I get what you're saying, but what I mean is that China is headed for decline first and foremost. It's not happening now but it'll come and hit hard for China. Any strength China is gaining now is only as strong as their workforce is young, and they have fewer babies per year now than they do elderly people entering retirement.
I'm not offended by the prospect of China making economic gains, because they just make up bullshit to pad their waning wealth. Remember the ghost cities they built to inflate their GDP? They might be gaining some strength, but they bullshit their numbers to look better off than they are.
And I don't see Africa becoming a major hub for factory labor, it's a continent known for having few resources, save for chromium mines, gold & diamonds, and really shitty labor. Could Africa improve? Possibly.
India is a better prospect for your cheap lightbulbs but they fucking hate China's guts, so who knows how well that could turn out.
No doubt China was heading for a decline - everyone was screaming about how bad their debt was and getting ready for the "great collapse". And now we have piled on more debt than they did and it should make us blush.
But is it really debt?
I've kept track of china for a long time, and yes I am familiar with the ghost cities, but at least they have something solid for the debt - i.e. a building. I'd sure rather have an empty city that could be filed rather than 3 trillion USD laying on a desert in the middle east as wasted munitions.
It is very hard for China to collapse because it is a global engine no matter how bad their debt; and the USAs argument that they were padding SOEs with free money has now gone out the window with the huge tax breaks we gave corporations and the billions we've handed to companies with essentially no requirement for payback. The USA is a global engine also.
It raises an interesting question of whether there is any point in paying back any debt if we all know it can never be repaid and should have us look at monetary policy in a different fashion - and thus we come back to the inflation matter. It raises the point of why bother with taxation at all if we can print and keep inflation under control. Can we? If we view debt as assets then what did America buy with it's debt? I think we spent it poorly, but really, we don't need to pay it back and other countries are starting to call our bluff. The 2008 blast took us into territory we could never come back from - we used the USD - the worlds currency - and gave ourselves 4 Trillion for nothing - and we didn't pay it back and lied that we would - so every other country kind of is a little pissed off at this as well hey, why do these guys have the keys to print machine and we don't?
One way to get rid of excess cash is to tax the shit out of where the money ends up - corporates. Or we tax everyone to death to squeeze out the money and burn it. Or we arrive at a new monetary policy, globally. Because the USD is everywhere and it is distorting everything.
All I can say is I am uncomfortable with the inflation that is happening at the moment and I am noticing it in the products I use to make a living. There are reports afoot that some supply shocks will loosen the noose on inflation and we will see some slowing down. If you are low income you will notice it far more, but it certainly is rising.
I fear we've entered into a territory where all countries are now going to spend; no one is going to hold back printing and some other method of controlling inflation is going to be required. And what that is I do not know; I fear burdensome taxes and I would scream about it if I actually had a better idea. And I don't.
I have a small nest egg and I am literally watching it devalue in real time; and I am fighting the "fight or flight" urge to put it somewhere to make more than the real inflation.
So I'm sitting on the fence watching. Perhaps not the most ideal strategy, but I do not like to act until I think I can see what is on the horizon, and I certainly do not.
In 2020 when they turned the taps on I literally stepped back from the TV and said "Are you fucking crazy??" and since then its been crazy town.