Jack Ma: America has wasted its wealth - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Jack Ma, one of China’s most successful and richest entrepreneurs, has responded to America’s growing globalization backlash, arguing that the superpower has benefited immensely from the process – but that it has largely squandered its wealth.

“American international companies made millions and millions of dollars from globalization,” Ma – the founder of Alibaba, the world’s largest online retailer – told participants on the second day of Davos. “The past 30 years, companies like IBM, Cisco and Microsoft made tons of money.”

The question is: where did that money go? It was wasted, Ma explained.

“In the past 30 years, America has had 13 wars at a cost of $14.2 trillion. That’s where the money went.” He also questioned America’s decision to bankroll Wall Street after the 2008 financial crash, arguing the money would have been better spent in other areas.

“What if they had spent part of that money on building up their infrastructure, helping white-collar and blue-collar workers? You’re supposed to spend money on your own people.”

It’s not globalization – and everything that comes along with it, like free trade and outsourcing – that’s to blame for America’s woes. It’s the way the country’s elite managed the process.

“It’s not that other countries steal American jobs; it is your strategy – that you did not distribute the money in a proper way.”



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#14877131
I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve never seen an American try to bargain for a lettuce at the supermarket. Seen plenty of Chinese try...

These two nations view money and wealth differently.
#14916966
I can agree with Jack Ma that the US did stupid things. It may not have been the only problem with globalism, but those mistakes were the bigger part of the resulting mess.

America's problem is that the current economic theory in use holds that Corporations exist solely to benefit their share holders. I have been told that the Founding Fathers disagreed with this in a big way. That is, in 1788 the writing of laws to codify how corps. would be set up, what protections they would be granted, and what purposes they would be expected to meet were left to the states. And that *every* state required that its corps. operate *in the public interest*.
. . . Now, that has been stripped away. Corps. are no longer required to operate in the public interest to keep the protections granted to them.
. . . So, Jack Ma says that the profits of the major Corps. were not distributed to the white and blue collar workers. Just how should this have been done? The Owners are selfish people who want to pay as little as possible to their workers and sell their products for as much as possible. Economic theory tells them that this *is totally as it should be*. Those same people also own the Congress and far from being willing to let Congress raise their taxes for the last 20 plus years; they have just made Congress give them a massive tax cut, on top of their already low tax rates.

As for the wars --- The figure of $14T seems high to me. But, that is not important.
What is important is the fact that those wars did a *huge amount of good* for some people. Which people you ask? Why, the shareholders of all the US Corps. that overcharged for the weapons that were expended in those wars.
. . That is, the same people who kept the inflated profits for themselves that came from globalization. The people who own Congress and now the Presidency.
#14917146
Xhina is a chimerical hybrid between early 20th century robber baron capitalism, Chinese-style corporatism and communist state planning. It's currently enjoying the bounty of the global infrastructure largely built by the Western world. As soon as it assumes more responsiblity on the world stage, we'll see what their plaintive refrain will be.

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