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computer parts
Nov 18, 2010

PLEASE CLAP

Zarin posted:


To bring this back to China, a lot of the safety videos I've seen that (appear to be) from China seem like they are still in the "throw more people at it" stage of industrialization. Is this true, or is automation catching on very heavily there as well?

China's still heavily urbanizing, and that means that lots of people (hundreds of millions in this case) are moving to the cities, which produces surplus population and decreased wages. There's no reason to automate right now, at least in urban areas.

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Crashrat
Apr 2, 2012

computer parts posted:

China's still heavily urbanizing, and that means that lots of people (hundreds of millions in this case) are moving to the cities, which produces surplus population and decreased wages. There's no reason to automate right now, at least in urban areas.

China was the largest purchaser of industrial robots in 2013 with roughly 20% of the worldwide share of industrial robots going to China alone.

Concomitantly China's "lets Great Domestic Everything Forward" idea has caught on with robotics as well, which has led to a burgeoning domestic robot manufacturing industry that's largely propped up by government intervention. So much like everything else with China it's impossible to know just how much of the demand is market based.

But what's undeniable is that China is putting a LOT of robots to use.

Fojar38
Sep 2, 2011


Sorry I meant to say I hope that the police use maximum force and kill or maim a bunch of innocent people, thus paving a way for a proletarian uprising and socialist utopia


also here's a stupid take
---------------------------->
Isn't automation only a productivity boost if you have a large, highly skilled, and well-educated labor force that can capitalize on it? I don't see how kicking a bunch of Chinese workers out of the factories and replacing them with robots increases the productivity of said Chinese workers unless they all move on to more skilled jobs which I would bet the vast majority are unable to perform.

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe

quote:


America, China, and the Productivity Paradox

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NEW HAVEN – In the late 1980s, there was intense debate about the so-called productivity paradox – when massive investments in information technology (IT) were not delivering measureable productivity improvements. That paradox is now back, posing a problem for both the United States and China – one that may well come up in their annual Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

Back in 1987, Nobel laureate Robert Solow famously quipped, “You can see the computer age everywhere except in the productivity statistics.” The productivity paradox seemed to be resolved in the 1990s, when America experienced a spectacular productivity renaissance. Average annual productivity growth in the country’s nonfarm business sector accelerated to 2.5% from 1991 to 2007, from the 1.5% trend in the preceding 15 years. The benefits of the Internet Age had finally materialized. Concern about the paradox all but vanished.

But the celebration appears to have been premature. Despite another technological revolution, productivity growth is slumping again. And this time the downturn is global in scope, affecting the world’s two largest economies, the US and China, most of all.

Over the past five years, from 2010 to 2014, annual US productivity growth has fallen to an average of 0.9%. It actually fell at a 2.6% annual rate in the two most recent quarters (in late 2014 and early 2015). Barring a major data revision, America’s productivity renaissance seems to have run into serious trouble.

China is witnessing a similar pattern. Although the government does not publish regular productivity statistics, there is no mistaking the problem: Overall urban employment growth has been steady, at around 13.2 million workers per year since 2013 – well in excess of the government’s targeted growth rate of ten million. Moreover, hiring seems to be holding at that brisk pace in early 2015.

At the same time, output growth has slowed from the 10% trend of the 33 years ending in 2011 to around 7% today. That downshift, in the face of sustained rapid job creation, implies an unmistakable deceleration of productivity.

Therein lies the latest paradox. With revolutionary technologies now driving the creation of new markets (digital media and computerized wearables), services (energy management and DNA sequencing), products (smartphones and robotics), and technology companies (Alibaba and Apple), surely productivity growth must be surging. As a modern-day Solow might say, the “Internet of Everything” is everywhere except in the productivity statistics.

But is there really a paradox? Northwestern University’s Robert Gordon has argued that IT- and Internet-led innovations like automated high-speed data processing and e-commerce pale in comparison to the breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution, including the steam engine, electricity, and indoor plumbing. He maintains that, although these innovations led to dramatic transformations of the major advanced economies – such as higher female labor-force participation, increased transportation speed, urbanization, and normalized temperature control – these changes will be extremely hard to replicate.

Indeed, as taken with today’s revolutionary technologies as we are – I say this staring at my sleek new Apple Watch – I am sympathetic to Gordon’s argument. If US productivity figures are to be taken at anything close to face value – a persistently sluggish trend interrupted by a 16-year spurt that now appears to have faded – it is possible that all America has accomplished are transitional efficiency improvements associated with the IT-enabled shift from one technology platform to another.

Optimists maintain that the official statistics fail to capture marked quality-of-life improvements, which may be true, especially in the light of promising advances in biotechnology and online education. But this overlooks a much more important aspect of the productivity-measurement critique: the undercounting of work time associated with the widespread use of portable information appliances.

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the length of the average workweek has held steady at about 34 hours since the advent of the Internet two decades ago. Yet nothing could be further from the truth: knowledge workers continually toil outside the traditional office, checking their email, updating spreadsheets, writing reports, and engaging in collective brainstorming. Indeed, white-collar knowledge workers – that is, most workers in advanced economies – are now tethered to their workplaces essentially 24 hours a day, seven days a week, a reality that is not reflected in the official statistics.

Productivity growth is not about working longer; it is about generating more output per unit of labor input. Any undercounting of output pales in comparison with the IT-assisted undercounting of working hours.

China’s productivity slowdown is probably more benign. It is an outgrowth of the Chinese economy’s nascent structural transformation from capital-intensive manufacturing to labor-intensive services. Indeed, it was only in 2013 that services supplanted manufacturing and construction as the economy’s largest sector. Now the gap is widening, and that is likely to continue. With Chinese services requiring about 30% more workers per unit of output than manufacturing and construction, combined, the economy’s structural rebalancing is now shifting growth to China’s lower-productivity services sector.

China has time before this becomes a problem. As Gordon notes, there have been long-lasting productivity dividends associated with urbanization – a trend that could continue for at least another decade in China. But there will come a time when this tailwind subsides and China begins to converge on the so-called frontier of the advanced economies.

At that point, China will face the same productivity challenges that confront America and others. Chinese policymakers’ new focus on innovation-led growth seems to recognize this risk. Without powerful innovations, sustaining productivity growth will be an uphill battle. China’s recent shift to a slower-productivity trajectory is an early warning of what may well be one of its most daunting economic challenges.

There is no escaping the key role that productivity growth plays in any country’s economic performance. Yet, for advanced economies, periods of sustained rapid productivity growth have been the exception, not the rule. Recent signs of slowing productivity growth in both the US and China underscore this reality. For a world flirting with secular stagnation, that is disturbing news, to say the least.


Read more at http://www.project-syndicate.org/co...oz1BUZ855EDv.99

Crashrat
Apr 2, 2012

Fojar38 posted:

Isn't automation only a productivity boost if you have a large, highly skilled, and well-educated labor force that can capitalize on it? I don't see how kicking a bunch of Chinese workers out of the factories and replacing them with robots increases the productivity of said Chinese workers unless they all move on to more skilled jobs which I would bet the vast majority are unable to perform.

Because individual market actors don't care about those workers who are displaced; the individual market actors only care about undercutting the market for iWidgets on Alibaba.

GlassEye-Boy
Jul 12, 2001

Zarin posted:

Yeah, and the next logical question is, "What is everyone doing now that we've automated everything that used to occupy all their time?" That gets uncomfortable quick since I don't think too many Very Serious Policy People are looking at this hard (yet?).

To bring this back to China, a lot of the safety videos I've seen that (appear to be) from China seem like they are still in the "throw more people at it" stage of industrialization. Is this true, or is automation catching on very heavily there as well?

Automation is certainly getting a lot of attention and the government at least is making it a major part of their planned development policy. However, how much automation is actually being used is hard to say. As a personal anecdote, I'm working at one of the largest industrial level 3d printing developers in China and from what I've seen adoption of 3d printing technology in China is still fairly slow.

Teal
Feb 25, 2013

by Nyc_Tattoo
I am sorry to take this deficit spending offtopic even further but I am genuinely curious about it.

What in particular did Greece do wrong that their deficit spending ended... well, the way it ended? Did they have to borrow for too high cost? Did they borrow too great volume in general? Did they handle the money they borrowed badly? Or can it just not be pinned to any particular issue and they just hosed up?

Mr. Nice!
Oct 13, 2005

c-spam cannot afford



Teal posted:

I am sorry to take this deficit spending offtopic even further but I am genuinely curious about it.

What in particular did Greece do wrong that their deficit spending ended... well, the way it ended? Did they have to borrow for too high cost? Did they borrow too great volume in general? Did they handle the money they borrowed badly? Or can it just not be pinned to any particular issue and they just hosed up?

Greece had a few problems: 1. massive corruption leading to declining revenues; 2. forced austerity in the face of 1; and the inability to fix themselves because they were stuck on the euro.

Shadoer
Aug 31, 2011


Zoe Quinn is one of many women targeted by the Gamergate harassment campaign.

Support a feminist today!


Mr. Nice! posted:

Greece had a few problems: 1. massive corruption leading to declining revenues; 2. forced austerity in the face of 1; and the inability to fix themselves because they were stuck on the euro.

They also were cooking the books for a while. People who were able to do basic math and had some knowledge of Greece realized that Greece's numbers were bs, but no one could really say for sure how bad things were until it was finally revealed what Greece's situation was. And when it was revealed, well it was clear the Greeks were hosed and there weren't a lot of options for them at that point.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Crashrat posted:

The WSJ article you quoted is utter crap, but that's what I'd expect from the WSJ.

The article focuses on how they just need current workers to eek out more finished goods. There are endless studies that show once you meet a certain number of hours worked - usually around 50 per week - your productivity drops. The problem here is that a lot of companies would rather just use salaried workers as disposable cogs. They bring them on salaried & FLSA exempt and then demand they basically bust rear end at 80-100 hours a week. The workers do their best till they burn out and are quickly replaced. The recent big expose on Amazon is a great example of how this works in corporate America.

Thus the lack of productivity gain isn't because of lazy workers - it's because of greedy company leadership that doesn't want to maintain a proper level of workers at reasonable pay. Workers haven't had a fair share of productivity gain in America since the early 70s when wage growth fell flat and productivity continued to climb. Now wage increases, when inflation adjusted, basically turn out either flat or negative

So for over 40 years productivity has continually climbed while workers haven't shared in any of it. Now the productivity growth is still occurring, albeit not at the same *very* high pace it once was and despite the highest level of productivity ever measured - and its still growing - workers are being asked to work even *more* hours all while watching the amount of money they take home stay the same or go down.

It's almost as if workers aren't lazy...they're just working hard enough to not get fired because if they bust rear end they don't see any difference in their paycheck.

Academic economists have been pointing this out for an extremely long time while corporate management teams just ignored it. That chicken comes home to roost at some point.

I was kind of surprised it took that long for someone to say anything from WSJ is crap.

Not that it really mattered. Again, someone said productivity was down, you said 'no it's not' and posted a too broad chart showing, yes, productivity has been going up, up, up, except for the last 5 or so years. Which is important because that's what we're referring to when we say productivity is declining and not what the numbers were in 1983.

But to contribute to your post - yes, the WSJ takes a simplistic approach with their rationale in that while higher productivity does result in higher wages - that hasn't been happening for awhile. Greedy corporations are partly to blame. However healthcare is also a pretty big reason why the massive productivity gains since 2000 haven't resulted in higher wages.

And to source my claim (I didn't quote the WSJ):

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

Specifically...

quote:

According to BLS-generated cost indexes for wages/salaries and total benefits, benefit costs have risen about 60% since 2001 (when the data series began), versus about 37% for wage and salary costs. (Those indexes do not take inflation into account.)

So according to their numbers about half of any wage increases have been eaten up by non-cash benefits, of which employer sponsored healthcare is the greatest component. It's a distant second to deficits, but I do enjoy the economics of healthcare too.

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010
I saw someone with a minor in economics posting about a "Social Security Trust Fund' so I thought "Who boy. What an idiot, I better jump ahead a few pages while people put him straight."

Nope still here.

Hey, dude, go punch all your economics professors in the face because they ripped you off.

There is no SS trust fund. Social Security is a tax. It is income to the government. Social Security benefits are paid out through regular appropriations just like any other government spending. Social Security is backed by the full faith and credit of the US ability to tax it's constituents. Just like cash money or T-Bills.

Suggesting that SS be invested in the Stock Market is suggesting that the US Government take partial ownership of all publicly traded US Corporations. A communist is you.

Now go away and get a real education.

e: SS is also not invested in treasuries. The government is not going to lend itself money at interest. That it then has to tax people to pay for. The entire concept is ridiculous.

Social Security is a tax. It is called the Social Security Tax. There is no trust fund. It is income to the government. Social Security benefits are made out based on the US ability to tax it's population. These two numbers (the amount collected and the amount paid out) do not have to be equal. Social Security cannot 'go bankrupt', it is not a bank it is a law. Although, just like any law, it can get repealed or modified.

Murgos fucked around with this message at 15:12 on Aug 31, 2015

Necc0
Jun 30, 2005

by exmarx
Broken Cake

Mr. Nice! posted:

Greece had a few problems: 1. massive corruption leading to declining revenues; 2. forced austerity in the face of 1; and the inability to fix themselves because they were stuck on the euro.

This last part needs to emphasized. If they still controlled their own currency & central bank they'd at least be able to fix the situation. It'd be a really lovely fix that'd still be painful for everyone but it'd at least be an option. They don't have that though so in their case, yes, the national debt sort of IS like personal debt.

Killer-of-Lawyers
Apr 22, 2008

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2020
The government buys treasuries from itself all the time, though. Also, it is a tax, but the excess is required to be invested into government bonds. That's the trust fund. Anti debt guy is still an idiot for voting for Perot and probably being a libertarian, but there is a social security trust fund.

edit: I mean, honestly, the US government is the single largest holder of its own debt. That's pretty basic knowledge.

Killer-of-Lawyers fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Aug 31, 2015

Murgos
Oct 21, 2010

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

The government buys treasuries from itself all the time, though. Also, it is a tax, but the excess is required to be invested into government bonds. That's the trust fund. Anti debt guy is still an idiot for voting for Perot and probably being a libertarian, but there is a social security trust fund.

edit: I mean, honestly, the US government is the single largest holder of its own debt. That's pretty basic knowledge.

Right, but it's moving numbers from one column to the other. It's still paid for by taxes.

The debate is how much money Congress allows Social Security to take out of the general fund.

Krispy Wafer
Jul 26, 2002

I shouted out "Free the exposed 67"
But they stood on my hair and told me I was fat

Grimey Drawer

Killer-of-Lawyers posted:

The government buys treasuries from itself all the time, though. Also, it is a tax, but the excess is required to be invested into government bonds. That's the trust fund. Anti debt guy is still an idiot for voting for Perot and probably being a libertarian, but there is a social security trust fund.

edit: I mean, honestly, the US government is the single largest holder of its own debt. That's pretty basic knowledge.

Hey, I admit I'm not rational in my hatred of deficits and Ross Perot would probably have been a terrible President. My concern on SS is primarily that money taken in now for the program is used to fund other things that may or may not be necessary. When the time comes that payments outstrip revenue (probably around 2020) we'll need to pay that not from the mythical SS Trust Fund, but via the general budget that is already hundreds of billions in the red. Hence more debt - which may not be as cheap to service as it currently is.

So yes, it's all money trading hands within the government. But it still represents a very real expense that needs to be paid when the time comes. Or we'll just cut SS benefits by a third - which will happen right around the time most of us Goons retire.

namaste friends
Sep 18, 2004

by Smythe
'Government waste'. :bahgawd:

Raenir Salazar
Nov 5, 2010

College Slice

quote:

When the time comes that payments outstrip revenue

This is a myth.

OXBALLS DOT COM
Sep 11, 2005

by FactsAreUseless
Young Orc

Krispy Kareem posted:

Hey, I admit I'm not rational in my hatred of deficits and Ross Perot would probably have been a terrible President. My concern on SS is primarily that money taken in now for the program is used to fund other things that may or may not be necessary. When the time comes that payments outstrip revenue (probably around 2020) we'll need to pay that not from the mythical SS Trust Fund, but via the general budget that is already hundreds of billions in the red. Hence more debt - which may not be as cheap to service as it currently is.

So yes, it's all money trading hands within the government. But it still represents a very real expense that needs to be paid when the time comes. Or we'll just cut SS benefits by a third - which will happen right around the time most of us Goons retire.

It's also not rational to pull numbers out of thin air.

Fishvilla
Apr 11, 2011

THE SHAGMISTRESS






Krispy Kareem posted:

Hey, I admit I'm not rational in my hatred of deficits and Ross Perot would probably have been a terrible President.

Stop posting. You're making GBS threads up the China Economy Megathread with your knowledge of ~201: Macroeconomics for non-majors~.

Go to D&D to spread your half-baked ideology.

Vehementi
Jul 25, 2003

YOSPOS

Krispy Kareem posted:

I'm not rational in my hatred of deficits

I guess we're done here

Necc0
Jun 30, 2005

by exmarx
Broken Cake

Fishvilla posted:

Go to D&D to spread your half-baked ideology.

*ahem*

Dodoman
Feb 26, 2009



A moment of laxity
A lifetime of regret
Lipstick Apathy
Al Jazeera is reporting that people in China are being forced to confess that they were spreading false rumors about the stock market crash and the Tianjian explosion.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

Dodoman posted:

Al Jazeera is reporting get that people in China are being forced to confess that they were spreading false rumors about the stock market crash and the Tianjian explosion.

Yeah, there's been a couple reports of multiple people being arrested and indicted for spreading rumors and insider trading. :tinfoil:

Nonsense
Jan 26, 2007

Dodoman posted:

Al Jazeera is reporting that people in China are being forced to confess that they were spreading false rumors about the stock market crash and the Tianjian explosion.

So then China imprisoned all the crazy internet people, and also probably at least one serious blogger?

Peel
Dec 3, 2007

So what's going on with the Chinese economy?

Shifty Pony
Dec 28, 2004

Up ta somethin'


Dodoman posted:

Al Jazeera is reporting that people in China are being forced to confess that they were spreading false rumors about the stock market crash and the Tianjian explosion.

I thought that was pretty much par for the course for these sorts of scapegoat propaganda arrests, in just about any country that does them.

How are u
May 19, 2005

by Azathoth

Peel posted:

So what's going on with the Chinese economy?

It is bad.

Mozi
Apr 4, 2004

Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die
Nap Ghost
You're under arrest for spreading malicious rumors!

Nonsense
Jan 26, 2007

Mozi posted:

You're under arrest for spreading malicious rumors!

Obama stares longingly out a Beijing window.

trucutru
Jul 9, 2003

by Fluffdaddy

Peel posted:

So what's going on with the Chinese economy?

It's :perfect:

The only way it could be better is if they switched their currency to bitcoin

Peel
Dec 3, 2007

I heard they were having some problems, glad to hear they got them under control in time for the big parade.

Slaan
Mar 16, 2009



ASHERAH DEMANDS I FEAST, I VOTE FOR A FEAST OF FLESH

Peel posted:

So what's going on with the Chinese economy?

Market correction with Chinese characteristics.

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Mange Mite posted:

Barn door status: closed

Update:

poo poo just hit the fan. An rear end load of Chinese Ports other than Tianjin have stopped accepting all DG cargo both import and export. The few that are continuing to allow DG have major restrictions.

This was a big loving deal. It is now a BIG loving DEAL.

Mozi
Apr 4, 2004

Forms change so fast
Time is moving past
Memory is smoke
Gonna get wider when I die
Nap Ghost
So now there's a lot of high explosives just chilling on ships for the foreseeable future?

nerdz
Oct 12, 2004


Complex, statistically improbable things are by their nature more difficult to explain than simple, statistically probable things.
Grimey Drawer
Don't worry, huge rear end explosion accidents with ships loaded full of explosives never happened before.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010

If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Mozi posted:

So now there's a lot of high explosives just chilling on ships for the foreseeable future?

Stay safe, goons in Maritime Transportation. I know we have a surprising number of those (although it might go down in the near future :ohdear: ).

eviltastic
Feb 8, 2004

Fan of Britches
I skipped a few pages, but someone was asking about arrests earlier. Reuters just put this article up.

Reuters posted:

The head of hedge fund manager Man Group Plc's China business has been taken into custody to help authorities in a probe into recent market volatility, Bloomberg reported on Monday, while separately a local financial reporter confessed on national TV to having spread false information that caused "panic and disorder".
...
Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter, said Li Yifei, Man Group's China chairwoman, was assisting with police inquiries, noting this doesn't mean she faces charges or has done anything wrong. Reuters could not independently confirm the report.
...
Separately, Chinese police are looking into the spreading of rumors about the stock market, as well as other issues such as the fatal explosions at a chemical storage facility in Tianjin.

On Monday, Wang Xiaolu, a reporter for the Caijing business magazine, read a confession on national state television, saying he spread false information in his reporting of the stock market that had caused "panic and disorder".

"I shouldn't have sought to make a big splash just for the sake of sensationalism," he said.

It was not possible to verify whether Wang made his confession freely or under any coercion.

State news agency Xinhua said earlier that 197 people in total have been punished in the rumor campaign.

link

Ceciltron
Jan 11, 2007

Text BEEP to 43527 for the dancing robot!
Pillbug
We're all gonna be arrested.

Crashrat
Apr 2, 2012

BrandorKP posted:

Update:

poo poo just hit the fan. An rear end load of Chinese Ports other than Tianjin have stopped accepting all DG cargo both import and export. The few that are continuing to allow DG have major restrictions.

This was a big loving deal. It is now a BIG loving DEAL.

Do you have a link for that? I'd like to read it because Google isn't helping me here.

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coffeetable
Feb 5, 2006

TELL ME AGAIN HOW GREAT BRITAIN WOULD BE IF IT WAS RULED BY THE MERCILESS JACKBOOT OF PRINCE CHARLES

YES I DO TALK TO PLANTS ACTUALLY

Crashrat posted:

Do you have a link for that? I'd like to read it because Google isn't helping me here.
Best place for live news nowadays is Twitter. Banging 'china dangerous goods' into their search gave me this.

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