Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
Not just money, but goods. The funny thing is: What might be extortionate wages for you would support a family of eight here. But with the standards of living starting to normalize towards the middle (Chinese middle class and minimum wage are both growing), you'll see less and less offshore manufacturing.
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It will continue and simply move to the next cheapest location - Apple (et al) are not going to sacrifice that extra few pennies on an iPad by making it in the USA or Europe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by niky
We can do renewables, but we have to be prepared for an energy poor lifestyle as opposed to the current one in which we waste huge amounts of energy without a second thought.
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The irony is that you can't have the infrastructure for renewables without medium and heavy industry, and you can't run those industries on renewables - see the UK, Germany and Japan for worked examples.
Slightly OT - Last year uk.gov issued a report saying that with renewables UK energy bills would fall instead of the 16% or so annual rises we have seen recently. Everyone went "huh ?" as we looked at the part of the bills that goes to subsidies rising. So how did they come to this conclusion ? Simple - they imagined everyone would just be using 50% less energy, so we would be paying for less of the stuff.