Thread: Business Week:Global forces taken control of economy

Crocket,

So we have cheap prices on items from China, our pollution has cleared up, while China is a mess....are you aware that OUR environment people, checked the air quality in California a while back, and discovered the air was tainted from China?

So now their polluted air blows our way but we have cheap items to buy.

No wonder our wages have decreased in many areas, they think now that since products are cheaper, we no longer need to make what we once did. (wages).

Although, health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, and many other products still cost the same or more.

Many items made elsewhere are of poor quality, but since the price is so low, we can buy two.???

My microwave lasted 1 1/2 yrs. I had a real old one, made here, that had belonged to my parents and worked up until 1 1/2 yr. ago. My parents have been deceased since 1991.

And if anyone can provide a name of a lamp, light switch that works right, please tell me....

Moosetracks, I am really delighted to see that I am not the only person who realizes that we have a lot of junk we can buy for supposedly cheap prices -- but the quality is cheap, too. And I'm even happier to see that I'm not the only person who realizes that they things we can't just ignore or do without such has health insurance, car insurance and I'm adding food to your list as well as utility bills haven't become any cheaper. Wages definitely aren't keeping up with these things and, even if they raise the minimum wage, the cost of these things we can't just say we don't want will rise right along with them. Are we headed down the slope to third world-ism even faster than we realize? How long before the average American has no health insurance and doesn't need/can't afford a car? How long before our groceries aren't affordable and we don't have electricity, running water or heating fuel in our homes?

At the moment, I'm quite concerned about the fact that the news keeps changing it's mind about whether or not people spent as much as expected over the Christmas holidays. Something tells me a shoe is about to drop and that we are in worse trouble economically in this country than anyone has even hinted about yet. There has to be some reason why they keep changing the story, sometimes within the same hour of news. Have you noticed this?

Originally Posted by moosetracks

Crocket,

So we have cheap prices on items from China, our pollution has cleared up, while China is a mess....are you aware that OUR environment people, checked the air quality in California a while back, and discovered the air was tainted from China?

So now their polluted air blows our way but we have cheap items to buy.

No wonder our wages have decreased in many areas, they think now that since products are cheaper, we no longer need to make what we once did. (wages).

Although, health insurance, home insurance, car insurance, and many other products still cost the same or more.

Many items made elsewhere are of poor quality, but since the price is so low, we can buy two.???

My microwave lasted 1 1/2 yrs. I had a real old one, made here, that had belonged to my parents and worked up until 1 1/2 yr. ago. My parents have been deceased since 1991.

And if anyone can provide a name of a lamp, light switch that works right, please tell me....

First off, you're talking to someone who has spent a LOT of time in California going back to the late 1960s when I used to visit relatives there right up to the present. I have seen the changing air quality there, and also in places like Ohio. Sure, the Chinese pollution thing is plenty bad and there are global effects from it. That does not change the fact that our air is VASTLY cleaner. You also seem to have missed much of my point, which is that the situation is so bad in China that it cannot continue. China cannot keep absorbing more and more of the world's manufacturing without causing an uprising in reaction to the abysmal conditions within its own borders. It will be, to a degree anyhow, a self-equalizing situation. China has not yet found its equilibrium and it may well do permanent harm to its own system before it reaches that point.

Now, before you go off on a rant about the poor quality of foriegn made products, perhaps you should take a moment to reflect on how poor American products were before foreign products drove cheesy American manufacturers to have to compete. I can remember quite well what American electronic (all except for the very highest end ones, anyhow) were like in the 1970s. Stereos sounded like crap and would last for nly a couple of years unless you could afford foreign tube amps (mostly Scottish and Canadian) and other components (like Sony and Nakamichi). American cars were good for maybe a couple of years and 40-50K miles before they literally fell apart. My Mom had a Buick Century that died on us at 37K. Even symbols of American artistry like the Fender guitar were so poorly made that I often came across Strats whose neck joints were so poor that they would shift position every time you attempted a pitch bend. It took Fender's decision to have guitars made by the Japanese and then to apply what they learned from that venture to turn around domestic fabrication. Light bulbs were good for a couple of hundred hours unless they popped the first time you turned them on. Spark plugs and brake pads had to be changed almost as frequently as oil. I remember those days well. It's the reason that clown like Carter could tell us that we were not that great of a country and actually have people believe it.

And as far as high prices for domestic products go, that is directly attributable to the inflationary pressure of the federal debt ceiling. Doubling the debt every ten years or so is the same as doubling the currnecy. It halves the value of existing notes. Not only that, but take a look at our prices relative to those in Europe. We STILL have the cheapest prices for equivalent services and products in the world, unless you count the wholesale mills like Singapore and Hong Kong where you can buy pre-tax items. Remember that a huge percentage of every item you purchase is hidden taxes like excises.

Again, I am not happy that we have allowed China to become the 800-pound gorilla of manufacturing. I am simply explaining why it happened and what the consequences, both positive and negative, have been. If you want to find a culprit, corporate greed may rank high on the list, but so do things like the EPA and our demand for cleaner air and water. These things do not occur without costs. The cost of EPA regulations has been hard to see, because they do not do what we imagine they do, nor have they accomplished the cleaning of the environment in the way that politicians would have you believe they have. Do you think that EPA restrictions make for cleaner domestic plants? Most plants don't have to clean up, thye just have to buy credits from the handful of operations that can clean up. No, the way that EPA regulations have made America cleaner is by moving operations that don't absolutely have to remain here (like power plants) offshore where they are not encumbered by such regulations.

I am trying to get you guys to think and to realize that there are many reasons why things happen. Most often, the primary reason is our own childish belief that we can have everything we want without any sacrifice. And while most of you will pretend that you are not guilty, examine how you vote and why. Think about what you tell pollsters about your priorities. Americans demand better products at cheaper prices, cleaner air and water, EVERYTHING on demand, and we want to do this without icky toxic landfills or noisy and dirty factories in our own back yards. Where in Hell do you imagine such wishes lead? OF COURSE we are losing manufacturing to places overseas who do not make such demands.

Any thoughts on global warming?

Originally Posted by Neese

Any thoughts on global warming?

Anthropogenic global warming is a myth propgated in order to allow transnational organizations like the UN to gain global regulatory authority. Period.

The science:

Take a look at any graph of the relationship between solar activity and global surface mean temperature. We can trace the history of solar activity by tracking changes in the production of Carbon-14. Here's what a graph of that increase in activity looks like:



Here's another such chart:



Be careful as to which charts you reference, though. I note that a number of solar correlation debunking sites use phony or meaningless (within the context of the discussion of the correlation between solar activity and global warming) statistics for solar output, such as cycle length, which is nowhere near as important as output magnitude. The fact is that we just went through the strongest solar maximum on record about six years ago, and that twice in the last five years we have been hit by solar flares that were off the chart used to measure solar radiation for almost one hundred years. That's akin to having an earthquake too large to be measured on the Richter scale.

There are several theories as to the reason for the upturn in solar activity. The most compelling is rooted in the capacitance model for the solar system, whereby the eletromagnetic relationship between the sun and its satellites is every bit as important as raw solar output. According to the capacitance model, the outflow of charged particles from the Sun creates capacitance between it and the planets. Planets with atmospheres in turn create capacitance between their upper atmospheres, such as our ionosphere, and their surfaces. Discharges from the upper atmospheres and surfaces are called fountains and sprites when they discharge to and intermediary cloud layer and lighning which they discharge from the cloud layer to the planetary surface. Discharges from the Sun to dust layers or bodies in the solar system are called solar flares. It is hypothesized that foreign matter either on long orbits (such as comets) or passing through from deep space can trigger increases in solar flares, which in turn heat any body in their path. Comets are particularly handy for creating such discharges, including coronal mass ejections (a sort of superflare), because the solid core trails behind it a long dust trail. In much the same way that meteorologists can create artificial lightning but shooting model rockets trailing silk threads toward a thunderhead so can a comet trailing dust act as a shunt for the capacitance between the Sun and a dust cloud, debris field, or even a planet and its atmosphere and dust/debris field. The theory is that there are cometary bands thick with dust and other debris on regular orbits that periodically result in numerous CMEs and other solar events that are responsibile for periodic shifts in the Earth's atmosphere. We are currently seeing an increase in comets and debris passing through the solar system, and in fact the heavy activity of the last solar maximum coincided with the appearance of several major comets.

Wondering whether the paltry activities of man are somehow overcoming the vast processes of nature is like standing in front of a thermonuclear explosion and wondering whether throwing a Black Cat firecracker into the maelstrom will increase the devastation. If you believe that greenhouse gases are the culprit, for example, you should consider that man is responsible for the production of only 0.28% of all greenhouse gases, with the remaining 99.72% being created by natural processes. Even at that, we are assuming that the Earth has no mechanism for balancing slight increases in such gases. For example, it has been demonstrated that increases in consumption of CO2 by plants is offset by increased release of that gas from the oceans.

The amount of "greenhouse gases," as another example, produced by a single volcano can equal the sum total of such gases produced by man over decades. The super-eruption that led to the Medieval "little ice age" is estimated to have cast more greenhouse gases and particulates into the atmosphere than has man since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Honestly, I don't know what to think about global warming anymore. I have heard that it is a normal cycle since we have been keeping records on the weather, Al Gore has been promoting his book on global warming and it's effects. The fact that we have a hole in the ozone does not ease my mind, and the pollution in parts of the world are frightening. I also understand the scare tactics that are being used by so many Hollywood celebrities, as they are flying around the world in their private jets. Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.

Originally Posted by Neese

Honestly, I don't know what to think about global warming anymore. I have heard that it is a normal cycle since we have been keeping records on the weather, Al Gore has been promoting his book on global warming and it's effects. The fact that we have a hole in the ozone does not ease my mind, and the pollution in parts of the world are frightening. I also understand the scare tactics that are being used by so many Hollywood celebrities, as they are flying around the world in their private jets. Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.

I've studied the same things on global warming, that it si a normal process and things change and go back. If the celbs and Gore are so bent on saving the environment, why do most of them live in huge houses that are powered on the grid? Why do they not drive alternative powered vehicles?

Originally Posted by Neese

Honestly, I don't know what to think about global warming anymore. I have heard that it is a normal cycle since we have been keeping records on the weather, Al Gore has been promoting his book on global warming and it's effects. The fact that we have a hole in the ozone does not ease my mind, and the pollution in parts of the world are frightening. I also understand the scare tactics that are being used by so many Hollywood celebrities, as they are flying around the world in their private jets. Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate fact from fiction.

We don't have a hole in the ozone layer at present. The holes that occasionally form are a natural phenomenon caused by high levels of solar radiation being redirected to the poles. Why do you think it occurs at the poles? That's where incoming radiation gets shunted by the magnetosphere. It's the same reason that we get auroras at the poles. Think about this: If the "ozone hole" was caused by the activities of man, why would it be occurring in the location most remote from human habitation on the entire planet? There are no prevailing wind patterns that would carry airborne pollutants there, and particularly they would not have any reason to collect there. What's more, do a little chemistry research. What do we know about chloroflourocarbons? Check out their molecular weight. They are MUCH heavier than air. Not only would they never collect in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, they are far more likely to pool in low-lying areas like sewers and creek bottoms as chlorine gas does when liberated.