Adam Neuman is bound to be canonised in our capitalist society. When his grand grandchildren donate to Harvard and waltz in high class ballrooms, nobody knows or cares about how their ancestor made that wealth and even for those who do, the story would have already been glamorised.
and people don't realise that china becomes manufacturing powerhouse not because of low costs. there're are many places in southeast asian alone which are much more cheaper in every aspect. What china has and other places dont have is, highly efficient logistics, very pragmatic kpi driven and arguably more efficient and definitely more business friendly local government policy makers and administration, end to end supply chain for almost every industry, well educated, very disciplined and hardworking workforce, and a unique culture that promotes perseverance, resilience, discipline and self improvement
I watched an episode of last week tonight in which John Oliver covers issues of private prisons. Basically it's inmates being exploited by extremely low paid labor and various unreasonable charges for necessities.
But I don't see how government run prisons can solve or mitigate the problems.
I guess it's because first world middle/upper-middle class are the most anxious of all social strata, because they have to constantly struggle with maintaining their social standings and that their children would not fall down, which is extremely hard, mostly because in first world middle/upper middle class kids have to compete with all other children in the same or lesser social standings and they usually don't have competitive edge.
If u.s. society is a caste system, where upper middle class kids don't have to compete with middle class kids, and middle class kids don't have to compete with middle lower class people, where each class has its cultural/religious/socioeconomic/political moat to keep lower class people from getting in, people in general would not feel that level of anxiousness.
you are right.
probably China has always been under reporting their growth rate as the hide your strength strategy. It's inexplicable that China's GDP from construction is smaller than that of U.S., given that China is undergoing an infrastructure build up at a scale that human race has never seen.
Not at all.
first, real estate is the essential part of a grand urbanisation plan along with other infrastructure developments.
second, concrete and steel buildings definitely last longer than plaster and wood built ones in U.S.. It's just U.S. people spend a lot of time maintaining their house...I think it's not economically sensible. The time spent on house maintenance and repair could be more valuable in productive activities.
This is my strong takeaway on China economy articles- most are enormously wrong in their predictions, and not simply in a few random details; fundamentally they have been wrong about the China system collapsing for years and years and years.
I mean, sure, some day things will change substantially - change happens and the decades of doomsays will claim they were right all along. But that's stopped clock thinking. :-/
I think all business has to know what they are selling. Google and Facebook know it very well. They sell ads. All their business endeavours hence are to sell more ads.
On the other hand, newspapers seems to not know that they are selling.
If it's content or information, then they don't create enough unique and valuable content that enough people are willing to pay enough amount.
If it's content distribution or platform for opinions or civil discourses, they are almost anachronistic.
If it's ads, they simply don't have enough eyeballs.
That's more or less how Russian printed press worked in the 1990s and early 2000s. All major newspapers and magazines not telling you how to have sex after properly tying your girlfriend to the bed were losing money, and each was owned by a major businessperson who wanted to control the narrative or at least to look like they were able to.
