Ground Zero of America

[8v10un30sun]

Could Flint, Michigan be ground zero of the fall of America?  Detroit in 1950 was the world greatest manufacturer.  Now it's just a slum.  It seems the leaders of America are clueless these facts...and corporations can care less about its stakeholder because an executive is only responsible for shareholder values.  What if shareholders are all foreigners?  

Source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nw&pname=mm_1107_story1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/28/magazine/28detroit-t.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgT1AidzRWM

NOTE: Watch the film from Michael Moore on Flint, Michigan.

As I toured China this year for a month, seeing S. China and all the manufacturing places that you get your cell phone, speakers, audio devices, light bulbs, razor blades, etc... and as I came home it nearly brought tears to my eyes.  What have we done to our country for the sake of short term profit?  Does anybody not care anymore about long term sustainable growth?  Are we this greedy to sell our children out?  I think we have!  

The new capital of manufacturing is China.  I toured Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Nansha and other cities of S. China.  Gosh, it was beautiful.  The air was filled with hopeful promise of a better tomorrow.  Everyone was happy and delighted at how great China is now and the projection is just we will be #1.  There are so much opportunity and the market is huge!  Every powerful country is there via foreign investment!  Their goal is to control their cost in China and utilize the cheap .25-.50 hourly laborers in China.  Now they want to move to SW China (our Homeland) and take advantage of that labor population because they have not seen the limelight and move all low-tech manufacturing SW and keep all high-tech manufacturing in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen and places closer to port cities.

I know they China cannot beat us right now when it comes to innovation but if their human right policies changes to allow more freedom (good with the bad) they have bright minds that will want to stay.  They have bright minds who are willing to accept the communist BS because there are so much $$ to be made there.  If we loose our innovation edge, will history say flint/detroit was ground zero of America?

[IB TIAM NEEJ]

Indeed China is going through what the US is in the '50's. An era of economic uprising. The Sputnik era was pushed to beat Russia's technological advancements. Oil was booming, the man landed on the moon, farming to industrializat ion enabled immigrants from European nations to have jobs. Life was good. America was known as the land of opportunity. Liberators of the cold war. Land of the free, home of the brave.

Americans during the baby-boomer time had better work ethics than generation x and y. They were humble and were willing to work for pennys. Just looking at my family, my lil bro PS3 like a champ, lil sister Myspace 24/7, teenage brother thinks he's too good for minimum wage, yet doesn't have a job.... Dad works two jobs and barely makes enough for mortage and food. Me? I'm the cheer leader trying to motivate a rock to rattle.

Although a little tarnished, America is still the best country I've ever seen--And I've been around. (I won't elaborate 'cause I'll go on forever).

The Chinese are hungry. They are big. Farmers move to the big cities for work. That's why most of their taxi drivers can't speak English. When we were kids, we're taught of the story of the rabbit and the turtle. You know the moral of this story already. Well now, Chinese kids are taught a different story right... The rabbit and the crab. The rabbit is the US, the crab--China. The rabbit speeds near the finish line, turns around to look for the crab. Unknown to the rabbit, the crab held on to the rabbit's tail. It let's go and sprints across the finish line. China is just this, a copycat model of the US. Everything from iPhones to drone and steath fighters follow this.

If you Google "Success" on Google trends you'll see India as the highest hit phrased of it. Things are happening there. Chinese is even bigger than India and the only reason they don't show up is 'cause they write in Chinese. You really should do business in China. I was there early this year. They saw me as a Chinese returning to the motherland and were eager to do business. And damn, all the sales chicks were flirting with me. They were pretty, especially of Mandarin decent. I stayed out of Hong Kong though--too expensive.

The auto industry co-existed with the oil industry. High gas prices, low car sales. Americans will adapt to public transpo...

How's your Mandarin? "Neee-how?" LOL

[8v10un30sun]

HK is AWFULLY expensive!  Why?  HK is the capital market for China.  Wealth is highly concentrated there.  I was on Canton Rd in HK at the mall close to the ferry and damn they have a line to go into the LV, Chanel, Gucci and etc... store...wtf... you don't have that in America.  Also all import/export goes through there.  In fact, it is cheaper to export to HK then buy in HK and import back to Chian to save on taxes....stupi d tax system if you ask me...inefficie nt.

Someday I hope to travel up north to like Shanghai.  My next trip back in S. China I'm going to spend a weekend in Macau...

[tetrapod]

I'm sure Detroit went down not because the auto industry decided to move manufacturing jobs oversea but because they fail the car competition.  The way I see the current situation is that US corporations are hiring more worker oversea to save money.  They move their manufacturing plants oversea.  As a result, the US now has more jobs in the service sector which doesn't pay much.  We learned that McDonald is the biggest employer.  This is the future of America. 

We give corporation tax cuts and as a result, they hire people oversea.  Greed drives the direction of corporations which is why government has to watch over them.  Corporations are not citizen of any country and has no loyalty to a particular government or country.  Communist government is just fine for them as long as they make lots of money.

The way I see it in America is that the people will become more poor because all the good jobs are not longer here.  They will work in the service industry like McDonald and retail stores.  We are no longer a manufacturing country but a consumption oriented country and our jobs are simply to bring us consumptions of goods from other countries.  When you see a hamburger, the only thing that is made in America is the cooking process.

Even smart and bright people chase after money.  When China or India are able to pay more for smart people, there will be those who will move oversea.  Engineers from foreign country will move there instead of coming to the US.  We will see a slow death of the US economic because the government is too stupid and corporations could careless about the country.  Money is their God.

[tetrapod]

What those American Corporations don't understand is a damn thing about Global Military Strategy.

What made America the sleeping Giant in World War II was Industry, they had all these factories that were converted into making planes, tanks, and bombs.

They pretty much gave this away to China and some day this will come back to bite us.

China is no sleeping giant, it's more like a hidden dragon.

It doesn't matter who is doing it.  As a whole, we as a human race is accelerating our own destruction by depleting our natural resources that are essential to our survival.  The earth can't afford to allow China and India to live the life of Americans.  They would take us down with them.  Steve Hawkin is proposing that we move out into space and repeat the process. 

[8v10un30sun]

 

I'm sure Detroit went down not because the auto industry decided to move manufacturing jobs oversea but because they fail the car competition.  The way I see the current situation is that US corporations are hiring more worker oversea to save money.  They move their manufacturing plants oversea.  As a result, the US now has more jobs in the service sector which doesn't pay much.  We learned that McDonald is the biggest employer.  This is the future of America. 

We give corporation tax cuts and as a result, they hire people oversea.  Greed drives the direction of corporations which is why government has to watch over them.  Corporations are not citizen of any country and has no loyalty to a particular government or country.  Communist government is just fine for them as long as they make lots of money.

The way I see it in America is that the people will become more poor because all the good jobs are not longer here.  They will work in the service industry like McDonald and retail stores.  We are no longer a manufacturing country but a consumption oriented country and our jobs are simply to bring us consumptions of goods from other countries.  When you see a hamburger, the only thing that is made in America is the cooking process.

Even smart and bright people chase after money.  When China or India are able to pay more for smart people, there will be those who will move oversea.  Engineers from foreign country will move there instead of coming to the US.  We will see a slow death of the US economic because the government is too stupid and corporations could careless about the country.  Money is their God.

[8v10un30sun]

Hawking is a scientist...no t an engineer.  He can think of it, but cannot do it.  Easy idea but hard to implement.  Like one of my buddy say, I can MAKE anything once, but if you ask me to make it consistently over time, that requires a lot of work.  In my line of work, we call that design for manufacturabil ity (DFM).

It doesn't matter who is doing it.  As a whole, we as a human race is accelerating our own destruction by depleting our natural resources that are essential to our survival.  The earth can't afford to allow China and India to live the life of Americans.  They would take us down with them.  Steve Hawkin is proposing that we move out into space and repeat the process.