Hacker News Reader

Comment by lenerdenator | Hacker News Reader

Is anyone surprised?

The investor class argued that shutting down factories in the American Midwest (where almost none of the investors live, of course) and moving production to China would bring political liberalization to the nation. That's why the US didn't slam the door shut on China after Tienanmen Square with Bush 41, and why Bush 43 was supportive of China joining the WTO. Of course, they didn't liberalize, and now China's using its massive industrial base that Americans funded to increase its capabilities for a showdown with the US (and other Western nations) for global economic and political supremacy.

Really, it was all BS from the start; investors just didn't want to pay working-class Americans anymore and couldn't have cared less about the political implications of the market forces they were unleashing.

It's arguably treason.

View on HN

> why Bush 43 was supportive of China joining the WTO.

First, It was Clinton, Bush 1, and Bush 2.

Secondly, this was because of how (then much richer) Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Turkiye, and Eastern Europe democratized in the 1980s-90s.

With those priors, it made sense to assume that economic integration and growth leads to calls for democracy.

The jury's still out on this btw - China's median income in the 2020s is still 33-50% that of Thailand's, Mexico's, Poland's, Serbia's, and Turkiye's in the 2020s and these countries are still in the process of democratizing.

> didn't slam the door shut on China after Tienanmen Square

PRC was sanctioned by the US and the west in the 1990s in the aftermath of the massacre. This was why ascension happened so late.

People forget that before the 2000s, most foreign investors to China were mostly from South East Asia and Taiwan.

Western countries didn't enter until the mid-2000s.

> China's median income in the 2020s is still 33-50% that of Thailand's, Mexico's, Poland's, and Turkiye's in the 2020s and these countries are still in the process of democratizing

Uhh no https://www.ceicdata.com/en/indicator/thailand/annual-househ...

Regarding "democratization" I'd say again that the most effective killers of Chinese democracy movement are Pompeo and Trump.

CEIC's data is incorrect. LET ME REPEAT. CIEC has data transformation issues.

The median household income in Thailand is around $7,000 [0] versus around $4,000 [1] in China - both are government provided statistics.

> Regarding "democratization" I'd say again that the most effective killers of Chinese democracy movement are Pompeo and Trump

In a way, but more so the economic stagnation and massive inequality towards the end of the Hu Jintao era as the Bo Xilai scandal proved.

[0] - http://statbbi.nso.go.th/staticreport/page/sector/th/08.aspx

[1] - https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202201/t202201...

If you read the link from Chinese govt statistic it says that it is DISPOSABLE.

"In 2021, the per capita disposable income of residents in China reached 35,128 yuan, a nominal increase of 9.1 percent over the previous year".

If you read Thai it's disposable as well [0]. There are so many data transformation problems on CEIC that I don't trust it. For example with Malaysia and Latvia

This is why I equally distrust Statisa for similar reasons.

Use primary sources instead of secondary sources as they say.

[0] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023...

I don't read Thai, but both Google and ChatGPT translate รายได้โดยเฉลี่ยต่อเดือนต่อครัวเรือน รายจังหวัด พ.ศ. as "average monthly household income" rather than median. I find it rather difficult to believe that median incomes are Thailand because prices seem lower in Bangkok than even a tier 3 city in China.

Thai to English translation via Google Translate is utter trash for some reason, but here's the Disposable Income stats the Thai Govt provided [0] and matches the data I provided above.

Also, Thai B1/2 refusal rates are significantly lower than Chinese B1/2 rates (B1/2 is largely judged based on economic capacity) and Thailand doesn't even have an exit pass requirement.

Also, Thai citizens can travel to SK and JP visa free but Chinese can't, which further proves the point.

> prices seem lower in Bangkok than even a tier 3 city in China

Because of housing. After the Housing Market crash happened in 1997 due to overbuilding, Thailand has a severe deflationary period similar to what China is facing today.

Most Western FMCGs in ASEAN are also manufactured in Thailand and don't have a luxury tax (0% in Thailand versus 30-40% in China), which has helped keep prices low.

This and the large Chinese Thai community is why Thailand became a popular tourist destination for middle class Chinese before COVID

[0] - https://www.nso.go.th/nsoweb/storage/survey_detail/2023/2023...

Going back 10 years of data fromt travel.state, PRC B visa refusal rate looks 2-5% lower than Thailand precovid. Now it's ~2-5% higher, but that's more likely due to geopolitics, not average Thai who can travel suddenly becoming richer than average PRC who can travel. Especially considering US/PRC flights still have restored to full capacity. SK/JP VISA free travel seems like a strange indicator to back up assertion, also more factor of geopolitics. I'm guessing average middle class PRC traveller is a larger spender than average thai traveller, especially to SK/JP. Unless the assertion that without VISA there'd be more low income travellers from PRC, but that's something airline supply/demand will filter out.

Eitherway, housing price makes some sense, but this data still feels off, considering PRC is at 65% urbanization vs Thai 50%, and neither urban nor rural thai measures up to urban or rural PRC from my travels.

> Going back 10 years of data fromt travel.state, PRC B visa refusal rate looks 2-5% lower than Thailand precovid

In 2022, 22% of Chinese B1/2 applicants overstayed in the US versus 8% of Thai applicants [0].

That is a massive discrepancy, and hard to attribute for any other reason except economic.

The primary factor to getting a B1/2 visa is proof that you will not overstay in the US or become a Ward of State

> SK/JP VISA free travel seems like a strange indicator to back up assertion

Because SK and JP grant tourist visas based on overstay risks and proof of income as well. That's why much poorer Vietnam doesn't have visa free travel to JP or SK despite having extremely permissive FTAs with both countries.

> without VISA there'd be more low income travellers from PRC, but that's something airline supply/demand will filter out

Or, you know, visa free status and overstay rates by country.

> Eitherway, housing price makes some sense, but this data still feels off, considering PRC is at 65% urbanization vs Thai 50%, and neither urban nor rural thai measures up to urban or rural PRC from my travels.

Well, firstly, Chinese urbanization rates seem to be miscounted upwards, as Tsinghua noted [1] for 2019 and earlier data. The Chinese numbers are closer to 50-55%.

Secondly, rural and urban incomes are starkly different in Thailand versus China, as both countries government released statistics have shown, and even Thailand's National and Local HDI statistics have proven.

There's no way around it, the average Thai (who lives a rural or semi-rural life) has a better quality of life than the average Chinese person (who also lives a rural or semi-rural life)

[0] - https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2023-07/23_0707_FY22...

[1] - https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CPE-10-2...

2018 overstay B1/2

PRC ~0.8%

Thailand ~2%

PRC overstays in other tables also lower, frequently substantially.

Maybe geopolitics changed between US/PRC since 2018?

https://cis.org/sites/default/files/2020-01/19_0417_fy18-ent...

You're a well read guy, but I find some of your use of data in this thread to be a little confusing.

E: Tsinghua study is about reclassifying based on household registeration, rural registered working in urban does not have access to urban level of social support, so less people should be considered urban even though they contribute to urban agglomeration effects. Which is what we think about when we measure urbanization. But it's not about whether rural PRC has less QoL than rural thai. Which sure, household income and HDI measures as proxy. But then tack on all the redistribution mechanisms, i.e. social transfers in kind where state subsidizes take home income and see it in practice and I find it difficult to believe (from what I see travelling both places, granted anedotal) average Thai has better QoL on when PRC per is 80% larger and per capita accounts for redistributed resources that supplements disposable income.

2018 data doesn't explain the spike in 2022 data.

> Maybe geopolitics changed between US/PRC since 2018?

With worse geopolitics, you'd have fewer Chinese illegally overstaying their Visitor Visa (which by definition is illegal immigration). This is why there was a drop in H1/F1 category applications from China.

There is no reason to overstay a visitor visa except undocumented work, especially since they are granted with 1-2 year blocks.

If you had legal work status, you'd be granted a H1B/H2B.

If you came for education, you'd be granted an F1.

If you have a degree and a great lawyer, you'd be granted an O1.

If you have millions of USD, you'd be granted an EB5

If you came for marriage, you would be granted a K1

You have more PRC illegally entering US from south due to US reducing issuing VISAs to PRC by large amount in last few years, IIRC CNN said over 80%, from 1m+ to low 100,000. Combined with reduced flights, the incentive for those who want to enter/overstay in US increase. Conversely 2022 data doesn't explain why data before US-PRC relations collapsed were overstaying less than Thais.

I see the gov stats youre posting, but this is where my personal experience find it divorced from ground reality. HDI sure, rural PRC education probably shittier, health care access questionable, but household stuff and general development in urban/rural as proxy for income, PRC seems much better than Thailand.

> PRC illegally entering US from south due to US reducing issuing VISAs to PRC by large amount in last few years

Which is a mark of desperation.

Why are similarly large numbers of Thai nationals not doing the same?

Nothing you say is disproving my larger point.

You aren't going to pay cartels to traffic you into the US if all you want to do is sight see in NYC.

> Conversely 2022 data doesn't explain why data before US-PRC relations collapsed were overstaying less than Thais.

I agree. Which is why the geopolitical argument you propose doesn't make sense.

> personal experience find it divorced from ground reality

I don't know your ground reality. But if you are on this forum, you probably live or lived in a T1 city working a high income white collar job in the booming Chinese tech industry.

Most Chinese aren't.

And this is where the difference comes in.

Beijing and Tianjin are great QoL wise when you earn a high income, yet neighboring Hebei has been fairly impoverished for a long time.

Not as bad as previously ofc. Yet much worse than Pathan Thani or Ayutthaya (the Thai equivalent of Hebei).

Hell, if you travel to Isaan, the Thai version of Guizhou or Gansu, the difference between the two is stark.

I have traveled thru Hebei, Beijing, etc in the late 2010s as I have traveled Isan, BKK, and Ayutthaya as well in Thailand.

> HDI sure, rural PRC education probably shittier, health care access questionable, but household stuff and general development in urban/rural as proxy for income, PRC seems much better than Thailand

So, ignoring the stats that calculate life for the average person, not the top 20-30%.

>Which is a mark of desperation.

There's a lot more PRC people so you would get more desperate people. Desperate people want to goto US. Desperate Thais without VISA drama just go and overstay, and they've historically overstayed more than PRC when US didn't crack down on PRC VISA. That's the control. Post VISA drama, the amount of PRC who are trying to sneak into US vs net drop in PRC who travel to US is drop in bucket, 30k wants to go, but 1M+ simply choose to forgo. Under previous control circumstances, PRC who wants to goto US and illegally overstay just... fly to US or Can and overstay, same method as Thais, but at less % than Thai. Hence it's geopolitics of VISA changes driving increased VISA changes. Because the people paying the snake heads also seem to be T2 / middle income tier, i.e. they have to be resourced to make the trip in the first place, and they have the opportunity to go because PRC influence in LATAM (triad) have setup good asylum schemes because US state sucker for PRC repression story. They're as much desperate as they are opportunists because geopolitcs has made asylum claims another avenue for getting into US.

> live or lived in a T1 city

I lived in T1, but I travelled T2/T3 where family are, including even worse bumfuck nowhere rust belt in the north. I see the differences. QoL in these places were still better than what I experienced in rural Thai (away from tourist areas), i.e. Isaan being better than Guizhou and Gansu I find not credible. Well I mean obviously Isann is much better than Gansu as a tourist. Rural Isaan was much more pleasant but people in rural Gansu has more stuff. Which leads to:

> stats

Stats for development, not stats for broad QoL, which HDI can be proxy indicator but doesn't capture full Qol reality, i.e. I replied with edit above, there's all sorts of additional social transfer / subsidies from central gov to PRC backwaters that supplement income and make QoL for your undereducated peasant/nongming better than disposable income would suggest. They have less HDI QoL but better actual QoL, which is what matters because padding their resumes with education that they're too old to make productive use of is dumb use or resources than just subsidize their income with modern infra, consumption and services. A lot of that doesn't get captured in disposable income and HDI. But it adds up substantially when gov has 5000 more per capita to play various fiscal transfers with, especially if they use to specifically to uplift bottom quantile.

So in 1989 there was this event called the Tiananmen Square massacre where an unknown number (probably in the thousands) of pro-democracy student protesters were killed by the PLA. This is what really kicked off the modern anti-democratic political repression in China. To the best of my knowledge neither Pompeo nor Trump were involved, but I guess you never know!

Correlation is not causation. There's been this idea that a shift towards market economics _caused_ the collapse of the authoritarian regimes in the countries you mentioned. It is simply _correlated_ with it. If there were causation, China would be an economic backwater to this day, and my iPhone would have been made in Romania.

The fact is, a large plurality of those holding capital today is not in favor of a market economy. Markets are hard. You have to compete. You have to keep customers happy. You have to constantly find the next big thing. You stand to lose a lot because everything I just mentioned includes a lot of risk by nature. These holders of capital are in fact far more in line with feudalism. Feudalism merged holders of monetary and political power into one entity: all of the economic value and capital were held by lords, who also had the ability to use the force of the state to marshal means of production to make more economic value for them at the exclusion of those who wanted to compete with the lords, or peasants/serfs who wanted more of the value they produced.

This is why many modern capital holders _love_ the People's Republic of China: they get to do what they want with the non-human means of production, and the CCP will use its authoritarian regime to make sure that the human means of production doesn't cause too much trouble. When Obama asked Steve Jobs why Apple didn't make the iPhone in the US, Jobs basically stated (and I'm paraphrasing here) that American producers wouldn't do whatever it took to make him happy. If he had a change he wanted on a piece of hardware, he could tell his suppliers to make it so immediately. There would be no dealing with labor unions, no dealing with environmental regulations, no dealing with health and safety. The CCP won't do that because these capital holders cut them in on the revenue at the expense of the society the CCP rules over.

> Correlation is not causation.

100% in agreement with you.

Though by every single measure, China in 2023 hasn't reached the economic inflection point that Taiwan, South Korea, etc hit in the late 1980s-90s.

The key commonality between those countries that became democracies and those that didn't was inequality and economic stagnation.

Those that worked on rapidly decreasing inequality saw broad support for maintaining a Liberal instead of Illiberal Democracy (Eg. Taiwan, South Korean, Poland recently, etc) whereas those who saw economic stagnation after proto-democratization fell to Illiberal Democracy or Authoritarianism (Eg. Hungary, Russia, Turkiye, Thailand, etc).

This is because of the "devil you know" fallacy that becomes justified if democracy or proto-democracy hasn't return any results.

China is in a weird position where it's able to compete with Advanced Economies in certain fields, but by most standards is still a developing country. You can have Beijing have first world level standards, but Tibet have living standards comparable to the poorer states of India.

> modern capital holders _love_ the People's Republic of China: they get to do what they want with the non-human means of production

Then why move manufacturing to less authoritarian Mexico, India, Thailand, etc or equally authoritarian Vietnam?!?

Why not continue manufacturing in North Korea like South Korean companies used to do?

This is a fallacy that ignores the reality of operational margins and capacity.

> It's arguably treason.

If I can give some feedback, this last line undermines the rest of your points. Not everything selfish is treason.

No, it's cogent to the argument. Undermining US economic and industrial capacity could be argued treasonous.

We literally have a clause in the Constitution defining what treason is, and that's not it.

Aid and comfort to the enemy, or making war against the US government.

I'd say the terms under which many investments in PRC were made fall under the first standard.

Companies in china are not defined as an enemy.

I say this agreeing that these investors really hallowed out America. My father was in one of those factories and I remember him specifically training his Chinese replacement (who they flew over for 6 months).

It devastated my family. That said, I don’t think treason is the correct term.

What if the company is nationalized?

There is no such thing as a "company" in China as we understand it in the United States.

There are CCP-controlled/tolerated commercial ventures that participate in the market economy. If you're investing in China, you can be sure there's a Party boss who's getting to wet his beak and dictate terms on which the deal will be accepted. Investments in China are not handled for the benefit of private interests; they are handled for the benefit of a strategic goal of the state.

That's not what the Constitution says, it says treason is "adhering to [the] enemies [of the United States], giving them aid and comfort." So there are actually two separate conditions that both need to be satisfied, aiding the enemies of the United States and adhering to them.

By saying you think aiding the enemies of the United States alone is sufficient you are disagreeing with the Supreme Court. If simply aiding the enemies of the United States is sufficient for a treason conviction then would everyone who goes on strike at a factory that makes something important to the US military (steel lets say) be committing treason? The Supreme Court and myself say its only treason if the strike was done out of adherence to a foreign power and not if done for other reasons (like better working conditions).

I think the Supreme Court's interpretation is much more practical and less prone to abuse then yours. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/art...

Treason is a Constitutional thing.

Its only treason if you undermine the US economic and industrial capacity with the intent of betraying the United States for the enemy. If you do it for other reasons such as profit then there is no treason. For example there are teachers striking in my town right now, they may be undermining a essential US government function and you could argue that this aids our enemies but because that isn't their intent it is not treason.

> "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort."

> the Court explained that a person could be convicted of treason only if he or she adhered to an enemy and gave that enemy “aid and comfort.” As the Court explained: “A citizen intellectually or emotionally may favor the enemy and harbor sympathies or convictions disloyal to this country’s policy or interest, but, so long as he commits no act of aid and comfort to the enemy, there is no treason. On the other hand, a citizen may take actions which do aid and comfort the enemy—making a speech critical of the government or opposing its measures, profiteering, striking in defense plants or essential work, and the hundred other things which impair our cohesion and diminish our strength—but if there is no adherence to the enemy in this, if there is no intent to betray, there is no treason.”

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/art...

Well here we are... Arguing. Ergo it's arguable.

How is supporting the military of your adversary not treason? Especially if a war does break out and those weapons are used against the US.

Remember China is not the ally of the US.

You don’t ship fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to a country you are friends with.

China actively works to disrupt the US. They only go as far as they currently think they can get away with.

It’s not treason because words have meanings. It ain’t good, but it sure ain’t treason.

Similarly, was it treason to supply Afghan militias with weapons during the 80s?

They were used later against US forces but wasn't something the US necessarily expected.

> It’s not treason because words have meanings

There's an argument for it, which is sufficient to leave alone unless you want to argue the merits (not quibble about a specific definition).

>> Remember China is not the ally of the US.

The raft of trade deals, tourism, cultural exchange, investment and massive trade relationship would say otherwise.

I largely agree with you, but fwiw treason has a specific and pretty limited definition encoded in the Constitution. My understanding is that since the US and China aren't at war it can't be treason under that definition.

> How is supporting the military of your adversary not treason?

For one, because treason refers to an enemy, not an adversary, and China is not legally an enemy of the US (at war). You can't just assert that China is an enemy in court without some legal basis.

Note that not even the Rosenbergs were charged with treason for sharing US nuclear secrets with the Soviet Union. That's how high the bar for treason is.

> How is supporting the military of your adversary not treason?

For a given meaning of adversary it is, for others it isn't, clearly the line in the sand at least for the US is when they are at war, arguably when a trade ban happens if we want to be a bit more relaxed with definitions. If you do disagree and believe the line in the sand encompasses china the real worry should not be a "measly" 3 billion from random VCs but the 1 trillion dollars of the US national debt china holds.

> You don’t ship fentanyl and other synthetic drugs to a country you are friends with.

You ship them to where people are buying them, unless you're saying it's a government operation and not a case of lax export regulations, which I'd be very surprised if it was the case, at least directly.

For fentanyl crisis you should look at your own country to stop the demand and prosecute the people who have enabled it with prescribed opioids instead sheltering them and pointing fingers to others. Today it's China tomorrow it will be India or a poor country from Africa who can make those drugs cheaply as long there is ever increasing demand.

Case in point if slackers were found guilty in China (or any country of Asia) destroying millions of lives using prescription drugs he would have been shamed, his company would have been desolved and executed immediately instead of wasting years of time in court debating on the technicality of the issue in the name of giving proper justice.

Tell that to the parts of the American populace who suffered most from the lack of lower-education jobs. Deaths of despair have risen in that population sector over the last four decades. Wages have become stagnant. The generation that was born after this shift to China will be the first American generation in centuries to have a lower standard of living than their parents.

These companies tossed the heavy manufacturing capabilities of the United States to a geopolitical rival. To be clear: there is no China with superpower ambitions if the American shareholder class hadn't made it happen.

Jobs moving to where they can be performed cheapest is simple economic force. Through black market or white market, communism or capitalism, that populaces goose was cooked as soon as other parts of the world could perform and deliver their jobs cheaper.

The strategy at that point is better comparative advantage. Education, capital improvements, infrastructure. Protectionism doesn't generate value .

Another point to add, if there are less local manufacturing/physical labor jobs, market forces will incentivize innovation in other areas like infotech jobs, etc.

Not saying it's overall beneficial but it likely pushes the working class towards other areas like infotech and more specialized trades which could lead to innovation in those spaces.

Creates a trade dependency however.

It does not likely do those things consistently on a national level.

Information technology was great for a handful of states - well, cities, really; I can't help but notice the lack of a MacOS Bakersfield - but not across the geography of the United States. The capital concentrated in those areas to an absurd extent. During the low interest rate days, VCs in these areas were far more likely to invest in an absolutely terrible idea within a fifty-mile radius of their offices than they were to invest in a good idea 800 miles away. They also drastically overvalue businesses that can throw on a thin whitewash of "tech company" on an otherwise-conventional business model, even if the execution of that business model does poorly in actually producing value for the non-shareholder parts of the market economy.

  was great for a handful of states - well, cities, really

I assume many government decisions around the world have similar effects. Can't imagine it's isolated to infotech or a specific sector.

> Education, capital improvements, infrastructure

All of which these areas lack because of revenue structuring that makes it impossible for them to pay for it.

Should be some extra money once you strip away most of what goes to the military and middlemen in healthcare.

Many of the things mentioned are handled at the local/state level in the US, while the military and healthcare regulation are a more national concern.

Congress doesn't carve out that much money to make sure that some kid in rural Missouri actually has what he needs from schooling to compete in the global economy. Even if they did, you'd have some conservative super PAC-funded state level politician arguing against it because it's "a way for out of touch Washington bureaucrats to attack local traditional values".

I mean it works all the way down. Eliminate the taxes I have to pay for military and extraneous healthcare costs, and I could and would afford to buy a little backhoe. With that I can improve the public road easement on my property, help my neighbors run utilities, make my property more hospitable to producing goods.

Just opening up that cash, even if super PAC blocks it's reuse as tax, works wonders at an individual level at improving infrastructure.

Not to say that we couldn't budget better as a country, but that's far more ambitious than most of the people I encountered while in a 6-year-long relationship with someone in the rural lower Midwest. Hell, most people in those areas don't pay a meaningful amount of federal income tax, so cutting military expenditures wouldn't help there.

By the time China became the world's manufacturer, Japan and automation had already functionally killed lower-education jobs. On the other hand, the efficiency of Chinese manufacturing has enabled more desirable and lucrative jobs in services and entrepreneurship. Americans already the second highest incomes in the world [1], which have continued to trend upward despite the rise of China [2]. The pain that Americans face rose internally (healthcare, housing, and college).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_income

[2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N

> Americans already the second highest incomes in the world [1],

I would like to see this broken down by decile over time; I suspect that doing so would show a shift favoring higher income deciles and disfavoring lower income deciles. If Bill Gates eats at a restaurant, the median net worth of the restaurant's customers makes them billionaires. But that doesn't mean they are all that well off. The same is true for income and for the US population.

You're thinking of the mean. The median is the 50th percentile.

> These companies tossed the heavy manufacturing capabilities of the United States to a geopolitical rival.

But for it to be considered treason they would have to committed that act with the intent of betraying the United States for their enemies. I think you will have a hard time showing that was their intent when a much more obvious and likely intent was making a profit.

If you take out the intent part of treason then it would apply to all sorts of scenarios and would severely restrict the freedom of US citizens. For instance would you consider a US citizen who is loyal to the United States but takes a year to volunteer at an Iranian hospital to be committing treason? What about a US factory worker who strikes for better working conditions and the strike gives an advantage to a Chinese competitor?

From a third party perspective though, that globalization move helped lift more than a billion people out of abject poverty and helped industrialize about 1/7th of humanity and all it took was a marginal decrease in prosperity for the richest nation in the world. If there was a world wide arbiter, that move would be a no brainer.

> marginal decrease

The decrease has been far from marginal. You don't get an increasing amount of political extremism from marginal changes in economic fortunes. You get them from a ton of alienation, desperation, and despair.

It’s marginal compared to the change a poverty stricken Chinese that was starving to death went through. Also people are very resistant to moving backwards in any sort of way, I can see intense opposition to even a small reduction in quality of life.

In our society money is power.

With great power comes great responsibility.

Put your own desires over those of the people in your own country to a large enough extent and it sure starts to feel like something treasonous.

> didn't want to pay working-class Americans

Consumers also like buying cheap products.

Exactly. Either government should kind of ban this, or the ones who do find less cost are going to be quite rich. Of course they don’t care too much about anything else. This is why we have governments.

>Consumers also like buying cheap products.

Consumers also like having jobs and money to buy products of any type ... presumably.

Consumers like being able to afford things, preferably through increased wages. Since we no longer allocate economic growth towards wages, but instead towards equities, we see the need for cheaper products.

If you look at the history of the DJIA, it wasn't really until the 1980s that it began to consistently take off (https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historic...). That money previously went to a wider variety of outlets into American society, like taxes paid to the government or wages paid to workers. When Milton Friedman argued that companies exist solely to return value to shareholders, shareholders fought successfully to see the value diverted away from those outlets and towards them. If your consumers are workers who no longer see rising wages, and you want them to buy your stuff, you have to find cheaper ways to sell things, so the argument was made that the PRC would politically liberalize if the world made its products there. The alternative was to not have all of the money go back to shareholders, and that was, of course, unacceptable.

Why are you only looking at the DJIA? Look at SNP500 or VTI and you'll see consistent positive growth.

Because they look much the same?

They also chart growth that exists purely in theory.

> They also chart growth that exists purely in theory.

Not really, unless you think the economy and resultant stock market is purely theoretical with no bearing on reality, in which case, there would be nothing left for me to tell you with such diametrically opposing belief systems.

Consumer is not a job.

It is for the professional managerial class.

> Of course, they didn't liberalize

History is always easy to predict in hindsight.

Even after Tiananmen Square in 1989, things could have turned around. Imagine what would have happened if someone would have stood up to the regime and turned it into a democracy. We would now have been talking about how clever George H.W. Bush had been in lifting them out of poverty etc etc. Also, the Soviet Union was the biggest threat still on that point. It fell only in the early 1990s. So what was so bad about giving China some space as a counterweight to the Soviet Union? Their relations where pretty bad since the Sino-Soviet split on the 1960. Only in 1989 was there a first summit again between China and the Soviet Union.

> China's using its massive industrial base that Americans funded to increase its capabilities for a showdown with the US

Probably better to talk about "The West" since many Western nations have imported goods and services from China and will potentially end up in a conflict.

China doesn’t want a showdown, it’s not Russia/Iran/NK/Pakistan/…, why must Americans think that if they are not #1 it’s the end of civilization? China only really care about itself (and Taiwan, but that’s a very special and not a black or white situation). US extreme hubris (and increasing plain racism) regarding China is really making me nervous. Americans should instead be following the words of Kennedy regarding Pax Americana. I obviously don’t support China politics, but I fail to see how they are a risk for western democracies and why peaceful coexistence and trade could not continue (in contrast to Russia for example where I’m grateful of US support). I’m open to be shown otherwise.

> The investor class argued that shutting down factories in the American Midwest (where almost none of the investors live, of course) and moving production to China would bring political liberalization to the nation.

of course isn’t this a contention of most mainstream economists too?

> Of course, they didn't liberalize, and now China's using its massive industrial base that Americans funded to increase its capabilities for a showdown with the US (and other Western nations) for global economic and political supremacy.

China's going to be way too busy with internal affairs to try and start a showdown.

China is not anywhere near a global economic supremacy.

Nominally, China is close to half the size of the US.

The idea that China is so big it runs the whole world is laughable. It's not even close to being the biggest player - and even the US is not that important like it was after WW2.

yet.

Yes, yet. With time and second worst demographics in the world they will be way less relevant relatively soon.

I hate to say it but that's a lot of cope. They are way more advanced now and in some ways have exceeded US capabilities technologically.

Also, in case you haven't noticed, the US is struggling with some very spicy internal affairs right now too.

The US's saving grace is that China's foreign policy is absolute shit and they've made themselves hated by every single one of their neighbors in a way the US could only dream of.

Xi has made it pretty clear that he wants China to take Taiwan and it seems likely that he wants to do it personally before he retires. Currently, that would trigger a showdown without a doubt.

All part of the managed decline of the US. These people are not stupid. They know exactly what they are doing.

I think they don’t. They see this something they can manage but will slip out of their hands.

Just imagine what is going to happen then to them and their families. Of course they don’t care that much to weight the risks

> Just imagine what is going to happen then to them and their families

They'd flee the country because they have the wealth to do so.

For the VC elite-types they don’t really live exclusively in the US. Most of them likely have NZ passports already. Look at how all the tech CEOs and rich guys left the US during Covid.

The (former) US wealthy elite don’t have the same strong ties with the US as they did in the past. They see themselves as international citizens free to go where it benefits them most.

What "managed decline"? The U.S. is arguably as strong as its ever been, and China's economy has been crashing recently.

The implications in this thread that US citizens are soon going to be running for their lives from foreign threats seem incredibly paranoid -- the sort of thing I'd expect to see in a ZeroHedge or InfoWars comment section, not on this forum.

The US stock market is as strong as its ever been. The allocation of capital past that is conducted in a way that doesn't bring much widespread or strategic benefit.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com