Hey Hillary, It's NOT China. But You Know That.
I admit it. I love Hillary. The more she lies, the more she attacks, the more she says things just to get elected, the more she just flat out refuses to give up, the more I think she is exactly what this country needs. I am NOT kidding. Hillary does not believe the crap she is spewing and she would never let herself be bound by it once she becomes President. Obama and McCain scare me mostly because I fear they actually buy into the ridiculous things they say.
Take China, Hillary (please). Great NYTimes column (and how often do I say that?), entitled, "The Cognitive Age," by David Brooks on how technological change plays a much bigger role in shaping our world than globalization (read China):
The globalization paradigm has led, in the political arena, to a certain historical narrative: There were once nation-states like the U.S. and the European powers, whose economies could be secured within borders. But now capital flows freely. Technology has leveled the playing field. Competition is global and fierce.New dynamos like India and China threaten American dominance thanks to their cheap labor and manipulated currencies. Now, everything is made abroad. American manufacturing is in decline. The rest of the economy is threatened.
Hillary Clinton summarized the narrative this week: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”
That Hillary would take a poem on inaction during the Holocaust and use it to get elected is conclusive (albeit somewhat disgusting) proof of the fact she would do anything to get elected.
Brooks goes on to talk about how "very convenient" it is for politicians to use globalization and foreigners as an excuse for economic woes:
It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety. It allows them to treat economic and social change as a great mercantilist competition, with various teams competing for global supremacy, and with politicians starring as the commanding generals.
But the biggest problem in blaming globalization is that it is not true.
Globalization is real and important. It’s just not the central force driving economic change. Some Americans have seen their jobs shipped overseas, but global competition has accounted for a small share of job creation and destruction over the past few decades. Capital does indeed flow around the world. But as Pankaj Ghemawat of the Harvard Business School has observed, 90 percent of fixed investment around the world is domestic. Companies open plants overseas, but that’s mainly so their production facilities can be close to local markets.Nor is the globalization paradigm even accurate when applied to manufacturing. Instead of fleeing to Asia, U.S. manufacturing output is up over recent decades. As Thomas Duesterberg of Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a research firm, has pointed out, the U.S.’s share of global manufacturing output has actually increased slightly since 1980.
The chief force reshaping manufacturing everywhere is technological change:
Thanks to innovation, manufacturing productivity has doubled over two decades. Employers now require fewer but more highly skilled workers. Technological change affects China just as it does the America. William Overholt of the RAND Corporation has noted that between 1994 and 2004 the Chinese shed 25 million manufacturing jobs, 10 times more than the U.S.The central process driving this is not globalization. It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.
The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?
The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.
Oh, and Germany is still the world's biggest exporter.
I'm Dan Harris and I approve of Brooks' column.
Comments
I agree with you that Hillary Clinton will stop at nothing to try to get herself elected. And perhaps in one sense this is a good approach since whomever doesn't get elected will not be shaping things much. And her recent interview with Mr. O'Reilly of Fox Channel and her statements to promise to nuke Iran just in case it ever thought of attacking Israel, are both very good examples of this kind of pandering, and certainly confirm what you said. (And incidentally, without wishing to appear to sympathize with the government of Iran for which I have little sympathy, I think what they said afterwards also was accurate: Making a statement like that is in violation of the UN charter) But the broader question I think is... should presidential candidates maintain some semblance of a relationship to truth and reality or should they say and do whatever they think is going to get them elected? The O'Reilly's and Fox channels and Karl Roves of our world (of our country) certainly reason in keeping with the latter. But do the rest of Americans really agree with them? And isn't that heading down towards the lowest common (or uncommon) denominator at an amazing speed? And how does one later climb back up and out of that bottomless stinking pit, since one cannot govern by the same principles and practices?
Posted by: Frank Johnson | May 3, 2008 4:50 AM
It's true that technological change and innovation are the biggest drivers of manufacturing change. (Globalization and its effects are a close second) But it is also true that we are a long way away from being able to apply "the cognitive paradigm" (see above) to everyone in either national or global society. And comparatively speaking much more is being done to further advance technological change and innovation in production than in educating and tooling up people so that everyone can be a participant. At the rate we are going 20% of the population will be employed in high tech activities and the other 80% will be unemployed. The above of course is an exaggeration but maybe it makes the point...which is that a whole lot more needs to be done to develop our national and global human capital, skills, and knowledge. Regrettably since less money is generally made out of such activities, they are not getting nearly as much attention as they should
Posted by: frank Johnson | May 3, 2008 5:15 AM
This post implies that politicians lying to the electorate is a good thing, and largely explains why most of the world is uncomfortable with the U.S. political system. It's broken when lying is embraced isn't it?
Also there's one line above that says technological change has a bigger role in shaping our world than globalization. Yet I feel they are inseparable from each other. The internet will drive further change and I think David Brooks has missed something profound if this is 'off the radar' in the 'thousands' of books in the library he refers to.
They're coming for the White collar jobs because of technology not despite it!
The U.S of course could reinvent itself if some proactive pruning was put in place, but the lobby collective would be out of a job.
I hear that no contested divorces cost 800 bucks in the States and a few dollars online these days. Watch out. Here comes everybody!
Posted by: Charles Frith | May 3, 2008 6:29 AM
Dan aren't you disgusted by Hillary's gas tax holiday pander? I agree that Obama has said some scary stuff about China, but I think Hillary's tone about China has been similar. I dislike Hillary because her gas tax holiday pander is just like so much of what we've seen from Bush for the last 7+ years: a policy which appeals superficially to Americans worried about something, but which actually does nothing to fix that something and even makes that something worse.
I think the Clintons are similar to Bush in that they approach issues in terms of how best to maximize their political power. I think the Clintons are generally more committed to doing the right thing than Bush, but a lot of what Hillary has said during this campaign downright scare me.
I think that ultimately when Obama sits down to figure out his China policy, he will be pragmatic and not political about it.
Posted by: Ben | May 3, 2008 9:39 AM
@Ben,
Political pandering is as American as apple pie, so I find it more normal and expected than disgusting.
Obama picked his church for political reasons and his "bitter" comment revealed how he really feels about the American people. He is no different from Hillary or McCain.
Posted by: China Law Blog | May 3, 2008 9:54 AM
What's all this about the pander being an endangered species?
Posted by: FOARP | May 3, 2008 10:34 AM
"I don't like Hillary because I don't like Hillary"
(and I never did from day one, or maybe it was day zero)
And I still remember a very nice conversation I had with my now ex- wife as we were walking together near the reflecting pool in D.C. on our way to the Smithsonian sometime that November right after Bill Clinton first had gotten elected. (and well before Jan. 20th of the following year when he took office).
And I remember telling her that "I didn't like Hillary because I didn't like Hillary". And she didn't think that was all that funny and couldn't quite understand why I felt that way and (at that time) I certainly couldn't explain it to her either.
But Hey folks, this has got nothing to do with why we later ended up getting divorced!
Posted by: max jones | May 3, 2008 11:07 PM
I like Hillary for similar reasons. We need a President ready to do whatever it takes to save the country from further decline.
However, I don't think that paraphrasing a poem, whose subject happens to be the holocaust, is the same as using the holocaust to get elected (technically, the way you've phrased your sentence respects the distinction I'm trying to make, but I'm responding instead to the way some people are liable to read what you said).
Thanks too for drawing attention to the thought-provoking David Brooks article.
Posted by: FLO | May 5, 2008 3:50 PM
...She's good because "ready to do whatever it takes to save the country from further decline"?
"Decline" of course does and can mean "economic decline" mainly, I suppose.
Although "moral decline" and "ideological decline" and "decline in the level and substance of discourse" are other categories that also perhaps could be thought to apply?
And part of the stuff that has to change is in the ideological and moral sphere or realm so that some of the progress in the economic sphere that we all want can be made to happen. One cannot bring people genuinely "on board" (except on to the wrong boat) by lying or by pandering to them. And this is precisely the sort of stuff that Hillary Clinton seems to me to be getting wrong.
It's true -in a qualified sense- that the ends may justify the means and that you can't ride the horse if you're not first in the saddle. But it is also true that just as often "the medium is the message" or "the process is the content". So I don't think that lying or pandering are the best ways (nor the only possible ways) by which candidates should try to get themselves elected "at any (moral/ethical) cost" just so that "later" they can then do what "really" needs to be done, but which "regrettably" they "just couldn't" talk or tell us about before.
All this sort of stuff is indicative of having a basic contempt for the population (not trust). (And this, no matter how many times one proclaims or trumpets far and wide that "we're going to do it together" and "I am with you") which is why I prefer Obama who at least tries to reason with people even if it's true that a lot of people are not all that reasonable and cannot be "reasoned with" because they mainly care only about themselves and what they think is staring at them right in front of their noses. (often without realizing that in fact what they really face is something else and much more complex and that they've been mostly spoon fed a bunch of malarkey by the media)
And these are the same things I didn't like about Hillary Clinton intuitively without ever really seeing her in action, (back when her husband first got elected as per my earlier comment on this thread) now only confirmed by time and by what I have indeed seen. My "first impression" about Obama is instead very different and may well be proven wrong by what may happen later. But my first impression about Hillary Clnton I think was right and, to me at least, has been confirmed.
Posted by: max jones | May 6, 2008 12:29 AM