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Wow, saw a great story on China last night. Apparently they are quietly taking over the world. It is seriously insane. I know in my business that the past several years they keep blaming every single price increase on the Chinese. I thought it was just bullshit to raise prices.
But that country is exploding. All of those billions of people that we have always heard about are now deciding to buy stuff. And the money is coming from poor countries that have oil or resources to use as payment for construction projects and work for chinese workers. Then they take the money back to China and buy cars or food or clothes or indoor plumbing or things they never had before.
They said that with the number of Chinese people they have in that country, if they all decided to consume like we do in the US (not more just the same as we do per person) that it would take another planet the size of the earth to supply the resources that would require.
The only good news is that China can never nuke us or anything because without our consumption of their cheap products, they could not survive.
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Well, actually its a much bigger problem than I realized. They aren't importing all of this stuff into their country to consume.
Take Angola for example. After the war over there, their country was begging for loans from the west. The US was going to loan them money but had so many stipulations on it that they couldn't agree to it. The Chinese came in and loaned them $2 billion with relatively no conditions (they said that the people should decide how to govern themselves and China didn't want to dictate that to them).
But, in return for the loan, China gets cheap oil from them. They also get 70% of the government reconstruction projects. They say that more people speak Chinese there now then their own language. Chinese construction companies are going apeshit there. And most of the workforce are Chinese workers that have gone there for jobs. And when they finish, they bring all that money back to China.
Same thing in Brazil. Brazil is about to become the largest exporter of soybeans on the planet (a title the US used to hold). Who is buying their soybeans? Chinese. They said that just 10 years ago China could produce enough soybeans for themselves. Now the import billions of tons from Brazil. Brazil is even cutting down their rainforests to make more farmland. Millions and millions of acres of soybeans.
The Chinese are practically running the country of Cambodia now. All of the reconstruction work in Cambodia is being done by Chinese contractors. Cambodians are lining up to go to Chinese language schools. The kids idolize China like people used to idolize the US. And the funny thing is, the Chinese were the ones funding and supplying the Moulan Rouge with the weapons they used to practically destroy Cambodia. And that wasn't that long ago. But apparantly, this new quality of life the Chinese are bringing is enough to make them forget that. What do the Chinese get from Cambodia in exchange for the money they are spending to rebuild it? Cheap labor. Tons of it. And they are exploiting the shit out of it.
They said that the growth of China economically and industrially right now is so huge, that it can only be compared to one other event in recent history, and that was the growth of the US when it surpassed Britain in economic strenth a hundred years ago or so.
And you don't even want to know what the trade deficit is between the US and China.
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We are setting them up to be the super power in 100 years.I'm glad I'll be dead.
See You In Toledo
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you'll begin to see us increase taxes and tariffs
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Flumper Barflusterbutt Wrote:.
....ones funding andsupplying the Moulan Rouge with the weapons they used to practically destroy Cambodia. And that wasn't that long ago. But apparantly, this new quality of life the Chines.
:loool:
I realise that I have a past to break with--an accumulation of inertia, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk. A great need of clarification, of mindfulness, or rather, of no mind. A need to return to genuine practice, right effort. Need to push on the great doubt. Need for the spirit. Hang on to the clear light.
Thomas Merton
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khmer
yours is a misspelled movie
made my day, thanks flumpy
I realise that I have a past to break with--an accumulation of inertia, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk. A great need of clarification, of mindfulness, or rather, of no mind. A need to return to genuine practice, right effort. Need to push on the great doubt. Need for the spirit. Hang on to the clear light.
Thomas Merton
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Flumper Barflusterbutt Wrote:Friends again?
:ct:
I realise that I have a past to break with--an accumulation of inertia, wrong, foolishness, rot, junk. A great need of clarification, of mindfulness, or rather, of no mind. A need to return to genuine practice, right effort. Need to push on the great doubt. Need for the spirit. Hang on to the clear light.
Thomas Merton
