World power swings back to America

[joeglow3]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/8844646/World-power-swings-back-to-America.html

"Assumptions that the Great Republic must inevitably spiral into economic and strategic decline - so like the chatter of the late 1980s, when Japan was in vogue - will seem wildly off the mark by then.

Telegraph readers already know about the "shale gas revolution" that has turned America into the world’s number one producer of natural gas, ahead of Russia."

"Meanwhile, the China-US seesaw is about to swing the other way. Offshoring is out, 're-inshoring' is the new fashion.

"Boston Consulting expects up to 800,000 manufacturing jobs to return to the US by mid-decade, with a multiplier effect creating 3.2m in total. This would take some sting out of the Long Slump."




While there are some things I hope we can find a better way around (Shale Gas???), I would welcome much of what is mentioned in this article.

[leveymg]

1. What's the incentive to inshore? Show us? This is just hype without an answer to that question,

[Kolesar]

3. Chinese wage inflation running at 16pc a year for a decade has closed much of the cost gap.

And, just for fun:

It matters that America is a genuine nation, forged by shared language and the ancestral chords of memory over two centuries, with institutions that ultimately work and a real central bank able to back-stop the system.

[leveymg]

4. Do the institutions ultimately work and how much impact will the Fed have with QE6?

Assumes a great deal, perhaps too much, about the integrity of basic institutions - particularly, since they're largely globalized and interdependent at this point with less ultimate commitment to survival of the US population and our traditional "way of life".

No, I believe the basic strategy is one of regression to the mean - US living standards are slated to drop to some hypothetical middle-level. I foresee some real systemic viability issues with that sort of steep cut in middle-class US incomes.

[On the Road]

7. Inshoring is Definitely Happening

It's just a question of scale. Not sure if onshoring is greater than offshoring at this point, or will ever be.

Where it happens, the incentives are some mix of:

1) Rising Chinese labor costs
2) Higher transportation costs
3) Difficulty in managing and controlling distant locations
4) Quality control problems in foreign-sourced goods.

As Robert Townsend wrote in "Up the Organization":

If your business is in Cleveland, start or acquire an operation in Santa Barbara at your peril. Absentee management is fatal.

And the disaster potential is equal to the square of the distance -- measured in hours -- between your home based and the new plant. No matter how determined you are to visit it frequently, you'll discover that your capacity to find last-minute reasons not to go is unlimited.

If the new operation is in Europe or the Far East, the problems increase by cube functions. It is twenty-seven times harder to cope with an operation in Hong Kong than in Duluth.

Link

The rate of offshoring over the last 10-20 years was never going to be sustained indefinitely. A lower dollar, lower US wage rates, and higher overseas wage rates change the equation over time. Not to mention higher oil prices.

[ileus]

2. Lt's keep our fingers crossed...

[izquierdista]

5. Shale = Fracking

This is what happens when all the pockets of natural gas, sitting on top of oil under some type of impermeable cap, are all depleted. No more can you stick a straw (drill pipe) in the ground and have the geologic pressure of the oil squirt ready to use natural gas into a pipeline. No, now you have to go and get the methane that is trapped in the pores of otherwise solid formations. That means you need to smash rock up into little bits (frack it) and try to catch the stuff that squirts out. And since there is no impermeable salt dome to catch what you release, the methane manages to find its way up through smaller cracks and ends up in the ground water above (making people's faucets catch fire).

The public is blissfully ignorant about the science of oil and gas extraction. As long as gasoline appears at the gas pump for a decent price, they don't give a second thought to what the energy companies are doing. But as the energy reserves become more and more difficult to tap, "problems" like the BP oil spill, fracked gas escaping into water wells, and all the difficulties in extracting energy from tar sands are going to cause HUGE environmental problems. Especially since none of these "problems" will be the fault of the oil companies involved and of course they can't be expected to pay to remediate them.

[Peace Patriot]

6. The Corporate Rulers giveth and the Corporate Rulers taketh away. That's the problem.

The Corporate Rulers are "God" and we are their subjects, slaves and victims. It should be the other way around. We are the sovereign people of this land, and nobody does business here without our permission and according to OUR rules. That is one of the premises of democracy. Another, and THE most fundamental premise of democracy, is visible, transparent vote counting in the public venue. Instead now we have one, private, far rightwing-connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--controlling 80% of the vote counts in the U.S., using 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that we are forbidden to review--with virtually no audit/recount controls. That's how bad Corporate Rule has gotten. Thus, we no longer have the ability to rein in their power, to tax them fairly, to enforce rules and regs, such as environmental protections, and to prevent them from owning our "elected" representatives and writing our laws, not to mention hijacking our military for corporate resource wars. In theory, we charter corporations in the states and can pull their corporate charters, dismantle them and seize their assets for the common good, but in practice they are untouchable, and, with globalization, they have created many other ways to evade the rightful power of democratic nations and their people (moving headquarters abroad, hiding funds/assets, etc.).

So, the Corporate Rulers, for instance, can ease up here, if they decide to, in order to prevent rebellion of one of the potentially most progressive and powerful people on earth--us--maybe re-nationalize some middle class jobs and let us have schools and libraries, but the boot will come down again. The problem is POWER: who has it? In a democracy, these should be OUR choices. They want to do business here? They can't rip us off. Period. End of story. And, believe me, there are plenty of entrepreneurs and creative and energetic people among us who would leap at the opportunity to make useful, delightful and reliable consumer products, create genuine, non-rip off services and provide non-polluting energy, decent food, true medical care and other needs of our population for decent salaries and modest profits. We don't NEED these goddamn monster corporations and super-rich parasites.

The choices should be ours, as a sovereign people. But somehow the rules of our society are made in Dubai or Hong Kong or at meetings of the Bilderburg group or the G-8, or in the programmers' dungeon in Omaha where ES&S chooses the lackeys who parade around as our "democratic representatives."

This was a very big but understandable mistake we made about Bill Clinton and the Clinton "bubble." Most people (except those who protested in Seattle) were unaware that our power as a people was being GIVEN AWAY to multinational, corporate-run institutions like the WTO, by a Democratic Party establishment that had utterly betrayed us and our democracy. The "bubble" was brief and the consequences were dire: war and massive suffering, rigged elections, suborned Supreme Court, multiple tax cuts for the rich, vast war profiteering, further loss of our rights, vast undermining and destruction of our institutions, rules and ideals. We had better beware this time, if another "bubble" is created to fool people about who has the power over our society, government and lives. We need fundamental, structural reform--starting with a REAL 'Boston Tea Party' for the corporate-run voting machines--or our democracy is over and we will become just a ragtag, conquered territory of Corporate Masters who have loyalty to no one.

[Romulox]

8. The plan was likely to destroy our middle class, then hire us back at pennies/dollars. nt

[leftstreet]

9. 800,000 jobs by mid-decade...with how many millions currently out of work?

:eyes:

[joeglow3]

12. Keeeeeeep reading

800,000 manufacturing jobs, creating an additional 3.2 million jobs. With something like 6 million jobs lost, I certainly wouldn't shit all "only" 4 million being created.

Either way, we are only talking theoretical here.

[quinnox]

10. Hell yea, As it Should Be

I'm doing a little patriotic dance. WE deserve to be on top and goddamn if we are ever going to get off our rightful throne!

:bounce: :patriot: :patriot: :patriot:

:sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[marmar]

11. The Empire is declining. Accept it. We need to move on and prepare for the next phase.

nt