General > General Technical Chat
How can governments ensure all companies get equal access to China?
SiliconWizard:
--- Quote from: SilverSolder on April 26, 2020, 02:04:25 pm ---
Most people have a fixed amount of disposable income each month.
That has to mean that if we raise prices by means of tariffs or other methods, people only have one option: buy less stuff each month.
It is not immediately clear to me how this benefits anybody.
--- End quote ---
This is of course a very simplified economic "model" here. Things are just a tiny bit more complex.
There's a fine line between regulating economy and making it worse for everyone. But without any form of regulation, you're almost certain the system ends up going bonkers.
Tariffs are one way of regulating worldwide economy, and disposing of them altogether is probably not a good idea.
One thing (among many others) you're overlooking in this little "analysis" is that you're assuming that tariffs (and other means) make no difference to the economy, except higher prices for the consumer. This of course can't be true - if not excessive, it can actually improve things, and people would have more money to spend. Prices alone mean nothing if you don't link them to the standard of living of a given population.
The mere idea that lower prices for goods would lead to people getting richer somehow is completely silly. Doesn't work this way - or it's only very temporary. If you keep dragging prices down, everyone ends up poorer in the end. When you don't actively regulate economy, it just ends up regulating itself. And if everything gets cheaper, wages will mechanically drop too, eventually.
If you think we can just keep getting cheap goods from China (for instance) forever without it impacting our wealth negatively, IMHO you're largely deluded. At best, it would just end up making money have less value, without changing anything much to the overall standard of living. At worst, it would end up making us all poorer because it's just not sustainable as such.
nctnico:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 26, 2020, 06:27:08 pm ---If you think we can just keep getting cheap goods from China (for instance) forever without it impacting our wealth negatively, IMHO you're largely deluded. At best, it would just end up making money have less value, without changing anything much to the overall standard of living. At worst, it would end up making us all poorer because it's just not sustainable as such.
--- End quote ---
China has solved that nicely by just lending the money back to countries they export to. Inflation also helps because the amount of money borrowed in the past loses it's value automatically.
floobydust:
--- Quote from: nctnico on April 26, 2020, 06:06:11 pm ---
--- Quote from: floobydust on April 26, 2020, 06:02:50 pm ---I don't agree with your view, because MBA "profit" does not equal economic prosperity. On a macro-scale, manufacturing creates more jobs, more skilled workers,
than just warehouses selling imported shit. china does manufacturing, Walmart does reselling.
--- End quote ---
And what use is there for skilled workers in an automated factory? No matter how you look at it: most of the profit is made at the sales side. The place for skilled workers is at the sales side working in R&D; not on the factory floor.
--- End quote ---
china's main advantage is their sheer population - basically people as cheap robots. The IP is stolen, copied and so they don't really understand product development or the technology in what they are making. But they've leapfrogged into manufacturing in a scale never before seen. Pic related.
If most (other) nations then degenerate down to only being consumers of products, with sales of imported goods as the main revenue generator, this is just the race to the bottom.
Eventually a nation would become impoverished as it can only buy things using debt, and never create revenue. The intangible money, that the bean counters and MBA assholes cannot see, comes from R&D but you don't see that stand alone. Pure R&D is a massive expense only, according to the bean counters and "management by numbers".
Simon:
--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on April 26, 2020, 06:27:08 pm ---
The mere idea that lower prices for goods would lead to people getting richer somehow is completely silly. Doesn't work this way - or it's only very temporary. If you keep dragging prices down, everyone ends up poorer in the end. When you don't actively regulate economy, it just ends up regulating itself. And if everything gets cheaper, wages will mechanically drop too, eventually.
If you think we can just keep getting cheap goods from China (for instance) forever without it impacting our wealth negatively, IMHO you're largely deluded. At best, it would just end up making money have less value, without changing anything much to the overall standard of living. At worst, it would end up making us all poorer because it's just not sustainable as such.
--- End quote ---
I think this is the problem. We have a better standard of living than centuries ago but are we actually any richer? not really. To be better off is relative to your environment. Once upon a time to be very rich meant a huge house and employ servants, now it means to own an island, it's all relative. When governments have to give handouts to working people you have a problem. It's ok saying they can just go buy some cheap stuff made abroad but that is not solving the underlying problem. nations that just consume in the long run will have problems but every government and business that is generally owned by a guy who pretends to live in a different country for tax reasons only thinks of the now, the profit they can make today, what it costs them tomorrow is tomorrows business strategy meeting where they will work out how to make someone else pay or the next governments problem to deal with.
I'll say it again, the covid-19 crisis exposes very well why this is a crisis for the UK and others and not something we just deal with.
coppice:
--- Quote from: nctnico on April 26, 2020, 06:06:11 pm ---And what use is there for skilled workers in an automated factory? No matter how you look at it: most of the profit is made at the sales side. The place for skilled workers is at the sales side working in R&D; not on the factory floor.
--- End quote ---
A highly automated plant doesn't need many people of any kind, but, apart from the cleaners, the people it does need are those skilled enough to keep everything running smoothly - maintenance, inwards and outwards logistics, etc.
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