Economically who is at fault?

[MisterTinkles]

Dont know about other countries, but as for America....its greedy corporations, pure and simple.

Make an inferior product that costs a couple of pennies to produce, while paying pennies per hour to people who pretty much live in ghetto conditions if not worse, with no healhcare or decent standard of living....selling garbage and crap to the rest of the world that lasts long enough to make it from the store you bought it at to the landfill that is every growing.

Instead of paying a decent wage to people in their own countries, making a decent product, and creating jobs and industry for their own people, they just have to be as greedy as hell instead.

Dont worry, this will be the final "straw" that collapses consumerism all over the world. And the governments will blame industry and industry will blame the governments.

[southbiochem]

I read the post related to Wal-Mart last night, and that has prompted me to post this debate

Using the Chinese as an example

Is it the fault of the Chinese, who have grown their economy so extensively that it has shrunk the economies of other countries, including that of South Africa by taking advantage of the comparatively extremely low productivity of their target countries?

Or is it the fault of the "targeted" countries for having such low productivity (and consequentially disproportionate high labor costs), thereby affording the Chinese the opportunity to take economic advantage thereof?

Is it the fault of the Chinese for having a focused government backed market driven economy and buying raw materials such as iron ore, which has no value added, converting it into value added goods such as cars / ships / rail coaches

Or is it the fault of the very same countries for selling the raw materials to them without conversion into high value products?

Trial by error

Simply going on with the China example

First, the thing that's good about China is the whole "to each its own" foreign policy...this same policy has allowed it to still be a single party communist country but with a market economy and with very good commercial relations with capitalist nations...

The US could learn a bit of "to each its own", instead of the crazy amount of military spending, they could put that money for better use.

Second, China, like all developed overpopulated countries is one resource-hungry bitch...

As citizen of a country that falls into the category of not having a very productive industry and focusing on exporting such resources, I'm not conviced "fault" is the word to describe it.

Neither we are counsciously trying to put China as number one giving away resources, nor China is trying to actively topple anyone (except probably Japan, for obvious reasons)

China doesn't compete with Germany, for example, which has am uber-strong economy...

It just so happens that we receive havey Chinese investment and the manufactured products they sell us are so much cheaper than what we get from anywhere else..

That's why China has displaced US as the number one marketfor this side of the world

This however is the result of Washington's aggressive foreign policies towards Latin America...we are only too happ to get Uncle Sam's foot off our necks for once and turn to a much nicer world power such as China (nicer to us anyway).

Chile, Peru and Colombia have gone into the Pacific Alliance which market for selling resources is obviously the Asia-Pacific region, with Japan and China as the obvious strategic partners.

I don't know what's the deal for South Africa, but as far as the US and Europe goes, the fact that China has grown so extensively and they have declined, is due their focus on petty wars in the Middle East, which has given the opportunity for China to both sustain it's economy while US and Euroe undewent heavy military expenses and then had the whole 2009 meltdown, and at the same time, get into the markets that were once under Washington's sphere of influence, once Washington's eye was fixed on oil and expanding their influence in the middle east..

ahhhh this was long...I hope I mad some sense

[Garystampa]

Greed is a strong factor. People feeling entitled is also a strong factor.

Marketing has convinced us we need things we never needed before.

The only thing one can do is reduce consumption and simplify. It is difficult to blame corporations and countries. They see consumers clamoring for products and know if they provide those products the quality of their own lives will increase.

Forcing laborers or companies do to anything will not achieve desired goals. They will simply find ways around it.

Remember, people will always do what they feel is in their best interest.