Comments by "Xiphoid Process" (@xiphoid2011) on "VisualEconomik EN"
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ObamaCare is good for some, but also unfair to some degree. I'm a Chinese American who immigrated to the US. One of my relative's father also immigrated shortly after Obamacare went into effect. During one of his first visits to a US doctor was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer, something doctors in China missed or just didn't bother to look. Because all legal residents qualifies, that means he, a man who has never worked a single day in the US (already retired when he came), not a US citizen (has a green card, legal resident but not a citizen), was able to have Obamacare pay for all of his cancer treatment. The chemo, radiation and surgeries saved his life. He extremely grateful to the US and thankful, saying coming to America saved his life. I'm not sure how other American tax payers feels about paying probaby $1 million through it all. But the objectively, if the situation were reverse (if it was an American who was diagnosed in China), Chinese hospitals would have denied him care unless he paid for everything himself, or go back to America. US healthcare system is very humane and generous, but sometimes it's not really objectively fair.
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@ArawnOfAnnwn Being chinese I know how much low cost labor plays into the equation. You are correct that cheap labor is only a part of the equation, but it's probably the biggest part. If you look at history, US first off shored commercial ship building to Japan, this caused the rise of Japan's ship building industry. Then when Japanese labor became too expensive, it was off shored to South Korea, which lead it its dominance today. And then China came when South Korea labor for ship building also become expensive. So you see, in all the cases, the labor cost is the main driver for each of the rise in their respective shipping industry. Today, some of that labor advantage can be off-set by increase automation (which is the main advantage of S.Korean ship building vs China's, still more expensive but being higher enough quality to stay in business). South Korea actual has higher % of automation (more robots per person) than any country by quite a large margin. However, with the US labor cost being even higher than S. korea by far, and it's civilian ship building industry being long gone, it's basically only doing military ship building which not being profit driven is not very price sensitive.
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Housing in the US is still among the cheapest in the entire world, especially far cheaper than in Asia. Yet Asians in Asia making far less money are saving 30-40% of the income. We joke about how bad Americans are with money, and coming to America and see it's true is really kind of shocking. In Asia, when someone only make $1000 a month, he/she will share an one bedroom apartment with 3 other people, eat instant noodles, not buy anything, and always save some money each month. I notice this kind of life style adjustment doesn't really happen in the US, not sharing a room, not stop eating out, just charge it on credit cards... Even more shocking is seeing how people say "I'm broke" openly and almost proudly, when it would be too shameful to speak of in Asia. Yeah, this is one of those culture shock.
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China is both more capitalist and socialist, I'm speaking as a Chinese who grew up in china who then studied and immigrated to the west. You just never know when the political pendulum will swing the other way.
For much of 2000-2010, china is indeed more capitalist. I remember going back to China for the first time after finishing high school and university in the US. I was shocked how my home town of Shanghai's public bathrooms didn't have toilet papers. It's so capitalist that you had to pay cash for toilet paper in public malls, which was, inconvenient, to for the credit card using and dollar carrying me. This was also the time why my chinese relatives convinced my father to invest in chinese real estate, and it grew faster than the US housing bubble. In 4 years my dad quadroupled his $300K investment to over a $1 million. When the US housing bubble popped, my father cashed out of China, but the chinese bubble kept growing, so my relatives were bragging how their housing "wealth" were just as good as my father's hard earned PhD in the US. Indeed, the laissez-faire capitalist chinese model was going crazy, Anything from the west were faked, from Rolex to McDonald were ripped off, anything for a dollar, morals be damed.
Of course being china, eventually china happened. Xi came to power, he did a Mao 2.0. Undid the liberal reforms, undid constitution's limit on his terms, disrespected his predecessor Hu in an open display. He re-instituted the central control to himself. It's not saying that he is all wrong. He popped the Chinese housing bubble which is long overdue. But it also made my relatives stopped talking about their real estate, probably lost millions of their paper "wealth". The housing bubble is overdue to pop, so it was the right thing. But Xi also disappeared anyone who dared to oppose him, especially the high flying CEO of tech sectors. It's both sad and comical to watch the once praised leaders of China's advancement were disappeared and silenced. Others who dared to expose go to Wuhan at the beginning of COVID were just as quickly disappeared, and people taught a stern lesson that once increasing free and open China is no more, and it's time once again to sing together the praise of the glorious leader like when we were children.
But that's China. It has tremendous potential. And due to the once source of power, can swing from being more capitalist and liberal under one man to completely another Maoist cultural revolution in another. The thing to remember is that the one thing the government will not allow to change is that the need to maintain power always under we Chinese (both in China and overseas) call 朝廷（basically imperial court). Leaders can change, politics can changes, but the power will always be with the emperor or the few officials who wield power. This is also the reason why we chinese have such a high savings rate. The thousands of years of history has trained us that the political wind is unpredictable, we the common people are 韭菜 （chives) to be harvests, so the only way to secure our lives and our family is to save enough money no matter what happens.
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Stock investing 101: The stock market is largely driven by forward-looking corporate profit potentials. The main reason US stocks have done so well for 15 years straight is because the profit growth has been very good. So while the constant up and to the right price moment does seem unreal to some, it has so far been justified by business fundamentals. I came from china to study in the US and started investing in US stockmarket since 2011, and there has been yearly warnings about stock market just can't keep going up like this starting in 2017 and yet the corporate profit always came in better than expected, so those people who stopped investing missed out on hundreds % of gains. Remember 3 things: stocks will always go up in the long run because it's a measure of corporate profit potential, and that always goes up as mankind continues to develop new technologies that increase overall productivity. So any pullback will always be temporary unless a world ending event like nuclear war or astroid collison. (2) diversify your investments to decrease risk. Don't just buy US stocks, but also international ones. Also invest in bonds, realestate, commodities, ect . (3) you can't time the stock stock market, as no one knows when growth or crash will start or end until it has already happened, so keep buying little bit every month and invest for the long run in humanity's long term advancement.
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@雅君墨客-i9z don't get me wrong, China has come a long way since I was little. But cheap labor is still a major part of what propels the Chinese industry. You don't need stastics to tell you that. It's all plain to see for us. I'm from shanghai, my family has been fortunate, but no so for all the people who came from else where. The laborer working in those ship yards are mostly not the expensive Shanghainese but immigrant laborers, this is a big part of why cheap ship building moved down stream to China, and likely will continue to move down the price chain. This is why shanghainese generally look down on them, call them 乡下人，苏北人, and these last couple of years even want these migrant labors out of shanghai since the recent economic down turn has lead to them being homeless. When we just ignore the daily CCTV for once, we can see that cheap labor (along with good infrastructure to transport goods) is a predominent factor of manufacturing in China, and is one of the main reason (other than property bubble) of China's ecnomic slump -- cheap labor means low consumption, and the government's decades long policy to maintain cheap labor to stimulate export has lead to this moment.
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