"Oooh how I love arrogance when combined with ignorance."

From what Ive read of you thats already very obvious. You're also pretty good at each on their own though.

"Was Spain, Portugal, Switzerland laid waste in World War II? And Japan was totally brought to its knees. It suffered far more than say France did. Japan is doing great. Why isn't France? Germany was devastated more than nearly any European country and it's come back better than most. I don't think World War II is a good rationale"

And with which countres does Spain, Portugal and Switzerland trade? You dont think WWII had any real contributing effect on the economic ability of European countries vrs the US and you call me ignorant?

"The US certainly is built on the influence of Europe. No doubt about it. Therefore, one would thik that the "real thing"(TM) would be dominating right?"

Um no. Apple invented the GUI. Microsoft dominates. You suggest a far tighter coupling between being first and being on top than is true of any field or discipline. There are a variety of factors that determine the leader of a particular field, or in this case economic power, than simply being first. I suggested what most reasonble people would agree as being a pretty good hiccup in the growth of Europe (A world war in its back yard!) but clearly this is irrelevant to you. A hiccup which not only severly reduced the economic competitiveness of the states involved but did simultaneously provide an economic sweetspot for the US...but of course to you this is entirely inconsequential.

Your write off of Europe is far too simplistic and typical of the kind of whippersnapper state thinking that comes from countries so young. We've had people cross our borders for hundreds and hundreds of years. We're old enough and wise enough to know that they will be assimilated. We're confident in our ability to deal with change. We've done it for centuries. What you describe as old and tired is actually wisdom and self confidence a.k.a maturity. Something the US for all its contemporary might sorely lacks.

The author says " I believe that it is also too late for Europe to resort to a resurgent fascist movement as a means of cultural survival..... The population simply isn’t there and neither is the will to fight." As if this would be a good thing to undertake. A purge? Sounds alot like the kinds of arguments that drives hysteria and allows people like Hitler to do as they did.

"Trade deficits are largely a meaningless statistic because they effectively display the wealth of the importer vs. the wealth of the exporter."

No they dont. Wealth doesn't enter into the equation. A deficit can just as easily be funded by borrowing. And borrowing can be either good or bad. Trade deficits or balance of payments in general are highly meaningful statistics. They can tell you an awful lot about the economic policies and international competitiveness of the country concerned so long as the context in which they occur is properly considered.

"By all measurements, coming back in 50 years won't be necessary because Europe won't be enough of a player to even bother a comparison any more than making a comparison between the US and South America today is not worth the time."

You know you chastise someone else on this thread about their ability to provide evidence of their claims; perhaps you can provide evidence of this claim of yours. Ive yet to hear or read anything that has any significant weight or merit that suggests "by all measurements" Europe will be economically irrelevant in 50 years.

One of the primary reasons the US the invaded Iraq was to try and stave off a switch from the US petro-dollar to the Euro petro dollar. Europe. Irrelevant? Hardly. The US is quietly shitting itself about the future expansion of the EU.

"One might argue that anyone who takes pride in how little of the world's resources they use is a symptom of the problem"

One might argue that if they were a complete moron. Lets see I've got a tenner in my pocket. It's got to last me all my life. My strategy therefore, cause im so clever, is too spend it all at once and worry about the future when it comes. Hey i know. Maybe if i close my eyes real tight and deny the future, it wont come at all. Yep, thats my brilliant strategy. Think it'll work...... ?

"According to the Cox survey, only 1 in 5 French households in 1999 owned a Microwave oven for crying out loud."

omg, no microwaves, whats the world coming too. Maybe thats because they dont all eat out of a freeze dried packet. Ever had a real banana? Its comes with a skin that you can peel and all. Microwave statistics. Love it. Yep, you guys are a real cultural beacon thats for sure.

btw when you make statements like this:
"So yea, in 50 more years, Europe will be pretty much spent as a major force. It's just a matter of calculating the population of native Europeans and going from there.
"

What exactly are you saying? Are you saying Muslims are intellectually and culturally inferior to native (does this mean Aryan) populations? How in your opinion is an influx of Muslims directly linked to the downfall of Europe?

" In secular Europe, it's a different matter. Nearly everyone is thinking about themselves or "issues" they care about."

So your position is that Europe is too self involved to be more self involved? Too busy concerning themselves with the issues that concern them to be concerned about the issues that concern you? How American is that rational?

"What do you think is the European cause for not reproducing? YOu don't think it could just possibly be because Europeans don't want to spend time and effort on other things other than their personal enjoyment of life? Do you have an alternative explaination?"

Yup. And the US also has the highest incarceration rates in the world and the highest number of murders per capita. So wtf does that tell you. You might be good at making them but you're sure not very good at raising them. If you want to talk about real selfishness around the issue then lets talk about that. Even if your own simplistic rationals were true re:euro birth rates at least they were making the choice and considering the child. Clearly given the stats ive mentioned Americans are both having kids and "considering only their personel enjoyment of life".

And you actually think your ways better. Squirt 'em out then if they haven;t already killed each other, lock em up. Nice. Thanks but I think we'll do it our way. Its a little more reasoned.

"Assinine is taking a quote and then going off onto a totally different tangent."

Actually asinine is defined as being devoid of intelligence.

"Now, do you want to comment on the quote? Or just be a shit thrower who does not know their ass from a hole in the ground?"

Um I already did. Nice potty mouth btw. Potty mouth....hmm... who else uses that term when they wish to pass themselves off as being morally superior and tiresomely condescending?

And you actually think your ways better. Squirt 'em out then if they haven;t already killed each other, lock em up. Nice. Thanks but I think we'll do it our way. Its a little more reasoned.

Love it!  More reasoned?  Is that like more suicidal?  Cause the death of your culture is suicidal.  Or how else should we put it?  More Noble? "There lies a noble people!  Too stupid to realize their own demize".

I like the last one!

Actually asinine is defined as being devoid of intelligence.

You have defined yourself.  Thank you.  Anything else you have to say, said behind the cover of darkeness and cowardess, just re-inforces the fact that you just stated of yourself.

I did not want to say it, but you did of yourself. Thanks for saving me the trouble.

Dr Guy, I think we are all relatively anon but I'd suggest my handle is alot more revealing than yours. Secondly i can see your working pretty hard (for you anyway) to bait me into a flame fest. I dont really have the time nor the inclination for this. You're simply not provocative nor interesting enough for me to waste my time.

You also seem to possess an innate ability to accuse others of behaviour which by and large only you are demonstrating. So Im just going to ignore you. Sorry. You're just too immature for my liking.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Discovery

Um no. Apple invented the GUI. Microsoft dominates.

Okay, fine! But Apple is ALSO an American company!

Actually Apple borrowed from Xerox, didn't they?

Actually Apple borrowed from Xerox, didn't they?

yup. solana filled em in as to what was available for the taking at xerox' parc lab.

Not to be too critical, but I notice you use the EU when it supports your assertions, and then decry it when it does not.

No. I'm just willing to show both sides of the coin, while some others seem to prefer to throw "black!" or "white!" at each other's head.

"Actually Apple borrowed from Xerox, didn't they?"

Technically some guy at pre-NASA. Commercially Id say Apple.

"while some others seem to prefer to throw "black!" or "white!" at each other's head"

a.k.a the joe user modus operandi. Im pretty sure it must say somewhere in the TOS "must supply own helmet". Standard fare at most blog sites.

Was Spain, Portugal, Switzerland laid waste in World War II? And Japan was totally brought to its knees. It suffered far more than say France did. Japan is doing great. Why isn't France? Germany was devastated more than nearly any European country and it's come back better than most. I don't think World War II is a good rationale.

Hate to nitpick, but... Spain was devastated before WW2 begun, through its own civil war. Switzerland was, of course, neutral, but it hardly ever had the population or the resources to be a major European power. As for Japan, I don't have the knowledge here, but I think its recovery had been aided by the US following the war.

Germany and its bounce-back following the war is an interesting case, but let's not forget that West Germany had been heavily financed and supported by the whole Western block, so that it could serve as a buffer between the Soviet block and the rest of Europe. The situation in East Germany (more than 15 years following reunification and billions of euros later) is in some cases worse than it is in former communist states (huge unemployment levels for example). Lets also not forget that Europe had been divided by the iron curtain for nearly half a century, and the countries of the former Soviet-block had only begun their road to recovery a decade (or even less) ago.

All in all, WW2 (and, to a similar degree WW1) has had a tremendously negative effect on Europe as a whole and it cannot be dismissed as a root of Europe's problems.

Anon

What the hell kind of word is "breeding" to use about human beings anyway. You are too far gone to even try and reason with.

oh get a bloody life - you whiney assed drivel spouting dog turd!

Dan Greene

How many products and goods and services can really say they're European?" The same could be said of the United States. That is if you've shopped at Walmart lately, and bothered to look at a label with the prefix MADE IN ...

You know you have a point here, I was commenting the other day about the fact that the UK manufactures very little these days; all the factories have closed and moved manufacture to China, eastern Europe, India etc. It really is a sad state of affairs.

I'm not trying to bash Europe. I am trying to understand. It's a continent that once absolutely dominated the world that today can't be bothered to produce most of the things they use and now can't be bothered to even reproduce.

And so it is dying..............

"Dan,

If you want to debate, you need to learn how to do it.
For example. Debates go like this:
[Evidence]
Example:
Fashion, ecological maintenance of the planet, safe and effective nuclear energy providing the bulk of their energy resources, light rail.
This is assertion."

You are right.

"You provide no evidence. (and in fact you are incorrect on all of these IMO). Only France gets a significant % of its energy from nuclear and it is in the process of migrating away from it. If you've been to Europe, which you clearly haven't given the above statement, you would definitely not consider it at the forefront of ecological maintainence. They only recently stopped putting lead in their gas. Light Rail has nothing to do with ecology and everything to do with having large cities that are close together."

I'm sorry you are correct, New York, NY is the fashion capital of the world, not Paris, France. Again I was just pulling items out of my head without doing research. I deemed it not necessary, considering the trivial nature of the argument. Please forgive me.

As for nuclear energy France is a model of how the vast majority of electricity could be produced in the United States, for stable energy prices with miniscule risks. No three mile island, no Chernobyl. A great majority of electricity in France does come from Nuclear Energy. If that is a fact in dispute please let me know. As for whether or not they are migrating away from nuclear energy in the long term, I'm not aware of why that would be, my supposition is that they may be doing that in favor of other means of electricity generation that are cheaper and have fewer negative effects on the environment. Namely, no radioactive waste, or emissions into the air.

"pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/reaction/readings/french.html"

Why does France not have to fight for oil? Because they're energy dependency is nuclear, not oil based. They made a decision in 1973 to break from the oil-violence-mid east instability cycle. For them it has worked out. What stands in their way is the accumulation of nuclear waste and what to do with it.

"Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved."

Notice the United States hasn't come up with any better solution for our own Nuclear energy production, except to bury it.

As for other light rail projects namely the TGV! Oh yes another French invention, yes cities are closer in Europe, but only if you measure by that ruler alone. Europeans are much better able to give up their "driving independence" in exchange for quick efficient and cheap transportation networks. Mass transit in Europe is far more advanced then inside our country mostly because it must be profitable in order to succeed. In the United States businesses are so large that they become unprofitable and have to be subsidized or bailed out. You can see examples of this in AMTRAK, and the airlines after 9/11. When a 20% drop in travel led to a huge bankruptcy wave by airlines, and of course the subsequent bailout.


"But I'm not going to go and do the research for you on every proclaimation you make."

Nor should you have to.

I'm not saying we don't produce anything good in this country or produce anything at all. That was never the case. But if you look at how much globalization has changed things for companies. How much work is not outsourced to other companies which outsource to other companies, versus that percenage which wasn't even necessarily tracked in 1995 or 1985 or 1975. There is no question the world marketplace has changed in a very capitalistic way.

Goods and services which are cheaply produced in one location tend to be produced there, and places that produce them less efficiently tend to trade away the production of those goods and services.

"said Dan as he types his message on an American designed PC built on American designed CPU displayed on an American designed graphics technology running on an American made operating system via an American made web browser on an American made website.."

I'll give you that America still has a very good run on the software development and production and operating systems as well. Thats yours I concede, even though I didn't make that point you did Brad , that nobody in Europe that I know of has been interested in competition with Microsoft, in China Microsoft only competes with itself via cloned and ill legit copies.

The hardware of a computer is an excellent example of what I mean. This Dell 4600 that I have. The keyboard was made entirely in china, from the keys to the metal inside, all Chinese. The only part that was likely American made was the USB port at the tip. That likely was an American made invention for about 6 months then it became produced in China. No facts, just supposition on the USB thing. The label "Made in China" is on the keyboard. Turn yours over and look for it, it's there.

The Mother board inside the box, I mean the actual printed circuit board, more then likely produced in China as well. Nearly anything that is produced in the millions is done in China, especially if its production is going to be a durable good, one that is produced for a year or two and in high quantity. If not the PCB's, the component parts, except for maybe a single digit quantity were made there also. If your circuit board was wave soldered in the USA then it's a high end rig. Usually some work especially developement or prototype work is done here. If not high end, even a mainstream PC 500-$1000, was likely soldered outside the US, literally hundreds of solder connections. That would be a service item rather then a good done in China.

These parts, the tiny chips, resistors, all the components that have a defect rate under .01% and a cost of less then a penny a part, these were made in China too. The power supply probably was made by a subcontractor and also made in China. The harddrive, made in China, the graphics card, possibly made in the United States because I have a Geforce 6600, and this is a typically value added product which has its value added here. However the component parts are again 99% foreign, with only a handful actually made here in the USA. The reason for it is again, the magnitude of production. Dell will sell millions of computers but Nvidia will only sell tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of a particular graphics card design if even that many. The profit per card is higher meaning that the production can still remain inside the US. The replacement mouse I have here that replaced the dead Dell one, you guessed it "MADE IN CHINA".

As for the design of the actual computer the outside box and perhaps the integration of components concept; That was likely done in the US, which is great, because it is a highly skilled profession, paying well, support a family, which in turn support the local economy in the long run. However, these types of design are increasingly being done overseas at an accelerating rate. Not just for Dell but any American company doing any type of work. It's competitive advantage, as other nations build a workforce with the skills for less, and can produce for less, the production flows there.

Just like medical procedures, performed by a doctor, also a professional skill, being done over in India for a fraction of the cost of being done here, so too will PCB design if it isn't already.

Lastly, I didn't just but the rig, Oh no, when you Buy Dell, you buy the customer service, which is you guessed it foreign serviced, the monitor, though I'm not turning it around, it's made in China too. The Intel P4 2.4 GHZ non HT processor may be one of the processors that was made in the US, at the time. Today though, like the DX4 processor and lots of other Intel products that are standard bulk manufactures these are no longer made here.

As for the servers that run your website, you maybe do your own hosting or are hosted by another company, anyway down the line somewhere is Chinese manufacturing, or foreign manufacturing. There are very few products that have no raw materials from another country to debate that is rather pointless even though your label is on the site, and the content you create is entirely yours, my point is. "Everything is connected."

How do I know so much about this, I work in electronic assembly, I'm a second generation electronic assembler, and the fact is very simply, just because it says Dell on it, and Dell is in TX, like every other product, a vast majority of the product is not American. Maybe they tested it in the United States, maybe they put it into a cardboard shipping box in the United States, maybe the marketing is entirely inside the United States. But as for how much of that company is American, I would remind you all that very few companies handle both the raw materials and products, as direct as Dell would us all believe. The majority of the weight and functioning of the box is as much Chinese in nature as American.

The global economy isn't like the railroads and steel economy of an American past, where the railroads used steam engines to haul the steel to make more rails and steam engines.

Downsizing, outsourcing, competitive advantage, have all made any complex product poly-heterogeneous (is that a word? ) at best.

I'll give you another example. At the place I work, we in Wisconsin, build a very important piece of medical technology, for Siemens, my company is not Siemens though. We take a blank PCB with no components on it whatsoever, only the silkscreen which is the white labeling for where components go. At this point these circuit boards are maybe a hundred or so dollars, then we place chip components on the top side, check it for errors, place them on the bottom side, check it for errors, palce thru-hole parts, then wave solder it, check it for errors, check the for in circuit errors, at some mechanical structuring for it, test it for functionality, place it into the unit's final chassis, test it inside a cold/hot chamber, box it up ship it to Germany. In Germany, they put the unit into it's outer shell and sell it as a Siemens product. The same way, Dell takes a computer built in China and sells it as an American product.

"They only recently stopped putting lead in their gas"

As for this, yea that's bad. However Europe as a whole has banished lead from soldering in their electronic manufacturing, if you consider lead is inside every electronic device, and would like to consider how many electronic devices exist in your house then you would expect the United States has done the same. Well think again. Lead in the air sucks and there is no question banishing it from gas is a good thing. However the average mile driven in Europe per capita is probably so much lower then in the United States that the levels of pollution are much lower anyway. But I do agree, every country could do more to help the ecology of the world.

What I don't see happening in ours is a consistent and dedicated resource devotion to clean energy both in our homes and automobiles. If you want to argue that Brad then we can. As for fuel economy standards.

Lead in gasoline was an American marketing virtue.

www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/Lead-Science.htm
www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog100/Lead-Ads.htm

As for its harm to you, only via long term exposure, since there is no mechanism inside the body to remove it. We work with 14lb bars of 63/36 lead/tin solder, as well as liquid lead/tin during the hand solder process, and the only health precautions we need to take are washing our hands before eating.

"Hydogen has been proven many times over not to be "economically" sound."
Show me one study, and then another. Until then, hydrogen powered fuel cell vehicles, are more efficient and if mass produced would be more cost efficient. Benefit the environment, reduce our consumption of foreign oil by leaps-bounds-bushels, and most importantly barrels, my point is, the Europeans are off to a head start on it. They also have a seemingly better acceptance of alternative energy forms.

"Show me where they haven't. Since I drove a car in 1969 with an average of 11.5 gpm. I now drive a car that gets 30 gpm. How is that "not" an increase? And I can site various makes and models that get better gpm than that!"

Oh ok, well I guess over 37 years an increase in the gpm of roughly double is an acceptable measure. Perhaps rather then an overwhelming increase in efficiency we can see from your example that you were driving a less efficient vehicle when prices per gallon were high and now that they are higher a vehicle that is modestly more efficient. Ok you win. Nobody believes that, considering the size and price of vehicles, that great strides in automobile engine efficiency is vastly better. But you're right going another few miles on your rig is ok for you, thats cool. I just don't think that since engine power has increased double in the last 15 years, that a growth rate of half a mile per gallon per year in fuel efficiency standards is an acceptable metric considering the increasing demand for fuel and a cleaner air country.

This year, the EPA is going to be revamping the way it tests those gpm standards and don't be surprised when the "real" rate of .5 miles per gallon per year, over the last 37, is closer to .4 or .3 or .2 miles per gallon per year. An increase yes, but not exactly something to be too proud of considering the design of economy vehicles in other parts of the world.

"Okay, fine! But Apple is ALSO an American company!"

May I ask if their keyboards are made inside the United States and if so does that make you feel better? Type faster maybe?

"More baseless claims: Europe in the lead of emissions free automobiles. Really? I must have missed all those European made hybrids and hyrogen cars. Where is your evidence to suppor that Europeans are 15 years ahead in Hydrogen technology? I'm not even saying you're wrong, but you just spout out this stuff with not even the slightest effort to back it up. The Wikipedia page on Hydrogen cars show the GM Sequel (Hydrogen car). If Europeans are so far advanced in this area, where is the evidence? Where are the production European cars running on Hydrogen? Because I'm pretty sure that you'll see cars from Toyoto, Honda, GM, and Ford that are production-level using Hydrogen in 10 to 15 years."

"The Wikipedia page"

OMG you mean that narrow good for nothing source of information on the internet? I never thought I'd hear you reference something from there. What, encyclopedia Britannica a little behind the tymes on Fuel cells? I'm just teasing you Brad.

By the way where are the hydrogen fueled cars in the United States? SleeperCell you got a link for that?

Are we talking about hydrogen fuel cell powered cars, hydrogen fueled cars, or something else?

BTW I believe I stated 5-10 years, which is aggressive at best.

So far America's best efforts have been E85 which is I think is a pretty good fix for automobile consumption but does nothing to move electricity generation off of coal which is just as hazardous as lead in gasoline. The other fix has been hybrids which increase the efficiency of a vehicle through out it's lifetime, until it gets handed down two or three generations and is on the road beyond 100,000 miles, in which case when it gets to me, or someone like me, and I can't afford to fix the $1000 electric component, it just becomes dead weight on a gasoline powered vehicle. Obviously this is a circumstance that isn't discussed, certainly not marketed that hybrids only work towards the goal of reducing emissions and improving mpg when the electrical part is maintained, and not disabled. Many vehicles are driven beyond the 100,000 mile mark, beyond their warranty, beyond the point at which they can be effective in reducing both the overall oil demand and pollution.

My point is E85 is a good solution right now for oil demand for automobiles. To fix the electricity demand which is expected to double or triple, no doubt because Gal CIV 4 will come out with realistic AI that won't give up like a human. If you guys can pull that off, I'll buy it. Anyway, fuel cell electricity production facilities are becoming a reality in Europe. These facilities combine hydrogen and water to create electricity, and they also are able to use electricity to split hydrogen and water, in a process called electrolysis. Anyway, doing that is a necessary first step to having a way of producing both electricity, as well as hydrogen, and oxygen, pressurize it, and have it available and on tap similarly to how a gas station has gasoline on tap.

Hence "why hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are 5-10 years further in development then anything available in the United States."

Without a place to fill up compressed hydrogen and compressed oxygen fuel cells are basically useless. You cannot charge a fuel cell battery in seconds like you can fill a compressed tank of a gas, nor can you refill it over and over again at a high rate. So the mere fact that the Europeans are building hydrogen fuel cell power plants, puts them ahead 5-10 years beyond the United States. The best efforts of the US automobile industry have been to lobby the hell against any effort to reduce oil consumption or stability in its attainment. Whether this is a good thing or not for you guys to decide. Personally whenever a special interest wins consistently via lobbying to kill anything that could offer competition even far down the road "seatbelts" on the tucker for example lol they should be suspicious.

Who stands to gain from no competition force to the oil economy. Well the oil companies that own the foreign refineries, the ship tankers, the local refineries, the pipelines, the thousands of semi tankers, the tens of thousands of gas stations.

In order for a fuel cell vehicle to successfully compete with a gasoline automobile. You have to be able to "gas up" which means compressed hydrogen and oxygen has to be stored or generated. Right now the only way to do that is via electricity, which means the oil companies would have to pay the electricity companies to generate the electricity. Not only that but for every trip made with renewable hydrogen and oxygen which by the way, where does this come from you ask? Water lol. H202, All you need to do to make it is add electricity to water and it makes itself. Then all you have to do is pressurize it. The recombination of the pressurized gasses reverses the process and provides the electricity. The electricity that powers a electric motor.

Why not just do solar? It's a tried method but solar power doesn't have the efficiency, and the storage capacity is also insufficient. With hydrogen and oxygen available nearly everywhere just like gasoline, and water are, this could be a real reality.

You're going to want links. I'm going to go looking for mine, it's been a while since I wrote about alternative energies give me the benefit of the doubt for a bit. I'll round up some links.

"You know you have a point here, I was commenting the other day about the fact that the UK manufactures very little these days; all the factories have closed and moved manufacture to China, eastern Europe, India etc. It really is a sad state of affairs."

Its only sad when people loose their jobs or livelihood. It can be exciting if a company makes the severance right, getting a new education, and finding something else that makes a person happy to work on. But you are right it can be sad or really suck too. A benefit of it though is that prices consistently drop as the products move to the places where they can be most efficiently manufactured.

It's reality no sense in hiding from it. The company I work for had to close their doors in one of their UK operations, not from their wrong doing but another company that ran into trouble with their government, not sure about the details but I think what is happening in the EU and UK is a wave of restructuring that occurred in our country directly a few months before and after 9/11. Since the economy of the EU is tied to Chinese and American markets it's sorta like a ripple on a sphere, that ripple started here, made it to China and then back to the UK.

Please nobody ask me for a fact there, it's just a supposition.