????? Do you not remember the 1970s?

They become English or Phrench?

I am a modern business manager. And my business is helping other businesses adapt to change and the realities of the business world.

As for not being able to put your entire workforce into white collar management positions...

Nike did just that. So did Adidas. So did Toyota (and some of that overseas production is in the US). So have most of the Pharmaceutical Companies. So has ExxonMobil, Unocal... (I'm including designers, engineers, geologists and a lot of other highly talented and educated people in the white collar description although they usually do not supervise others).

You get the idea....

No, and I am admitedly lacking in detailed knowledge on that part and will therefore not comment on it without further research.

The general logic I used, open for critique - not claimed as absolute truth, was that even if a depression or recession hits China, it can reform and become stronger from what it has learned. It would hit a country that has tasted success and that has acquired experience, an industry base, educated segments of the population, and organizational and economic knowledge. Add a growing dependance, although not complete, on China.

If they will have to fight, economically and politically, to reacquire that position they seem to have the resources to do it and the knowledge to avoid previous pitfalls. Hence they might be able to rise above where they were before.

If I'm completely lost in the forest, tell me and I'll be quiete.

GH:

That is a laudable, but idealistic solution.

Since we can't find a white collar job for everyone, and the "Soylent Green" solution is not yet acceptable, what do we do with the underclass which becomes unemployable due to changes?

Do we rack and stack them in public housing and put them on the dole?

What white collar job do you propose for those with criminal records, substance abuse problems, subnormal intelligence, or lack of education?

Public assistance in the interim, retraining, educating, and placing newly unemployed (and recycling failures) could potentially be very expensive. Who pays?

On the flip side, what happens when your only source of rare earth magnets, for example, is in China and they decide to cut you off for a period of time due to economic, political, diplomatic, or military reasons?

The military already subsidizes key industries to guarantee production and to foster competetion. What happens when the only foundry capable of producing tank hulls goes under or is unable to find key craftsmen?

These are valid questions that need to be answered BEFORE we continue shipping jobs and entire industries overseas.

NDD, I agree with you that change is inevitable. My concern is that the pace is not being managed, and it should be. It looks more like a stampede than orderly change to me.

I have grave concerns for the future of my children and my country.

TR

No need to be quiete. There was a time when China was considered by many to be the sun source of everything. Religion, products, raw materials were all thought to be better and were imported, especially to Japan. There was a time when you couldn't hardly turn something over in the US without seeing "Made in Japan" on it. Countries and power wax and wane. History is cyclic as well as linear. ;)

Absolutely agreed. No rule sets to guide us. That is Barnett's whole premise - Globalization is not bad, we are poorly managing it.

http://ludb.clui.org/ex/i/CA3008/

TR

Increased trade and mutual investment with other nations are win-win propositions. The problem, however, is a classic one of political economy - while the benefits of engagement are spread amongst a broad, diffuse group lacking a single voice or organizing principle, the pain is felt by a small, concentrated and organized minority. The textile example cited earlier is a perfect demonstration of this.

Textile producers and their workers' unions have successfully lobbied for trade protection in the form of the MFA, etc., for many years. This has slowed the pace of change within that industry, but has cost US consumers billions more in the form of elevated prices for final goods than has been transferred to the textile industry in the form of protection.

When workers are legitimately displaced by trade, policy makers have it within their power to ease that transition while still allowing the broader society to benefit from the gains of trade. Trade makes the whole "pie" bigger. That is an indisputable fact of economics. If the US withdrew all trade protections currently benefiting our textile workers, the resulting gains accruing to consumers in general would be large enough to guarantee those workers their current level of income through retirement if our elected officials chose to do so. That would obviously be an extreme outcome, but it illustrates my point. If there is long-term damage to workers within an industry coincident with increased trade, that is a failure of domestic policy and political will, not of the trading system in general.

Free trade is like a ratchet. Because of the way that the WTO system is set up, countries which choose to trade more freely with their partners cannot reverse that process without incurring enormous penalties. The ratchet moves only forward, never backward. I have to believe that, in the final analysis, Americans' security and wallets will both benefit from this. Our sources of "soft power" as a nation are profoundly important, and they are transmitted through frequency of interaction. These include culture, media, political mores, etc.. Close trading partners rarely go to war with each other and, just as factor-price equalization ensures that the prices paid for goods and services in different countries will gravitate toward one another as trade deepens, so too will we see a gradual convergence of basic political ideas and social contracts.

BTW - I was trained as a trade and development economist, used to work at the WTO, and have represented many industries involved in trade disputes before the International Trade Commission. If you have arcane questions, fire away, but I won't otherwise sidetrack the discussion. :D

Nice shoot house (23 stories!!! Hello stairwells!!!), driving track close by, train tracks (I'll stea...find an Amtrack car or two for train take downs), looks like plenty of scrap for bullet traps and PT, plenty of room for Longrange. Good weather. We can set the Blademaster up just off the range fan.

Place was going to waste making steel anyway. :lifter

Thats easy, they get to wander around the country like beduoins looking for temporary jobs, leaving no legacy for their children, having no dignity in their lives, and serving as a warning to others that all there is to life is a work week.

Actually, they'd probably be better off leaving the country... it's going to be too expensive to live here anyway.

You people need to learn to exploit the invisible hand before it smacks you in the ass. There is a huge difference between labor-driven protectionism, on the one hand, and protecting truly strategic resources and industries, on the other. The latter makes sense, but the rest is just whining as far as I'm concerned. Kill or be killed.

Back on topic:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2...50318_247.html

Intelligence Chiefs Outline Threats, Challenges
By Terri Lukach
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, March 18, 2005 – The nation’s top civilian and military intelligence chiefs outlined the primary threats to U.S. national security in the post 9/11 world, as well as the major obstacles to overcoming them, in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee here March 17. In a joint appearance before the committee, Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Navy Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby agreed that terrorist extremists remain the greatest threat to the United States and its allies.

Goss said the war on terror “has presented the intelligence community with challenges unlike any before.” Rather than standing armies, he said, U.S. forces face small groups of terrorists and extremists who operate out of homes and caves, rather than military bases, and who don’t necessarily wear uniforms, use conventional weapons, or observe the norms and standards of civilized society.

While emphasizing that “the United States government does not engage in or condone torture,” Goss underscored the importance of professional interrogation of terrorists to save innocent lives, disrupt terrorist schemes, and protect combat forces. “The United States has had documented success protecting people and capturing terrorists with such information,” he said, and will continue to take terrorists and extremists off the battlefield. “I’d much rather explain why we did something than why we did nothing,” Goss said.

Goss also noted that the volume and scope of information the intelligence community collects, process and provides to policymakers and warfighters has grown tremendously.

While great progress has been made in improving the flow of information among analysts across the government, Goss said, many challenges remain. He cited the need to better discern between real threats and “wishful thinking,” the need to establish a threshold for allocating resources to track down leads, and the damage caused by unauthorized disclosure of classified information by the media and others.

Goss said he welcomed President Bush’s directive to increase CIA human intelligence and analytical capabilities by half and proposed the establishment of a national university of intelligence to “help define a new intelligence community culture” and encourage better cooperation across the various government agencies.

In addition to defeating terrorism, Goss said, other priorities for protecting U.S. national security include defending the homeland, stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as the proliferation of drugs, and fostering stability, freedom and peace in troubled regions of the world.

Jacoby agreed with his CIA counterpart that transnational terrorism remains the primary threat to the U.S. and its interests, and said it’s not necessarily terrorism directed primarily by al Qaeda.

The terrorist threat, he said, has changed over the last 12 months away from a movement centrally directed by al Qaeda leadership to like-minded Sunni Islamic groups who share resources and goals. All of the groups, he added, “remain interested in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, and have a stated intention to conduct an attack exceeding the destruction of 9/11.”

Jacoby said WMD and missile proliferation is the second most immediate and significant threat to the United States and international stability. He cited both Iran and North Korea’s continued efforts to develop nuclear weapons as well as China’s military modernization program, which includes ballistic missiles.

In Iraq, Jacoby praised the increasing capability of Iraqi security forces, noting that since the Jan. 30 elections, daily attacks by insurgents continue to drop and “are now considerably below the high level of activity that existed last November.”

“Also,” he said, “the attacks are basically confined to four provinces in the Sunni heartland and the vicinity around Baghdad,” although he added it is too early to say whether this is a trend.

Jacoby stressed that military intelligence disciplines must remain robust and that more collection and analysis is needed to provide adequate warning of attack and a more complete understanding of the military capabilities, doctrine, war plans and intentions of other countries.

"Freedom and peace"? I need to go 'splain them something.

Anyway, this is what I don't like. This tells me nothing. These are abstract ideas, not objectives.

Worried about nation-states. Speaking the old language. Following the old rules. What other countries?