Economic differences...China and US...

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by Xist

Aren't the rich leaving France?

Would you stay if you were rich, and 75% of what you earn over 1 million Euro goes to the ever-greedy gov't who'll spend it on more debt and on importing ever more social losers ?

[Xist]

Originally Posted by euromodder

Would you stay if you were rich, and 75% of what you earn over 1 million Euro goes to the ever-greedy gov't who'll spend it on more debt and on importing ever more social losers ?

That is rhetorical, right?

While I imagine that French pride is as strong as any other known force, a Frenchman is still a Frenchman anywhere else, just presented with more opportunities to flaunt his outrageous accent!

[lowglider]

It`s nice to read people`s opinion across the Atlantic, here in Europe we face very similar problems like yours.

The thing is, Chinese labour is not nearly as cheap as it used to be, for instance in Shanghai the minimum monthly salary is around 200 dollars. I know it still sounds silly for us, but in other Asian countries where the workforce is also productive, you can easily get manufacturing workers for 35 USD per month. What this has done is that in recent years even the Chinese have started outsourcing.

As for the comparison to our countries, there is hardly any. China has 1.3 billion people, India has 1.2 billion. To try to compete with their workforces on pure manual labor manufacturing would be delusional, our economies can only survive on intelligent ingenuity and we must force our governments to start providing a good atmosphere for innovative businesses.
Although many do not agree with it, I strongly approve the loan the US government gave to Tesla Motors, they probably wouldn`t have survived without it and now look at the world changing potential the Model S has, I hope they make even better models in the future.

[redyaris]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

I don't know exactly who you are counting as "rich", but I don't think your argument is supported by facts.

First, I don't think the really rich ever actually vacation, they just buy homes in different places.

Second, for the prosperous to moderately rich, vacation location choices are far more likely to be based on climate & scenery than economics. If you want to go on a ski vacation, for instance, you go to places like Aspen, Whistler, or Gstaad - and the local economy in such places has very high levels of income inequality. Very few people, rich or not, take ski vacations in say Norway or Sweden.

Same for tropical vacations: most people head off to places which have a very high degree of income inequality - the West Indies, Mexico, Thailand,etc.

I do agree that most tourism is based on relativly low wages for the majority of workers in the tourist town itself, but many of the countries such as Switzerland and Austria... have relativley equitable societies even if workers in the tourist industry are low payed.
Swedes and Norwegens frequent there own ski areas in sufficiant numbers to sustain them because the average income is relativly high, just like there level of taxation...

Now what was it that Adam Smith said about the paying of Taxes...?

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redyaris

...but many of the countries such as Switzerland and Austria... have relativley equitable societies even if workers in the tourist industry are low payed.

Don't know much about Austria, but Switzerland - or at least the part of it I lived in, by Lac Leman - is far from being a model of income equality. There are a lot of rich to ultra-rich people living in mansions/palaces (literally, not McMansions) and driving Rolls, Bentleys, and Ferraris. There's an upper middle class who own what in the US would be typical suburban homes, which sell for (mid-2000s prices) roughly $1 million. And there are a lot of ordinary lower income folks getting by in small apartments, and people busking in the train stations for small change.

So you have Switzerland which is about as non-equal as you can get in a 1st-world country, vs Norway & Sweden. Both have snow, both have pretty decent mountains. Why does Switzerland get the world-class ski resorts, while the Nordic countries basically serve the domestic market?