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Yeah, but I'm not naive enough to think this will get passed soon. The problem with the US is that its manufacturing base has been so hollowed out it has becom

Yeah, but I'm not naive enough to think this will get passed soon. The problem with the US is that its manufacturing base has been so hollowed out it has become reliant on its treasury bonds + QE money printing fed (backed by its military) and financial hegemony (think Goldman Sachs) that results from it. The ftt got passed in the EU because Germany (which runs the EU, mostly) actually still makes things. They don't need the world to transact their bonds in order to stay liquid.

dantillberg 11y ago
I was curious about this conjecture that the US doesn't make things, while Germany does. So I dug up [0], a table of "Manufacturing, value added (current US$)", and here are the top five countries for 2013: 1: China $2.9bn, 2: United States $1.9bn, 3: Japan $904m, 4: Germany $745m, 5: Korea $368m Manufacturing in Germany may contribute a higher percentage of GDP, but it does not appear to have a larger (in dollars, according to this data) manufacturing base than the US in absolute terms. [0]: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD?order=wbapi_data_value_2013+wbapi_data_value&sort=desc http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.CD?order=wba...
- deleted 11y ago
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- jazzyk 11y ago
  It would be hard to expect Germany to produce more in absolute terms, with Germany's population being 25 % of US population (US=320M, Germany=80M). With its population 4x higher, the US only produces 2.5x more stuff. That's a huge difference.
  - kasey_junk 11y ago
    It's a huge difference but it isn't particularly telling about any larger points. A large component of US output is agricultural or natural resources which are not included in that number (nor is software for that matter).