Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money

mleahy999 · Dec 31, 2008

Good article. Americans like to have it's ego stroked and not be told that we're on shaky ground. We're AmeriCans not AmeriCants.

pirc1 · Dec 31, 2008

pgabriel said:

About Wall Street jobs, wealth, and the cultural distortion of America:

I have to say it: you have to do something about pay in the financial system. People in this field have way too much money. And this is not right.

When I graduated from Duke [in 1986], as a first-year lawyer, I got $60,000. I thought it was astronomical! I was making somewhere a bit more than $80,000 when I came back to China in 1988. And that first month’s salary I got in China, on a little slip of paper, was 59 yuan. A few dollars! With a few yuan deducted for my rent and my water bill. I laughed when I saw it: 59 yuan!

The thing is, we are working as hard as, if not harder than, those people. And we’re not stupid. Today those people fresh out of law school would get $130,000, or $150,000. It doesn’t sound right.

Individually, everyone needs to be compensated. But collectively, this directs the resources of the country. It distorts the talents of the country. The best and brightest minds go to lawyering, go to M.B.A.s. And that affects our country, too! Many of the brightest youngsters come to me and say, “Okay, I want to go to the U.S. and get into business school, or law school.” I say, “Why? Why not science and engineering?” They say, “Look at some of my primary-school classmates. Their IQ is half of mine, but they’re in finance and now they’re making all this money.” So you have all these clever people going into financial engineering, where they come up with all these complicated products to sell to people.

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This is so on the money.(no pun intended) We are loosing our brightest minds to the high paying lure of Wall Street and its hurting us on both fronts.
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Yup, the best mind should be designing things and creating new things not trying to know how to manipulate money. If people like Newton, Einstein, etc were all trying to invent financial products instead of science, where would we be today?

fmullegun · Dec 31, 2008

pirc1 said:

Yup, the best mind should be designing things and creating new things not trying to know how to manipulate money. If people like Newton, Einstein, etc were all trying to invent financial products instead of science, where would we be today?
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They would have failed miserably because they did not have good people skills.

The real question is if they were in today's educational system where it takes till you are over 30 to do your own independant research what would they achieve.

wnes · Jan 1, 2009

fmullegun said:

If the Taiwan and Tibet situation did not exist the PRC mil would not be spending so much money on diesel/electric attack subs, fighter jets, and troop carriers.

They are not modernizing their military they are changing it from a huge land defense (civilian oppressor) to a offensive force.
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fmullegun said:

Any my point is their military is changing from the previous role of "taking care of their own" to an offensive role. Just because they have millions of poor and starving people does not mean they are not doing this.
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Considering historically China has not adequately protected its own interest and both Taiwan and Tibet are still China's internal problems, the Chinese are indeed taking care of their own with the upgrade in military.

fmullegun said:

Also I am not some scared american of China. I think they get way to much credit for being smart politcally. They make dumb moves all the time.
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Perhaps you should be scared of your own English.

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Be Nice to the Countries That Lend You Money

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