them don't even know how to play baseball to begin with?Replies: @Muggles, @Twinkie
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Quality-of-health-care-system/Skill-and-competence-of-medical-staff
I am on record as stating that I abhor the over-regulation of healthcare in this country. And we don’t have a “medical cartel” in this country. AMA, the lobby for physicians, is extremely weak - that’s why you see chiropractors, osteopaths, foreign medical graduates, and even nurses are now calling themselves “doctors.” And provider costs are about 10% of the healthcare spending in this country. Financially speaking, I wish we had a more “free market” medicine in this country (which means your gold-plated government provided healthcare goes away). I’d be A LOT richer (the recent cuts in Medicare payments to providers, combined with increases in compensations for all levels of labor, means that I’m losing even more money than before on Medicare patients now).American medical care is the highest quality in the world. You can see that easily in the cancer survival rates and such that are the direct result of the quality of medical care provided. Life expectancy has to do with much more than medical care - diet, activity level, obesity, genetics, etc. once basic public hygiene is met. That’s why Hispanics, despite being poorer, have higher life expectancy than whites in this country.
And the so-called “medical cartel” isn’t the one taking 18% of the GDP (I wish!) - there is a massive amount of administrative burden - in both public and private aspects - that has been imposed on medicine.
But all of this is just a diversion and smokescreen for the fact you are completely, utterly wrong about the East Asian political economy and how they went from rags to riches. They didn’t go “free market” - they engaged in highly intelligent “state-directed capitalism” (also called “authoritarian capitalism”). In the real world, there isn’t a stark cartoon division between pure communism and pure market economy. There is state intervention in every society, except perhaps completely chaotic regions of failed states as Somalia (but even there there are distorting factors that affect the market as such).
The question isn’t whether state intervention is good or not. It’s rather what level and type of state state intervention is best (and the most optimal combination changes from place to place, from time period to time period). As I explained on another thread: https://www.unz.com/isteve/retconning-the-founding/#comment-6524275Replies: @Mark G.
click on help and documentation
then on Getting started
But Search function, needed to focus on an area, does not seem to be working now
Ok, type in name of place you want, then click on search – the pick from list – should bring up map, then click on analysis – should get you started
His point extends way beyond Tesla. I spent my childhood moving from city to city while my father climbed the corporate ladder. His company had operations everywhere – mostly in flyover country. But the final stop in his time with them was at corporate headquarters, which was in one of the very big cities under discussion. That company did most of its product development and all of its manufacturing in flyover country (yes, America still did manufacturing back then) but, for accounting purposes, Globalist Megalopolis #7 got all of the credit.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/how-microsoft-parks-profits-offshore-to-pare-its-tax-bill/
Jordanish Torres-Garcia
Giovany Crespo HernandezJordanish was the triggerman for the assassination of Senora De Aguasvivas."According to police, Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ husband is not a suspect in the case despite his involvement in criminal information leaking.""Why Torres-Garcia, who is wanted in Puerto Rico on gun charges, was allegedly after Guerrero De Aguasvivas is still a mystery.""Police on Friday also named Giovany Crespo Hernandez as a person of interest in the case after identifying him as the person Guerrero De Aguasvivas Facetimed as she drove through downtown Orlando, shortly before her murder.""Hernandez had allegedly told Guerrero De Aguasvivas’s brother that she was in the area — which was more than three hours from her South Florida home — to deliver money and “other stuff to a friend.”"Orange County Deputy Francisco Estrella, a family friend of Miguel Aguasvivas, is accused of providing him with details of the investigation, including the lead detective’s home address.There are still various unknowns in the baffling case, including why Guerrero De Aguasvivas was driving so far from home, why she didn’t call 911 and why Miguel could be holding onto some secrets, as police suspect."Baffling!These are the ethnics Boomers are counting on to pay their pensions, buy their mutual fund shares, join the military, and be first responders and guardians of the civil order.Replies: @Corvinus, @Bill Jones
“These are the ethnics Boomers are counting on to pay their pensions, buy their mutual fund shares, join the military, and be first responders and guardians of the civil order.”
Leave it to you, “counselor”, to offer up a sweeping generalization and scare tactics. And you should talk, considering you have squatty Guats at your beck and call at your posh Virginia country club.
Here is what is happening.
https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2023/09/15/hispanic-owned-business-brings-flavor-to-orlando
https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2021/11/hispanic-entrepreneurs-and-businesses-are-helping-to-drive-the-economy-s-entrepreneurial-growth-and-job-creation
Money printer go brrrrrr
But, can’t prrrrrrint bombs
Talk a rrrrrrrrotta shit
Always wrrrrrrrrong.
Rrrrrrrrrrussia in yo ass
Rrrrrrrrrrussia in yo ass
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarThe same happens in the UK. I was part of a business unit that moved 80 well paid chemists, engineers et al from North West England where they were very well off to South East England “because that’s where the customers were” which wasn’t true they were in Tokyo and San Jose. In South East England a senior industrial professional’s income did not go as far. Financial spivs from the city were competing for housing. Commuting wasn’t a 20 minute drive or even walk.
Why really? Because the new boss didn’t want to leave the London housing market or perhaps the job market. ICI, the UK’s biggest industrial firm (now gone) for 70 years at the time was enjoying embarassingly large profits and no one more senior cared. I have yet to see a rational location decision but that was the worst.
Zero Hedge published some similar deceptive bilge four years ago. These are all high cost high tax shitholes where the standard of living is far below that of low-cost low-tax rural areas. GDP, because it’s measured in increasingly worthless dollars, is meaningless.
Meaningful measures:
Ratio of net income to housing costs.
Ratio of net income to living expenses.
Percent of sweet sacred blessed Diversity.
Population density.
Proximity of green spaces and parks.
Nice map. The raw data and a variety of ways to look at it are here.
https://www.bea.gov/data/gdp/gdp-county-metro-and-other-areas
This site has a useful map of the MSAs if anyone wants to look at the region each covers.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/giant-map-shows-all-metropolitan-areas-in-us/
The members of this medical cartel largely remained silent during the authoritarianism of the Covid epidemic. Few of them said anything about the mandatory masking, lockdowns, and vaccinations. They did not want to go against the government that has given them their monopoly status. They are corrupt.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @SafeNow, @Twinkie
Oh just go ahead and hang a big sign around your neck that says, “Derp, I don’t know how the world works.”
The kokutai policy practiced in Asia as described by Twinkie worked like a charm, because the chaebols and the zaibatsu actually served the interests of the Japanese and Korean people, who were… get this, you’ll never believe it, actually Japanese and Korean. Diversity was, quite noticeably, NOT their strength. They didn’t have a hidden cabal of spiteful, vindictive, hateful non-Asian racists secretly running things for their own interests and to the intended detriment of the Asian peoples. They weren’t besieged with a huge hostile criminal underclass from a thuggish, sullen, ever-resentful non-Asian race. They weren’t splintered into a thousand warring special interests, each of them angling for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
Question: when do the Boston Red Sox work better as a baseball team: when all the players play in sync, in the interests of team victory? Or when each of the players is a separate individual, pursuing his own ends and interests, and some of them secretly play for other baseball teams, they are forced to let the locker room staff play as well, and about half of them don’t even know how to play baseball to begin with?
After WWII, the north and south parts of Korea split into two factions (after Japanese domination). One, the north, is well represented by your idealized system. No foreigners ever! In the north.
All is State planning. Of course periodic famines occur ("bad weather" only in the north) and nightmarish repression.
Both of the systems you suggest are just industrial fascism. Rule by state connected monopolies who receive special favors and subsidies. Korea is now largely free of that, but not entirely.
Japan faces population decline. Both nations also face real international competition.
Economic rule by oligarchy is always corrupt politically. They try it in Mexico and South America too but somehow it doesn't work.
Both Korea and Japan are geographically isolated so immigration is sparse, Finland is a European counterpart, but hardly a world economic power.
If State controlled monopolies were superior, fascism and communism would work. They don't.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Anonymous
Now that the state is much weaker than big business in South Korea, the latter is out for itself with nary a thought about its citizens… which has led to South Korean businesses importing Indian (South Asian) IT workers, for example, all the while the unemployment rate for the South Korean youth is through the roof.
Sound familiar?
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/it-professionals-dominate-indian-diaspora-2527675Replies: @epebble
The members of this medical cartel largely remained silent during the authoritarianism of the Covid epidemic. Few of them said anything about the mandatory masking, lockdowns, and vaccinations. They did not want to go against the government that has given them their monopoly status. They are corrupt.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @SafeNow, @Twinkie
Life Expectancy is an important statistic, but let’s look at a study ranking countries for “skill and competence of medical staff.” The U.S. ranks 27th. Japan is number one. (Of course.) I will give you the link. I just tested the link by pasting it into Google but what popped-up was a panel saying that the website is overloaded try again later. I tried a few times, same result. I then pasted the link into duck duck go, and the link worked…the study popped-up. It appears that the powers that be are hiding this. If you click on the link below the actual study will pop-up, but you would not find the study if you use Google, at least not now. Anyway try not to get sick unless you happen to be in one of the highest-ranked countries.
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Quality-of-health-care-system/Skill-and-competence-of-medical-staff
The Washington DC area and adjacent places (northern VA, nearby parts of Maryland) are at high GDP due to massive federal looting of other places via taxation.
So this is like a “pirate haven” where little wealth is created but proceeds of theft are sent and spent by locals.
The massive “defense” industry complex, along with federal drones on the payroll, are the main sources of this loot. The IRS and welfare bureaucracies are also big employers.
The result of this massive looting, aside from a huge moocher class elsewhere where drips and dabs of stolen loot is redirected, is a national defense with no actual southern border controls other than for legal Americans, who are forced to line up in orderly rows to arrive back home.
Other “defense” results are military ships and aircraft too delicate and expensive to use in combat, drones approved by the DoD which are not even used by Ukrainians since virtually all other nation’s drones work better in real combat. As well as poorly trained DIE recruits who enjoy their transgender squad mates, when not being lectured about the value of female “warriors” who are highly prone to monthly timeouts and constant complaints about , well, everything.
Meanwhile, billions are shipped overseas to fund “allies” deeply engaged in wars with their neighbors. All for our defense of course.
Washington DC enjoys high salaries and real estate costs. Also, a convenient locale (other than NYC) to employ local Democrat operatives on government legal payrolls to prosecute Republican political opponents.
Enjoy that “high GDP” there, but don’t go out or drive the streets at night…
According to David Stockman, this happened because of the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Due to inflation, the cost of American labor increased 310% between 1970 and 2020, making American workers less competitive on the world labor market. The factory losses were slow at first but when Deng introduced reforms in the eighties it threw a large pool of cheap, industrious, high IQ Chinese workers on the world labor market.
Deng was influenced by seeing the success of the former British colonies of Hong Kong and Singapore and American occupied Japan and South Korea. He strengthened property rights, which then encouraged foreign investment. Foreign investment plus cheap labor in China and bad Fed policies in this country explains Chinese economic growth.Replies: @Twinkie, @epebble
You are generally right, except:
inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Inflation during 1990 – 2020 has been low.
Much of the globalization in traditional manufacturing occurred after 1990 after China joined the WTO. Before that, only certain sectors like auto, steel, consumer electronics were subject to globalization pressures. After 1990, most of the traditional manufacturing economy became subjected to globalization pressures and relocated abroad. This is classic economic efficiency seeking (i.e. search for low prices and high profits – raison d’etre of all business) rather than Federal Reserve policies.
Mark G. is right. You have to look at what prices would have been without the Fed’s policies or without the “economic efficiencies.” Control for one or the other. The Fed’s inflationary policies meant that Americans were deprived of the lower costs of living they should have enjoyed from the globalization of manufacturing and services.Replies: @epebble
Jordanish Torres-Garcia
Giovany Crespo HernandezJordanish was the triggerman for the assassination of Senora De Aguasvivas."According to police, Guerrero De Aguasvivas’ husband is not a suspect in the case despite his involvement in criminal information leaking.""Why Torres-Garcia, who is wanted in Puerto Rico on gun charges, was allegedly after Guerrero De Aguasvivas is still a mystery.""Police on Friday also named Giovany Crespo Hernandez as a person of interest in the case after identifying him as the person Guerrero De Aguasvivas Facetimed as she drove through downtown Orlando, shortly before her murder.""Hernandez had allegedly told Guerrero De Aguasvivas’s brother that she was in the area — which was more than three hours from her South Florida home — to deliver money and “other stuff to a friend.”"Orange County Deputy Francisco Estrella, a family friend of Miguel Aguasvivas, is accused of providing him with details of the investigation, including the lead detective’s home address.There are still various unknowns in the baffling case, including why Guerrero De Aguasvivas was driving so far from home, why she didn’t call 911 and why Miguel could be holding onto some secrets, as police suspect."Baffling!These are the ethnics Boomers are counting on to pay their pensions, buy their mutual fund shares, join the military, and be first responders and guardians of the civil order.Replies: @Corvinus, @Bill Jones
Thanks.
What are all the jobs in MN?? Somali resettlement gigs?
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarAlthough Cambridge itself is part of a much bigger metro area. But one which conspicuously couldn’t save its Route 128 high tech sector after the end of the Cold War, plus right then had a partly real estate triggered inability to fund startups, although most of that is cultural.
While it doesn’t change your thesis, a major reason Silicon Valley became a thing, and I think the reason it “defeated” all would be US competitors, is because by long standing public policy non-competes are unenforceable, which I assume also had some good effects in LA. See Zuckerberg refusing to sign on to Steve Jobs’ big company no poaching scheme, as a newer company he needed talent more than the ones that agreed.
That should have been harshly punished by the authorities, instead of a not much more than a slap on the wrist of a $145 million class action lawsuit settlement spread across Apple. Google, Intel, and Adobe. Damn, Jobs’ threatened Palm with a patent lawsuit WRT to poaching, was rebuffed.
This bears on the issue of these concentrations, because the authorities allow the entities inside them to grow pretty much no matter how much they break the law. No doubt in part because the most recent generation of web tech giants have been suborned by the Deep State, and that’s perforce tolerated by these companies because of the stark object lesson when the Deep State threw into Federal prison Joseph Nacchio because he wouldn’t spy on Qwest’s users (they bought Baby Bell/RBOC US West, were later bought by CenturyLink). I’ll add governments often prefer big companies because that reduces the number of throats to choke to achieve some policy goal, gain money, etc.
Ratio of net income to living expenses.
Percent of sweet sacred blessed Diversity.
Population density.
Proximity of green spaces and parks.Replies: @SFG
It’s not meaningless, you’re just making the (excellent) point you don’t necessarily want to live in a high GDP area.
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarAB InBev of Belgium is the parent company and New York is now the operational headquarters.
And so we see why Ron Unz of Palo Alto singlehandedly supports this entire site (and pays Steve, in his words, “a handsome salary.”)
Leave it to you, "counselor", to offer up a sweeping generalization and scare tactics. And you should talk, considering you have squatty Guats at your beck and call at your posh Virginia country club.
Here is what is happening.
https://mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2023/09/15/hispanic-owned-business-brings-flavor-to-orlandohttps://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/democrats/2021/11/hispanic-entrepreneurs-and-businesses-are-helping-to-drive-the-economy-s-entrepreneurial-growth-and-job-creationReplies: @The Anti-Gnostic
LOL so what? The fine old De Aquasvivas family had several businesses too; restaurants and salons are great places to launder money. Maria Molina is probably within four degrees or less separation of every Arby’s-American named in that article.
The kokutai policy practiced in Asia as described by Twinkie worked like a charm, because the chaebols and the zaibatsu actually served the interests of the Japanese and Korean people, who were... get this, you'll never believe it, actually Japanese and Korean. Diversity was, quite noticeably, NOT their strength. They didn't have a hidden cabal of spiteful, vindictive, hateful non-Asian racists secretly running things for their own interests and to the intended detriment of the Asian peoples. They weren't besieged with a huge hostile criminal underclass from a thuggish, sullen, ever-resentful non-Asian race. They weren't splintered into a thousand warring special interests, each of them angling for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
Question: when do the Boston Red Sox work better as a baseball team: when all the players play in sync, in the interests of team victory? Or when each of the players is a separate individual, pursuing his own ends and interests, and some of them secretly play for other baseball teams, they are forced to let the locker room staff play as well, and about half of them don't even know how to play baseball to begin with?Replies: @Muggles, @Twinkie
Yes, the “interests” of the Japanese people were well represented by the military-industrial complex until their “we’re better than them” spirit and belief got them totally destroyed in WWII.
After WWII, the north and south parts of Korea split into two factions (after Japanese domination). One, the north, is well represented by your idealized system. No foreigners ever! In the north.
All is State planning. Of course periodic famines occur (“bad weather” only in the north) and nightmarish repression.
Both of the systems you suggest are just industrial fascism. Rule by state connected monopolies who receive special favors and subsidies. Korea is now largely free of that, but not entirely.
Japan faces population decline. Both nations also face real international competition.
Economic rule by oligarchy is always corrupt politically. They try it in Mexico and South America too but somehow it doesn’t work.
Both Korea and Japan are geographically isolated so immigration is sparse, Finland is a European counterpart, but hardly a world economic power.
If State controlled monopolies were superior, fascism and communism would work. They don’t.
Indeed. GDP reflects churn, not productive economic activity. Divorce litigation, porn-movie production, gambling, paid social activism, sportsball – they all contribute to GDP. Look at the bubble for Las Vegas, Nevada. What is produced there?
After WWII, the north and south parts of Korea split into two factions (after Japanese domination). One, the north, is well represented by your idealized system. No foreigners ever! In the north.
All is State planning. Of course periodic famines occur ("bad weather" only in the north) and nightmarish repression.
Both of the systems you suggest are just industrial fascism. Rule by state connected monopolies who receive special favors and subsidies. Korea is now largely free of that, but not entirely.
Japan faces population decline. Both nations also face real international competition.
Economic rule by oligarchy is always corrupt politically. They try it in Mexico and South America too but somehow it doesn't work.
Both Korea and Japan are geographically isolated so immigration is sparse, Finland is a European counterpart, but hardly a world economic power.
If State controlled monopolies were superior, fascism and communism would work. They don't.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Anonymous
Here’s a coloring book. Look, a picture of a pumpkin. Perhaps you’d like to color it.
Tangentially related – the US doesn’t make civilian ships any more:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/03/global-shipping-china-dependence-korea-japan-britain/
The more I look at China the more I think we should just welcome our new Chinese overlords, before the people who closed down the Western shipyards and Western manufacturing get round to it – “we know these people, and can help you exploit them in exchange for a small cut!“.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/small-china-made-ev-global-auto-execs-politicians-edge-rcna144613
If, to make cars more affordable (and lower inflation), the government lowers tariff, there won't be much of an auto industry left.
After WWII, the north and south parts of Korea split into two factions (after Japanese domination). One, the north, is well represented by your idealized system. No foreigners ever! In the north.
All is State planning. Of course periodic famines occur ("bad weather" only in the north) and nightmarish repression.
Both of the systems you suggest are just industrial fascism. Rule by state connected monopolies who receive special favors and subsidies. Korea is now largely free of that, but not entirely.
Japan faces population decline. Both nations also face real international competition.
Economic rule by oligarchy is always corrupt politically. They try it in Mexico and South America too but somehow it doesn't work.
Both Korea and Japan are geographically isolated so immigration is sparse, Finland is a European counterpart, but hardly a world economic power.
If State controlled monopolies were superior, fascism and communism would work. They don't.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Anonymous
“their “we’re better than them” spirit and belief got them totally destroyed in WWII”
Yet a walk round totally destroyed Tokyo followed by a walk round totally not-destroyed London and NY might make you wonder who won WW2.
“Japan faces population decline.”
So does the States, if you’re thinking of the population who won WW2. People aren’t fungible units of production. Japan is still pretty much all Japanese.
“Both nations also face real international competition.”
From Korea?
Their recovery since has been remarkable. The power of the large industrial combines was greatly reduced by MacArthur's reforms, though it remains a tendency.
The "two nations" I was referring to were the original subjects, Japan and (S) Korea.
It wasn't the economic "leadership" of state sanctioned economic cartels and monopolies there, but fierce international competition from abroad, which made these economies grow. And starting from nearly zero industrial capital.
The main advantage large industries have is in access to bank capital and stock sales. Governments do tend to favor larger businesses, even in the US.
But China's much larger "state managed" quasi market economy has been mismanaged for years by "malinvestment" (over financed) real estate development. Government driven investments usually go off track pretty drastically.
Japan has had recent long periods of low or zero growth. At the moment the relative free markets in the US lead the world in innovation and wealth creation.
Also, Japan and Korea pay almost nothing for their national defense. The US does it for them. Quite a boost for their economies.Replies: @Twinkie, @showmethereal
Ireland has a higher per capita GDP than the UK because it’s a tax haven. Same way Microsoft US used to make most of its profit in the place where they printed the discs (Puerto Rico).
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/how-microsoft-parks-profits-offshore-to-pare-its-tax-bill/
Also to consider:
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=Share%20of%20value%20added%20to%20the%20gross%20domestic%20product%20of%20the%20United%20States%20in%201990%2C%20by%20industry&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2FPreview_Images%2Fmanufacturing_USGDP.gif&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2Fontarget%2F18-03-21-1.php%3Fcid%3D13920&docid=H6VxNX9jjkaetM&tbnid=DRUX8JF55oZsGM&vet=12ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA..i&w=750&h=410&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA
Most of the wealth is being created today by bit twiddling and not by producing physical goods (except agriculture and energy) as in the 1960’s.
One of the main reasons why the US of A is the world's largest consumer of imported goods (not to mention services). Take heart though, because we excel at producing "information."
This obituary in my old hometown’s listings has my head spinning. It is for a 42-year-old woman, a mental health therapist and mom to two small children – and, going by the picture on the obit, a real hottie:
She passed away unexpectedly on the morning of March 28, 2024, at her home … She was preparing to visit family in Texas for the Easter holiday when she succumbed to a systemic bacterial infection associated with a previous injury to her hand.
What the holy f***? She was healthy enough to be preparing for a trip to another state, probably about to leave that day or the next, yet she dies suddenly from an infected hand? Could hand infections be unexpectedly deadly? Something is very weird.
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-06-02/cdc-warns-of-potentially-fatal-bacterial-illness-on-u-s-gulf-coast
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/20/us/texas-shooting-confession-gonzales-county/index.html
May be:
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2023-06-02/cdc-warns-of-potentially-fatal-bacterial-illness-on-u-s-gulf-coast
peripheral to the topic, it is astounding how useless and unproductive most of America’s billionaires are, and how the great majority of them are simple wealth extractors. they do almost nothing useful at all with their money. it’s mind blowing how not constructive most of them are.
America has mainly become about extraction rather than construction. in line with it’s general decline.
Bacterial infection is totally understandable. But what to make of this?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/20/us/texas-shooting-confession-gonzales-county/index.html
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
PRC has had four development models since 1949, in chronological order
1. Soviet command economy. PRC still nominally publishes a five-year plan:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_five-year_plan
2. Japan and East Asian tiger state capitalism, as you wrote
3. Anglo free market capitalism— to an extent, as part of Deng’s reforms
But 3 is clearly problematic as its significantly contributed in financialization and de-industrialisation of US and UK economies, so this fourth model being espoused
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy
Not a coincidence that Germany and Continental Europe is furthering cooperation with PRC
https://twitter.com/SariArhoHavren/status/1780509787366572321
That is because Asians and Jews have edged Europeans out of the best paying American occupations.
NYC produces almost nothing and literally cannot even feed itself. it has the same on the ground economic profile as Lagos. population is slowly becoming similar too. shut down it’s only reactor and never built any new ones. shutting down all the pizza ovens now too.
it would be impossible to put into words how badly all those dual citizenship wall street guys in Neeew Yawk wish the corner bodegas were ammunition factories right now.
at least they can find a partner in 10 minutes tonight on Grindr and catch an Uber to the gay orgy and take some pharma company Step Up Prep up pills on the way. and that’s the GDP output that matters. but don’t fold your license plate on the way back into Manhattan to avoid that Congestion Fee. illegal aliens aren’t cheap, somebody gotta pay for all the free hotels and food and schools.
The question is whether they actually prefer the “large cities” or the arts, mixers, and affinity groups that previously could only be funded by the higher incomes and large populations of large cities but can now flower anywhere.
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I’ve been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.
I think a lot of intelligent, confident, unmarried women fear small towns and cities because they find some safety in the larger herd in the big city. Gay men concentrated in big cities play a role since they do not prey on the women and may be a slight buffer, if only psychological, against men who might trouble the women otherwise.Replies: @Bumpkin
How long is CVS going to pay pharmacists $100K a year to count pills?
We already have every bit of software and engineering we need to automate every step of your McDonald's Big Crap. They are paying dimwit stoners just to show up and wear a nametag at this point.
OTR driving will be automated rigs in a dedicated lane on the Interstate. Drivers will board them for the first and last mile. Container ships, cargo flights, trash removal, Amazon deliveries--same.
Bank tellers will disappear to the extent they haven't already.
WFH is bringing the hammer down too. Businesses (and government bureaucracies) are walking away from their cube-farm leases like underwater homeowners from their mortgages in 2008.Replies: @Bumpkin
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarAnheuser-Busch was acquired in a hostile takeover by the Brazilian/Belgian InBev in 2008. Besides the historic original brewery and the Clydesdales, I don’t think the new ownership cares a whit about Saint Louis.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/03/global-shipping-china-dependence-korea-japan-britain/The more I look at China the more I think we should just welcome our new Chinese overlords, before the people who closed down the Western shipyards and Western manufacturing get round to it - "we know these people, and can help you exploit them in exchange for a small cut!".Replies: @epebble
And our auto industry rests on a thin tariff line:
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/small-china-made-ev-global-auto-execs-politicians-edge-rcna144613
If, to make cars more affordable (and lower inflation), the government lowers tariff, there won’t be much of an auto industry left.
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I've been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.Replies: @QCIC, @Frau Katze, @The Anti-Gnostic, @showmethereal
I agree with this general train of thought, though I think many people move to larger cities hoping to find mates. College was an important part of this process. Some stay because of career or they enjoy being in the hive with more restaurants and activities. Others leave. Now that colleges have largely discredited themselves, what institutions will replace them for mating purposes and will this favor smaller cities?
I think a lot of intelligent, confident, unmarried women fear small towns and cities because they find some safety in the larger herd in the big city. Gay men concentrated in big cities play a role since they do not prey on the women and may be a slight buffer, if only psychological, against men who might trouble the women otherwise.
I do think we will come up with new ways of meeting online, with most current methods simply recreating the stupid chaos of a singles bar online. We can do much better than that in future apps.
I don't think online dating favors small or big cities, as you can only date so many people in either. But with economic opportunity now not being tied to the large cities, I expect them to get hollowed out.Not been my limited experience, heard enough complaints of them being accosted in big cities.
inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve.
Inflation during 1990 - 2020 has been low.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Fig-1.jpg
Much of the globalization in traditional manufacturing occurred after 1990 after China joined the WTO. Before that, only certain sectors like auto, steel, consumer electronics were subject to globalization pressures. After 1990, most of the traditional manufacturing economy became subjected to globalization pressures and relocated abroad. This is classic economic efficiency seeking (i.e. search for low prices and high profits - raison d'etre of all business) rather than Federal Reserve policies.Replies: @Anonymous
Yet despite all this offshoring and low costs of production and economic efficiency, prices rose persistently.
Mark G. is right. You have to look at what prices would have been without the Fed’s policies or without the “economic efficiencies.” Control for one or the other. The Fed’s inflationary policies meant that Americans were deprived of the lower costs of living they should have enjoyed from the globalization of manufacturing and services.
(1) Keep an inflation target of 2% and
(2) Aspire for as low unemployment, subject to being secondary to (1)
They may not achieve either or both of these goals, but that is their mandate. They have done a good job, on the whole, during 1990 - 2020. Amazingly so during 2008.
Globalization has definitely led to cost efficiencies; that has been translated to profits. Prices have also fallen (or have not risen much) on globalized goods. $300 big screen TVs, computers, $100 cell phones all would been at least $1,000 without globalization. Nice Honda and Toyota cars can be bought for a fraction of their equivalent prices in 1990 real price. Economic efficiency need not necessarily mean low prices for consumers. It may mean high profits for business if market allows it. That is why we are seeing record setting Dow and high inflation now.
After WWII, the north and south parts of Korea split into two factions (after Japanese domination). One, the north, is well represented by your idealized system. No foreigners ever! In the north.
All is State planning. Of course periodic famines occur ("bad weather" only in the north) and nightmarish repression.
Both of the systems you suggest are just industrial fascism. Rule by state connected monopolies who receive special favors and subsidies. Korea is now largely free of that, but not entirely.
Japan faces population decline. Both nations also face real international competition.
Economic rule by oligarchy is always corrupt politically. They try it in Mexico and South America too but somehow it doesn't work.
Both Korea and Japan are geographically isolated so immigration is sparse, Finland is a European counterpart, but hardly a world economic power.
If State controlled monopolies were superior, fascism and communism would work. They don't.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @YetAnotherAnon, @Anonymous
So what? Japan is overpopulated. Its population is still greater than it was heading into world war 2 or than during the postwar economic miracle. It wasn’t “underpopulated” then. It isn’t “underpopulated” now.
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I've been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.Replies: @QCIC, @Frau Katze, @The Anti-Gnostic, @showmethereal
Good point. I’m out of response buttons.
“I think single people prefer larger cities, other things being roughly equal.”
QCIC, you’re probably right, the diversity of activities in which one can participate is virtually unlimited in a big city like San Francisco. Yesterday being especially fruitful:
“Saturday, you may have noticed, was an exceptionally busy and spectacularly beautiful day in San Francisco.
Not only was it 420, but Taylor Swift fans embarked on a pub crawl, low-riders were out in the Mission and the World Naked Bike Ride was busy weaving around town. On top of that, the city’s oldest queer bar, The Stud, reopened in a new location after a four-year sabbatical.”
Quite a few pics accompany the local paper’s article; I’d recommend an eye shield:
https://sfstandard.com/2024/04/21/best-day-ever-420-stud-swift/
It’s a well known fact that most of America’s GDP is concentrated in “Blue” states despite “blue” states being the minority of states, just like most of the best instututes of higher learning, most of the most advanced industries like I.T. Most of America’s Nobel Prizes are also won by Blue states. All of the Ivies, for instance, are located in Blue states.
I think that most of this boils down to culture. White liberals, concentrated in mostly Blue states, have a culture that is more focused on education, learning, and the professions/clerk/technical jobs and tend to be more bourgeoise in values and orientation.
Conservative whites, conversely, tend to be more rural, more religious, less educated and more proletarian on average.
I read somewhere that a lot of the psychological differences between white Libs and conservatives van be explained by the spectrum of life history/strategies.
White conservatives tend to have kids at an earler age than white Libs, and often more kids. A lot of the psychological traits of conservatives, such as:
– Les inclination to acquiring complex skills.
– Less intelligence(not insulting, just being objective about cognitive and academic scores).
_ Les empathy.
– Lower pro-social attitudes like egalitarianism.
– More short-term orientation, such as favoring polluting the environment for short-term economic gains rather than preserve it for the future.
– Obsession with breeding, as much as possible and as soon as possible.
These are all characteristics associated with what evolutionary biologists call “fast life strategy”. This is also known as “R-selection”.
White Libs, conversely, tend be more of what evolutionary biologists call K-selected, or slow-life strategists: white Libs get married at older ages, and only have kids when conditions are optimal in terms of resources. They also have fewer kids than conservatives, but tend to invest more in them.
Every time that I see a white family that invests a lot in their kids, like forcing them to take violin lessons after school, or getting them into intense preparatory classes so that they can get into the best universities, etc, the family turns out to be Democrat-voting Libs. This is *always* true. Always, always, always.
White conservatives, conversely, seem to be more of the type of “breed fast, breed a lot, and hope fot the best.”
Consider the Palin family. Sarah Palin got pregnant at 18, and she went on to have litters of kids. Her son also got a girl pregnant at 18, and started his family at that age. But the children are not of very high quality. Sarah Palin herself is not a rocket scientist, and her son is pretty dumb as well and works menial blue-collar jobs.
This difference in the attitudes towards breeding explains a lot of the psychological differences between white conservatives and white Libs.
This is not to say that nothing good ever comes from R-selection. Some times, R-selection produces some big winners. The big macho general that wins wars, the sexy singer, the handsome movie star, the sociopathic corporate raider that becomes a billionaire, the hard-charging man of action that gets lots done, etc.
But the problem with R-selection is that it produces a lot, more more duds than successes. It produces a lot of stupid people, or people genetically designed for short lifespan and terrible health that will cost Society a lot in medical bills from getting diabetes or cancer at an early age, violent criminals, bi-polar people(like Kanye West), promiscuous women with the sex drives of men that litter Society with kids they can’t afford, kids that will become criminals when they grow up, etc.
The historical success of white people comes from primarilly K-selection with a little bit of R-selecton thrown in the form of idiosyncratic and strong personalitirs that change things.
You do need some R-selection becuse strongly K-selected people have a tendency towards egalitarianism and conformis that eventually results in stultification. But you need only a small degree of R-selection.
Without R-selection we wouldn’t have people like Colonel Sanders, Donald Trump, Kat Williams or little Richard. These pintoresque types make the World a more interesting place. But any society with too many Donald Trumps would collapse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie
Many families push their kids into intense sports participation. It's doubtful that all of them - or even most of them - are liberals.
Without R-selection we wouldn’t have people like Colonel Sanders, Donald Trump, Kat Williams or little Richard. These pintoresque types make the World a more interesting place.
Col. Sanders, really? He wasn't a flashy showman, but a man who had held many different jobs before becoming a success when he was past 60. The whole white suit routine was a part of being a company brand ambassador.
Ummm – no.. It says “number of jobs” for size of the dot and per capita GDP for the color. So if Colgate had most of it’s jobs in say “Ohio” those would NOT count toward NYC numbers. Same with Tesla. Has nothing to do with the jobs in Shanghai. San Jose and NYC have those colors because the jobs pay more. The size of LA’s dot is bigger than San Jose because there are more jobs. So sorry – but that is incorrect.
We're off on our own tangent here.
Hong Kong became wealthy as a trading hub and a financial center. But the economic development in Japan-South Korea-China occurred in a neo-mercantilistic fashion whereby those countries joined an anti-Soviet alliance and, in turn, the U.S. allowed them to access the extremely rich American consumer market (despite not receiving reciprocation from these countries). And the state, in each of these countries, developed, planned, and executed an export-oriented industrial development model by exercising state power to direct subsidies and favorable credit terms to those firms that were able to penetrate foreign markets.
As I tried (to educate you) in another thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_South_Korea#Rapid_growth_from_1960s_to_1980sIt wasn't your libertarian fantasy of "free market" that led to the rise of the East Asian economies.Replies: @OilcanFloyd, @James B. Shearer, @Mark G., @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms, @showmethereal
Correct. Even though I don’t like Wikipedia. Also of note is that South Korea was a military dictatorship at the time as well.
Well South Korea is more libertarian than North Korea and Deng moved China in a libertarian direction so I am not sure it is entirely wrong.Replies: @showmethereal
Actually South Korea was ruled with an iron fist until about 1988. I mean they might have been more “western” than North Korea – but It was still a military dictatorship as well. Same as it was when the Korean War started too. History has been re-written since the end of the Cold War.
Nielsen, which computes television ratings, includes Mercer as part of Philadelphia, not New York.
As for Bucks County, it is not on the map, as it is part of Philadelphia's MSA on the map along with Chester, Delaware, and Montgomery Counties.Replies: @Anonymous, @prosa123
Trenton, the seat of Mercer County as well as the state capital, is noteworthy for its junction of commuter train lines. New Jersey Transit trains from New York and SEPTA trains from Philadelphia stop there and allow for timed cross-platform transfers. This enables quick train travel between New York and Philadelphia at lower cost than Amtrak.
As an aside, I didn't realize that there is another SEPTA line that serves Mercer County with a station in the West Trenton section of Ewing. It takes one down to Temple, where you can connect with other SEPTA lines if needed. AFAICT this is the only passenger station in New Jersey not served by NJ Transit.
Barack Obama & Eric HolderBlack Lives Splatter. Apparently AB’s CEO has never even moved to St. Louis, instead commuting from his home in Brooklyn.Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Philip Owen, @That Would Be Telling, @Flip, @Rohirrimborn, @Reg CæsarThis statement is deceptive. Federated Department Stores was based in Ohio from 1929 until 2020, first in Columbus, then in Cincinnati. They bought a bankrupt Macy’s in 1994, and eventually took its name for the entire holding company. They’re the George Steinbrenner of retail.
Dayton-Hudson did something similar, buying Marshall Fields and taking their name. Across town around the same time, little-known Norwest bought Wells Fargo, and took their name– and moved into their HQ in San Francisco. Does that make WF a California corporation, or a Minnesota one in exile? The Lakers of banking!
All these are probably incorporated in Delaware, anyway.
If you don’t think WWII nearly totally destroyed Japan, then I can’t help you.
Their recovery since has been remarkable. The power of the large industrial combines was greatly reduced by MacArthur’s reforms, though it remains a tendency.
The “two nations” I was referring to were the original subjects, Japan and (S) Korea.
It wasn’t the economic “leadership” of state sanctioned economic cartels and monopolies there, but fierce international competition from abroad, which made these economies grow. And starting from nearly zero industrial capital.
The main advantage large industries have is in access to bank capital and stock sales. Governments do tend to favor larger businesses, even in the US.
But China’s much larger “state managed” quasi market economy has been mismanaged for years by “malinvestment” (over financed) real estate development. Government driven investments usually go off track pretty drastically.
Japan has had recent long periods of low or zero growth. At the moment the relative free markets in the US lead the world in innovation and wealth creation.
Also, Japan and Korea pay almost nothing for their national defense. The US does it for them. Quite a boost for their economies.
Both Japan and South Korea have large, powerful military forces and are, as of 2024, countries with the 9th and 10th highest military spending in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
But you are correct that both China and Japan have huge issues with inflated real estate prices and the bursting of the bubble affecting their economies negatively.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Anon
The members of this medical cartel largely remained silent during the authoritarianism of the Covid epidemic. Few of them said anything about the mandatory masking, lockdowns, and vaccinations. They did not want to go against the government that has given them their monopoly status. They are corrupt.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @SafeNow, @Twinkie
Stop making up lies about me. You are the one who works as a paper shuffler for the DOD (which you try to make seem important by omitting that crucial paper shuffling detail), making sure, of all things, contractors get paid. You literally live off the taxpayers’ tits and will for the remaining days of your life.
I am on record as stating that I abhor the over-regulation of healthcare in this country. And we don’t have a “medical cartel” in this country. AMA, the lobby for physicians, is extremely weak – that’s why you see chiropractors, osteopaths, foreign medical graduates, and even nurses are now calling themselves “doctors.” And provider costs are about 10% of the healthcare spending in this country. Financially speaking, I wish we had a more “free market” medicine in this country (which means your gold-plated government provided healthcare goes away). I’d be A LOT richer (the recent cuts in Medicare payments to providers, combined with increases in compensations for all levels of labor, means that I’m losing even more money than before on Medicare patients now).
American medical care is the highest quality in the world. You can see that easily in the cancer survival rates and such that are the direct result of the quality of medical care provided. Life expectancy has to do with much more than medical care – diet, activity level, obesity, genetics, etc. once basic public hygiene is met. That’s why Hispanics, despite being poorer, have higher life expectancy than whites in this country.
And the so-called “medical cartel” isn’t the one taking 18% of the GDP (I wish!) – there is a massive amount of administrative burden – in both public and private aspects – that has been imposed on medicine.
But all of this is just a diversion and smokescreen for the fact you are completely, utterly wrong about the East Asian political economy and how they went from rags to riches. They didn’t go “free market” – they engaged in highly intelligent “state-directed capitalism” (also called “authoritarian capitalism”). In the real world, there isn’t a stark cartoon division between pure communism and pure market economy. There is state intervention in every society, except perhaps completely chaotic regions of failed states as Somalia (but even there there are distorting factors that affect the market as such).
The question isn’t whether state intervention is good or not. It’s rather what level and type of state state intervention is best (and the most optimal combination changes from place to place, from time period to time period). As I explained on another thread: https://www.unz.com/isteve/retconning-the-founding/#comment-6524275
Their recovery since has been remarkable. The power of the large industrial combines was greatly reduced by MacArthur's reforms, though it remains a tendency.
The "two nations" I was referring to were the original subjects, Japan and (S) Korea.
It wasn't the economic "leadership" of state sanctioned economic cartels and monopolies there, but fierce international competition from abroad, which made these economies grow. And starting from nearly zero industrial capital.
The main advantage large industries have is in access to bank capital and stock sales. Governments do tend to favor larger businesses, even in the US.
But China's much larger "state managed" quasi market economy has been mismanaged for years by "malinvestment" (over financed) real estate development. Government driven investments usually go off track pretty drastically.
Japan has had recent long periods of low or zero growth. At the moment the relative free markets in the US lead the world in innovation and wealth creation.
Also, Japan and Korea pay almost nothing for their national defense. The US does it for them. Quite a boost for their economies.Replies: @Twinkie, @showmethereal
State intervention does not mean cartels and monopolies in the traditional sense. In both Japan and South Korea, the state developed a broad framework of export-oriented industrial development, under which those firms that were the most successful in penetrating foreign markets were rewarded with high favorable credit terms and other politico-economic benefits as well as being granted privileged access to the highly protected domestic markets. Contrary to your assertion above, the Japanese and South Korean domestic markets were largely protected from foreign competition, at first tariff, but increasingly with non-tariff barriers such as onerous inspection regimes for imported goods and inaccessibility to retail (e.g. car dealerships) as GATT made overt use of tariffs to protect their domestic producers difficult.
False. As of 2022, the U.S. spent 3.5% of its GDP on the military (10th in the world). South Korea spent 2.7% (13th in the world): https://www.statista.com/statistics/266892/military-expenditure-as-percentage-of-gdp-in-highest-spending-countries/
Both Japan and South Korea have large, powerful military forces and are, as of 2024, countries with the 9th and 10th highest military spending in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
But you are correct that both China and Japan have huge issues with inflated real estate prices and the bursting of the bubble affecting their economies negatively.
The kokutai policy practiced in Asia as described by Twinkie worked like a charm, because the chaebols and the zaibatsu actually served the interests of the Japanese and Korean people, who were... get this, you'll never believe it, actually Japanese and Korean. Diversity was, quite noticeably, NOT their strength. They didn't have a hidden cabal of spiteful, vindictive, hateful non-Asian racists secretly running things for their own interests and to the intended detriment of the Asian peoples. They weren't besieged with a huge hostile criminal underclass from a thuggish, sullen, ever-resentful non-Asian race. They weren't splintered into a thousand warring special interests, each of them angling for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie.
Question: when do the Boston Red Sox work better as a baseball team: when all the players play in sync, in the interests of team victory? Or when each of the players is a separate individual, pursuing his own ends and interests, and some of them secretly play for other baseball teams, they are forced to let the locker room staff play as well, and about half of them don't even know how to play baseball to begin with?Replies: @Muggles, @Twinkie
When the state was more powerful than the corporate sector in South Korea, the former indeed ensured that the development of the corporate sector was sublimated into building national strength (which made sense for these “garrison states,” another example being, by the way, Israel). So, while the chaebol gained wealth and power, it was co-opted into build military and industrial strength for the country and provide jobs for the legions of increasingly highly educated populace. Those corporate leaders who did not “get on with the plan” suffered accordingly (with the credit being cut off and the businesses being dismembers).
Now that the state is much weaker than big business in South Korea, the latter is out for itself with nary a thought about its citizens… which has led to South Korean businesses importing Indian (South Asian) IT workers, for example, all the while the unemployment rate for the South Korean youth is through the roof.
Sound familiar?
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/it-professionals-dominate-indian-diaspora-2527675
Both Japan and South Korea have large, powerful military forces and are, as of 2024, countries with the 9th and 10th highest military spending in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
But you are correct that both China and Japan have huge issues with inflated real estate prices and the bursting of the bubble affecting their economies negatively.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Anon
Sigh. Everybody just go back and re-read Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle, Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One, Vogel, Canton Under Communism, and Ronald Dore, British Factory/Japanese Factory. Then y’all can at least have a well-read pie fight.
And I am actually someone who advocates for minimal government intervention in our domestic economy. I just want our corporations to be patriotic and pay a price if they aren't, and I also don't want our citizens to fund the economic rise of our present and future competitors by being taken advantage of through the said competitors' mercantilist policies. "Free markets" work best when the participants are public-spirited and honest. They work very poorly and end up not being free at all when self-interested and unpatriotic actors accumulate market power and enact barriers to entry to newcomers and/or when external parties take advantage.
Both Japan and South Korea have large, powerful military forces and are, as of 2024, countries with the 9th and 10th highest military spending in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest_military_expenditures
But you are correct that both China and Japan have huge issues with inflated real estate prices and the bursting of the bubble affecting their economies negatively.Replies: @The Germ Theory of Disease, @Anon
But US spending as a percentage of GDP should be much lower than that Japan and Korea. The US has no natural enemies and is protected by two oceans. In addition, its GDP is much higher than Japan’s and Korea’s!
Now that the state is much weaker than big business in South Korea, the latter is out for itself with nary a thought about its citizens… which has led to South Korean businesses importing Indian (South Asian) IT workers, for example, all the while the unemployment rate for the South Korean youth is through the roof.
Sound familiar?
https://www.deccanherald.com/world/it-professionals-dominate-indian-diaspora-2527675Replies: @epebble
The linked article seems to suggest tight economic integration between two countries with a lot of mutual investments etc., rather than ‘importing’ IT workers. Also, it is unlikely that unemployed South Korean youth will be good engineers and scientists for Samsung. It is like we have a huge number of people living in tents in downtown Portland and Seattle. Unfortunately, they can’t be hired by Intel or Microsoft.
Quick compared to driving, but not-so-quick compared to Amtrak. Remember that Amtrak only uses six stations between Philadelphia and New York while SEPTA and NJ Transit use 25 plus the transfer in Trenton. I would imagine that would get tedious after a while. He is no longer around to ask, but Ed McMahon made this commute for 15 years (1957-72) on the Pennsylvania Railroad, with Amtrak, SEPTA, and NJ Transit coming later.
As an aside, I didn’t realize that there is another SEPTA line that serves Mercer County with a station in the West Trenton section of Ewing. It takes one down to Temple, where you can connect with other SEPTA lines if needed. AFAICT this is the only passenger station in New Jersey not served by NJ Transit.
America has mainly become about extraction rather than construction. in line with it's general decline.Replies: @epebble
Not sure why you feel like that about billionaires. Most of them have created completely new sectors of economy, ab initio. Bill gates and Steve Jobs created the PC, Smartphone, digital music industry. Elon Musk created electric car and private space industries. Jeff Bezos completely remade retailing and computing. Even less exciting billionaires like Sam Walton and Warren Buffet have done amazing transformations (Walmart, by creating a highly efficient retailing system has kept inflation low in the last many decades, Buffet’s investments have made the businesses very efficient and profitable helping the stock market do very well). Without people like these, U.S. would not be much different from Mexico (or Canada, at best).
I am on record as stating that I abhor the over-regulation of healthcare in this country. And we don’t have a “medical cartel” in this country. AMA, the lobby for physicians, is extremely weak - that’s why you see chiropractors, osteopaths, foreign medical graduates, and even nurses are now calling themselves “doctors.” And provider costs are about 10% of the healthcare spending in this country. Financially speaking, I wish we had a more “free market” medicine in this country (which means your gold-plated government provided healthcare goes away). I’d be A LOT richer (the recent cuts in Medicare payments to providers, combined with increases in compensations for all levels of labor, means that I’m losing even more money than before on Medicare patients now).American medical care is the highest quality in the world. You can see that easily in the cancer survival rates and such that are the direct result of the quality of medical care provided. Life expectancy has to do with much more than medical care - diet, activity level, obesity, genetics, etc. once basic public hygiene is met. That’s why Hispanics, despite being poorer, have higher life expectancy than whites in this country.
And the so-called “medical cartel” isn’t the one taking 18% of the GDP (I wish!) - there is a massive amount of administrative burden - in both public and private aspects - that has been imposed on medicine.
But all of this is just a diversion and smokescreen for the fact you are completely, utterly wrong about the East Asian political economy and how they went from rags to riches. They didn’t go “free market” - they engaged in highly intelligent “state-directed capitalism” (also called “authoritarian capitalism”). In the real world, there isn’t a stark cartoon division between pure communism and pure market economy. There is state intervention in every society, except perhaps completely chaotic regions of failed states as Somalia (but even there there are distorting factors that affect the market as such).
The question isn’t whether state intervention is good or not. It’s rather what level and type of state state intervention is best (and the most optimal combination changes from place to place, from time period to time period). As I explained on another thread: https://www.unz.com/isteve/retconning-the-founding/#comment-6524275Replies: @Mark G.
“You literally live off the taxpayers’ tits”
I am not an anarchist who thinks we need no military. The Founders of this country were also not anarchists who thought we should have no military. They thought the purpose of government was to protect the “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” of its citizens and a military would be needed as part of that. That “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness” quote comes from an 18th century Enlightenment America document. Ever heard it before?
Are you an anarchist who wants to abolish the military? You do not need to answer that because I already know the answer. When a retired physicist said here he was an anarchist, your response was to start talking about going over to his house and shooting and killing him.
He told me (probably seriously) that Sacramento was going to be some sort of a post-apocalyptic anarchist "free city." I joked - half seriously - that such a perfect government-less "utopia" leads to warlordism (whoever has more men and guns) like Somalia, not some sort of an orderly, government-less version of Japan. I pointed out that, in such a situation, there is a particular advantage to people who already have access to a large body of armed men (aka early mover advantage) who can then kill "malcontents" like the said "physicist" and then take over (he then went on to ramble psychotically about BBQ-ing me and eating me or some such thing - he was clearly deranged).were not libertarians nor were they hateful, radical atheists like you who called Christians adherents to an "evil and malignant God" (as you wrote in another thread). Many were devout Christians themselves.Replies: @Mark G.
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I've been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.Replies: @QCIC, @Frau Katze, @The Anti-Gnostic, @showmethereal
AI is going to mow through jobs like a mechanical harvester through a cotton field.
How long is CVS going to pay pharmacists $100K a year to count pills?
We already have every bit of software and engineering we need to automate every step of your McDonald’s Big Crap. They are paying dimwit stoners just to show up and wear a nametag at this point.
OTR driving will be automated rigs in a dedicated lane on the Interstate. Drivers will board them for the first and last mile. Container ships, cargo flights, trash removal, Amazon deliveries–same.
Bank tellers will disappear to the extent they haven’t already.
WFH is bringing the hammer down too. Businesses (and government bureaucracies) are walking away from their cube-farm leases like underwater homeowners from their mortgages in 2008.
I agree with you that a lot more will get automated by non-AI software, and WFH is going to leach out the big cities.
New types of work will also be created, and more importantly, the whole concept of a "job" will become irrelevant. Instead, there will simply be tasks to be done, and people will choose which they want to do.
Some young guy may spend a month ferrying people around in his car, waiting tables, and illustrating digital artwork. Rather than having three part-time jobs with set hours, he will be able to pick and choose which he wants to do when from a stream of tasks offered online, depending on his mood that day.
Right now, that is mostly available for low-wage physical work, like driving for Lyft, but someday soon it will be the norm for all service work, including high-paid creative work:
https://youtu.be/vIQASBN0VyE
DC not Philly.
Mark G. is right. You have to look at what prices would have been without the Fed’s policies or without the “economic efficiencies.” Control for one or the other. The Fed’s inflationary policies meant that Americans were deprived of the lower costs of living they should have enjoyed from the globalization of manufacturing and services.Replies: @epebble
The only Fed’s policies are:
(1) Keep an inflation target of 2% and
(2) Aspire for as low unemployment, subject to being secondary to (1)
They may not achieve either or both of these goals, but that is their mandate. They have done a good job, on the whole, during 1990 – 2020. Amazingly so during 2008.
Globalization has definitely led to cost efficiencies; that has been translated to profits. Prices have also fallen (or have not risen much) on globalized goods. $300 big screen TVs, computers, $100 cell phones all would been at least $1,000 without globalization. Nice Honda and Toyota cars can be bought for a fraction of their equivalent prices in 1990 real price. Economic efficiency need not necessarily mean low prices for consumers. It may mean high profits for business if market allows it. That is why we are seeing record setting Dow and high inflation now.
So are you in the military? Or are you a member of the vast legion of the administrative staff with no military function whatsoever who lives off the government tit and the taxpayer-funded gold plated pensions and medical care?
Keep making up lies about me.
He told me (probably seriously) that Sacramento was going to be some sort of a post-apocalyptic anarchist “free city.” I joked – half seriously – that such a perfect government-less “utopia” leads to warlordism (whoever has more men and guns) like Somalia, not some sort of an orderly, government-less version of Japan. I pointed out that, in such a situation, there is a particular advantage to people who already have access to a large body of armed men (aka early mover advantage) who can then kill “malcontents” like the said “physicist” and then take over (he then went on to ramble psychotically about BBQ-ing me and eating me or some such thing – he was clearly deranged).
were not libertarians nor were they hateful, radical atheists like you who called Christians adherents to an “evil and malignant God” (as you wrote in another thread). Many were devout Christians themselves.
When I went to work for the military in 1981 I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That is why I went to work for them. I love the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it.
You hate the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it. You have expressed admiration for the Spanish Catholic Fascist dictator Franco. Apparently that is the type of government you would like to see here, a Catholic Fascist dictatorship.Replies: @Twinkie
You get no argument from me in reducing dramatically both America’s defense spending and its overseas commitment. I was merely contradicting the notion that “Japan and Korea pay almost nothing for their national defense.” That’s clearly false. Both countries are major military powers with substantial defense outlays (which is not a surprise given the threats China and North Korea pose to those two countries).
Many, many people have written about Japanese, South Korean, and Chinese economic development based on state-directed export-oriented industrialization model. This is basic knowledge to anyone who has studied the recent history of those countries.
I know it. It’s sad that we even have to debate (more like educate) people about this here (and in the process, endure malicious and false personal attacks).
And I am actually someone who advocates for minimal government intervention in our domestic economy. I just want our corporations to be patriotic and pay a price if they aren’t, and I also don’t want our citizens to fund the economic rise of our present and future competitors by being taken advantage of through the said competitors’ mercantilist policies. “Free markets” work best when the participants are public-spirited and honest. They work very poorly and end up not being free at all when self-interested and unpatriotic actors accumulate market power and enact barriers to entry to newcomers and/or when external parties take advantage.
He told me (probably seriously) that Sacramento was going to be some sort of a post-apocalyptic anarchist "free city." I joked - half seriously - that such a perfect government-less "utopia" leads to warlordism (whoever has more men and guns) like Somalia, not some sort of an orderly, government-less version of Japan. I pointed out that, in such a situation, there is a particular advantage to people who already have access to a large body of armed men (aka early mover advantage) who can then kill "malcontents" like the said "physicist" and then take over (he then went on to ramble psychotically about BBQ-ing me and eating me or some such thing - he was clearly deranged).were not libertarians nor were they hateful, radical atheists like you who called Christians adherents to an "evil and malignant God" (as you wrote in another thread). Many were devout Christians themselves.Replies: @Mark G.
Apparently you think the military does not need accounting people to pay the bills and keep track of how taxpayer money is spent. You really are a dumbass. As for my gold plated pension, I am not collecting it. I qualified for a pension 12 years ago and am still working. Most people my age are retired.
When I went to work for the military in 1981 I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That is why I went to work for them. I love the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it.
You hate the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it. You have expressed admiration for the Spanish Catholic Fascist dictator Franco. Apparently that is the type of government you would like to see here, a Catholic Fascist dictatorship.
But that is not how this is measured. It goes by jobs in the area – not companies. A Google office in Virginia does not count to San Jose metro area. It counts toward DC for this
Much as I love Steve’s writing, I’m increasingly aware that we’re all like citizens of the Roman Empire around AD 400, discussing the goings-on in the Senate as if it’s AD 100.
Things have changed enormously in the world in the last 60-odd years.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016
“China coal is more than a quarter of current world CO2 emissions”
Even historically (since Ind Revolution) it’s 14%. And that’s just coal, we’re not considering oil or gas.
I wish people would get some of these simple facts into their heads. Coal and oil may be “yesterday’s fuel” in the G7, but in the rest of the world they are actually being burned at record levels – which makes China’s outputs of CO2 even more impressive/frightening, depending on view.
https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-august-2023
“World oil demand is scaling record highs, boosted by strong summer air travel, increased oil use in power generation and surging Chinese petrochemical activity. Global oil demand is set to expand by 2.2 mb/d to 102.2 mb/d in 2023, with China accounting for more than 70% of growth. With the post-pandemic rebound running out of steam, and as lacklustre economic conditions, tighter efficiency standards and new electric vehicles weigh on use, growth is forecast to slow to 1 mb/d in 2024.”
https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-set-to-remain-at-record-levels-in-2023
Then we have the news that China, Korea and Japan together account for 94% of civilian shipbuilding.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/03/global-shipping-china-dependence-korea-japan-britain/
The world is changing so fast, I can hardly believe that people like Pashinyan in Armenia are cutting loose from their traditional guarantor.
When I went to work for the military in 1981 I took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. That is why I went to work for them. I love the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it.
You hate the Constitution and the 18th century Enlightenment era that produced it. You have expressed admiration for the Spanish Catholic Fascist dictator Franco. Apparently that is the type of government you would like to see here, a Catholic Fascist dictatorship.Replies: @Twinkie
Keep justifying your taxpayer-funded paper-shuffling job and gold-plated healthcare, Mr. Libertarian. Your argument can be used to justify every government function no matter how bloated (I mean the government should be able to collect taxes, right? So let’s hire more accountants and bloat the IRS too!). What a hypocrite.
Your argument by ad hominem reveals who the dumbass is here. Hint: it’s the person avoiding discussing the topic at hand, because he doesn’t know much about it.
1) I don’t hate the Constitution (indeed I love it and swore to defend it more than once)*. 2) The French Revolution (with its chaos and the guillotine, leading to the rise of the Ogre and an entire continent engulfed in war) was the product of The Enlightenment. Our Founding Fathers – when they created the Constitution and our system of government – was reacting in horror to the that product (well, maybe except Jefferson who was in love with the Perpetual Revolution).
More statement that reveals your ignorance. Franco was not a fascist (fascism died with WWII). He was a Catholic traditionalist. But, yes, he was a dictator – but such a figure was required, because Spain was about to fall into the hands of revolutionaries who intended to burn churches, kill priests, rape nuns, and bring ruin upon his nation by turning it over to anarchists and communists.
*There is something I love more than the Constitution – it’s the American people, especially the honest, kind, orderly and faithful Christian people of the rural Midwest who produced my wife and her kin (who are now my kin). The Constitution, as extraordinary a document as it is, should not be the object of worship that you engage in. What we ought to love more and care for and protect are the American people. To the extent that there is an enormous rot that has infected the country and is hurting the ordinary Americans, it must be combated and even excised. Should the surgeon for that rot be someone like Franco, in other words, someone who will rise, risk his life, and fight to combat the rot, so be it. I welcome such a figure.
Note that before Franco died, he ensured that the constitutional monarchy would return to his beloved country. Indeed, he left the country far better off than he found it. If that is not the most noble purpose of a statesman, I don’t know what is.
As John Boyd said, “people first, ideas second, hardware third.”
If they were big fans of Broadway, local theaters all over the country can now market and sell tickets for live performances easier online, while slapping video recordings of performances online and making money that way too. Affinity groups way too niche for even a big city form online all the time now, as can be seen by the tiny transgender group commandeering the discourse or the small group of online developers who created Bitcoin. Most singles meet online these days, with almost nobody risking the potential embarrassment of asking each other out in person anymore.
I suspect what will happen is that various mid-sized towns will cater to the few affinity groups that want to be close together, say many comedians live in Austin, TX or many of the finance podcasts move to Vegas, but most will spread out wherever they want.
The large cities were an artifact of technology, eg better construction techniques and sanitation, plus the need for close coordination in many white-collar jobs, and they will be destroyed by new tech in turn, the internet. I've been saying this for decades and this Covid episode has finally made more people realize it.Replies: @QCIC, @Frau Katze, @The Anti-Gnostic, @showmethereal
Theatre…. As with many other industries. The best want to compete against the best. To do that you can’t just be “anywhere”. Maybe the automatons being grown up ok social media will change. But instinctively humans like interaction. Electronics can’t do that. And to compete against the best you have to be where the best is. Maybe that is true in US culture where they started saying “everyone is a winner”. But cities have been around for thousands of years for a reason. Tech bros won’t change that. Maybe you mean just in the US. But an Asian violinist who migrates to the US in 2024 wants to play in NY or one of the 2 or 3 other top places for orchestra. They don’t want to just play anywhere. They might take a job “anywhere” but that’s not their goal. Same with a Russian composer – etc etc. Human beings at the core are still competitive. The internet hasn’t completely bred that out …. At least not yet. Humanity will probably swallow itself before then. Cities might be dying as you say in the US – but that is not the case around the globe. The rest of the globe is urbanizing even more. Talent is concentrating even more
And yes, much of in-person interaction has been getting replaced by "electronics" for the last century, everything from telephones to now video-conferencing.Says who? You were right about this for the last century, but do you think Microsoft is now unable to compete with Samsung because one is based out of Redmond and the other Seoul?
The best are now online, not in the big cities. Joe Rogan, the most-watched talk show in the world, is based out of Austin, TX now, not Los Angeles as he was previously forced to for his prior TV career.Just as paper mail had been around for centuries till the tech bros killed it off with email and online messaging apps, the internet is now killing off the big cities.No, I'm talking about the entire world. Of course, many countries or professions are still fairly backward or traditional, so orchestras might be the last to change, but this decentralization will happen everywhere there is internet.
The reason violinists and composers wanted to move to big cities is because only those places could afford to pay more for the best and that led to a lot of competition to work there. Well, now that economic opportunity is leaving the big cities, the musicians will eventually follow the money and leave too.Oh, of course, and now that the most intense competition is online, not in the antiquated big cities, the competitive won't bother moving to the big cities anymore.You may be right about those outside the US, but that's largely because they're behind the US in most tech and their use of the internet. Eventually, they will catch on and decentralize also.Replies: @showmethereal
The Constitution protects the American people. Only a Catholic Fascist like you would think replacing it with someone like Franco would be an improvement.
You wrote to me here at the Unz Review on June 12th, 2021 the following: “Let us have a Franco and be done with it. I am henceforth a Francoist”. The commenter dfordoom responded to that by saying that the problem with making someone dictator is you don’t know what you might get. Even if he starts off well, remember Lord Acton: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Our Founders were wiser than you. They knew concentrating power in the hands of one person was dangerous and designed a government with a separation of powers. In addition to that we were put under the Constitution, which Jefferson said was meant to bind men down from mischief. We need to go back to that and not listen to a little Catholic Korean Fascist who wants an American Franco.
You always start screaming "Fascist" when you lose an argument -- it's kind of a tell at this point. Leftists do that, too -- do you think you're fooling anyone any more than they are?
Look, these days, we're all Orwellian to some extent, regardless of political persuasion. That still doesn't make those who admire Orwell's work and character into leftists -- certainly not in the way he outspokenly regarded himself. Nor does it make them admirers of leftism. See where I'm going with this? Now, take off the tendentiousness/stupidity blinders you've wrapped around your head as tight as any tourniquet in a desperate effort to come up with a counter-argument, and apply the same latitude to someone like Franco, or even Francoism.
Sputtering about yelling "fascist" is really not the effective comeback and "gotcha" tactic you seem to think it is (especially on a site like this, I might add.)
All it takes for The Constitutions to be mangled (even more than it has already) is for Biden to win again and then a couple of conservative SCOTUS justices to have health issues during his term. Are you really this naive?
Be sure to wave "Muh Constitution" as an amulet when looters and rioters come to burn down your house or business (oh, wait, despite wailing about "the free market," you actually don't own any business, do you and you have never had to balance profits and losses, to which your livelihood and that of children depended?).Replies: @res, @BB753
Things have changed enormously in the world in the last 60-odd years.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/04/just-57-companies-linked-to-80-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions-since-2016
“China coal is more than a quarter of current world CO2 emissions”
Even historically (since Ind Revolution) it’s 14%. And that's just coal, we're not considering oil or gas.
I wish people would get some of these simple facts into their heads. Coal and oil may be "yesterday's fuel" in the G7, but in the rest of the world they are actually being burned at record levels - which makes China's outputs of CO2 even more impressive/frightening, depending on view.
https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-august-2023
"World oil demand is scaling record highs, boosted by strong summer air travel, increased oil use in power generation and surging Chinese petrochemical activity. Global oil demand is set to expand by 2.2 mb/d to 102.2 mb/d in 2023, with China accounting for more than 70% of growth. With the post-pandemic rebound running out of steam, and as lacklustre economic conditions, tighter efficiency standards and new electric vehicles weigh on use, growth is forecast to slow to 1 mb/d in 2024."
https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-set-to-remain-at-record-levels-in-2023
Then we have the news that China, Korea and Japan together account for 94% of civilian shipbuilding.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/03/global-shipping-china-dependence-korea-japan-britain/
The world is changing so fast, I can hardly believe that people like Pashinyan in Armenia are cutting loose from their traditional guarantor.Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
Et tu, Brute? moment for US Empire is when Japan and SK go over to the side of China. There use to be an annual CJK summit before Covid, now its restarting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–Japan–South_Korea_trilateral_summit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China–Japan–South_Korea_Free_Trade_Agreement
The kind of people here making anti-Japanese, anti-Korean comments, or lumping “Asians” together, may as well be CCP moles.
But you'd think other countries would see which side their bread is buttered on - unless, of course their leaders are hopelessly corrupt. The Saudis are definitely looking Eastwards, even if they've not moved much in that direction.
No, the real "Et tu, Brute?" moment will be when Israel goes over to the side of China.
In rural places when people abandon farms do to urbanization- forests grow back and animals repopulate. A cousin of mine tells me of bears moving into places they hadn’t been in a century. Japans issue though is they are 90% urbanized population. When urban population drops there are homes and schools and hospitals that become redundant. The alternative is then??? Urban parks after demolition? The other issue is societal promise of retiree income requires new blood producing. When retirees outnumber productive workers- that can be a huge problem. The EU and US populations are only growing because of migration (and that is the real reason they are allowed in by politicians). Japan isn’t going that route – so that have to find another way.
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=Share%20of%20value%20added%20to%20the%20gross%20domestic%20product%20of%20the%20United%20States%20in%201990%2C%20by%20industry&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2FPreview_Images%2Fmanufacturing_USGDP.gif&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scdigest.com%2Fontarget%2F18-03-21-1.php%3Fcid%3D13920&docid=H6VxNX9jjkaetM&tbnid=DRUX8JF55oZsGM&vet=12ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA..i&w=750&h=410&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwjcvu2UjtSFAxURHjQIHUFYAvIQM3oECEMQAA
Most of the wealth is being created today by bit twiddling and not by producing physical goods (except agriculture and energy) as in the 1960's.Replies: @Prester John
“Most of the wealth is being created today by bit twiddling and not by producing physical goods (except agriculture and energy) as in the 1960’s.”
One of the main reasons why the US of A is the world’s largest consumer of imported goods (not to mention services). Take heart though, because we excel at producing “information.”
To a great extent the Anglosphere and EU are bound to the US for good or ill – the former by what used to be ties of blood, the latter by being tied into “the rules-based international order”, which means they will fly planes to protect Israel but not Ukraine.
But you’d think other countries would see which side their bread is buttered on – unless, of course their leaders are hopelessly corrupt. The Saudis are definitely looking Eastwards, even if they’ve not moved much in that direction.
“Et tu, Brute? moment for US Empire is when Japan and SK go over to the side of China.”
No, the real “Et tu, Brute?” moment will be when Israel goes over to the side of China.
Their recovery since has been remarkable. The power of the large industrial combines was greatly reduced by MacArthur's reforms, though it remains a tendency.
The "two nations" I was referring to were the original subjects, Japan and (S) Korea.
It wasn't the economic "leadership" of state sanctioned economic cartels and monopolies there, but fierce international competition from abroad, which made these economies grow. And starting from nearly zero industrial capital.
The main advantage large industries have is in access to bank capital and stock sales. Governments do tend to favor larger businesses, even in the US.
But China's much larger "state managed" quasi market economy has been mismanaged for years by "malinvestment" (over financed) real estate development. Government driven investments usually go off track pretty drastically.
Japan has had recent long periods of low or zero growth. At the moment the relative free markets in the US lead the world in innovation and wealth creation.
Also, Japan and Korea pay almost nothing for their national defense. The US does it for them. Quite a boost for their economies.Replies: @Twinkie, @showmethereal
To your last paragraph – that is also why Japan was able to recover the way it did. It didn’t face the same punitive costs that Germany did in exchange for military occupation in a potential war against China (which is why Okinawa was given back to Japan rather than independence- so the U.S. could put nukes there). Japan never had to pay full reparations. Just ask South Korea. They are still angry. Their current leader has record low approval partly because he’s seen as too deferential to Japan – who still owes a debt to them.
1. The Korean War broke out where US military needed Japan as supply depo.
2. Both Chiang and Mao took lenient attitudes towards it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#Relations_with_Japan
These days CCP is spinning as America letting Japan off the hook.
But you can't even read Chinese so wouldn't know what this article is about.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/以德報怨_(蔣中正)Replies: @showmethereal
“Only a Catholic Fascist like you…”
You always start screaming “Fascist” when you lose an argument — it’s kind of a tell at this point. Leftists do that, too — do you think you’re fooling anyone any more than they are?
Look, these days, we’re all Orwellian to some extent, regardless of political persuasion. That still doesn’t make those who admire Orwell’s work and character into leftists — certainly not in the way he outspokenly regarded himself. Nor does it make them admirers of leftism. See where I’m going with this? Now, take off the tendentiousness/stupidity blinders you’ve wrapped around your head as tight as any tourniquet in a desperate effort to come up with a counter-argument, and apply the same latitude to someone like Franco, or even Francoism.
Sputtering about yelling “fascist” is really not the effective comeback and “gotcha” tactic you seem to think it is (especially on a site like this, I might add.)
Explain why this guy may be the smartest member of Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Massie
No. Japan recovered quickly because
1. The Korean War broke out where US military needed Japan as supply depo.
2. Both Chiang and Mao took lenient attitudes towards it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#Relations_with_Japan
These days CCP is spinning as America letting Japan off the hook.
But you can’t even read Chinese so wouldn’t know what this article is about.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/以德報怨_(蔣中正)
At worst, you could leave them be. The world won’t end.
Sure. That’s a nice idea. Or forests or fields.
Japan is doing just fine. It has one of the highest standards of living in the world.
They are being allowed in for far more sinister reasons, unfortunately.
Again, Japan is doing just fine.
You are correct they have among the highest living standards in the world. But they worry about a drop. Do you know how many old people live in Japan alone with no family to even visit them. It is already a social problem. The economic issues of the stagnant economy for a couple of decades is for another reason. It would be interesting to see a GDP map of Japan like this US one. Tokyo and Osaka would be huge blobs
It’s not that power corrupts, it’s that power tends to attract the corruptible.
Oh, you sweet summer child. I guess this is what happens when you live off the tit of the taxpayer-funded government and work at a facility protected by soldiers all your life.
All it takes for The Constitutions to be mangled (even more than it has already) is for Biden to win again and then a couple of conservative SCOTUS justices to have health issues during his term. Are you really this naive?
Be sure to wave “Muh Constitution” as an amulet when looters and rioters come to burn down your house or business (oh, wait, despite wailing about “the free market,” you actually don’t own any business, do you and you have never had to balance profits and losses, to which your livelihood and that of children depended?).
I think it is fair to characterize this paper as arguing that "moral identity" mediates that effect though.
Does Power Corrupt or Enable? When and Why Power Facilitates Self-Interested Behavior
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221752730_Does_Power_Corrupt_or_Enable_When_and_Why_Power_Facilitates_Self-Interested_Behavior
One thing I find interesting there is how much the Table 1 correlations differ between the two outcome variables.
6. Self-interested work behavior
7. Points kept in dictator game
6. Is dominated by a positive correlation with "Social desirability" and a negative correlation with "Moral identity."
7. is dominated by a negative (?) correlation with "Power (manipulated)."
Note that in Table 2 both model 3 power coefficients are positive and significant. The coefficients are unstandardized so hard to interpret the values beyond that. Also note how little explanatory power (see R^2) the model 3s add over the model 2s.
Perhaps interesting to explore how they measure moral identity. Here is the questionnaire source.
The self-importance of moral identity
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6127751_The_self-importance_moral_identity
Some groundwork.The first paper described their scale as:I'm not certain how to interpret that, but my best guess is they mean the five questions in Table 3 with high (bolded) Internalization factor loading.Where "(R)" means reverse scored and "characteristics" refers to the nine traits quoted above.Replies: @Twinkie
That's why they hate Trump. From the charges filed against him, there's nothing much there to blackmail him with, and Trump has probably the goods on everybody.
Les
All it takes for The Constitutions to be mangled (even more than it has already) is for Biden to win again and then a couple of conservative SCOTUS justices to have health issues during his term. Are you really this naive?
Be sure to wave "Muh Constitution" as an amulet when looters and rioters come to burn down your house or business (oh, wait, despite wailing about "the free market," you actually don't own any business, do you and you have never had to balance profits and losses, to which your livelihood and that of children depended?).Replies: @res, @BB753
Interesting. I think we could argue about which has the greater effect (I would tend to agree with you there), but I think it is hard to argue the “power corrupts” effect does not exist.
I think it is fair to characterize this paper as arguing that “moral identity” mediates that effect though.
Does Power Corrupt or Enable? When and Why Power Facilitates Self-Interested Behavior
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221752730_Does_Power_Corrupt_or_Enable_When_and_Why_Power_Facilitates_Self-Interested_Behavior
One thing I find interesting there is how much the Table 1 correlations differ between the two outcome variables.
6. Self-interested work behavior
7. Points kept in dictator game
6. Is dominated by a positive correlation with “Social desirability” and a negative correlation with “Moral identity.”
7. is dominated by a negative (?) correlation with “Power (manipulated).”
Note that in Table 2 both model 3 power coefficients are positive and significant. The coefficients are unstandardized so hard to interpret the values beyond that. Also note how little explanatory power (see R^2) the model 3s add over the model 2s.
Perhaps interesting to explore how they measure moral identity. Here is the questionnaire source.
The self-importance of moral identity
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6127751_The_self-importance_moral_identity
Some groundwork.
The first paper described their scale as:
I’m not certain how to interpret that, but my best guess is they mean the five questions in Table 3 with high (bolded) Internalization factor loading.
Where “(R)” means reverse scored and “characteristics” refers to the nine traits quoted above.
Yes, power can corrupt people. But so does money. Or adulation (of others). Or fame. Or success of infinite variety. I can go on.
But, in my experience, virtuous people are not that easily corrupted just because they attain power (cue George Washing and Cincinnatus). If anything, they tend to be weighed down by the responsibility of it and are eager to cast it aside as soon as possible.
What happens, more often than not, instead is that politics (or any contest for power) tends to draw people who are already corruptible (that's why, not infrequently, politicians who become powerful are brought down by some petty corruption or malfeasance from earlier - that is, before they had power).
Anyway, that's what I have seen.Replies: @res
Every time that I see a white family that invests a lot in their kids, like forcing them to take violin lessons after school, or getting them into intense preparatory classes so that they can get into the best universities, etc, the family turns out to be Democrat-voting Libs. This is *always* true. Always, always, always.
Many families push their kids into intense sports participation. It’s doubtful that all of them – or even most of them – are liberals.
Without R-selection we wouldn’t have people like Colonel Sanders, Donald Trump, Kat Williams or little Richard. These pintoresque types make the World a more interesting place.
Col. Sanders, really? He wasn’t a flashy showman, but a man who had held many different jobs before becoming a success when he was past 60. The whole white suit routine was a part of being a company brand ambassador.
I think it is fair to characterize this paper as arguing that "moral identity" mediates that effect though.
Does Power Corrupt or Enable? When and Why Power Facilitates Self-Interested Behavior
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221752730_Does_Power_Corrupt_or_Enable_When_and_Why_Power_Facilitates_Self-Interested_Behavior
One thing I find interesting there is how much the Table 1 correlations differ between the two outcome variables.
6. Self-interested work behavior
7. Points kept in dictator game
6. Is dominated by a positive correlation with "Social desirability" and a negative correlation with "Moral identity."
7. is dominated by a negative (?) correlation with "Power (manipulated)."
Note that in Table 2 both model 3 power coefficients are positive and significant. The coefficients are unstandardized so hard to interpret the values beyond that. Also note how little explanatory power (see R^2) the model 3s add over the model 2s.
Perhaps interesting to explore how they measure moral identity. Here is the questionnaire source.
The self-importance of moral identity
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/6127751_The_self-importance_moral_identity
Some groundwork.The first paper described their scale as:I'm not certain how to interpret that, but my best guess is they mean the five questions in Table 3 with high (bolded) Internalization factor loading.Where "(R)" means reverse scored and "characteristics" refers to the nine traits quoted above.Replies: @Twinkie
Have you ever heard the saying, “If you want to see the true inner core of a man, do not give him failure, give him success”?
Yes, power can corrupt people. But so does money. Or adulation (of others). Or fame. Or success of infinite variety. I can go on.
But, in my experience, virtuous people are not that easily corrupted just because they attain power (cue George Washing and Cincinnatus). If anything, they tend to be weighed down by the responsibility of it and are eager to cast it aside as soon as possible.
What happens, more often than not, instead is that politics (or any contest for power) tends to draw people who are already corruptible (that’s why, not infrequently, politicians who become powerful are brought down by some petty corruption or malfeasance from earlier – that is, before they had power).
Anyway, that’s what I have seen.
It seems to me we have two problems here.
1. The effect you observe of corruptible people being attracted to power (and I would argue being most likely to win these days, those short term benefits can be powerful).
2. Relatively virtuous people (clearly there are levels here, I wonder what the distribution looks like and how much it varies over historical time) taking a shortcut along the way and later finding out they have provided kompromat.
Then there is the issue of successfully negotiating an environment of people and laws which sometimes seems structured to help the corrupt get ahead. The route George Washington and Cincinnatus took to power does not really exist in major countries these days (thankfully, in some ways).
P.S. Perhaps useful (or too obvious?) to observe that power (etc.) tends to make individual corruption more significant?
1. The Korean War broke out where US military needed Japan as supply depo.
2. Both Chiang and Mao took lenient attitudes towards it.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek#Relations_with_Japan
These days CCP is spinning as America letting Japan off the hook.
But you can't even read Chinese so wouldn't know what this article is about.
https://zh.wikipedia.org/zh-hans/以德報怨_(蔣中正)Replies: @showmethereal
It if worked for the CPC wouldn’t I be able to read Chinese??? LOL. Weirdo. In any event – stop sourcing Wikipedia. And there are a lot of things that were let slide. The Diayou islands for instance. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t serious. Just because a country was too weak to make certain demands doesn’t mean they weren’t aggrieved. And as I wrote to the other poster – South Koreans still are aggrieved.. But you skipped that I guess because you have an obsession with the CPC (you read Chinese and don’t know they refer to themselves as such and CCP is western??). Where are your sources to claim that South Koreans don’t still hold a grudge against Japan and want proper reparations? Or are you the operative you accuse others of being???
If Japan is doing fine then please go to Tokyo and tell them. Do you know anyone that lives in Japan? I do! There is serious angst there. So please go tell them “anonymous” says everything will be fine.
You are correct they have among the highest living standards in the world. But they worry about a drop. Do you know how many old people live in Japan alone with no family to even visit them. It is already a social problem. The economic issues of the stagnant economy for a couple of decades is for another reason. It would be interesting to see a GDP map of Japan like this US one. Tokyo and Osaka would be huge blobs
All it takes for The Constitutions to be mangled (even more than it has already) is for Biden to win again and then a couple of conservative SCOTUS justices to have health issues during his term. Are you really this naive?
Be sure to wave "Muh Constitution" as an amulet when looters and rioters come to burn down your house or business (oh, wait, despite wailing about "the free market," you actually don't own any business, do you and you have never had to balance profits and losses, to which your livelihood and that of children depended?).Replies: @res, @BB753
If a politician is incorruptible, he won’t play game with the system. So the system selects individuals who can be blackmailed for past and future misdeeds. Politicians are all bought and sold in the Senate and Congress. Anybody with a working brain can figure that out.
That’s why they hate Trump. From the charges filed against him, there’s nothing much there to blackmail him with, and Trump has probably the goods on everybody.
Yes, power can corrupt people. But so does money. Or adulation (of others). Or fame. Or success of infinite variety. I can go on.
But, in my experience, virtuous people are not that easily corrupted just because they attain power (cue George Washing and Cincinnatus). If anything, they tend to be weighed down by the responsibility of it and are eager to cast it aside as soon as possible.
What happens, more often than not, instead is that politics (or any contest for power) tends to draw people who are already corruptible (that's why, not infrequently, politicians who become powerful are brought down by some petty corruption or malfeasance from earlier - that is, before they had power).
Anyway, that's what I have seen.Replies: @res
Agreed with that. And well put (I appreciate your ability to articulate things like that). I just don’t think it proper to dismiss “power tends to corrupt” completely. It takes a strong and virtuous person to put the greater good first (rather than their own, their family’s, or various other outward, or overlapping, circles of affinity). Especially when dealing with situations high in uncertainty (e.g. which policy will best achieve intended ends). Then there is the issue of which level constitutes the “greater good.” How does one trade off cost and benefit between those levels? That theme resonates through iSteve posts and comments.
It seems to me we have two problems here.
1. The effect you observe of corruptible people being attracted to power (and I would argue being most likely to win these days, those short term benefits can be powerful).
2. Relatively virtuous people (clearly there are levels here, I wonder what the distribution looks like and how much it varies over historical time) taking a shortcut along the way and later finding out they have provided kompromat.
Then there is the issue of successfully negotiating an environment of people and laws which sometimes seems structured to help the corrupt get ahead. The route George Washington and Cincinnatus took to power does not really exist in major countries these days (thankfully, in some ways).
P.S. Perhaps useful (or too obvious?) to observe that power (etc.) tends to make individual corruption more significant?
Yeah we know that.
We’re off on our own tangent here.
First of all, plenty of blue staters live what you see as a red state lifestyle and plenty of red staters (even conservative red staters) live what you see as a blue state lifestyle. Secondly, most of political psychology is dubious, a collection of cliches and outdated findings. I don’t see much real evidence that liberals or progressives are actually more empathetic or egalitarian than conservatives. They may support politicians who use that rhetoric, but do they really practice what they preach? Scant evidence of that. Third, is it really the case that strongly K selected people become dangerously egalitarian? I also find that doubtful. The children of successful people may not put be as ambitious as their parents, but then are they really strongly K selected people? Finally, having children does seem to involve concern about the future. Putting that off — often until it’s too late — doesn’t.
I think a lot of intelligent, confident, unmarried women fear small towns and cities because they find some safety in the larger herd in the big city. Gay men concentrated in big cities play a role since they do not prey on the women and may be a slight buffer, if only psychological, against men who might trouble the women otherwise.Replies: @Bumpkin
I think economic opportunity and bountiful recreation were the main reasons, and mating was mostly a side effect. But are you saying mid-sized towns like Oklahoma City or Duluth don’t have enough singles?
I didn’t realize mating was their chief purpose. 😉 If there is one thing we may have too much of today, it’s instantaneous access to almost anyone on the planet. And social media has become a veritable mating ground, with constant thirst trap pics, spouting off what you think your mating group wants to hear, and discreetly sliding into DMs. That is why I stay off social media entirely.
I do think we will come up with new ways of meeting online, with most current methods simply recreating the stupid chaos of a singles bar online. We can do much better than that in future apps.
I don’t think online dating favors small or big cities, as you can only date so many people in either. But with economic opportunity now not being tied to the large cities, I expect them to get hollowed out.
Not been my limited experience, heard enough complaints of them being accosted in big cities.
How long is CVS going to pay pharmacists $100K a year to count pills?
We already have every bit of software and engineering we need to automate every step of your McDonald's Big Crap. They are paying dimwit stoners just to show up and wear a nametag at this point.
OTR driving will be automated rigs in a dedicated lane on the Interstate. Drivers will board them for the first and last mile. Container ships, cargo flights, trash removal, Amazon deliveries--same.
Bank tellers will disappear to the extent they haven't already.
WFH is bringing the hammer down too. Businesses (and government bureaucracies) are walking away from their cube-farm leases like underwater homeowners from their mortgages in 2008.Replies: @Bumpkin
The same “AI” that can’t do basic math?
Why are they getting paid so much now? Software is going to automate a lot of work, leaving aside delusions of “AI.”
I agree with you that a lot more will get automated by non-AI software, and WFH is going to leach out the big cities.
New types of work will also be created, and more importantly, the whole concept of a “job” will become irrelevant. Instead, there will simply be tasks to be done, and people will choose which they want to do.
Some young guy may spend a month ferrying people around in his car, waiting tables, and illustrating digital artwork. Rather than having three part-time jobs with set hours, he will be able to pick and choose which he wants to do when from a stream of tasks offered online, depending on his mood that day.
Right now, that is mostly available for low-wage physical work, like driving for Lyft, but someday soon it will be the norm for all service work, including high-paid creative work:
Think about what you wrote: what does it even mean for theater groups to “compete” against each other? One of the main reasons most go into theater is that they hate the competition of sports but still enjoy live performance.
I simply pointed out that physical interaction like live theater performances, dating, or meeting people with similar interests is much easier to do in smaller towns now that online software provides easier ways to form the initial introduction.
And yes, much of in-person interaction has been getting replaced by “electronics” for the last century, everything from telephones to now video-conferencing.
Says who? You were right about this for the last century, but do you think Microsoft is now unable to compete with Samsung because one is based out of Redmond and the other Seoul?
The best are now online, not in the big cities. Joe Rogan, the most-watched talk show in the world, is based out of Austin, TX now, not Los Angeles as he was previously forced to for his prior TV career.
Just as paper mail had been around for centuries till the tech bros killed it off with email and online messaging apps, the internet is now killing off the big cities.
No, I’m talking about the entire world. Of course, many countries or professions are still fairly backward or traditional, so orchestras might be the last to change, but this decentralization will happen everywhere there is internet.
The reason violinists and composers wanted to move to big cities is because only those places could afford to pay more for the best and that led to a lot of competition to work there. Well, now that economic opportunity is leaving the big cities, the musicians will eventually follow the money and leave too.
Oh, of course, and now that the most intense competition is online, not in the antiquated big cities, the competitive won’t bother moving to the big cities anymore.
You may be right about those outside the US, but that’s largely because they’re behind the US in most tech and their use of the internet. Eventually, they will catch on and decentralize also.
As to Samsung and Microsoft. Go check their jobs boards around the world. The jobs are concentrated. Not sure where you get the idea that even tech firms want their employees sprawled out all over. In fact - tech firms have been one of the big pushers to get people back into offices post Covid - because they say they need a collaborative environment.
As to internet speeds - no the US does not have the fastest. But the issue is different. The US is not a densely populated country. The rest of the world - which is more densely populated continues to concentrate.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country
https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php
And yes, much of in-person interaction has been getting replaced by "electronics" for the last century, everything from telephones to now video-conferencing.Says who? You were right about this for the last century, but do you think Microsoft is now unable to compete with Samsung because one is based out of Redmond and the other Seoul?
The best are now online, not in the big cities. Joe Rogan, the most-watched talk show in the world, is based out of Austin, TX now, not Los Angeles as he was previously forced to for his prior TV career.Just as paper mail had been around for centuries till the tech bros killed it off with email and online messaging apps, the internet is now killing off the big cities.No, I'm talking about the entire world. Of course, many countries or professions are still fairly backward or traditional, so orchestras might be the last to change, but this decentralization will happen everywhere there is internet.
The reason violinists and composers wanted to move to big cities is because only those places could afford to pay more for the best and that led to a lot of competition to work there. Well, now that economic opportunity is leaving the big cities, the musicians will eventually follow the money and leave too.Oh, of course, and now that the most intense competition is online, not in the antiquated big cities, the competitive won't bother moving to the big cities anymore.You may be right about those outside the US, but that's largely because they're behind the US in most tech and their use of the internet. Eventually, they will catch on and decentralize also.Replies: @showmethereal
When talking about the theater – I am talking about the people who actually want to work on top tier shows. Don’t take my word for it… Go ask
As to Samsung and Microsoft. Go check their jobs boards around the world. The jobs are concentrated. Not sure where you get the idea that even tech firms want their employees sprawled out all over. In fact – tech firms have been one of the big pushers to get people back into offices post Covid – because they say they need a collaborative environment.
As to internet speeds – no the US does not have the fastest. But the issue is different. The US is not a densely populated country. The rest of the world – which is more densely populated continues to concentrate.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/internet-speeds-by-country
https://www.fastmetrics.com/internet-connection-speed-by-country.php