It feels like that episode of Cheers. The one where Sam loans Diane money to buy a Hemingway novel and she does frivolous things with the money. This is a popular theme in sit-coms. The loan that gets misused.And maybe in life too. Will China (Sam) begin to see the US as Diane and wonder whether another round of stimuli to 400 million people is just plain frivolous? Will they ask themselves whether Americans should be buying this year's Christmas gifts on their largess? Will they decide our 2008 versions of Hemingway novels are just too decadent?
I don't know much about economics. (NOTHING, REALLY) And I can't remember what happened in the Cheers episode, but I think Sam wanted his money back. Is it "there" to give back to China and if not, what next?Just print some up?
6 comments:
People keep telling me that China's economy relies on selling consumer goods to the USA and Europe, but I wonder if that's just an interim stage on the way to selling consumer goods to a giant middle-class that will develop in China?
Then what good are we?
This is something new, a whole well-managed, high tech economy not run for profit.
Interesting times, for sure...
Somehow I think the profit will seep into it as more and more Chinese move into the middle-class.
The loss of manufacturing might spell our doom. How much service can we peddle to each other?
I am incredibly disturbed to realize I do remember that episode of Cheers and will not foist details upon you. Surely there are better things I could've done with those neurons in the past twenty years!
I am reminded of the board game Merchant of Venus, wherein the Earth's export is rock videos. I very much like the idea of Culture as an export commodity...but I get nervous about it being the export commodity. I guess I have an instinctive wariness about the eggs-to-basket ratio, and a nagging feeling that a service-based economy is a vast consensual illusion more consensual and illusory than other aspects of the dismal science. (About which I, too, am generally underinformed.)
I think almost every sitcom had a episode about loaning money and watching how it was spent. Also one where someone had two dates. We do have limited imaginations.
Manufacturing made pollution but it also made jobs.
I have teens. And am constantly amazed at their financial choices...
I'm constantly amazed at mine
Post a Comment