Tham khảo tài liệu 'technology and the economy of the future_8', kinh tế - quản lý, kinh tế học phục vụ nhu cầu học tập, nghiên cứu và làm việc hiệu quả | THE LIGHTS IN THE TUNNEL 234 Trouble in China If consumer spending in the . and the rest of the developed world remains depressed China may ultimately find it difficult to sustain the growth it needs to keep its workers employed. Giant retailers in the United States will likely continue to exert extreme pressure on Chinese manufacturers to produce ever cheaper better and more sophisticated products. These businesses may have little choice but to turn increasingly to automation as a way to improve efficiency and trim costs. In a society that offers little in the way of a safety net the saving rate among Chinese workers might remain very high or perhaps even increase in spite of the government s efforts to somehow spur consumer spending. All this may lead to increased incidents of civil unrest and instability. Continuing Instability in the Financial Markets As everyone knows the current crisis began with the subprime meltdown. A case can certainly be made that stagnating wages played a role in the cause of that meltdown. Obviously low wages made it difficult for these people to repay their loans. Beyond that I think it is also true that to some degree the motivation behind subprime loan programs was the idea of the ownership society. Basically in light of increasing evidence that wages paid to average people no longer offer a likely path to success we turned instead to the promise of real estate speculation and tried to extend it to as many people as possible. Copyrighted Material Paperback Kindle available @ Amazon Appendix Final Thoughts 235 It didn t turn out well and the lesson is that virtually all asset values in our economy are based on the assumption that we are going to continue having a vibrant mass market economy supported by robust consumer spending. If that basic assumption is threatened we are very likely to see increased risk volatility and ultimately deflating values. The ownership society idea just isn t workable consumers need incomes and .
