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Is raising an American kid to integrate culturally and economically with Asia really that great of an idea when taking into account all that we know about the f
by euroclydon 15y ago
Is raising an American kid to integrate culturally and economically with Asia really that great of an idea when taking into account all that we know about the future?
Yes, China is a creditor, but global trade is probably set to wane with the increasing scarcity of fossil fuels. It will certainly become increasingly expensive to pump liquid hydrocarbons into jumbo jets and criss-cross the Pacific. I think forward looking parents will impress upon their kids the importance of local and regional relationships because long-haul transport of goods will likely be seen as a blip on the historical radar.
- sethg 15y agoMy impression is that the majority of global trade is either in the form of services, which involve only transporting bits (e.g., a US hospital emailing X-rays to an Australian radiologist); capital, which involves even fewer bits; and physical goods that can be transported cheaply by ocean freight and rail. (Shipping a standard cargo container from Asia to the US costs less than US$2000; think of how many iPhones can fit into a box that size.)
- jberryman 15y ago> Shipping a standard cargo container from Asia to the US costs less than US$2.00 That's amazing, can you point me to a source for that?
- sethg 15y agoSorry, US$2000. (Which is still amazing, given the size of the box, but not so much.) I got it from the “Recent liner freight rates” table on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Freight_market http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship#Freight_market) and misread the caption.