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posted by Fnord666 on Monday March 23 2020, @01:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the What-goes-around-comes-around. dept.

"Kentucky Republican Rand Paul is the first US senator to test positive for coronavirus, throwing an even greater sense of urgency into Senate negotiations over a massive stimulus package that had yet to come together Sunday afternoon.

A statement from Paul's office posted to his Twitter account Sunday said he was "feeling fine" and was "tested out of an abundance of caution." But some senators and aides are angry at Paul for not doing more to self-quarantine earlier and for potentially exposing senators to the coronavirus.

[...] Senate Republicans, emerging from their closed-door lunch where they received the news, were extremely unsettled.

GOP senators told CNN Paul was in the gym with colleagues Sunday morning, and several pointed out how close Paul had sat to others during Senate lunches in recent days. Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas said he saw Paul in the Senate swimming pool Sunday, according to a source in the GOP lunch.
"This is a different ballgame now," one Republican senator told CNN."

If one ignores the guidelines for social distancing like the above Senator, as well as the President in his daily briefing such as 6 foot separation and avoiding gatherings of more than 10 people, one may well expect to become infected. One's status and position will not provide protection.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/22/politics/rand-paul-coronavirus/index.html


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday March 23 2020, @04:01AM (11 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday March 23 2020, @04:01AM (#974309)

    In the long term, it makes sense to move manufacturing for products back to countries like the U.S. Another option would be to move manufacturing to countries with much lower labor costs than China, but factories will become even more highly automated than they are today, making labor costs irrelevant.

    Why would Chinese companies want to move manufacturing to the US or any other country besides China? This statement sounds completely arrogant, as if Western nations are the only ones that know how to set up factories. Chinese factories aren't run by Western companies; they're run by Chinese companies that Western companies have outsourced their operations to. How are you going to "move manufacturing back" when you don't have it any more, and you don't remember how to do it because you long ago laid off all the institutional knowledge holders that knew how to do it? Some manufacturing is still done in America, but I'm sure those companies are busy running their own operations, and have no desire to move into some totally different industry manufacturing something completely different. The fact is, all that stuff made in China is stuff that America no longer knows how to do, or for newer technologies, never knew how to do in the first place.

    Tariffs and lower transportation costs could counter the costs of stricter environmental regulations.

    So you want to set up big tariffs for Chinese-made stuff, hoping that somehow, magically, American companies will start making that stuff instead? This reminds me a lot of Robert Mugabe's thinking in Zimbabwe, that he could seize farms from white people who had been farming there for decades if not generations, then give it to black people who had never run a farm before, and somehow this was going to be successful, and of course it wasn't, it was a total disaster that resulted in massive hyperinflation.

    China has a good chance of getting away with it. As the chaos of the pandemic subsides, economic opportunities will be created. For all we know, China will be in a better position post-pandemic.

    They absolutely will. You might as well get used to thinking of China as the new sole superpower. This is what happens when one big, economically powerful nation manages to have halfway-competent leadership, and competing nations continue to shoot themselves in the feet and choose utterly incompetent leadership. China's made plenty of screw-ups, but when their competitors have absolutely no idea what they're doing, that's still good enough.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @04:20AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @04:20AM (#974317)

    The fact is, all that stuff made in China is stuff that America no longer knows how to do

    Your implication that entire industries migrate atomically is absurd. There's many fields where the same type of product is made in China for cheap, and also made in the US expensively.

    or for newer technologies, never knew how to do in the first place.

    Please, cite some examples. Can't wait.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pav on Monday March 23 2020, @02:29PM

      by Pav (114) on Monday March 23 2020, @02:29PM (#974420)

      China hasn't surpassed the US in many areas? You're kidding right? Other than the knowledge that authomatically comes from doing such massive production of goods and infrastructure, in a few short years they have more and better high speed rail infrastructure than the rest of the world combined, paradigm-busting artificial intelligence technology [medium.com], they're leaders in rare earth mining technology, are leaders in anti-ship ballistic missile technology [wikipedia.org]... their current crop are called "carrier killers" with a range that can reach almost the entire world from within the borders of China. Their biotech industry doesn't have as many controls so stem cell ltechnologies... not just using stem cells on knees etc... but lung regeneration, human genome editing in embryos, world leading genome editing and sequencing techniques, cloning of primates (and probably humans) etc... and those are just the things on the tip of my brain from reading sites such as this.

  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 23 2020, @06:33AM (7 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 23 2020, @06:33AM (#974345) Journal

    all that stuff made in China is stuff that America no longer knows how to do,

    That seems almost silly. A mere fifty years ago, China was pretty much incapable of heavy industry. Thirty years ago, they were getting clues. Then, all the rich people in the US hopped on board with exporting industry to China.

    The US, EU, and all the rest of the more-or-less developed nations in the world can relearn what they have "forgotten" in pretty short order. That is, it won't take fifty years to ramp up again.

    If the flow of industry were to be reversed, back into the US, we still have the expertise around to run a factory. Maybe we don't have the most expert people around anymore, in some cases. But we can do just about anything, or we can find the people necessary to get it done. One to six experts running operations, and training assistants, and in three years, we are a going concern again.

    That goes for just about anything. Iron, steel, tin, plastics, high tech, low tech, whether it be in the Sun Belt, the Rust Belt, east coast, west coast, Gulf Coast, or flyover country.

    All it takes is determination. We can do it. If we wait a hundred years before we decide to do it, then it would be a real bitch. No more experts, or they are so very rare as to make little difference.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @03:39PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @03:39PM (#974450)

      > back into the US, we still have the expertise around to run a factory
      For $95/hour vs $15/hour
      It keeps equalizing but not there yet

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 23 2020, @04:01PM (5 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 23 2020, @04:01PM (#974458) Journal

        I don't know where you get your $95/hr. Here, in Arkiesaw, with their right to work laws, the top dogs who get stuff done in factories may be getting half of that. Not likely, but maybe. Management? Hell, they're skimming everything they can off the top, but they aren't the experts I was referring to. Management, on a good day, can pour piss out of a boot, if the instructions are printed on the bottom. Men and women out in the foundry produce iron and steel, aluminum and glass, parts and components. Management produces nothing but bullshit.

        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @07:27PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @07:27PM (#974546)

          Yet you seem to keep supporting the system. I blame your ignorance, you THINK you're doing the right thing by voting for leopards, so it isn't your fault when they rip your face off.

          • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 23 2020, @07:34PM

            by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 23 2020, @07:34PM (#974548) Journal

            Maybe. And, maybe better the leopards that I know how to deal with, than the snakes in the grass who sneak up behind me and poison me.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 23 2020, @08:35PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 23 2020, @08:35PM (#974586) Journal
            Why do you seem to keep supporting the system, AC?
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @10:00PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @10:00PM (#974615)

            Ah the defenses of fools.

            What a sad state conservatives are in.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday March 23 2020, @10:32PM

          by PartTimeZombie (4827) on Monday March 23 2020, @10:32PM (#974636)

          I don't know where you get your $95/hr...

          It doesn't really matter what the exact number is. Once capitalism decided more money was to made from China, and the Chinese government made the deal that has given the west access, places like Arkansas become irrelevant.

          Unfortunately, in my view.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @06:08PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 23 2020, @06:08PM (#974506)

    "as if Western nations are the only ones that know how to set up factories"

    not now, but we were the only ones who knew how to do anything modern before sell-outs gave it away to the mongoloids.