Comments on: Chinese corruption and looting on a vast scale: industry, government, and military

By: Amelia_G

Amelia_G — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 21:31:00 +0000

Very, very, very interesting. Thank you.
One sole weird thing: it doesn’t feel right to call the Chinese people indolent.

By: benher

benher — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:20:00 +0000

“the success of Americans who live in western level prosperity depends on the continued exploitation and good nature of the other 99%”
Fixed those typos!

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I guess I’d have to start using RSS, in order to no longer use it…

Firefox’s middle-click-a-folder is just too handy.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:52:00 +0000

Heh, he only did that walk out of a sense of duty as his original prediction was over a longer timeframe than the bet ended up being about. And recent trends seems to favor his original prediction.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:50:00 +0000

Meh, corporations have no nationality any longer. First they played US state vs state to make the charter laws as loose as possible via a race to the bottom. And now they have done the same globally over trade and workers rights.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:48:00 +0000

Think of it as a extreme version of the American Dream. They all see themselves as joining the 1% at some point and so want to make sure the law will favor them at that time.

By: digi_owl

digi_owl — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:46:00 +0000

People no longer use RSS?

By: Nicholas MacDonald

Nicholas MacDonald — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:17:00 +0000

Yeah, that’s the surprising thing about China… a lot of commentators who haven’t been over here and don’t know what’s going on make it sound like life hasn’t changed at all in the last 30 years for most Chinese, which is a load of bollocks. I’ve been to a lot of small towns and villages in many provinces of China, and the *average* (not middle/upper middle class) standard of living in rural China is a modern one. The typical “peasant”:

-is literate
-lives in a spacious home with electricity, running water, and at least partial heating & air conditioning. In most cases, the family owns their own home, with no mortgage, as well as a small plot of land (that they’re generally forbidden from selling, but can rent out for income if they don’t want to work it).
-has household appliances and a TV
-carries a cell phone
-Can go use a computer at a local wangba (“internet bar”) or print shop for about $.20/an hour
-has access to basic healthcare, though they have to pay out of pocket. Antibiotics, immunizations, and casts for broken limbs usually aren’t a problem, though serious traumatic care or cancer treatments can bankrupt them (like uninsured Americans).
-sends their kids to school, generally through high school, though college is usually out unless they do exceptionally well on the gaokao, or are able to save enough money for a private school
-can afford the occasional domestic vacation, though nothing very fancy- usually a bus tour groups and cheap hotels, or backpacking through hostels for the younger and more adventurous
-probably has a motorscooter, but no car- though, as the aftermarket grows, as well as the cheap domestic auto industry, this is changing too.

So the typical mode of living isn’t terribly different than that of poor rural people in the US, or anywhere on the high side of the developing world.

By: CognitiveDissident

CognitiveDissident — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 04:58:00 +0000

More deregulation and grow some Madoff clones?

By: CognitiveDissident

CognitiveDissident — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 04:51:00 +0000

Maybe we’re copying them now, just a little bit maybe, because corporations found out that corporations run more “smoothly” without democracy?

By: Charlie McHenry

Charlie McHenry — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 03:27:00 +0000

This is just one of several grand challenges faced by the old guard in the “Party” and the Military, while they struggle to manage growth; maintain harmony, and cling to power. The vast migration of country agricultural laborers to cities; the stirrings of tribal, ethnic and regional tensions; the collision of technology and totalitarianism – all will impact China’s evolution through the next few, critical years. Though it is clear China will remain a major, influential player on the international stage, anyone who invests expecting a long, straight, uneventful ride to the top is beyond naive.

By: Shashwath T.R.

Shashwath T.R. — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 02:00:00 +0000

The trouble is that they believe that they are the house…

By: billstewart

billstewart — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 01:50:00 +0000

I’m not surprised by the wealth of China’s top .00001%, or even the 300 million middle-class Chinese. What does surprise me, though, is how well off the poorest billion are, compared to the Mao Zedong days or the earlier empires. $5000 is still poor, but it’s approaching First-World poverty, as opposed to starvation poverty or Third-World poverty. There’s a long way still to go, and a lot that needs to be fixed, but there’s been a lot of progress.

By: misterhorsey

misterhorsey — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 01:35:00 +0000

Ahh, Steve Keen…..

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-02-16/economist-keen-to-walk-canberra-kosciuszko/333138

By: fuzzyfuzzyfungus

fuzzyfuzzyfungus — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:32:00 +0000

I, for one, am disturbed to hear that the communist chinamen are overtaking us in the critical area of financial services fraud. Without our comparative advantage there, how will we ensure broad-spectrum dominance in the 21st century?

By: Eark_the_Bunny

Eark_the_Bunny — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:58:00 +0000

Hey with some deregulation we could be just like that. Who cares about clean air or water when there is money to be made. Let the peasants eat twinkies!

By: nomad411

nomad411 — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:35:00 +0000

So the Chinese DID copy everything from the US.

By: allium

allium — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:34:00 +0000

If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up with some kind of Communist revolution taking place!

By: lava

lava — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 23:24:00 +0000

Shouldn’t we take a lesson from our hedge funds. Encourage them to do more, while simultaneously shorting them x100. When they crash, who cares – we’ll just cash in our shorts just like the Wall Street did.

By: robcat2075

robcat2075 — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 22:59:00 +0000

All those Republicans clamoring for the US to be more pro-business “like China”… they either know this or they don’t and either case should discredit them.

By: bcsizemo

bcsizemo — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:35:00 +0000

You’d think China would have realized from all those western movies that the “house” always wins.

By: Hakuin

Hakuin — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:28:00 +0000

so, what’s YOUR plans for the crash?

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 21:26:00 +0000

People should add Steve Keen’s DebtWatch to their ‘Sites I visit every coupla days’ folder.

Always interesting, often maddening (but in a good way).

/off to read…