(sorry for absence – hope to be back tomorrow – b.)
News & views …
Back to Main
October 25, 2016
Open Thread 2016-35
Comments
@201 Jdmcjay
China as voted with their $$, in a huge way. They have every right to.
It’s one of the perks of a country maintaining a sound percentage of state owned and public banks – you get to invest in pursuits that are progressive, projects with vision… as opposed to innovation being stifled for decades by private finance in our debt backed ‘free market’ economies.
The west has put on a good show of how to get owned.
Posted by: MadMax2 | Nov 1 2016 1:04 utc | 201
@201 jdmck ‘They are spending billions re-training their workers for next generation technologies; ours are ending up flipping burgers in Macdonalds.’
That’s a stark difference, isn’t it? The US grillionaires view American ‘labor’ as a liability, always have – and I’m sure the Chinese grillionaires do as well – but American ‘labor’ used to be exploitable. With ‘globalization’ all that changed (see figure-1.1 especially). Chinese labor became exploitable. And from their relative basis the American – and Chinese – grillionaires had a much more profitable base to exploit. Now the Chinese grillionaires are moving up market, and need a more skilled labor force to exploit their new target markets.
The figure I read is 300 million in the ‘new’ Chinese middle class … that leaves another 1000 million Chinese, even granting 200 million member Chinese ‘upper/upper-middle’ classes. The Chinese capitalists have been through a successful revolution before though, driven bottom-up, and are trying to avoid another. Who knows if they’ll be successful. There’s no doubt that the Chinese are on the way up as a nation and that the US is a nation on the way down. A nation is, after all, a collection of people. No matter what the 1% says.
At the next turn of the screw I hope there is a bottom-up revolution in the US, With we the people seizing power and in charge. We certainly have brains enough to discover how to structure our society to avoid the pitfalls of the past … domination by the financiers, fusiliers, and fossil-fuelers – in their most recent incarnation. Political-economy is not rocket science. Success just requires everyone’s participation.
By that time the class structure in China will probably have reasserted itself with a vengeance. Let’s hope for our own sakes that we will have met and solved our ‘difficulties’ ourselves by then, learned from their mistakes as well as from our own. Let’s hope the darkest hour is just before dawn.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 1 2016 3:59 utc | 202
@ jfl
You may find this interesting, especially the discussion about China’s view of “consultive democracy”.
Thanks for the Mark Blyth link… interesting.
Chinese labor became exploitable. And from their relative basis the American – and Chinese – grillionaires had a much more profitable base to exploit. Now the Chinese grillionaires are moving up market, and need a more skilled labor force to exploit their new target markets.
I’m not sure agree with that as characterization of what drives Chinese economy.
You are absolutely right, Chinese boom has produced ton of “grillionares”. And just like everywhere else, some are megalomaniac assholes (exploiters… Trump/Murdoch types) but many are authentically investing considerable wealth to their best vision of need in China.
What I don’t agree with… and this becoming more acute for me as time passes/observation/fascination/time there: that being the extent to which China’1economic goals are chosen/set/financed/directed by the state. There, for some time now (15+ yrs), my meaning of “goals” is very all encompassing. It includes identifying sectors that need development. Now, solar (and energy in general) is huge there, and the state directs money/investment there in magnitude for which we rely on Wall St. And the extent: massive advanced training of workers, related infrastructure needed and more. They’ve already done much of this with transportation: hi-speed rail all over the country for example. Professionals commuting 100+ miles to/from work in short time is routine now. So much more.
Thing is to me, they’ve accomplished so much in such a short time… in a way that in US seems not possible. And more impressive: they’ve made so many right calls in this planning. I’m really coming to realize more & more (in good way) cultural US bias that I was nfully aware I had, of suspicion towards this type of centralized control/command planning. China’s just proving, it’s worked very well. Especially compared to our (collective) investment choices (Wall St. directed) that have been… abysmal over this same time.
That BBC link gives some “hints” in the party’s mindset behind this.
So my point: the grillionaires are not (IMO) even close to being directing force behind all you describe (exploitable): there’s a lot of common purpose amongst the workforce, they increasingly experience value/satisfaction working towards these goals and increasingly do not see themselves as being exploited.
And one other thing: guys on highest level of inner circles setting these agendas… almost all have earned doctorates in business/economics/finance from (mostly) top US Universites: Harvard, MIT, Princeton etc. (although big shift beginning to occur to their own Universities now). They’ve taken “best” (???) of US education back home, teaked/changed/refined and created quite flexible “hybrid” expertise that doesn’t so much fit accepted thought here. And a great underlying component: to not become another dependent, reliant satellite of the west: self sustainable.
Of all the emerging economies in last 20 years, China has far exceeded all in this west-independence/self-reliance & I don’t think the west (at least our leaders in politic & economics) knows what the hell to do about it. They’re used to being on top, now they aren’t, and they slept through the last 15 yrs or so thus, don’t have a damn clue how this happened.
I think we’re stuck in the past. Coupled with that, as a country we seem to have lost our ability/willingness and even desire to agree on anything that matters. This (IMO) is a very fundamental problem, and worse… held by too many as a virtue.
Just my $0.02 worth. Thx for good conversation.
@204 jdmck
Thanks for taking the time and sharing your thoughts. I made a reply, pushed the post button, but now it’s not here.
Just as well, it was too long : wouldn’t have been read.
So let me just include the link to Fanshen, in case you or someone else would like it, and let me say that historically no one’s got anything on the Chinese ‘elite’ when it comes to exploiting the masses, seems to me.
In between then and now was the real, absolutely historic Chinese revolution. The greatest accomplishment of the Chinese people. And I think that all the fruits the Chinese elite are picking now are borne on the tree planted by that revolution and its construction of a revolutionary society.
China now is all ‘caught up’ with the west along any technological line I can think of, and surpassing ‘us’. That’s not at all surprising from a 5000 year-old empire based on scholarship and organization. The few hundred years when the Chinese elite were laid low by the Western elite were the exception, not the rule.
But I believe that presently, both the USA and the Chinese states are essentially elitist states … although, as you point out the more mature Chinese elite timeframe is longer than the adolescent Western elite timeframe. I do believe the Chinese have turned round and are sailing in the wrong direction with their turn to capitalism … I see all those graduate of Western schools – Harvard, MIT, Princeton etc. as a liability not as an asset … and that uplifting of the 300 million to the middle class will still leaves 1000 million in the dark, and that in the case of China as in the United States the ‘vision’ of an ‘elite’ is just insufficient to cover the needs of the entire society.
An elite always ends up mistaking its own interests for the national interest … the leaders of the Plutocrats’ republic inherited that from the leaders of the Peoples’ Republic – the dictatorship of the proletariat – just as surely as Engine Charley Wilson inherited it from Alexander Hamilton … “I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa” … and the MIC was born and has grown and flourished to this day.
Elites can get away with that as long as they can claim that “a rising tide lifts all boats” … as I believe it was jfk said. And the tide is rising now in China, as it ebbs in the USA.
The only way to include the interests of all the people in the realization of a society is, literally, to include all the people in the wheelhouse of the ship of state : participatory democracy. That is anathema to the elites running China and the USA, both. Anathema to elites everywhere.
So I see a revolution in the USA and the same class-based inequity followed by revolution again in China. Maybe I won’t live to see both … or either. Maybe China will democratize and skip the revolution, or experience a second, peaceful revolution. I hope so. But looking at the history of entrenched elite rule I see the same cycles for both nations, albeit they’re presently out of phase.
The thing for us Americans to do is to end military confrontation with the Chinese and everyone else on earth, and to open up our government to all of our ordinary selves – to have a peaceful revolution ourselves. No reason why it cannot be peaceful, although the possibility of peaceful change doesn’t look good from the elite side.
What is a nation? It’s a people, not a place or a regime or a gnp. It’s a people. The governmental functions in a society have as their goal the elevation of the people, of all the people, to conditions of peace, individual development, and shared prosperity. That’s revolutionary in the USA, and – though given lipservice is given it at present in China, as it was in the US in the 1950s – I think it’s revolutionary, once again, in China, as well.
Hope that’s not tl:dr.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 1 2016 11:42 utc | 204
US cuts arms deal with Philippines, citing human rights violations
A top Democrat, Senator Ben Cardin opposed the sales because of what he referred to as Manila’s human rights violations.
He made no objections to the sales of weapons to Saudi Arabia in their aggression and starvation on Yemen.
Senator ‘Benjamin Louis “Ben” Cardin (born October 5, 1943) … who has never lost an election’ proves he’s deaf, dumb, and blind.
Posted by: jfl | Nov 1 2016 13:05 utc | 205