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He forgot a couple of #1’s:
We’re #1 in Ritalin consumption, consuming 90% of all the Ritalin made in the world, and we’re #1 for psychiatric/lifestyle drug use. This place is akin to living in an insane asylum without walls.
a·kin [? kín]
adj
1. similar: similar or closely related to somethingEncarta ® World English Dictionary © & (P) 1998-2004 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
These postings are interesting,
I might have missed this but in everyone of these postings not one mentioned the reasons why the U.s and the U.K is out sourcing,
I have had to write a paper on this recently and the top two reasons is Health care and Pensions,I have to ask this question to all that has posted,
Do you pick your airline tickets because of price or the airline?
Would you pay 25% more for your automobile to pay for health care and pensions for employees and past employees of GM,Ford, and all of the u.s. companies.
Until the U.S. is ready to cap the salaries health care workers, caps on drugs and insurance companies, ect than we will continue to have outsourcing.
I just think it is funny on how people with higher education is now becoming aware of the situation and are in the panic mode. Now since their jobs could be on the line its a issue!
I am currently in Germany and if you think the U.S. has problems! come to Germany and see their really bad economic situation due to high cost of social programs and high unemployment. If you ask any German you will get the same answer the economic situation is bad and many people are out of work!
I believe we have to keep something’s in perspective
1st the size of the U.S
2nd the employment rate
3rd the opportunities (most people that I have asked on my trips what they want and 90% will say they want to live in the U.S because of opportunities.25% increases and capping salaries won’t help… The US “dream” is all over and we’re hanging on by a thread and that ‘thread’ is oil.
From last week’s Washington Post
U.S., China Clash on Currency. Chinese Vice Premier Wu Yi saying Americans do not have a full understanding of the situation.
“Some American friends are not only having limited knowledge of, but harboring much misunderstanding about, the reality in China,” Wu said, according to a copy of her remarks provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For example, Wu noted that China needed to create enough jobs to absorb an estimated 300 million rural workers – equal to the entire population of the United States – into its urban economy in the next two decades.”
You can just imagine what’s going to happen to prices when 300,000,000 more Chinese workers come online and India has about the same number and you can bet your bottom dollar that the percentage of workers learning English will grow by leaps and bounds
We must remember that the true unemployment rate in the USA is far higher than ‘official’ estimates
The “United States also has a low literacy rate compared to other developed countries…” which cannot help our employment situation.
And although it’s not received any press, the Hurricane Katrina story really shattered the illusion of the “American Dream.”
Whilst villagers in Pakistan without electricity used to be impressed with episodes of ‘Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous’ on their car battery driven televisions, the Katrina debacle showed them that “one in three New Orleans residents lived in poverty, and the literacy rate stood at only 40 per cent.” Some “American dream.”
All empires come to an end, all we can hope for is that our Bush/Cheney/Rice psychopaths who are clearly making up US foreign policy as they go along don’t take the rest of the world with them.
Great posts by everyone. It’s a conundrum.
Outsourcing and globalization take some jobs away, but add others. Change doesn’t come cheap, but it’s less expensive that stagnation.
Economies can’t afford to subsidize failing industries, but removing the subsidies may mean their demise. It has to be done slowly, but in many sectors the special interests keep it from happening at all.
Protectionism may be good for a country in the short term, but ruinous in the long term.
There is a race to the bottom, but given all the global economic development, over time the tide will raise all ships.
Healthy economic advances will promote peace, but political frameworks, both national and international, are still stacked against the little guy.
Thinking globally and acting locally doesn’t work when the local problems are global in nature.
If the U.S. wants to remain an important international economic power, then it must get in the game. For decades the US has been such a large and thriving economy that companies didn’t have to think about making money elsewhere. Now that the rest of the world is starting to catch up, unless we get a move on they will surpass us.
I always use the most startling example – the auto industry. Celebrated as one of the most American of all enterprises, how many GM, Ford and Chrysler cars do you see on the road in Costa Rica?
But the demographics, basic economics and the facts say otherwise.
Over the last twenty-five years, median family income has risen by only 18% clearly showing that the median family income in the US (in real terms) is declining and NOT rising. Yes! As always the income of the top 1% has gone up by 200%.
In actuality, half of all Americans make more than $44,000, and half make less.
Many people expect the income levels of the average worker in the USA to continue falling and when income levels drop off more, then we will see real estate foreclosures at levels not seen since the great depression. It’s not going to be pretty.
So no! I would disagree that “over time the tide will raise all ships.”
It would appear that incomes in countries like China and India (which are obviously extraordinarily low in comparison with the first world) will indeed rise but the median income in the US and most European countries will probably continue to fall.
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comWe should stop giving corporate execs those ghastly salaries in the double-digit million dollar range and those horridly obscene golden parachutes totalling in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Nobody — and I do mean nobody — deserves that kind of salary when we have 40,000,000 children in the US who go to bed hungry.
Absolutely, the average Gringo is definitely worse off economically now than 20 years ago, as I agree with the race to the bottom theory. The rising tide lifts up the heaviest boats last.
Globalization inevitably costs the demise of many jobs, and even whole industries, in all countries that participate. However, it also offers the opportunity for countries to develop their own unique economic niches which provide them with sustainable competitive advantages. If the country’s government does its job to help insure a more even distribution of the resulting wealth, and avoid the sharp edges of capitalism, then their citizens will thrive, providing them with the buying power to then purchase American products and services.
That’s the theory, anyway. The problem is the distribution of wealth part. But that is a political issue for each nation to debate.
What is the alternative for a country that does not want to participate? Economic isolation, continued reliance on government subsidies to prop up non-productive industries, expensive and low quality product pawned off on consumers, and forever being behind the curve of modernity. As I see it, you either get on the train or get left behind. While I admit, getting left behind can at times sound enticing, especially if it’s on a beach in Guanacaste, eventually you have to play catch up.
Are the people of East Germany better off economically now than prior to its absorption into “greater” Germany? Yes. Was the process economically painful for the average West German. Yes. Did both sides come out of it stronger in the end? Yes. Globalization is the same kind of integration (albeit not to the same extent as the German example), and while we will all lose something, we will also all be stronger for it.
Regarding a national economic plan, I can only say that depending on a government entity to come up with the best possible “plan” for its economy is sure to be a big disappointment. Governments can and should provide an economic environment where the private sector can thrive, but the (kind of) free market should govern how businesses invest.
That said, I sorely agree with the statement that the U.S. squanders its economic resources and its political will on all manners of non-productive (as well as anti-productive) initiatives, while many other countries do things like actually investing in their youth.
I would have to differ on the issue of west and east germany better off.
If you ask any German on the west side they will say it has hurt their pockets by picking up the tab for east Germany. I have talked to many cabie since I have been here and they all say there just are not enough jobs which shows since their unemployment is in double diggits,How ever I would like to ask this question for all of the retirees in the room.
What would happen if your past employer said sorry but your pension plan is now gone. You will have to recive your money from the goverment pension play and only recive 35 cents on the dollar.
This happend to my cousin and some of my friends that flew for Delta and US Air. Most people were not willing to pay 900.00 for a airline ticket to Costa Rica. This in return set the airlines in a spiral and now they have cut pensions and health care plans and wages.
This issue is not only for the North Americans ask many airlines in the EU what they think about Ryan air? Where you can fly from Germany to London round trip for less than 100 dollars.
And how much dough did those airlines CEOs make???? OBSCENE AMOUNTS OF MONEY!! Don’t think that doesn’t affect how an airline is run and whether it can afford pension plans.
Nope here for biz for the next couple of weeks, been traveling from Africa to Eastern Europ and based out of Germany.
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