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Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
http://www.texasobserver.org/a-galveston-med-student-describes-life-and-death-in-the-safety-net/

thoughts? ideas? bitter resignation?

[ November 23, 2013, 12:05 PM: Message edited by: Samprimary ]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
The last option.

What do you expect anyone to say? Our society is terrifyingly, reprehensibly amoral, and the most comic-book villainy part of it is the people responsible for cutting off access to healthcare for the poor do it under the guise of being family values oriented and religious.

I'm disgusted and enraged to a point past hate and wrath.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
What does one even say to that?
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
One takes it as a reminder that some politicians-in this case strongly religious conservatives-are willing to score political points over the dead bodies of some of their weakest, most vulnerable constituents. One also lets it serve as a reminder never to let such politicians, or their supporters, claim to speak for any sort of 'moral majority' or a group of 'family values' types.

That's my answer anyway. Rick Perry can go die in a fire.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
It sort of puts Sarah Palin's recent comments about the Pope into sharp relief. She thinks he's being co-opted by the mainstream media because he wants people to focus more on the sick and poor in our society.

Can't wait until Sarah Palin reads the New Testament, she's going to be FURIOUS at Mainstream Jesus.
 
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
 
Yeah, but there's a common theme among the poor to which Mainstream Jesus and his New Testament Pals TM devoted their ministries.

1. Widows
2. Orphans
3. Those too crippled or disabled to work at all, who were reduced to begging in order to survive.
4. Those who had been exiled because they had serious communicable diseases.
5. Those who could work, but were taxed into starvation by the crooked government.

It's not exclusive, but the theme is obvious: those who needed help most were the ones who literally had no power over their situations. The percentage of people like that in America is smaller than our privileged lifestyle would have us believe, but I'll admit that I don't know how to go about distinguishing between the genuinely needy and those who never took responsibility for their improving their lives and now expect the rest of the country to pay the bill. It's tempting to err on the side of blanket generosity but for the sake of taxpayers and their children it seems fair to me to be a little more discriminating.

I grew up in a trailer park in the ghetto with alcoholic, abusive parents, dropped out of high school, got knocked up at eighteen and have spent the last thirteen years trying to raise two children on one low income. But I don't see myself as a victim in any sense. I'm going to college part time and living very frugally so I can afford decent health insurance. I'm not saying everyone should think like me, but I do have a hard time understanding the threshold at which someone is no longer "able" to improve their situations. Personally, I've never been there.

By the way, as for my insurance that I've worked so hard to keep over the years: my co-pays just went up so much that I'll no longer be able to use it. So now I have insurance that amounts to "catastrophic," but costs the same as my old insurance.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
I grew up in a trailer park in the ghetto with alcoholic, abusive parents, dropped out of high school, got knocked up at eighteen and have spent the last thirteen years trying to raise two children on one low income. But I don't see myself as a victim in any sense. I'm going to college part time and living very frugally so I can afford decent health insurance. I'm not saying everyone should think like me, but I do have a hard time understanding the threshold at which someone is no longer "able" to improve their situations. Personally, I've never been there.
I understand where you're coming from-to an extent, of course, there's only so far empathy can take you outside of your own experience-but wouldn't 'debilitating illness which intensifies to crippling and then kills you' meet this threshold of people who aren't able to improve their situations?

Doesn't this create widows and orphans when left unchecked, and doesn't it also stand that many of these people who might have been 'able' to improve their lots got in with the wrong insurance company or employer and drew the 'major poorly- or uninsured illness' card? And is it really fair to say that Prosperity Christians such as you're describing approach the question with anything approaching the nuance you're employing?
 
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
 
The word 'amoral' has been thrown around a few times in this thread. It's either being used in a non-standard way (and merits clarification) or it's being used incorrectly.
 
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Misha misused it. Lyrhawn used it correctly.
 
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
 
Rakeesh: Absolutely, having a debilitating disease that cripples you meets that qualification. But most people who receive free medical care don't have debilitating, crippling diseases. Many of them have no diseases and, because they know their medical bills will always be covered, have no incentive to plan ahead in case they get such a disease.

Do Prosperity Christians employ that level of nuance? I have no idea. I think many of them are so terrified of the country falling into financial ruin that they behave as though public assistance is a gushing, mortal wound that they have to staunch completely, before deciding how much blood they can afford to let trickle. I'm not sure they're completely wrong, but I can't stand the idea that legitimately needy people could suffer and die while they're figuring it out. I wish there was a balance somewhere; in my opinion, neither the liberals nor the conservatives are making any efforts at finding one.

[ November 16, 2013, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: PSI Teleport ]
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Rakeesh: Absolutely, having a debilitating disease that cripples you meets that qualification. But most people who receive free medical care don't have debilitating, crippling diseases. Many of them have no diseases and, because they know their medical bills will always be covered, have no incentive to plan ahead in case they get such a disease.
I can't argue with that. The problem seems to me to be, though, that efforts to incentivize the sort of proactive, long-term thinking you're describing...they tend to really rub many Americans the wrong way.

On the one hand if they're done via private insurance, well, then we're left with the many problems of many millions of people slipping through the cracks of health care which has been the status quo for a generation now. If they're attempted to be done publicly through a mandated insurance program, Americans will quickly begin to holler about things like death panels and nanny states and whatnot.

Like you (or at least, I imagine you might think this way) I don't think that sort of complaint is entirely without merit.

It's just that I've reached a point, looking at my country, where I've begun to think, "Which is the greater potential threat for us? Unchecked childhood obesity, or government-disincentives and restrictions on selling huge buckets of fries and soda to children?" has become a serious, valid question and no longer something to simply brush off as 'the parents decision'. That's just an example, mind.

I suppose for me my stance on these issues come from my response to your last observation-I'm not satisfied with the compromise and serious effort liberal politicians in this country are making and willing to consider for these problems, but to me there's no question at all that they're making more of an authentic effort than conservative politicians. Like, zero contest.
 
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
 
Sorry, I edited my last post after you replied.

Moving my edit here:

ETA: I also think they're terrified of the federal government getting more involved in the states' legislation. But it makes me wonder (because I really don't know), is it possible to reject the federal aid, but then make laws within the state that will increase the availability of emergency care to poor people who don't meet the qualifications of Medicare? Does that money have to come from Washington?
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
I also think they're terrified of the federal government getting more involved in the states' legislation. But it makes me wonder (because I really don't know), is it possible to reject the federal aid, but then make laws within the state that will increase the availability of emergency care to poor people who don't meet the qualifications of Medicare? Does that money have to come from Washington?
For some states in the long-run, it really wouldn't be possible-more than a few states get more than they give from the federal government in dollars. Paradoxically these tend to be red states, so even if they managed to navigate the labyrinth of political budgeting to take money from one program to give it to increased access to emergency care it wouldn't so much be a shift as an actual taking. And it's tough to sell constituents in a wealthy county or district on losing some of services for the sake of the poorest counties in the state, even if it was a breeze to get such things done in terms of budgeting.

I'm more than a little concerned about government creep too. I just wonder how many corpses the walls against it need to be sufficiently fortified.
 
Posted by PSI Teleport (Member # 5545) on :
 
quote:
It's just that I've reached a point, looking at my country, where I've begun to think, "Which is the greater potential threat for us? Unchecked childhood obesity, or government-disincentives and restrictions on selling huge buckets of fries and soda to children?" has become a serious, valid question and no longer something to simply brush off as 'the parents decision'. That's just an example, mind.
Ehh...that's tricky. I come from a position, possibly fear-based, that rejects nearly all efforts on the part of the government to get involved with the raising of children. Right now unchecked childhood obesity is a greater threat. Long-term, I believe the government intervention is worse. Both are bad.

quote:
I'm more than a little concerned about government creep too. I just wonder how many corpses the walls against it need to be sufficiently fortified.
Yeah, I worry about that, too. This is the biggest reason that I no longer align with the Republican party: because the religion of "right" has trumped their purported Christian religion.

I know you guys have hashed and re-hashed all of this until it's mashed potato, so thanks for talking to me about it at all.
 
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by PSI Teleport:
Yeah, but there's a common theme among the poor to which Mainstream Jesus and his New Testament Pals TM devoted their ministries.

1. Widows
2. Orphans
3. Those too crippled or disabled to work at all, who were reduced to begging in order to survive.
4. Those who had been exiled because they had serious communicable diseases.
5. Those who could work, but were taxed into starvation by the crooked government.

Your must have a very different version of the New Testament than the one I've studied. I am unfamiliar with any scripture in the New Testament that could fit your #5. Please give me a reference. On the other hand, I know of many times that Jesus referred to the poor and beggars who were neither widows, orphans, cripples or lepers.

Here are a few references:

Luke 16:19-31
Matt 25:41
Luke 4:16-21
Matt 5:42
Luke 3:11
Luke 14:12-14
Matt 19:20

The New Testament I've read not only condemns those who do not help the poor it also condemns those who judge the poor.


quote:
But I don't see myself as a victim in any sense. I'm going to college part time and living very frugally so I can afford decent health insurance. I'm not saying everyone should think like me, but I do have a hard time understanding the threshold at which someone is no longer "able" to improve their situations. Personally, I've never been there.
I'm surprised that growing up in such poor circumstances you've never known anyone who wanted to work but had a hard time finding a job. I've known lots of them, particularly in the current economy. I've also known quite a few who work long hours at multiple jobs, live very frugally and still don't earn enough to make ends meet. As a professor, I've worked with more than a few people who've went back to school when they were in their late forties because the business they'd work for went under. Many got their 2nd college degree and then still couldn't find a new job because of age discrimination.

I also have several family members and friends who want to pay for health insurance but can't find any company willing to sell it to them because of their medical history.

I'd love to believe I belonged to a society that had no victims, where everyone who was willing to work hard could be certain of having the basic necessities of life -- but I've lived to know that's a lie.
 
Posted by Misha McBride (Member # 6578) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Misha misused it. Lyrhawn used it correctly.

I disagree. Rick Perry only pays lip service to the idea of morality because it serves his purposes, not because he actually has any morals. His decisions are ultimately based only on possible benefit to himself, not whether they are Right or Wrong. He has no empathy for other human beings and no feelings of guilt or remorse for anything because he doesn't really think he's done anything wrong. He completely lacks a conscience and probably has antisocial personality disorder. In short, he's amoral (as much as a human being can be) and as such all his choices are based on that lack of morality.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Eh, that seems to be rather a lot further over the line than can be supported. By that I mean you're speaking about things that happen entirely between his ears, and so however reprehensible you find some of his actions you can't possibly know if even a fraction of what you've said is true.

I say this as someone who thinks he's a pretty big turd, mind you.

------

quote:
Ehh...that's tricky. I come from a position, possibly fear-based, that rejects nearly all efforts on the part of the government to get involved with the raising of children. Right now unchecked childhood obesity is a greater threat. Long-term, I believe the government intervention is worse. Both are bad.
I worry about it too, but I question which is worse-another few inches in the line of government creep, or a substantial portion of a generation, eventually much of a generation, suffering from morbid obesity and dying sooner, living less happy lives, and costing the entire system more in money and resources?

Both are bad, but government creep is a problem on so many levels of society and surely there are many other levels on which it may be combated without sacrificing so much.

quote:
Yeah, I worry about that, too. This is the biggest reason that I no longer align with the Republican party: because the religion of "right" has trumped their purported Christian religion.

I know you guys have hashed and re-hashed all of this until it's mashed potato, so thanks for talking to me about it at all.

I tend to think that any major political party anywhere-particularly in our system-that purports to align itself with religious objectives is going to be full of crap. And it should be said that strong Christianity hasn't been a real core component of Republicans generally for quite some time-it's rather been a major factor among their base.

As for it being rehashed, you're good to talk to in any event, and particularly since you come at this with a different perspective-there's plenty of left-leaning or moderate critical-of-GOP talk on the `rack, but not so much from someone who might be further right. It's an interesting angle.
 
Posted by Misha McBride (Member # 6578) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Rakeesh:
Eh, that seems to be rather a lot further over the line than can be supported. By that I mean you're speaking about things that happen entirely between his ears, and so however reprehensible you find some of his actions you can't possibly know if even a fraction of what you've said is true.

I say this as someone who thinks he's a pretty big turd, mind you.

Three words- Cameron Todd Willingham.

Edit: And that's just the most egregious example in a list longer than I have time to type up.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Even if you could find a score more examples as egregious as the most egregious possible reality of that arson and execution, it still wouldn't be enough to support the kinds of statements you made, Misha.

Sorry. Extremely dubious, potentially very foul and wicked, sure. But you stated that Perry is not bound by any motives other than self-interest, period. That he is constantly lying about everything except when he acknowledges his self-interest. That far from feeling no guilt, he doesn't even think having no morality and constantly lying is even wrong.

There's a solid case to be made for Rick Perry being a hypocritical scumbag. You don't do any service to it by piling on hyperbole so obvious it's clear even to Perry's detractors.
 
Posted by Reticulum (Member # 8776) on :
 
Food for thought:

What right do Men truly have in the abortion debate? If Men don't give birth, then we should probably leave it to Women, in its entirety.
 
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
 
Food for thought:

What right do others truly have in the suicide debate? If individuals are free, rational and totally autonomous moral agents, then we should probably leave it to the person committing suicide, in its entirety.
 
Posted by Reticulum (Member # 8776) on :
 
Aren't you cute?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Firstly this thread has NOTHING to do with abortion.

Secondly, I'm fairly certain that capa was neither being cute nor imitating you. I suspect he was simply applying your (horrible) principal to a broader topic to illustrate its horribleness. Altho I could be wrong.

Wanna talk abortion, I'll participate. But please show this thread the decency of not gate crashing with nonsequiters.
 
Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
Food for thought:

What right do others truly have in the suicide debate? If individuals are free, rational and totally autonomous moral agents, then we should probably leave it to the person committing suicide, in its entirety.

I actually have no problem with this, and think it's the correct thing to do. Hate the idea that society can tell someone that their life is not their own, to do with as they please.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
The rub is...what if the person who is making the choice is not in use their right mind? If presented with the same option a week earlier or a week later they would vastly prefer to be incarcerated in a mental hospital and still be alive than take their own life while at a limited capacity.

Then you get to the deeper problem...who gets to decide when one is right minded enough to make that choice or not?

All in all I'm good with the illegality of suicide. For those truly commited to dying there is very little the government can do about it.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Also...everyone should have a voice in debate. Excluding people categorically from discussion is just the worst kind of assery.
 
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
 
From the Wikipedia article on the ACA:

quote:

States that choose to reject the Medicaid expansion can maintain the pre-existing Medicaid eligibility thresholds they have set, which in many states are significantly below 133% of the poverty line for most individuals.[360] Furthermore, many states do not make Medicaid available to childless adults at any income level.[361] Because subsidies on insurance plans purchased through exchanges are not available to those below the poverty line, this will create a coverage gap in those states between the state Medicaid threshold and the subsidy eligibility threshold.[362][363] For example, in Kansas, where only those able-bodied adults with children and with an income below 32% of the poverty line are eligible for Medicaid, those with incomes from 32% to 100% of the poverty level ($6,250 to $19,530 for a family of three) would be ineligible for both Medicaid and federal subsidies to buy insurance. If they have no children, able-bodied adults are not eligible for Medicaid in Kansas.

Jesus.
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by PSI Teleport:
Yeah, but there's a common theme among the poor to which Mainstream Jesus and his New Testament Pals TM devoted their ministries.

1. Widows
2. Orphans
3. Those too crippled or disabled to work at all, who were reduced to begging in order to survive.
4. Those who had been exiled because they had serious communicable diseases.
5. Those who could work, but were taxed into starvation by the crooked government.

It's not exclusive, but the theme is obvious: those who needed help most were the ones who literally had no power over their situations. The percentage of people like that in America is smaller than our privileged lifestyle would have us believe, but I'll admit that I don't know how to go about distinguishing between the genuinely needy and those who never took responsibility for their improving their lives and now expect the rest of the country to pay the bill. It's tempting to err on the side of blanket generosity but for the sake of taxpayers and their children it seems fair to me to be a little more discriminating.

I grew up in a trailer park in the ghetto with alcoholic, abusive parents, dropped out of high school, got knocked up at eighteen and have spent the last thirteen years trying to raise two children on one low income. But I don't see myself as a victim in any sense. I'm going to college part time and living very frugally so I can afford decent health insurance. I'm not saying everyone should think like me, but I do have a hard time understanding the threshold at which someone is no longer "able" to improve their situations. Personally, I've never been there.

By the way, as for my insurance that I've worked so hard to keep over the years: my co-pays just went up so much that I'll no longer be able to use it. So now I have insurance that amounts to "catastrophic," but costs the same as my old insurance.

Knowing for a fact that if I were American I would not be able to pursue my dream of being a game designer because I wouldn't have had the safety net and support of the government to help me through hard times, I am glad I am not American.

I think its better, morally and economically that every individual should be able to have a free quality public education and have their healthcosts covered until University or a Tradeschool; and then be given a combination of bursuries and low interest loans they won't have to pay until they finish.

If something "bad" or out of your control happens this entire time, you can recover with help.

Also a well educated productive populace allows for a stronger nation.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
I'm all for foreign aid, but we should be charging/cancelling debt to offset the huge costs of American humanitarian efforts.

As I said, I am for helping those in need around the world, but not at the cost of helping those at home.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Foreign aid is such a small ticket item. I mean seriously, with the exception of foreign military aid, the cost/benefit analysis is incredibly skewed toward the benefits. Our dollars have a much more meaningful impact on the lives of people in need in the third world.

But even if we totally eliminated non-military foreign aid, it would only save a few billion dollars - a relatively tiny drop in the bucket for our overall problems that very much likely be better cut from elsewhere in the domestic or military budgets.

In a two trillion dollar budget, "huge" isn't a word I would use to describe American humanitarian efforts in terms of cost. Certainly they are massive undertakings after disasters, but the actual cost is less extreme than you might think, relatively.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
I never said cut...I said charge.

You break it, you buy it.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
I'm fine with addressing some of the actual real problems of our economy before we start scrimping on giving pennies to starving children in the world.

That's hardly all foreign aid is, of course-quite a bit of it is military, and tied in with American military producers-but still. It's a lot. How important is it to us to get some dollars out of the Phillipines when they get wrecked by a typhoon?
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Just issue them a bill at the end of the emergancy.

We help foreign powers who hold debt over this county you know.

That cost should cancel out that debt.

I'm not saying stop helping by any means! Lets just not pretend that there are those at home who need help and don't get it. And do something about it.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Sounds like the IMF.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Just issue them a bill at the end of the emergancy.

We help foreign powers who hold debt over this county you know.

That cost should cancel out that debt.

I'm not saying stop helping by any means! Lets just not pretend that there are those at home who need help and don't get it. And do something about it.

I just don't see what purpose is served by pretending the reason we have those people at home is because we spend too much abroad. It's not. What you're advocating would net us mere pennies in economic terms, even in the cases of those countries who can pay-and would have a real cost in lives for those who couldn't. It'd also do real damage to our reputation abroad. All because we 'can't afford it'?

We could afford it. This is a leaky second floor faucet at a drip an hour or so you're talking about, when the reason our water bill is so high is because of the great big crack in the main underground.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Perhaps you are right. I'm not one to follow politics closely for this very reason. I would go mad from the sheer injustice of how poorly those scheming, lying bastards are running our country.

Despite that, when you are in a leaky boat and sinking fast, if you see a leak you try and plug it, even if its only a small one. At least that small leak would be easier to get the morons who won't bail or fix the big leaks to agree to do something about.

ETA:
No lives lost. Help first, bill later. If they don't pay, fine. We don't stop helping, they just have a running tab, that doesn't mean a whole lot. Mostly I'm affronted by us sending help that costs money to countries which hold our debt.
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
How often do you think that happens?
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
Stone wolf it gives me an aneurysm to see this kind of poor argumentation.

Firstly, in terms of national economic interest, military aid serves an important purpose for the United States.

You know all of those planes that are still decent in most of todays combat environments? that loads of countries would be interested in like the Super Hornet (Canada eh?)?

You can't build em anymore. Well the Super Hornet you probably can, but the A-10 Warthog? There's loads of equipment the industry 'tribal knowledge' and expertise doesn't exist anymore.

You know that boondoggle program now costing twice its original expected costs to somewhere to the tune of 400 billion dollars (A very large amount of money compared to foreign aid..)? The Joint Strike Fighter? Did you know its completely uncompetitive for ANY of its assigned roles when compared to its likely competitors with half the flight radius?

You know what the root cause of both these issues are? Its complex, but it comes down to that if you stop producing a certain plane and those people involved aren't able to be transfered to other projects they tend to go away and never come back.

Similarly the same problem resulted in the USA having several aircraft producers that were competitive, you had Lockheed, Boeing, Skunkworks, Northrop Grumman, Curtis-Wright, and so on, but now you have the problem that many of them didn't have sufficient orders to keep the lights on.

So you get mergers, and now you went from a competitive playing field with several manufacturers with juuuuuust enough overlap that if you couldn't get a good bomber out of one you could always threaten with going to a competitor; you could shop around, threaten contracts and so on.

But now the US can't, its now down to I think The Big Three and they're very specialized.

Its not the only factor, but foreign aid and military sales provides highly skilled jobs in the aerospace industry and keeps the lights on in between big orders.

These nations obviously won't accept such sales if they weren't essentially gifts, which the US does to keep these nations in its "camp"; with China far richer and more competitive in the third world, and less caring about ideology than th FSU, the USA cannot really afford to not pay the bill and give stuff away for free.

Because where the US won't the Chinese will.

As for humanitarian aid, the same logic applies at a basic level. Without assistance without a price tag not only would many governments possibly just refuse the aid to avoid stacking on top of their already ridiculous debts to the IMF and the World Bank that are keeping them in "resource export economy" third world status. Their people will suffer and you risk governments toppling and being overrun by revolutionaries of various stripes.

And you end up paying the cost anyways, except larger and later; because eventually politics will force you to act.

And not on your terms.

Finally, low interest/free development aid helps to develop the economies of various developing nations which increases their purchasing power over time. As their middle class expands, their demand for American goods increases, producing jobs for American manufacturers and services.

Since the US gov't can borrow money from the Central Bank for pennies on the dollar it allows for huge potential for investment with good returns.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
American goods? What do we still make here?
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with much of what Blayne just said.

What's the point of charging them a bill? Just for the sake of being able to point to it and crow about how benevolent we are?

When we send money to first world countries like Japan after a problem, it's usually political. Our way of attaching a dollar figure to how much we care about them. When we send money to third world countries after a disaster, like the Philippines, it's because they're overwhelmed and unlikely to have have the money to ever pay us back. When you realize both those realities, the only real conclusion to come to is that sending them a bill is all about score keeping, and not about economics or budgeting. And I think it'd ruin a lot of the good will you engender by being there in the first place.

Remember a lot of places offered or sent America aid after 9/11 and Katrina, not because they really thought we couldn't clean up our own mess (though we proved rather woefully unsuited for the task at the end of the day), but because it's a show of friendship and community. It's tenths of pennies on the dollar for good will you can't normally buy so easily.
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
I can't believe I'm saying this, but I agree with much of what Blayne just said.

I will erect a Tower of Pimps in Minecraft to commensurate this day.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
Very well.

But I still don't but the American goods part, because all the stuff we have has a sticker that says, "Made in China."
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
Very well.

But I still don't but the American goods part, because all the stuff we have has a sticker that says, "Made in China."

Bullshit.

American manufacturing comprises roughly 6% of GDP or 910 Billion dollars.

This comprises roughly 350,828 firms and employs over 15,000,000 people do you even google anything you claim? Or is this more Republican "Post Facts" bullcrap?

None of this of course factors in the other sectors of the US economy that get a small buff from increased global trade and demand, particularly in services, finance, transportation, investments into research and so on.

This really isn't hard, its Keynesian economics applied globally.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Ellison: It really isn't hard to not be snotty to people.
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
Ellison: It really isn't hard to not be snotty to people.

I was able to find out this information with less than 5 seconds of googling. Though I agree I shouldn't have had that tone.
 
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
This really isn't hard, its Keynesian economics applied globally.

How is that an example of Keynesian economics?
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Good.

China routinely plays around with 30% of GDP coming from manufacturing. Taiwan is also at 30%, Japan 20%, South Korea 30%.

I've got the US at around 10-13% at the most. We are being hammered economically by several factors.

1: Year over year trade deficits. Our largest trading partners manipulate their currencies alot, keeping them weak, thus allowing their products to remain cheap, and hard for us to compete with. We buy their stuff, and they don't buy ours. We've got to stop running trade deficits. China is starting to import more and more, and its currency should be getting stronger, but instead they force it down, and nobody calls them on it because our economy is too dependent on imports.

2: We don't export as mentioned before. Or rather, we don't export enough. We import import import. Importing takes money out of the US economy and sends it elsewhere. Of course importing is good, just not at the ratios we've got it.

3: Intellectual property. Hua Wei China's telecom darling, partnered with US's Motorola. When they were caught stealing Motorola's IP, Motorola sued, but they couldn't stay afloat during the lengthy legal processes, and tried to sell themselves. Hua Wei countersued Motorola for IP theft (laughable)and demanded the sale be frozen until the court case was resolved. Motorola ended up paying off Hua Wei out of court, just so they could sell themselves off piecemeal. Leave a bad taste in your mouth? It should. China always tells companies that complain about IP theft to bring their claims to Chinese courts. Yeah right.

The US spends more on R&D than any other country, China has no problem paying hackers and corporate spies thousands of dollars for IP worth hundreds of millions. This behavior is devastating to US firms. And it's not even a case of both sides stealing from each other, one side has all the IP, the other doesn't.

Either cyber security needs to make an incredible leap forward, or laws protecting IP need to be given serious overhauling. Many firms don't even patent their work anymore because a patent application is basically a free schematic for spies to steal.

The Chinese government has fiercely denied paying hackers to steal IP or sabotage foreign firms, but security experts have found a pretty obvious proof that this is a lie. Chinese hackers all take weekends off. Only government employees do that. If the Chinese want to benefit from US R&D, pay us for our work.

3: The US made a *big* mistake letting China into the WTO without insisting on more liberal policies in regards to economic policy. When Japan butted heads with China over a Chinese trawler smashing into a Japanese coast guard vessel, the Chinese restricted rare earth exports, sending a harsh blow to the Japanese electronics industry. It was a vagrant violation of WTO policy, but they simply waited out the process, and then stopped restricting flow before the process was completed. The damage had already done, and the message was loud and clear. Fortunately this stimulated US firms to find rare earth metal deposits elsewhere. But its thuggery, plain and simple.

The US is far from white as the driven snow, but there is nothing worse than playing mostly free market rules, and playing with economic nationalists like China and Japan. The nationalists always win, while the liberals lose lose lose.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
China always tells companies that complain about IP theft to bring their claims to Chinese courts.
presided over by the honorable judge flunky kid of a powerful apparatchik

china's nuts, it really is. recently it's been making italian courts look honest and clean by comparison
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
1. In fairness, the trade imbalance has much more to do with cheap labor overseas than it does currency manipulation. Keep in mind two things: A. What the US loses in currency underevaluation in foreign markets, it gains in being the world's reserve currency. We couldn't regularly borrow half a trillion dollars if the dollar was like the yuan. B. China and other countries, especially our debt holders, have constantly berated us in the last five years for currency manipulation by printing (or hand wave creating) trillions of new dollars to dump into our economy. It's keeping the dollar somewhat devalued, and it's also depressing interest yields on their treasury bills. So it works both ways.

2. Reshoring is a big trend that's only likely to increase for two reasons: A. America is undergoing and will continue to enjoy an energy boom which is dramatically lowering the cost of running a largescale manufacturing enterprise in the United States. B. Labor costs are sky rocketing overseas, especially in China. A lot of that work is going to increasingly come back to America, because it's going to be cheaper, between labor, transportation and energy costs (energy costs are going up in China as well as demand soars whereas in the United States demand is actually decreasing as supply increases), to reopen a factory here, close to the market, instead of over there.

As time goes on, more and more of American-owned manufacturing will leave China, some of it going back to America, and a lot of it simply finding a new low-labor cost home base, like Vietnam, India (if they can get their crap together) or possibly a new boom in Africa.

3. Yes. Unfortunately China is too important to the US economy at the moment for us to really play hardball over it. It sucks, but we basically have to just beef up security and warn companies they're on their own and to be wary of partnerships, but that's hard because China often DEMANDS partnerships with shared technological access as the price for admission into the Chinese market. Companies like GM are paying that price on the gamble that domestic manufacturers won't just steal their secrets and kick them out in 5 to 10 years.

3b. Agree here as well. We're getting hosed pretty hard. It's hard to gather much of a coalition to fight back though. There isn't much we can do to hurt them that won't hurt us in return.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
1. I'd quibble over the ratios, but you are right that cheap labor is a big part of it. Yes it's true being the reserve currency lets us print money, but our GDP to Debt ratio is not unlike quite a few other countries (notably countries that I'd say are red flags for meltdowns, but... [Wink] )

Further while we print money, it's only because other countries continue to buy our bonds that we aren't struggling with inflation yet. We should be though at some point. Still, it's not like we're making them buy them up. If people didn't buy our bonds, we'd stop printing money at some point.

2. Agreed on energy, but I'm not sure even some of the jobs are coming back here. People are already starting to move manufacturing to Vietnam, Thailand, and perhaps Indonesia. Parts of Africa are conceivable too.

3. Ultimately I think foreign firms are starting to see the problems with business in China. I think ultimately corporate law is going to have to develop at an extremely rapid pace in China, or else business will start leaving, at least in
the tech industry. Companies like Walmart and Amazon I don't think have the same challenges. Hopefully the Chinese will see the benefits of IP protection, and allow trademark law to be developed in the country. It would be a self-correcting problem.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
To be honest most of this conversation has been above my pay grade, but I have found it quite informative and interesting to read.

To Blayne...your personality makes it difficult for me to converse with you. Sorry.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Stone_Wolf_:
To be honest most of this conversation has been above my pay grade, but I have found it quite informative and interesting to read.

If there is a part you would like to understand I'd be more than happy to explain. [Smile]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
It'd be different if India hadn't tanked their own economy. If they'd kept pace with China, businesses wouldn't be so beholden to China's consumers which would give them a great deal more leverage in deals. But that didn't pan out the way a lot of people wanted it to.

As far as jobs...no, they aren't coming back in huge numbers, but maybe not for the reason you might be suggesting. Factories will return to America, but they'll largely be automated. Automation has dramatically cut jobs in America over the last 30 years but also dramatically increased profits and productivity.

Thus, seemingly bizarrely, manufacturing will become a bigger sector of the economy though its share of jobs in the economy will only get a slight uptick.

Still, that's something.

Edit to add: Some economists would point out a key difference between our economy and say, Greece/Spain/Ireland's. That's growth. So long as our debt grows at a slower pace than our economy, the curve on the debt to GDP ratio is sustainable, which allows us to continue deficit-spending even as the debt seems to spiral out of control. Obviously we'll have to get that under control at some point, but being the world's reserve currency gives us that power. We won't go under like the others.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
It isn't that I don't understand what you guys are saying. I do. It's that I have nothing of value to add as most of the discussion is new to me. But thanks BB.
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by capaxinfiniti:
quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
This really isn't hard, its Keynesian economics applied globally.

How is that an example of Keynesian economics?
Aside from the fact that what's considered "Keynesian" is in of itself a huge field at its simplest explanation Keynesian economics is the idea of boosting aggregate demand in order to grow the economy.

So if various developing countries say, double their purchasing power, then they are more likely to purchase more American goods; more American goods bought generally means more jobs.

quote:

To Blayne...your personality makes it difficult for me to converse with you. Sorry.

My personality is irrelevant when it comes down to it, you made easily verifiable claims that you could have researched on your own. Life and the pursuit of knowledge is just about knowing how to do your own research and critical thinking as it is about asking to be taught, sometimes whats needed is knowing how to acquire that knowledge on your own.

Exaggerated claims about how America doesn't make anything anymore is a great standup bit but makes for poor discussion.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Misha McBride:
quote:
Originally posted by TomDavidson:
Misha misused it. Lyrhawn used it correctly.

I disagree. Rick Perry only pays lip service to the idea of morality because it serves his purposes, not because he actually has any morals. His decisions are ultimately based only on possible benefit to himself, not whether they are Right or Wrong. He has no empathy for other human beings and no feelings of guilt or remorse for anything because he doesn't really think he's done anything wrong. He completely lacks a conscience and probably has antisocial personality disorder. In short, he's amoral (as much as a human being can be) and as such all his choices are based on that lack of morality.
This is a little harsh, misha. you're making rick perry out to be like some sort of texas conservative
 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:

3: The US made a *big* mistake letting China into the WTO without insisting on more liberal policies in regards to economic policy. When Japan butted heads with China over a Chinese trawler smashing into a Japanese coast guard vessel, the Chinese restricted rare earth exports, sending a harsh blow to the Japanese electronics industry. It was a vagrant violation of WTO policy, but they simply waited out the process, and then stopped restricting flow before the process was completed. The damage had already done, and the message was loud and clear. Fortunately this stimulated US firms to find rare earth metal deposits elsewhere. But its thuggery, plain and simple.

I don't believe its this simple, harvesting rare earths is one of the most ecologically harmful industries that have ever existed and if any percentage however small of the claims of them doing it to restructure so its less harmful are true; then I think it was perfectly justified. The good outweights the harm and industries relying on China alone for rare earths were asking for it.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
quote:

3: The US made a *big* mistake letting China into the WTO without insisting on more liberal policies in regards to economic policy. When Japan butted heads with China over a Chinese trawler smashing into a Japanese coast guard vessel, the Chinese restricted rare earth exports, sending a harsh blow to the Japanese electronics industry. It was a vagrant violation of WTO policy, but they simply waited out the process, and then stopped restricting flow before the process was completed. The damage had already done, and the message was loud and clear. Fortunately this stimulated US firms to find rare earth metal deposits elsewhere. But its thuggery, plain and simple.

I don't believe its this simple, harvesting rare earths is one of the most ecologically harmful industries that have ever existed and if any percentage however small of the claims of them doing it to restructure so its less harmful are true; then I think it was perfectly justified. The good outweights the harm and industries relying on China alone for rare earths were asking for it.
Wait, hold up! China stopped without warning exporting, what was for them basically a monopoly commodity (95% of rare earth exports), because of environmental concerns? I know it's a stereotype, but do you *know* how freaking low the environment is on Chinese policy maker's agendas?

And lets just say for the sake of argument it was the environment. They implemented quotas, didn't actually meet even these reduced quotas, and when the trawler incident happened, China stopped shipping to Japan. Not other countries.

Also, China has since the 1990s been trying to get electronics firms to move their factories to China in exchange for cheaper rare earth metals. But guess what else firms get? IP theft.

I'm sorry I just don't buy Captain Planet's explanation for Chinese stopping shipments of rare earth metals to Japan. Not to mention as soon as they announced it, the Japanese released the trawler captain.
 
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
This is a little harsh, misha. you're making rick perry out to be like some sort of texas conservative [/QB]

I hate articles like that. Using "immigrant" in place of "illegal immigrant". That's not shortening anything, or a slight imprecision, it's a straight-out lie. I fall into the liberal/Democrat camp on the issue of immigration, and I agree with the writer here on the reasonableness, or lack thereof, of this plan. But I do so without deliberately obfuscating the intentions of those involved to make them look worse. Why would I need to? I think the current policy and this particular "awareness campaign" are plenty bad without me making it so.

Hobbes [Smile]
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
do you mean how the article called it a 'catch an immigrant' game in the headline when you would prefer they had not used any shorthand?

They specify pretty clearly what the game is right off, but if it is an issue then replace the link with this one

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/18/young-conservatives-of-texas-to-hold-catch-an-illegal-immigrant-event-on-wednesday/
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
quote:
I don't believe its this simple, harvesting rare earths is one of the most ecologically harmful industries that have ever existed and if any percentage however small of the claims of them doing it to restructure so its less harmful are true; then I think it was perfectly justified. The good outweights the harm and industries relying on China alone for rare earths were asking for it.
This is so silly I might almost think it's an elaborate long-term game for you, Elison. Are you seriously suggesting that the PRC did this because of environmental concerns? That environmental impact, rather than money and power in business, was their motivation? Everyone knows you love China but please be serious.
 
Posted by Stone_Wolf_ (Member # 8299) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
My personality is irrelevant when it comes down to it...

Obviously not. Being right is far less useful in this life than driving people away with unnecessary aggression and snottiness. When it comes down to it, I was wrong and you were right. America is #2 producer in the world. But when you blow your stack and act like a jerk over a simple stating of opinion (not a claim btw) who is going to come back with anything positive to say?

quote:
Life and the pursuit of knowledge is just about knowing how to do your own research and critical thinking as it is about asking to be taught, sometimes whats needed is knowing how to acquire that knowledge on your own.
Please do not lecture me about the meaning of life. From what I know of your life you have no legs to stand on. I might not (read AM not) be as knowledgeable about microeconomics as you and others on the board, and freely admit it, but I'm the sole caregiver for my two small children and bed ridden wife and I'm bloody well busy doing better things.

If you really think that -how- you talk to people isn't as important as what you say then perhaps you should reexamine how human beings work.
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
yeah china flat-out pulled its rare earth embargo for political reasons. it was a row over territory. they were specifically cutting off japan.

the environmental pressures excuse is eminently transparent. oh I guess it was pollution purely from the rare earths that would happen to go to japan in 2010 that they were concerned about. phew! i guess i'm glad they halted that environmental issue!
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
... business will start leaving, at least in
the tech industry. Companies like Walmart and Amazon I don't think have the same challenges. Hopefully the Chinese will see the benefits of IP protection, and allow trademark law to be developed in the country. It would be a self-correcting problem.

Two things:
a) I think they want the American tech industry to leave and I would have to agree, given American enthusiasm for spying and hacking these days.

b) I think there's an assumption inherent that having China's IP laws be equivalent to American laws would be a good thing. I would have to whole-heartedly disagree. Between dedicated patent troll companies, the whole anti-consumer Google-Apple lawsuit fiasco, over-priced pharmaceutical drugs, etc, that can't be something that I can support.
 
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
quote:
do you mean how the article called it a 'catch an immigrant' game in the headline when you would prefer they had not used any shorthand?
Yes. Because "immigrant" is not shorthand for "illegal immigrant".

Hobbes [Smile]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
I know it's a stereotype, but do you *know* how freaking low the environment is on Chinese policy maker's agendas?

First, it is a stereotype, and it's pretty incorrect. The environment is near the top of the public agenda and the government has responded with some pretty incredible stuff.

For example:

quote:
Given all that, the remarkable thing is not what China has failed to do but what it has achieved, especially in reining in carbon dioxide. Its carbon emissions are growing at half the rate of GDP, a bit better than the global average. China has also boosted investment in renewable energy far more than any other country. It has the world’s most ambitious plans for building new nuclear power stations.


To combine economic growth and environmental improvement, China has concentrated on reducing carbon intensity—emissions per unit of GDP (see chart 3). This fell by about 20% in the past five years and the government is aiming to cut it by 40-45% by 2020, compared with 2005. Most of the improvement is coming from a scheme to bully 1,000 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into using energy more efficiently—arguably the single most important climate policy in the world.

The enterprises sign a contract with the central government agreeing to meet efficiency targets, abide by new building codes and install environmental-control equipment. This helped Chinese cement-makers (who produce as much of the stuff as the rest of the world put together) reduce the energy needed to make a tonne of cement by 30% in the ten years to 2009. The scheme has now been expanded to 10,000 SOEs, covering the majority of polluters.

China is also generating energy more efficiently. According to the World Bank, better operations and the closure of clapped-out plants helped to push the average thermal efficiency of its coal-fired power stations from 31% in 2000 to 37% in 2010; America’s remained flat, at 33%.

The other big energy change is China’s vast renewables programme. The government aims to get 20% of its energy from such sources by 2020, the same target as in richer Europe. The largest slice will come from hydropower, which accounted for around 15% of total energy in 2012 (with nuclear power at 2%). But the big rise comes from wind and solar: the government will roughly double investment in these two in 2011-16, compared with 2006-10. Chinese investment in renewables puts others to shame. It amounted to $67 billion in 2012, says REN21, a network of policymakers, more than three times what Germany spent. The aim is to have 100 gigawatts of wind capacity and 35 gigawatts of solar capacity by 2015.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21583245-china-worlds-worst-polluter-largest-investor-green-energy-its-rise-will-have

And all this with a per capita income that's less than Mexico's.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
The Chinese government has fiercely denied paying hackers to steal IP or sabotage foreign firms, but security experts have found a pretty obvious proof that this is a lie. Chinese hackers all take weekends off. Only government employees do that.

Ummm. This is a standard of proof that I would expect from a pot-smoker, "I got hacked by the FBI man. How do I know? It stopped during the weekend." Totally impossible to fake.

I'm not even asking for impossible standards here. We have a few examples, like for example government powerpoint presentations about hacking, released by a government employee with everything to lose, pursued by the government, and with policies that are acknowledged and then defended by government leaders. I'm just sayin'
 
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Samprimary:
do you mean how the article called it a 'catch an immigrant' game in the headline when you would prefer they had not used any shorthand?

They specify pretty clearly what the game is right off, but if it is an issue then replace the link with this one

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/18/young-conservatives-of-texas-to-hold-catch-an-illegal-immigrant-event-on-wednesday/

I was actually relieved to read that link. From the title I thought they were advocating a day of vigilante-INS volunteerism and encouraging people to report on their neighbors and confront strangers to question them about their citizenship/residency status.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Mucus:
quote:
a) I think they want the American tech industry to leave and I would have to agree, given American enthusiasm for spying and hacking these days.
Spying is a government thing, I seriously doubt American tech companies *want* to participate in government spying. I don't know much about the US side of hacking. But as I said before, I don't think the US is stealing Chinese trade secrets.

quote:
b) I think there's an assumption inherent that having China's IP laws be equivalent to American laws would be a good thing. I would have to whole-heartedly disagree. Between dedicated patent troll companies, the whole anti-consumer Google-Apple lawsuit fiasco, over-priced pharmaceutical drugs, etc, that can't be something that I can support.
No, I'm saying that China doesn't have a concept at all that if I design something, I should be able to enjoy the fruits of those labors rather than my efforts being buried under copy cat trolls who jump in. The US has problems with patent law sure, but it still has a lot of good checks in place to stimulate innovation.

quote:
First, it is a stereotype, and it's pretty incorrect. The environment is near the top of the public agenda and the government has responded with some pretty incredible stuff.
First of all, that's renewable energy reform, not environmental reform. Further, slowing down a little carbon and only growing slightly slower than the global average means almost nothing. Look, the US is crappy about this too. As soon as you talk about nuclear everybody is going to scream Fukushima for the next 20 years. And people think driving electric cars is somehow reducing carbon output. But China has turned their atmosphere into soup, I've seen it. People don't even want to go to Beijing for business it's so unhealthy.

The only thing I know of that I think signals environmental reform on China's end from the past year was the decision to make environmental crimes a capital offense.

Well see if that stops it from happening.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Mucus:
quote:
Ummm. This is a standard of proof that I would expect from a pot-smoker, "I got hacked by the FBI man. How do I know? It stopped during the weekend." Totally impossible to fake.
I agree on its own it's not much. But when you have a security expert put up a ton of data on hacking behavior, and amidst it all, you can see hackers taking the weekends off as well as Chinese holidays, you have to find measures like that because it's too hard to trace back to the original source a lot of the time.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
quote:
a) I think they want the American tech industry to leave and I would have to agree, given American enthusiasm for spying and hacking these days.
I don't know much about the US side of hacking. But as I said before, I don't think the US is stealing Chinese trade secrets.
Of course they're stealing Chinese trade secrets, they're stealing pretty much everything which includes trade secrets.

For example, in South America, that includes mining companies, government energy regulators, etc.

quote:
Citing documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the fugitive former American intelligence contractor, O Globo newspaper said the NSA programs went beyond military affairs to what it termed "commercial secrets."

These included petroleum in Venezuela and energy in Mexico, according to a graphic O Globo identified as being from the NSA and dated February of this year.

Also swept up in what O Globo termed as U.S. spying were Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/09/us-usa-security-latinamerica-idUSBRE96816H20130709

In China specifically, the NSA was specifically hacking public officials and businesses.
quote:
The documents don't reveal any details about Chinese military systems, Snowden told the newspaper. However, they do show hacking by the U.S. against targets in China's Special Administrative Regions, which include Hong Kong and Macau. Those targets include public officials, businesses, and students of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57589100-83/nsa-whistleblower-u.s-has-been-hacking-into-china-hong-kong/

The idea that they managed to filter out and avoid stealing trade secrets when they've managed to steal pretty much everything else is pretty ridiculous.


quote:
No, I'm saying that China doesn't have a concept at all that if I design something, I should be able to enjoy the fruits of those labors
That's just plain false, of course the concept exists.

quote:
Yes, prior art exists in China with respect to the patent law — which requires both novelty and an inventive step over the prior art. “prior art” with respect to trademarks is a bit different, so I believe that you may be getting these concepts confused.
http://www.chinalawblog.com/2013/10/having-china-ip-problems-whose-fault-is-that.html
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
But when you have a security expert put up a ton of data on hacking behavior, and amidst it all, you can see hackers taking the weekends off as well as Chinese holidays, you have to find measures like that because it's too hard to trace back to the original source a lot of the time.

One doesn't *have* to believe anything given crappy data. We've seen American "experts" go right up to the UN present hard data on weapons of mass destruction in order to justify an invasion that would kill tens of thousands of people. This data is much crappier than that and similarly self-interested.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by JanitorBlade:
First of all, that's renewable energy reform, not environmental reform.

These two are pretty inextricably linked. I don't see how you can separate it out. Hydroelectric power generation displaces coal plants, nuclear power plants, the same. In Ontario, a key strategy to improve air quality is to shut down thermal power and replace it with renewables.

quote:
Further, slowing down a little carbon and only growing slightly slower than the global average means almost nothing.
I don't see it as a "little." China has leap-frogged the US, a rich developed country, in the efficiency of its coal-fired plants in just ten years. The US can't even build a single high speed rail line in less than ten years. That's a huge accomplishment in such a poor country.

quote:
As soon as you talk about nuclear everybody is going to scream Fukushima for the next 20 years.
Not everyone and that's part of the point. As the article says, China is building more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world. Environmentally, that's huge. That's going to displace tonnes of carbon. It's true, Americans are going to scream about Fukushima, but China's the one that's going to take the risk to actually help the environment.

quote:
But China has turned their atmosphere into soup, I've seen it.
And I haven't seen it?

The US went through things like rivers on fire when it was significantly richer. China is already taking action way ahead of the curve at a significantly earlier point in terms of things like income, education, and capability.

There's a lot of hard work and perseverance there, contrary to American stereotypes.
 
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
 
Mucus: [url=These two are pretty inextricably linked. I don't see how you can separate it out. Hydroelectric power generation displaces coal plants, nuclear power plants, the same. In Ontario, a key strategy to improve air quality is to shut down thermal power and replace it with renewables.
[/url]As I said there is some overlap. Maybe even a lot, but just because you make a bunch of nuclear power plants instead of coal plants to manage your energy needs, doesn't mean those coal plants are still in operation.

quote:
I don't see it as a "little." China has leap-frogged the US, a rich developed country, in the efficiency of its coal-fired plants in just ten years. The US can't even build a single high speed rail line in less than ten years. That's a huge accomplishment in such a poor country.

You keep using the US as a point of comparison, I think the US is abysmal at environmentalism. We are only talking about Chinese environmentalism because Ellison said rare earth imports to Japan were stopped for a short time purely because of environmental concerns.

quote:
And I haven't seen it?
Didn't say anything about your experiences, I affirmed what mine were.

If China is serious about the environment, then lets see it get on board with the Kyoto protocols. China is the only reason the US didn't also sign on.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Hobbes:
quote:
do you mean how the article called it a 'catch an immigrant' game in the headline when you would prefer they had not used any shorthand?
Yes. Because "immigrant" is not shorthand for "illegal immigrant".

Hobbes [Smile]

Do you think that this should make an appreciable difference in how we view the actions of the people playing this game?
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
JanitorBlade: That's just silly. China signed Kyoto over ten years ago. It's the US that didn't sign on and there's no way they can blame their failure to sign on a country that did sign.

Second, you may be addressing Blayne's rare earths angle. I'm addressing this: "I know it's a stereotype" It is a stereotype and it's incorrect. I'm just using the US as a frame of reference, but it doesn't really matter what developed country you use. China is significantly ahead of the curve as a developing country, let alone where it will be in decades when its a developed country.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Mucus: China signed Kyoto? This is news to me. *scurries off*.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Huh. They signed in 1998. That makes me irrationally angry at a certain instructor I just finished taking a class from.
 
Posted by capaxinfiniti (Member # 12181) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by kmbboots:
quote:
Originally posted by Hobbes:
quote:
do you mean how the article called it a 'catch an immigrant' game in the headline when you would prefer they had not used any shorthand?
Yes. Because "immigrant" is not shorthand for "illegal immigrant".

Hobbes [Smile]

Do you think that this should make an appreciable difference in how we view the actions of the people playing this game?
It should and does make a considerable difference. It's dishonest to conflate the two in order to advance a political agenda.
 
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
 
Kate, are you asking if I think there's a difference between a person who wants to catch and deport immigrants and a person who wants to catch and deport illegal immigrants? If so: yes, yes I do think there's a difference. I have to admit that I would loose a great deal of respect for you if you think there isn't a difference.

Hobbes [Smile]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Huh. They signed in 1998. That makes me irrationally angry at a certain instructor I just finished taking a class from.

Technically, the United States DID sign the Protocol, they just never ratified it.

The US signed but didn't ratify, and the Chinese signed and ratified, but their CO2 reduction numbers were not binding, which means they opted out of signing into the part of the agreement that actually had teeth. Only the EU and a handful of other countries signed on to the binding parts of the law.

So I'm not really sure how much significance you can give to who signed.

In reality, China couldn't sign onto the Annex I binding targets. Those targets mandated that countries reduce their emissions to 5% below their 1990 levels. China hadn't really gotten industrialization off the ground to any appreciable level at that point. (Rough numbers ahead). I think they were emitting something like 2 billion tons of CO2 in 1990, but by 2006 it was 10 billion. To reduce their emissions to 5% of their 1990 numbers would have required them to deindustrialize the entire country. That's why they signed onto the non-binding parts intended for third world countries.

Having said that...anyone who wants to excoriate the US for not ratifying needs to actually look at the emissions levels over the last half decade. In 2006 China overtook the United States as the lead producer of GHG. Fair enough, perhaps, since they're a century behind the curve on industrializing. Their renewable energy investments are laudable, but ultimately a drop in the bucket. More than 90% of their ever-expanding energy production is still fossil fuels, mostly coal. And that 10% renewable includes a massive amount of hydroelectric, which isn't exactly environmentally friendly, it's just atmospherically friendly.

Meanwhile, United States emissions are at their lowest levels since 1995. Coal-fired plants are closing and being replaced by less-polluting gas-fired plants, even as coal-fired plants begin construction in the European Union. In 2012, China was responsible for 27% of all worldwide emissions. The United States 14%, the EU 10% and India 7%.

United States emissions have fallen year over year for the last half decade at unheard of rates. 3.7% last year, and that wasn't a recession year.

So no, the United States did not ratify Kyoto, and yes, China did.

So what?

Edit to add: A qualifier, I recognize that China is in an incredibly difficult position. Trying to raise hundreds of millions of people into a 21st Century first world standard of living and stuffing a century's worth of progress into a couple decades is a dirty, difficult task. And it's not fair that we got the jump on industrializing then turned around and said "hey, you're ruining the atmosphere!" to a bunch of guys who just got here after we played such a large role in keeping them down for so long.

There's a reality though, that while it's not really fair, we also need to seriously reduce emissions levels, and that burden is going to fall most heavily on China and to a lesser extent India. It's not fair, but we can't let the world burn in the longterm for the sake of fairness to them now. The difference, I think, in our perspectives is that China needs to solve this problem alone. That's crap. We've largely outsourced our emissions to them by moving manufacturing abroad, and as consumers we have a guilty hand involved.

I think we can do a little more to reduce our own emissions to help offset the rise in theirs. But we should be looking at the other side of the equation too. Global emissions aren't just about reducing the output, it's also about increasing the number the planet can safely process. In other words, we should be focusing more on deforestation and creating carbon sinks. Every square mile of rainforest that gets slash and burned is that much less CO2 the planet can tolerate. We should focus our efforts there.

[ November 20, 2013, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Lyrhawn ]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Quick note: A lot of that is just obfuscating the fact that the US didn't in fact meet its Kyoto emissions targets. But moving onto the meat:

quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
In 2012, China was responsible for 27% of all worldwide emissions. The United States 14%, the EU 10% and India 7%.

This comparison implies that these groups are, well, comparable. Why not throw in Canada? We're responsible for, what, 2% of worldwide emissions? We're doing great! (no, we're not) Both China and India are more than and almost four times larger than the US respectively.

To put that into terms easier to grasp, if China, India, and Europe were separated into US-sized countries, the Chinese countries would only be responsible for 6% of the world's emissions each, only a little-ahead of the US-sized portion of the EU, and India ... well, India would be hardly worth mentioning with the same emissions as Canada.

So when it comes to stuff like this:
quote:
... we also need to seriously reduce emissions levels, and that burden is going to fall most heavily on China and to a lesser extent India.
No, there should be no reductions for India. If anything, we should be encouraging them to develop more and emit more so they can do some basic things like get flush toilets and food to all of their citizens.

As for China, Chinese people have to more than double their emissions to reach American levels. In fact, their current level of emissions is only roughly at the level of Europe, which is more than three times as rich per person.

Now let's look at the best case scenario. Let's say China develops into something like Hong Kong, pretty much no one middle class has a car, people live in densely populated areas so they can have a walk-able city, awesome public transit, and so forth. Well, according to World Bank data ( http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC ), they're going to be able to pull roughly 5 tonnes of emissions per person, down from 7 tonnes. It's worth doing, but it underscores how little manoeuvring room that mainland China really has.

The real burden should be put on countries that really have a lot of room to manoeuvre. For example, the US has an income five times that of China and emissions at roughly 17 tonnes per person.

To further put that into perspective, those fast food strikes you're having in the States, with fast food workers earning less than a "living" wage? The median salary for them in 2010 was almost twice that of the average person in China. Imagine the spectacle of middle class Americans asking for the burden of cutting back to be placed on fast food workers in America. That would be reprehensible. This is twice as bad.

[ November 21, 2013, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Mucus ]
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
For those interested in IP theft, according to The Australian Australia is losing 1% of GDP annually to IP theft. The article estimates the US at 2% GDP loss, in the US' case, that's $333 billion.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Newsweek also have a must-read article about Edward Snowden stopping American efforts to curtail Chinese espionage.

Link.

I think the argument that the US never leaks the information it gets to American firms while the Chinese do falls kinda flat. Who cares? It's the stealing of information that is problematic, what's done with it is secondary to that.
 
Posted by Orincoro (Member # 8854) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
For those interested in IP theft, according to The Australian Australia is losing 1% of GDP annually to IP theft. The article estimates the US at 2% GDP loss, in the US' case, that's $333 billion.

Most estimations (especially industry estimates) are highly dubious. They often just use some very broad shorthand to get the number that barely scratches the deeper economic impacts. Since content providers set the expected value of their own content on the market, their projections of profitability typically fit with the assumption that a degree of piracy will occur, and the property will remain financially viable.

People wouldn't produce content if this were not the case. So a post hoc analysis of "losses," doesn't properly reflect the fact that content is marketed and sold with the understanding that its illicit use is inevitable. This is like Pfizzer saying that because 50% of its production of Vicodin is abused or trafficked in the black market, they are losing 50% of their profits. Not exactly: they know that their products are being abused for the profit of others, and their sales model still makes sense.

And with non-finite properties like content, it's even more ridiculous. For example, if the "loss," in IP theft is calculated as the gross or even net value of the content being consumed if it had been purchased on the market, this ignores the large number of illegal uses which don't replace a legal use, such as by people who can't afford the content in question, or to whom that content is not available on the market.

Second, it ignores the potential for properties to gain market potential through proliferation by pirating. Pirated properties such as music can *easily* return some portion of the potential loss in other revenues, such as concert tickets, other branded products, and similar revenue streams.

Just as a thought experiment, suppose I placed my music library on Itunes for $1000 a song (if this were to be allowed by Itunes of course). I will know that I will not have a lot of takers at that price, but even if I just get one, and that one person shares the file with 100 people, are my losses $100,000? I set the market for my product, and the market doesn't support it. But wait, I still make $1000 where most people on Itunes only make $1. That's not so bad for me.

Content businesses understand that the value of their content is inherently limited by the number of people who are willing to pay for it. And contrary to popular consumer opinion, they do not set prices as high as they are to be greedy, but because they know, and have spent considerable time and energy finding out, the price that the customers who *really* want or need to purchase the product will pay for it.

Pricing for non-finite content is not "supply and demand," it's just a product of these two dimensions: need and means. If the customer needs the product, and has the means to buy it, she probably will buy it. If she needs the product, and doesn't have the means, she will steal it if she can. But that customer never had the means to buy, and understanding where your company is on the sales funnel is important: it is not the business of a content provider to assure the world that it will make content available at whatever price people can afford. It will carefully analyze its market and determine that at a certain price, most of the people who need it, will have the means to buy it. You can't sell things to people if they don't need them- that's rule number one. A person who steals content either can't afford it, or doesn't need it.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Interesting thoughts Orincoro.
 
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Hobbes:
Kate, are you asking if I think there's a difference between a person who wants to catch and deport immigrants and a person who wants to catch and deport illegal immigrants? If so: yes, yes I do think there's a difference. I have to admit that I would loose a great deal of respect for you if you think there isn't a difference.

Hobbes [Smile]

I think that a person who thinks that deporting anyone is fun is so deeply lacking in empathy that I see very little difference.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
For those interested in IP theft, according to The Australian Australia is losing 1% of GDP annually to IP theft. The article estimates the US at 2% GDP loss, in the US' case, that's $333 billion.

Security consultant whose paycheque depends on cyber-security spending urges increased spending on cyber-security? News at 11.

Also, poke around a bit the article, you might notice a conspicuous lack of sources. The closest thing to clue is the caption "Source: Supplied"

Ok, so no evidence. Who is this person?

Google her name and it turns out she worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, the same company that Snowden worked for and has her own Revolving Door entry https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving../rev_summary.php?id=71598

Hmmm.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Mucus -

quote:
Quick note: A lot of that is just obfuscating the fact that the US didn't in fact meet its Kyoto emissions targets.
::shrug:: I'm not obfuscating anything. We didn't meet the targets set by Kyoto. Most estimates right now have us 5% above 1990 levels instead of 5% below, where we should be. But how many countries actually have hit their Kyoto levels? Canada is what, a quarter of the way to that goal? So do I feel especially bad? Meh, not really. We've bent the curve in the United States from runaway emissions growth to a staggering decline that will only continue for at least the next decade as renewables become cheaper, coal becomes more expensive, new CAFE standards kick in and the US LDV fleet turns over, and gas plants come online. I don't think we're doing awesome, but we're doing just fine.

Really though, it's not like it matters. At the end of the day, The United States is roughly 600 million tons of CO2 over what it should be producing (we actually HAVE reduced three atmospheric gasses 7% or more below their 1990 levels, in methane (an important one), PFCs and SF6). We're on track, as a planet, to be over our 2020 global targets by 6 BILLION tons. You can keep blaming the United States if you want, but the fact of the matter is we're simply never going to hit our targets as a planet. You could eliminate ALL United States emissions and we would STILL go over the limit in 2020. It seems a foregone conclusion at this point. Could we do more? Sure.

quote:
This comparison implies that these groups are, well, comparable. Why not throw in Canada? We're responsible for, what, 2% of worldwide emissions? We're doing great! (no, we're not) Both China and India are more than and almost four times larger than the US respectively.

To put that into terms easier to grasp, if China, India, and Europe were separated into US-sized countries, the Chinese countries would only be responsible for 6% of the world's emissions each, only a little-ahead of the US-sized portion of the EU, and India ... well, India would be hardly worth mentioning with the same emissions as Canada.

I mean of course they're comparable. I didn't pick random countries, I picked the four largest emitters. But sure, let's try to solve the problem by only addressing 25% of it. Sounds like a surefire recipe for success.

quote:
No, there should be no reductions for India. If anything, we should be encouraging them to develop more and emit more so they can do some basic things like get flush toilets and food to all of their citizens.

As for China, Chinese people have to more than double their emissions to reach American levels. In fact, their current level of emissions is only roughly at the level of Europe, which is more than three times as rich per person.

Now let's look at the best case scenario. Let's say China develops into something like Hong Kong, pretty much no one middle class has a car, people live in densely populated areas so they can have a walk-able city, awesome public transit, and so forth. Well, according to World Bank data ( http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC ), they're going to be able to pull roughly 5 tonnes of emissions per person, down from 7 tonnes. It's worth doing, but it underscores how little manoeuvring room that mainland China really has.

The real burden should be put on countries that really have a lot of room to manoeuvre. For example, the US has an income five times that of China and emissions at roughly 17 tonnes per person.

I get that. It's just not realistic when you look at the scale of the problem. You'd have to solve it one of two ways, or a combination of the two. 1. Pour trillions of dollars in public money into renewable energy and electric cars. 2. Literally force tens of millions of people living in the suburbs to uproot and cluster closer to city centers, then build a mult-trillion dollar public mass transit center in every one of those cities.

And it would still take decades, the end result of which probably wouldn't be a significant amount of reduction over and above the reductions already taking place in America when you look at current trends and cost-competitiveness of energy sources.

The thing is, no matter how much you whip the United States for being problematic (and it is very, very problematic), at the end of the day there's only so much savings you can squeeze out of it before you have to get those savings from the third world. It's just not enough.

quote:
The real burden should be put on countries that really have a lot of room to manoeuvre. For example, the US has an income five times that of China and emissions at roughly 17 tonnes per person.
I agree. I'm wondering if you really read my whole post, because I said as much throughout much of it. My post wasn't a ra-ra America is awesome and China needs to do all the work post. I guess I can see why you'd read past a lot of what I said to assume that, give the discussions we've had in the past, but if you read what I actually wrote, that's not really it. My post was mainly to demonstrate that who did and did not sign Kyoto, for the purposes of discussing global emissions, isn't really the most important part of the discussion when you look at the actual numbers around the planet.

quote:
To further put that into perspective, those fast food strikes you're having in the States, with fast food workers earning less than a "living" wage? The median salary for them in 2010 was almost twice that of the average person in China. Imagine the spectacle of middle class Americans asking for the burden of cutting back to be placed on fast food workers in America. That would be reprehensible. This is twice as bad.
This is neither here nor there, but what's the cost of living in China compared to here?

Maybe you could make this easier on my by answering this question: Do you really think this is a problem that can be solved by the developed world alone? Because the numbers suggest no, it's not possible. Estimates are that if the current trends for the United States and China continue, China will emit more per capita within 10 years. Then what? Cutting American emissions by half so we're roughly on par with China take a nice bite out of global emissions...but not nearly enough to make up for China and India.

Maybe it's just time we realized the planet is simply doomed. If your rhetoric is the de facto policy of the third world, we're simply never going to solve the problem, because if the entire world was even at China's baseline per capita levels, we'd still be too high. How do you square that circle?

The third world attitude seems to be that the developed world mostly created this problem, so the developed world is responsible for solving it in a way that allows the third world to develop just like the developed world did, albeit at an accelerated pace. And you know what, that sounds perfectly fair. It's just not feasible if what scientists are saying is even remotely true.

[ November 22, 2013, 07:10 PM: Message edited by: Lyrhawn ]
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
But how many countries actually have hit their Kyoto levels?

To be clear, the world actually did meet the Kyoto targets as a group. In fact, since the ones that didn't (countries Australia for example) missed goals by a much larger margin than the ones that exceeded goals, many more countries actually met Kyoto targets than missed them.

ex:
quote:
Industrialised countries meet collective Kyoto
target of -4.2%

Collectively the group of industrialised countries
presently committed to a Kyoto target, i.e. all Annex B
countries excluding the United States and Canada, have a
target of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 4.2
% on average for the period 2008-2012 relative to the
base year, which in most cases is 1990 but 1995 for the
F-gases. The collective target is met even without
accounting for emission credits purchased from certified
emission reduction projects under the UN’s Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM). With an estimated
average emission reduction of 20.5% over the 2008–2012
period, excluding the United States and Canada (and by
9.5% if including them), industrialised countries are
certain to achieve their targets quite comfortably (Figure
2.8).
...
With emissions slowly increasing until they
peaked in 2005, and decreasing in 2008-2012 to a level
that was about 8.5% higher than in 1990, the United
States will not meet the intended reduction target of 6%
included in the protocol.

http://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2013-trends-in-global-co2-emissions-2013-report-1148.pdf

quote:
I get that. It's just not realistic when you look at the scale of the problem. You'd have to solve it one of two ways, or a combination of the two. 1. Pour trillions of dollars in public money into renewable energy and electric cars. 2. Literally force tens of millions of people living in the suburbs to uproot and cluster closer to city centers, then build a mult-trillion dollar public mass transit center in every one of those cities.
It is a big problem and on a big scale, which makes it only more puzzling when you talk about putting the burden on China and India.

As noted in the above handy report, the US, China, the EU, and India produce 16.4, 7.1, 7.4, and 1.6 tonnes/CO2 per person in order to produce 16%, 29%, 11%, and 6% of the world's emissions respectively.

On a small scale, if you imagine that one American could roughly halve their emissions and live like a European, that would save 9 tonnes/CO2. In order to match that, 2.5 Chinese citizens would need to halve their emissions. 11.25 Indians would need to halve their emissions.

On a large scale, let's use a simplified model of the world and assume that those numbers above are static going forward and let's say we want to reduce the world's emissions by 7% of the total.

How can we accomplish this? Well, the 314 million Americans can as a group reduce their emissions from 16% to 9%. That implies that each American would *still* be allowed to pollute 25% more than the average European. You have a perfect model in Europe for how to accomplish this, it's been done before, and you have significantly more money than Europe. It's within the realm of possibility.

How can China accomplish this? Well, 1.351 billion Chinese people would need to reduce their emissions from 29% to 22%. This implies that each Chinese person would need to reduce their emissions to 5.4 which is pretty much unheard of in the developed world, France as the best performing member of the EU is at 5.8. So somehow more than four times as many Chinese people than there are Americans would need to innovate and sacrifice their way to somehow emit less than the best performing member of the EU. Its literally never been done before and you have less than half the wage of a fast food worker in the States to do it with for each person. I don't really see that as being in the realm of possibility.

And Indians, they would need to die. And turn into magical carbon sinks that can suck an additional 1% of the world's emissions. Per year.

So when you imply that massive change is not preferred but that the burden of reductions should be placed on China and India, that's contradictory. Many times more Chinese people would need to change on a scale never seen before in order to match what a much smaller number of Americans could do relatively easily.

quote:
Maybe you could make this easier on my by answering this question: Do you really think this is a problem that can be solved by the developed world alone?
Personally, I don't think the problem can be solved. The third world simply doesn't have the ability to as noted above. The developed world, particularly the non-EU part of it (like the US, Russia, Canada, Australia) simply hasn't shown any willingness to do much of anything.

But as I laid out, if you want to solve 7% of the world's emissions, the above is what we need to do.

quote:
Estimates are that if the current trends for the United States and China continue, China will emit more per capita within 10 years.
Well, several assumptions here. First, it sounds like you're using per decade numbers rather than last years's numbers. Since China's current plan is to plateau in around 2025, emissions growth is slowing.
quote:
In 2012, China’s CO2
emissions increased by 3.3% (‘actual’)
to 9.9 billion tonnes, the slowest rate of increase in a
decade. This mainly was caused by a relatively small
increase of 2.5% in domestic coal consumption, as
reported by NBS (2013), whereas in the receding decade,
the annual growth rate was mostly around 10%

In ten years, that would place China's per capita emissions only at 9.5 tonnes/person or the upper end of Europe rather than anything approaching Americans. It would take something like 28 years of growth to match Americans.

Second, that assumes no recessions at all over that time, which is impossible.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
This should probably be addressed separately
quote:
This is neither here nor there, but what's the cost of living in China compared to here?

I'm using PPP adjusted numbers ( http://goo.gl/bNgT3Y ). So as far as I understand it (not an economist) when it says the average Chinese person has an income of 9,223 and the average American has 49,965 it really means that for a normalized set of standardized goods, the average American can buy more than five times more, of those baskets of goods.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
For those interested in IP theft, according to The Australian Australia is losing 1% of GDP annually to IP theft. The article estimates the US at 2% GDP loss, in the US' case, that's $333 billion.

Security consultant whose paycheque depends on cyber-security spending urges increased spending on cyber-security? News at 11.

Also, poke around a bit the article, you might notice a conspicuous lack of sources. The closest thing to clue is the caption "Source: Supplied"

Ok, so no evidence. Who is this person?

Google her name and it turns out she worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, the same company that Snowden worked for and has her own Revolving Door entry https://www.opensecrets.org/revolving../rev_summary.php?id=71598

Hmmm.

This doesn't help you, but I have it on good authority from people I trust who mentioned the article that while the figures aren't verifiable, the person isn't wrong in principle.

I think it's clear that the Chinese learned the lessons of the Gulf War clearly. A conventional army is a loser strategy. So save hundreds of billions in R&D by stealing. It's the US's fault for not identifying the problem, and coming up with a good fix. We still don't seem close to one.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
To tie in this forum's more popular debate, as an atheist, I'm obviously not willing to take that on faith [Wink]
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
In ten years, that would place China's per capita emissions only at 9.5 tonnes/person or the upper end of Europe rather than anything approaching Americans. It would take something like 28 years of growth to match Americans.

Second, that assumes no recessions at all over that time, which is impossible.

In 2013, their emissions have increased by 5.9% while the United States' have decreased by 3.7%. You're only accounting for Chinese growth and not for the reduction in United States emissions. If 2013 numbers were to continue for a decade, US emissions would be closer to 11 tonnes per person. China's would be roughly 11.5. Yes, that assumes a lot, but it shows that it's not out of the realm of possibility. Maybe China slows down, maybe they don't. Maybe the US stops reducing emissions, and maybe the trend accelerates. Maybe there's a huge global recession and emissions drop everywhere. It's impossible to predict all that.

quote:
On a small scale, if you imagine that one American could roughly halve their emissions and live like a European, that would save 9 tonnes/CO2.
And in the grand scheme of things, when you look at the targets for what climate change scientists say we need to hit as a planet in order to stop climate change from reaching a tipping point, how big an effect is that when weighed against what's happening on the rest of the planet?

2020 Global emissions targets

To keep on pace to reduce global emissions to the level required to satisfy scientists and to meet the goals set by the UN at the 2010 conference, the world needs to be at 44 billion tonnes of CO2 by 2020. If they miss that, it becomes increasingly impossible to meet the next two sets of deadlines to keep this century's temperature increase down.

How are we doing?

quote:
In order to avoid this scenario, the report recommends that emissions should reach a maximum of 44 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2020, falling to 40 gigatonnes by 2025 and further to 22 gigatonnes by 2050.

However, given that the 2C target was set based on the assumption that action would start in 2010, the report warns it will become “increasingly difficult” to meet this goal. Global greenhouse gas emissions for 2010, the latest year for which data is available, stood at 50.1 gigatonnes.
*
The UN Environment Program said that even if nations meet their current emissions reduction pledges, carbon emissions in 2020 will be eight to 12 gigatonnes above the level required to avoid a costly nosedive in greenhouse gas output.

8 to 12 billion tonnes of CO2 over the targets, and according do you, China still thinks it will grow its emissions for 5 years beyond that? And what about India?

We're talking about an emissions gap (just for 2020!) that, if we're ignoring the third world, would require the the EU and the United States to almost literally go zero emissions within 7 years. And then what? The target in 2020 is 44 billion tonnes.

quote:
In order to avoid this scenario, the report recommends that emissions should reach a maximum of 44 gigatonnes of CO2 by 2020, falling to 40 gigatonnes by 2025 and further to 22 gigatonnes by 2050.
In other words, in our scenario, after the EU and United States have gone zero emissions, the world needs to cut a further 4 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions within 5 years when China and India are still slated to be growing their emissions.

What's your solution to all that?

I get it, the United States isn't doing enough, they could and should be doing more, they should put a tax on carbon, an aggressive tax, that would help bend that curve dramatically downward...but you seem to be losing the bigger picture in your criticisms of the United States.

quote:
So when you imply that massive change is not preferred but that the burden of reductions should be placed on China and India, that's contradictory. Many times more Chinese people would need to change on a scale never seen before in order to match what a much smaller number of Americans could do relatively easily.
It's not about change and burdens. If the United States could reduce its own emissions by 30 billion tonnes of CO2 and get global emissions down to a sustainable level, I would argue pretty strongly in favor of a massive change in our national priorities to do so.

But we can't. We just don't emit enough.

If you were to look at the global population and the global emissions output, each person on earth would get about 6.9 tonnes of carbon per capita. That's the 2010 status quo. If you use the projected numbers for how much is expected we'll be emitting in 2020 based on current rates, it would be between 7.49 and 8.01 (using 7.75 billion as the estimated global population in 2020). But if you look at the TARGET emissions per capita, globally, it's 5.6 tonnes. Assuming every one in the world got an equal share of carbon and keeping in mind targets for where we should be in 2020 to keep us on pace to avert catastrophe, China is already over where it needs to be in 6 years assuming everyone was equal.

My point in all this is not to excuse the United States from its responsibility in dramatically reducing its own emissions. It's that you can't solve the problem by only addressing such a relatively small part of it.

The developed world can't solve this problem alone.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
FYI, not ignoring you, just got hit by some fever or something over night.

I'm going to have to wait until I feel better to crunch the numbers, but my initial thought is that we're boned. I've laid out the relative difficulty in making significant cuts and the difficulty doesn't change simply because it's not enough. As I said above, I don't think there is a (realistic) solution.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Remember the Senkaku islands mentioned earlier in the thread? The ones China blocked rare-earth metals to Japan over.

Well China just claimed the airspace over the islands. And are already flying patrols over it. Japan is responding in kind.

We'll see if China punishes Japan again over it.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Mucus:
FYI, not ignoring you, just got hit by some fever or something over night.

I'm going to have to wait until I feel better to crunch the numbers, but my initial thought is that we're boned. I've laid out the relative difficulty in making significant cuts and the difficulty doesn't change simply because it's not enough. As I said above, I don't think there is a (realistic) solution.

Take your time. I got hit with a bad cold last week and almost fainted when my blood pressure dropped giving blood last Friday. Unpleasant.

But yes, I agree. Unless the third world can plateau their emissions growth by the end of the decade, or there's a major tech breakthrough, we have to accept higher sea levels by the end of the century.

The first world could invest in carbon sinks or carbon capture technology. But I don't think the former can make a big enough dent, and I don't think the latter is realistic.

The part that sucks is that raised sea levels will hurt the third world disproportionately. China will suffer a heavy toll.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Remember the Senkaku islands mentioned earlier in the thread? The ones China blocked rare-earth metals to Japan over.

Well China just claimed the airspace over the islands. And are already flying patrols over it. Japan is responding in kind.

We'll see if China punishes Japan again over it.

I'm less worried about economic retribution than I am one of those pilots getting confused and accidentally firing on each other. It's one thing when boats and ships are sailing around each other. Two different nations flying CAP over the same airspace is a recipe for disaster.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Gao Yaojie, one of the saddest stories I've read in a very long time.

quote:
China has never provided a full accounting of the infection rate and death toll from the plasma disaster in Henan and surrounding provinces. Low estimates say 50,000 people contracted the virus through selling blood; many more sources put the number at at least 1 million. Another million may have contracted HIV through transfusions of the contaminated blood. Gao believes as many as 10 million people might have been infected, but she is alone in that high estimate.

 
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
Remember the Senkaku islands mentioned earlier in the thread? The ones China blocked rare-earth metals to Japan over.

Well China just claimed the airspace over the islands. And are already flying patrols over it. Japan is responding in kind.

We'll see if China punishes Japan again over it.

Is there a problem with China patrolling its territorial airspace?
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
yes, they should mind those islands there they don't control
 
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
 
Your bias on the topic of China is thoroughly familiar in these parts, Elison, but surely you can bend far enough to acknowledge that the PRC's decision to simply ignore Japanese territory for over...hmmm, over a hundred and ten years, isn't it?...is surely provocative to say the very least.

In two hundred years, history will tell whether it was a big deal but c'mon. Right now, it's blunt aggression. You wouldn't expect any nation on Earth to casually tolerate such a thing unless it came from China, or possibly Russia.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
Blayne: Not at all, too bad they don't own those islands, the Japanese do. They have no more right to fly over those islands than they do Taiwan.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
Blackblade -

What a tragic story. It's impossible to believe something like that could be kept secret in America if such a huge number of people were infected. It seems like a good case is made here for the necessity of government to provide protection via regulation and oversight.

Elison -

That's like the US starting a CAP over Cuba.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Blackblade -

What a tragic story. It's impossible to believe something like that could be kept secret in America if such a huge number of people were infected. It seems like a good case is made here for the necessity of government to provide protection via regulation and oversight.

Somebody read the link at the bottom of the previous page! [Smile]

It's an all too familiar story. Somebody stands up to corruption that is getting people killed, and local officials use the party apparatus to crush them until they escape or disappear.

Like Chen Guangcheng she is adamantly apolitical. I'd call her a hero, but I don't think she cares for that label, she just wants people told the truth.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
quote:
Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:
Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
Blackblade -

What a tragic story. It's impossible to believe something like that could be kept secret in America if such a huge number of people were infected. It seems like a good case is made here for the necessity of government to provide protection via regulation and oversight.

Somebody read the link at the bottom of the previous page! [Smile]

It's an all too familiar story. Somebody stands up to corruption that is getting people killed, and local officials use the party apparatus to crush them until they escape or disappear.

Like Chen Guangcheng she is adamantly apolitical. I'd call her a hero, but I don't think she cares for that label, she just wants people told the truth.

It occurs to me that this is also a story about just how disconnected parts of China are. I think in America we have a hard time conceptualizing just how cut off rural China is from the main centers of industry and power. America isn't perfect by any means in that real, with the inner city and some of the "heartland" somewhat disconnected, but not to the point where it seems whole territories are under an information blackout when something like this happens.

China still has a long way to go.
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
"There is nothing wrong with an ADIZ per se, but China is using this to advance territorial claims against its neighbors and to attempt to extend its controlled airspace beyond its territorial waters. An editorial in the Wall Street Journal put it this way: "The U.S., Japan and other nations also have air defense identification zones in which planes entering their airspace must declare themselves, but there is a key difference here. China declared its intention to challenge planes and demand that they follow instructions in the new zone regardless of whether they intend to enter Chinese airspace or are merely transiting through the area. This is an attempt to interfere with the normal rules of global navigation and assert de facto Chinese control over a huge chunk of the Western Pacific. "
-Chuck Hagel (US Secretary of Defense.)
 
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
 
i guess the air in beijing is so bad right now that it is the health risk equivalent of a 21 cigarette a day habit
 
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
 
My friends have been posting the air pollution indexes. It's all sorts of horrible.
 
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
 
I read that yesterday the air quality index doesn't even have a number for how bad it was. It was actually off the charts.

Someone also told me that the air quality was equally bad in Pittsburgh in the early 50s, but I have a hard time believing that. Though given what they did in Pittsburgh, I also find it a reasonable suspicion.
 
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
 
Catching up on podcasts, listened to an interesting podcast on recycling (and reducing, and reusing) on CBC with a guest Adam Minter.
http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/episode/2013/12/17/junkyard-planet---a-look-into-the-multibillion-international-trade-in-trash/

His blog was also pretty interesting in the past although its more focused on his book now.
 


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