Thread: Buy American Our government at work

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[QUOTE=glennsexton;456441]

Originally Posted by tin-man

There are more millionaires and billionaires in China now than most of the world combined. Sad fact of life.

John - while I appreciate your enthusiasm, you're way off base here. A "millionaire" is not a rare occurrence anymore and I would venture to say that there are several millionaires that post here on a regular basis (value of assets minus liabilities)..

According to Forbes, there are just over 1,200 billionaires in the world, specifically;
United States has 412 billionaires or - 34%
China – 115 - 10%
Russia – 101 - 8%
India – 54 - 4%
Germany – 52 - 4%
Turkey – 38- 3%
Hong Kong – 36 - 3%
United Kingdom – 32 - 3%
Brazil - 30 - 2%

The "rest of the world" has the other 19% is decreasing numbers..


The richest entity in the world is Carlos Slim Helu & family of Mexico - $74B

The US has four of the top ten - representing over 170 billion dollars (Gates - $56B, Buffett - $50B, Ellison - $39.5B and the Walton family - $26.5B)

The "richest" Chinese is Li Ka-shaing (Hong Kong) at 26 billion. That's not chopped liver, but is pales to the total

Total controlled by Chinese "billionaires" is +/- $230B
US billionaires alone control $1,578B

Doesn't make me any happier about the volume of product we import from China nor the fact that the Chinese government owns 37% of our national debt - but real money still lives in America. I'd like to see our government re-write procurement laws to favor more American made goods and services but the unfortunate result of our ultra greedy "entitlement generation" is a boat load of people who have gotten so used to instantaneous gratification that they don't know how to work and they have grown lazy. I'm afraid we've not see the worst of our economic woes as we continue to borrow at the government level.

I'm ranting, but at least it's to my friends!!
Glenn

No issues Glen my point was made in support of the prior post and while I did not refer to Forbes when I made my comment, China is for sure churning out wealthy people by the day at the expense of foreign funded companies prior relationships. Hyperbole for sure, but sadly based on hard facts regarding being subject to cloning, back yard rip-offs or just plain government backed funding to support development of proprietary designs attained thru less than legal means or just plain reverse-engineering. One thing for sure I am not one of them.

Cheers, John, AKA, tin-man
Zhuhai P.R.C.

Is it safe for you to be making comments like that??? aren't THEY watching what you do???

In my othere hobby (trains) china has taken over. I don't believe you can buy anything related to that hobby that is made in the USA

made in china assembled in mexico, broken in the US

I did a google map search of Zhuhai and found some very elaboate highway/street systems around and about some very upscale elaborate houses---
and also many,many 10-20 story apartment buildings with absolutely no parking places or street access---

Having been in the education business for 33 years including teaching an upper level (3rd year college) laboratory course, I can tell you that even in college there is a need for basic instruction. I tried to make my lab course 50% use of modern whiz bang equipment and 50% put-it-together experiments. Eventually I was overridden by folks who wanted to use only "modern equipment". Recently I visited the lab in which I taught for over thirty years and by golly my old sign "Make It Work!" was still on the wall! Folks here might be surprised that most Physicists and Physical Chemists have small lathes in their laboratories and make their own electro-optical experiments but you can't do that stuff in high schools because of the well known tendency of teen age students to do dangerous things. I do not know if this is still true but in my Freshman year at what used to be Drexel Institute of Technology (now Drexel University, complete with a Medical School) we all had to take courses in Mechanical Drawing, Basic Machine Shop and Surveying because they knew there would probably be a lot of changes in major in the second year. Even though I did change to Chemistry I used most of those skills (including basic Surveying when adding a wing on my home) later in Physical Chemistry and had to complete four of the five years in the Cooperative Education program with six months of each year in an industrial job. At the time I only entered the CO-OP program so I could pay my way through college but later I realized the value of the practical experience. One of my first jobs was as a Millwright Helper in a large plant and I got to participate in installation of large equipment and major machine shop projects. Later in Physical Chemistry I used mechanical drawing to coordinate with first class machinists to make various special electro-optical devices. At the very least Cooperative Education Programs should be expanded for Science and Engineering programs. I missed out on welding and I see that a lot of folks on this Forum can do some neat things by fabricating their own build projects. Is there a link to a Stossel reply to this problem? Probably this Forum is one of the best examples of the usefulness of basic trade skills in "making stuff". There is a lot to learn and admire on this site.

Don Shillady
Retired Scientist/teen rodder

Don, I can identify with your post from first hand experience. When I entered the university in 1965 every entering ME student took Graphics 1&2, a semester of Casting & Welding, and a semester of Machine Shop. There were two old WWII metal buildings housing working shops, including a lineup of engine lathes that we worked, even learning to cut threads on the lathe. In the second year the Metalurgy class had a three hour lab each week where we took alloy samples, mounted them in resin and then polished them to a high luster before etching them with a mild acid to expose the grain structure - all this to duplicate what we were reading about in the book. After two years I left school, ended up in the Navy for four years and then worked a couple of years before I got brave enough to go back and finish my degree. I had been gone six years, and when I went back the programs had been totally revamped - no more drafting classes (engineers tell the drafters what to draw), no more intro to machine processes shop classes, no more metalurgy lab, and no more Sr Engineering Projects to graduate (I had watched in awe in '66 when a graduating Senior was cutting a ring gear for his differential as his Senior Design Project!!) Everything was in the books now, and the labs were pretty tame, doing canned experiements to demonstrate some theory or another. One bright spot was a thermo professor who had a side-line consulting business, and in lab one day he had us running a complex set of steam table calcs, and once we had about a dozen points he wandered back in, asked us to plot the results and discuss what it might represent. That profile represented the phase change from water to steam with changing pressure - turned out he had a contract to design the ideal spray nozzle for a car wash, and he was looking at varying the storage temp and pump pressure to stay just below the steam point. Never did find out how much he made from our afternoon of lab work, but I never forgot the lesson....

Teachers institute day here today and they are at a high school only a couple of miles from here--thinking about going over and canvas the parking lot to see what autos that our finest teachers drive--when we went buy before lunch didn't see a single USA car in the lane near the street!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jerry, any more what is an American made car? Even Fords, Chevys and Dodges are often made some where else and what we consider foreign cars are made here in the USA by American workers. The line is definitely blurred.

Pat

Here's a link to an interesting read on cars assembled in this country.... It points out that buying "American made" isn't near as cut and dried as it used to be!!!!

Made in America? Hard to tell - The Boston Globe

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

Is it safe for you to be making comments like that??? aren't THEY watching what you do???

Quietly in whispered tones he said after looking over his shoulder: the Sphincter Police are more concerned about their kids getting involved in nasty western sexually explicit web sites and abhor the thought they could communicate freely among themselves thru twitter or other social networks. But reverse engineering and doing what comes naturally to make a buck at other peoples expense, naw, no matter, bring it on.

tin-man

Originally Posted by jerry clayton

I did a google map search of Zhuhai and found some very elaboate highway/street systems around and about some very upscale elaborate houses---
and also many,many 10-20 story apartment buildings with absolutely no parking places or street access---

Jerry, Zhuhai is without a doubt one of the best cities in China and is very much like Hawaii and Singapore in climate and infrastructure. Its one of China's best kept secrets and literally billions of equivalent dollars are being spent for technology parks, apartments, shopping centers, bridges and hi-ways plus rapid transit high speed trains that will be linked to Shanghai and Beijing. In addition there is a bridge being built that will link Zhuhai and Macao to Hong Kong and will be one of the longest bridges in the world when completed. This is where a lot of the monies are being invested by the government and thousands if not millions of people are at work building these structures. Arguably, they only get squat for salary, US$100 per month, 640RMB, but they do have a job. IMHO, if the USA government would wake up and start refurbishing all the bridges and roads and start high speed transit systems alongside our freeways the unemployment issue would go away. Of course we are now back to the argument would people want to work at performing such tasks?

Regarding the parking, its all underground below the apartment buildings.

Cheers, John, AKA, tin-man

Originally Posted by Dave Severson

Here's a link to an interesting read on cars assembled in this country.... It points out that buying "American made" isn't near as cut and dried as it used to be!!!!

Made in America? Hard to tell - The Boston Globe

Interesting article Dave, and given the fact that it is 5.5 years old things are even more confusing now.

Pat

Originally Posted by Stu Cool

Interesting article Dave, and given the fact that it is 5.5 years old things are even more confusing now.

Pat

Indeed!!! I seriously doubt if the percentages of foreign made parts has gone down on any of the brands!!!

Originally Posted by tin-man

Jerry, Zhuhai is without a doubt one of the best cities in China and is very much like Hawaii and Singapore in climate and infrastructure. Its one of China's best kept secrets and literally billions of equivalent dollars are being spent for technology parks, apartments, shopping centers, bridges and hi-ways plus rapid transit high speed trains that will be linked to Shanghai and Beijing. In addition there is a bridge being built that will link Zhuhai and Macao to Hong Kong and will be one of the longest bridges in the world when completed. This is where a lot of the monies are being invested by the government and thousands if not millions of people are at work building these structures. Arguably, they only get squat for salary, US$100 per month, 640RMB, but they do have a job. IMHO, if the USA government would wake up and start refurbishing all the bridges and roads and start high speed transit systems alongside our freeways the unemployment issue would go away. Of course we are now back to the argument would people want to work at performing such tasks?

Regarding the parking, its all underground below the apartment buildings.

Cheers, John, AKA, tin-man

Jerry, this building fell over, they decided to build an underground garage after the fact, stacked wet earth on the side reducing the benefits of the pilings and it just fell over, essentially intact. Only one poor guy got nailed, he was a worker who went back into the building to retrieve some tools. The owners of this site, the local ChiCom players in the Shanghai government got away with poor construction practices and the poor bugger that was hired to build it, went to jail. Go figure. Decidedly a case of, oops.

Cheers, John, AKA, tin-man

I've seen that before and just seeing that its right by the water makes me wonder if the other buildings there aren't at risk also--