Economic Recovery: India vs USA

P

PocketChange

Recently watched an old Ben Kingsley movie... gandhi after many years.

Based on the new economic realm certain story lines struck a chord...

Gandhi's economic recovery plan for India in the 1940's - 1950's. Pretty Simple and effective plan... Home Spun

Home Spun... India closed its currency and minimized foreign trade and dependency. Insanely high import duties and disallowed any foreign ownership of its land or businesses.

In effect they closed their gates and interactions with outside influence in order to heal and rebuild internally.

The US is in the same predicament. All of our electronics are made abroad, all of our call center jobs are shipped overseas.

Taking a step back the only real path to a full recovery is for the country and its citizens and enterprises to become self sufficient again. Rebuild and open the gates in 10 - 20 years... hopefully wiser

Charity begins at home... We are broke... abandon all overseas military engagements and rebuild America.
 
"We are broke... abandon all overseas military engagements and rebuild America."

Most of our major companies are multinational. You think everyone would stop buying stuff from Chindia and buy from America, at 10 times the cost???

And you are basically saying that we will no longer export anything?

Sorry, but the govt cannot tell business what to do. They will just take those jobs and close up in the USA and go where it is reasonable.
 
Exactly.
That strategy is OK if you're just starting out, which India was at that time. It's suicide if you're already fully integrated into the world economy.
Think the US can get along without Blackberries from Canada, the cars we import from Japan and Germany, or the consumer goods from China, Korea and Taiwan?
And, do you think the world will sit by and continue to let Microsoft and Intel and GE and Google and Ebay and Boeing and all of our drug companies continue to dominate if we close off our borders to imports?
This is madness: the road to poverty.
 
Yeah that strategy worked really well, currently India's GDP per person is under $1000/ year and they have been growing like crazy over the past decade.

I sure hope the US closes off the borders so we can achieve those results.

Free trade makes each country better off, take an economics course please.

5yr
 
The same phenomenon is well documented in Latin America with the dependencia economic theory but it only works with those economy's that are largely commodity based. Shutting them off to global trade forces them to develop a simple manufacturing base and an infrastructure to support it rather than just selling more and more of their commodities flooding the market so they can buy the latest Deere tractor from the US (you have to sell a hell of a lot more peanuts than shoes for example to buy a tractor). If the US tried the same thing it would devastate our own economy and the global economy and we would lose the few advantages that we current enjoy when global growth resumed.
 
A commodity-dependent country is the only place where high tariffs might work.
Being tied to a commodity is a tough nut to crack, though. Not sure how you get around how that distorts everything.
 
Is there some kind of unnatural force that makes people want to follow India? People in So. Cal are doing Yoga, one guy was telling me about his guru, she was a Jew hater!! Jew hatred from India, oh yeah, like Jews are a big influence there.... and stories about one person bathing in the Ganges and a guy ten feet upstream is taking a shit are enough to tell me that I don't EVEN need to visit there and I don't want to hear about their belief systems..

The US could accomplish manufacturing revival after our incomes fall so far that our wages would make it unattractive to outsource.. that will happen naturally...
 
Quote from Eight:

"... The US could accomplish manufacturing revival after our incomes fall so far that our wages would make it unattractive to outsource.. that will happen naturally...
More...

Our politicos are trying like Hell to prop things up above that, but it won't work. 500 million ambitious workers in low labor cost countries are a force like gravity... can't be denied.
 
To stop useless wars you're going to have to deal with the powerful evangelical imbecile power structure that supports the military/industrial complex and the powerful parasitic foreign lobby in congress that formulates all foreign policy.

Afghanistan is going to destroy what little is left of the middle class but the Evangelical imbeciles and the parasitic lobby could care less.

Shutting down military spending would save about $1 Trillion a year.




Quote from PocketChange:



Charity begins at home... We are broke... abandon all overseas military engagements and rebuild America.
More...
 
My Point was not to follow India.

My Point was for the US to become self sufficient again. Manufacturing in the US creates jobs... Answering calls and providing support provides more jobs. "Home Spun" was just a quote from the movie that struck me as such a simple solution.

Products will cost more for the consumer but there will be more US consumers.


Put India aside and consider our work force as a commodity.

No brainer for the multinationals...
Duh.. should I pay US rents and hire 500 workers for $10M / month or do I do it offshore for less than $1M and receive additional tax benefits? Multinationals are already setup to sell to the US and manufacture everything offshore. We no longer manufacture... we assemble products using foreign components.

Even the FDA outsources their testing labs to India. When our government chooses to ship jobs offshore how do we not follow their example?
 
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