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Europe is poor so should live within its means
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11-02-2012 6:42am#1
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Deleted User wrote: »I thought that we were turning Japanese, now we need to turn Malaysian!
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭
Join Date:Posts: 59145
So was Europe for much of it's history.That was because China was a feudal society.
Apparently not as far as the per capita of the average citizen of say Rome. The Qin didn't last very long for a start. The Zhou was amazing, sublime, breathtaking on so many levels, but those levels again tended to be centralised and monolithic. On technology, the Chinese have a history of innovation almost second to none in world history(not printing mind you, that was Korean), however the implementation and exploitation of that technology has often left a lot to be desired. Again long periods of stagnation are the order of the day. Plus they missed some innovations entirely. Innovations that left them behind in many ways. Glass being a biggie. They could make sublime ceramics so didn't bother with glass(except to decorate ceramicsWould China not have been more advanced technologically and during the Zhou and Qin dynasties? And economically during the Qin?
). Turned out to be a big mistake. While they didn't invent printing they had it very very early on however they were held back by an overly complex written language. They had printing for a few centuries before the west and printed little of worth outside some religious texts and court fancies(and continued on that path after that). Europe gets printing and within a generation starts the first real information revolution that permeated throughout society and put the lead foot on the throttle pedal of the modern world. They had gunpowder for centuries too. Made rockets and fireworks and crude cannon(surprising given their unparalleled history of metallurgy) and bombs. Europe gets it and with a couple of generations changes the world maps.
Oh agreed S, hence I wrote "it tended to do so in a remarkably Eurocentric/near eastern way". Plus even there it was hugely influenced by the classical Greek/Roman world in the sciences, who had been influenced by the Persians. Lots o back and forthI don't know about your Eurocentric opinion. Dar al-Islam?. If one was to plot world power, science etc over time by holding a plumb weight above a map of the world it would tend to swing in a lazy arc around the Mediterranean more than it didn't for much of history. Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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Possibly, but Africa does not as yet have the infrastructure. Possibly only the Maghreb, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa.
I mean look at a map of the continent at night time.
There's more lights on in Africa than Australia
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I was thinking a bit more about this today (dangerous
) and the reality is Europe is still extremely rich relative to many Third world countries. Ignoring the top 0.1% of citizens whose incomes skew all the so called average earnings, most people have much more purchasing power than they did 20 years or so ago.
In the 1960s, only those who had well paying jobs could afford to own and run a car, many just used bikes or buses to go to work. Any decline in spending power will have to be severe for a couple of decades before we get back to a 1960s living standards.
There will be a decline as resources become more scarce and their costs rise putting them out of reach of an ever increasing number of people, two car families dropping the second car for example.
Things may look bleak to some people, but we're far better off than 40 years ago and considerably better off than the average third world person.0 -
Everyone in Europe is very very rich. Some of the very very very rich just arent as rich as they thought they were.
See how rich you are compared to the rest of the world :
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
I am extremely dubious about that. Putting in the oppressed employees of FoxConn I get $17 * 6 * 50 ( i.e. their day rate, 6 days a week, assuming 2 weeks holidays) and at $5000 they are in the top 14%. South America is a middle income part of the world, India is trending upwards $2,000, which is lower middle income. China is about where the FoxConn guys are at $5000.
So where are the poor. Subsaharan Africa isn't that much of the worlds population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
Look at the map in wikipedia, and then type in $1000 into global rich list. Notice the disconnect. There are only 30 out of 180 countries in the world below $1000.
Edit: here is where they are coming from:
³ Milanovic, Branco. "True World Income Distribution, 1988 and 1993: First calculations based on household surveys alone", World Bank Development Research Group, November 2000, page 30.
two decades old data.Deleted User wrote: »I was thinking a bit more about this today (dangerous ) and the reality is Europe is still extremely rich relative to many Third world countries. Ignoring the top 0.1% of citizens whose incomes skew all the so called average earnings, most people have much more purchasing power than they did 20 years or so ago.
In the 1960s, only those who had well paying jobs could afford to own and run a car, many just used bikes or buses to go to work. Any decline in spending power will have to be severe for a couple of decades before we get back to a 1960s living standards.
There will be a decline as resources become more scarce and their costs rise putting them out of reach of an ever increasing number of people, two car families dropping the second car for example.
Things may look bleak to some people, but we're far better off than 40 years ago and considerably better off than the average third world person.
Americans, and most Europeans, aren't really that much better off. Here is why
1) Women coming into the workforce, increasing labour supply.
2) Immigration.
3) Outsourcing.
4) Loss of union bargaining power.
Eventually, as the rest of the world becomes consumers, manufacturing will move back to Europe. We could easily have a cachet - a made in Europe - which adds a premium to European made goods, they would have to be of German or Italian quality though.0 -
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Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 60,218 Mod ✭✭✭✭ Join Date:Posts: 59145
Compared to two generations ago? Yes, they kinda are.Americans, and most Europeans, aren't really that much better off.
I dunno who said that, but it sounds like a hippie."I have lived millennium and if I was to tell you how many times i have heard ours is the ultimate culture, a power the world has never seen, we could not possibly be usurped by any upstarts, we will be forever, but yet all those great empires are dust". It's incredibly simplistic a comment and doesn't ask the why's or the how's or the too and fro's, or what springs from such 'dust'.
I do and what he's describing is a centralised, ego driven monolithic empire/culture.Or i am sure you recognise this one
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Yep and that happened in the Tang dynasty, the only time when the average Chinese had a higher per capita worth than the average European or near Eastern right up to the present day. Plus let's not forget the exaggeration inherent in such "histories" from that distance in time. Hell the Greeks were at it and they tended to be anal to the point of requiring therapy. The victors write the histories, more like hagiographies. Or maybe we should believe the Irish annals from around the same time that describe Cuchulainn slaying a 100 men from the sparks from his hair? Or the Trojan Horse and the length and numbers involved in the siege of Troy?Someone composed a list of the most destructive human episodes of all time based on world population, WW2 is 9th on that list, China's claim to fame is they have 4 in the top 20, including number 1. The An Lushan revolt a war that took part in the middle of the 7th century which raged for 30 years of more, with battles involving a million soldiers, we never seen armies that size since xerses sent his armies to Greece and not again till the 19th century. An estimated 35 million people died in that conflict a figure which involves famine deaths caused by the war. If you calculate the proportion of population compared to time WW2 was fought half a billion people died. That was a very sophisticated culture who could field and supply such huge armies, what was Europe doing in the 7th century.
Links please, because the latest figures I have found are closer to 100 million and the definition of 'middle class' is itself up for debate. Nevertheless, this ignores the billion behind them who are dirt poor peasants barely above the poverty line(and oft below) left out of this economic 'miracle'. Mark me, they will decide the future of the region more than any emerging middle class.The biggest middle class in the world is now Chinese, a whopping great 300 million, Companies are climbing over themselves to get a slice of that market even high tech businesses such as Boeing and Airbus are building plants there.
Funny you mention Japan. I remember the same thing being said about Japan back in the day. Not such a distant day either. They were once the second largest economy in the world. They're still doing alright, but they're not up anywhere near second. And lest we forget history, Japan had an industrial revolution and large industrial base. A base that China could have only dreamed about a generation ago. Theirs was more a return to some form, rather than a new arising.Anyone with a tiny business brain knows were the emerging market are and that is the far east. China is now past Japan and it is the worlds second biggest economy.
Now you're having a laugh. It is nowhere near healthier than in the west.They have already a viable internal economy, a healthier one then the wests and still growing.
Oh I agree 100%. It's eff all to do with any notion of ethnicity. However I would argue that their culture is deeply engrained and that is a major stumbling block as they try to hold the centre of this growth. They have an incredible cultural heritage in soooo many ways, but set against that is disadvantages of said heritage. For a start it's not a nation, it's an empire. One made up of many different individual cultures beyond the Han of the coasts. That's a friction point. It's also and has been since it's very foundation a very centralised, socially structured, monolithic culture, which has shown itself in stagnation way more than in innovation and exploitation of same. That stuff takes more than a generation to begin to excise. We've already seen this in some internal industries and their inevitable race to the bottom, which then killed said industries. We see this in the Laissez faire attitude to anything approaching copyright, to the degree I wonder does Mandarin possess the pictogram for same. This will affect the west a lot less than it will affect China's internal growth if it is to continue.These arguments always seems to go beyond the facts and usually descends into a kind ethnic and cultural racism, they can be just as creative and culturally as creative as the west, they are people.
Go back in your time machine and visit Sothebys in London in the early naughties. Attend an auction of Irish furniture and silverware. Watch the prices skyrocket. Take the same items to Sothebys today and watch you lose your shirt in the interim. This stuff is a given in any emerging market and doubly so in a bubble.It is also interesting that the most expensive art at auctions these days is no longer western, but Chinese, they are buying back their culture, a ming vase recently went for 21 million in sotherbies the collection went for 76 million. Each auction breaks the last record and there are still more to come.
Where do the vast majority of the goods designs and initial capital you and the world owns originate? It's not China. And where does the lion's share of those resultant profits flow? One figure I saw mooted for an iphone was 20-30 dollars per unit to the Chinese who make it. And what does Apple sell an iphone for?The west while not out is certainly in decline, I am more interested, will the Euro last will the EU last, I hope so anyway. , but that is all I can do, hope, it will be on our own backs and not some "we are more creative then them" we are not.
Indeed but you're forgetting that growth by it's very nature slows. It is not an ever upward curve. That's the thinking that got the EU into the shíte. One cannot extrapolate such figures from the past, not without looking more deeply into what stresses may, nay will impinge on those figures. For a start look at the distribution of those per capita figures. Look at the looming underclass that don't come within an asses roar of those figures and what they may have to say about it.@44leto good post.
The stats you are quoting are form Pinker - the Better Angels of our Nature.
Most people don't get exponentials and don't really get what is happening in China. The globalrichlist is quoting from income distribution in 1988-1993, back when China and India were both way below $1000 a year. Probably $300 a year.
Where is China now. It is at $5000 a year. It is growing at 10% a year. So when was it at $2500 per capita? 2004. When was it at $1250? 1997, or so.
When will it be at $10000 per capita - about Mexicos level? 2019. When at $20000? 2026.
When $40k per capita - 2033.
Long before then it will be the richest actual country in the world.
* all stats are extrapolation, thats China's trend.
Ireland once had the highest uptake of Mercedes per head in the world. The highest proportion of mobile phones and a string of other highests. Remember when Grafton Street rents and real estate prices were higher than 5th avenue? We had the fastest growing and 'healthiest' construction industry in the west too for a time. And now, all too quickly? We have ghost estates. What happened to us in microcosm could very well happen to China. They're building 'ghost' cities as we speak. Oh and we had a growing population. Look up "demographic collapse + China".I can do percentages. It's BMW's top market, more people in China buy BMW's than any other country. This is in answer to the claim that they don't have a consumer/middle class. They do. Its growing.Rejoice in the awareness of feeling stupid, for that’s how you end up learning new things. If you’re not aware you’re stupid, you probably are.
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