Could you elaborate? Are you talking about the number of people? I feel like some other low-tech jobs, like truck driving or cleaning people, are more wasteful. Say, for example, that the 3.5 million truck drivers become automated out of a job then they work in finance, technology, etc., wouldn't society be better off?
Consider, for instance, that a company like Renaissance Technologies has over 100 PhD's in physics and math.
Say, for example, that the 3.5 million truck drivers become automated out of a job then they work in finance, technology, etc., wouldn't society be better off?
Is this even attainable?
Is a high-tech driven economy even a mass employer?
The primary (agrarian), secondary(industrial), ternary (services) sectors and economies served well the humanity over the past centuries esp accommodating and absorbing the exponential growth in population during the 20th century and onward but will the nascent knowledge based (quaternary) economy be able to keep it going or more than 6 bln humans have to suffer greatly to earn just to survive and have a sustenance level of income?
I have my deep doubts about this prospect and I believe that at least that having a knowledge based economy doesn't need all this amount of people on Earth to advance and that the transition from a consumerist led mass market to a non consumerist small one is going to be very painful if we haven't addressed the structural problems in the global economy esp. income inequality and wealth hoarding by the 1%.
I'm at Goldman this summer and come from a pure mathematics background (in an area that's not very quant-focused, by choice). The first part of the article is unequivocally true. Most in my area are incredibly interesting, diverse individuals with non-finance backgrounds.
I think it's somewhat fitting that these comments are made at the best university in China, however. It's emblematic of one of Goldman's recruiting challenges: those who have done interesting things prior to college, often continuing through college, may be less likely to get into top schools and if you aren't from a top college it's demonstrably harder to get your foot in the door with these summer internships.
This is one of the recruiting challenges to solve and companies have not that much of a incentive to alter it. As most of us agree, colleges has simply become filters and kind of a costly filter from the students perceptive for most of the cases.
The PPP reference is about as worthless of a concept as you could get in measuring economic scale.
If I make $80,000 and my cup of coffee costs $4, and the person in China makes $4,000 but their equivalent cup of coffee costs $0.10 - they'd have you believe that person has a meaningful purchasing power advantage.
Right up until that person earning $4,000 tries to buy a BMW, take a vacation to Paris, or save more than $400 per year.
The last five years of China's growth has been entirely fake. Their return on invested capital has plunged, and it now takes an extreme amount of debt to generate each dollar of GDP growth. Their economy stopped growing normally with the end of the global consumer boom in 2009. They've spent the years since accumulating one of the greatest piles of debt in world history. Within two to three years, they'll be the most indebted nation, with their total debt to GDP ratio already exceeding that of the US.
It now takes $4 to $5 trillion in new debt per year, just to stay near their 6%-7% GDP growth target. Put another way, they have to take on $7+ of new debt for every $1 of GDP growth.
Their PMI, electricity usage, imports, exports, and real estate market are all signaling imminent disaster. Up next their record-shattering stock market bubble is going to go bust, causing trillions of dollars in damage.
The next 20 years are going to be extraordinarily painful for China. They're making the same mistakes Japan did, except they're doing it at warp speed, and with a billion very poor people to deal with.
I'm not sure where you got your numbers for China's debt from. The IMF says that china's debt has decreased (from 26% to 19%), while the US's has stayed the same (~100%):
General government gross debt [Percent of GDP]
Country Year 2012 2013 2014 2015
China 26 23 20 19
United States 102 104 106 107
If you make 80k and your "average life package" costs 40k/year, and a Chinese makes 4k but the same package costs 1k/year, we'd all say that the Chinese is way better off than you. PPP is not the "cup of coffee index", nor the Big Mac Index.
Currency exchanges are meaningless when you're talking about quality of life and purchasing power, and PPP is meaningless when you're talking about total production.
On the other hand, you did the remarkable feat of using an example of when PPP is being used CORRECTLY (comparing purchasing power and quality of life per person) to argue against using it.
[Edit] Besides the PPP issue, I agree with the rest of your post, China is desperately looking for a way out of the demographic and political trap it dug itself into.
I'll disagree strongly here if the $80K and $4K are after tax. $40K in savings with an average life is highly preferable to $3K in savings with an average life. Yes there are smaller impacts to immediate choices, but I'd bet on the $40K to have a higher impact in the future. PPP is very sensitive to things like rapid economic growth, changes in immigration, changes in popularity of location, etc. You could very quickly find $3k/year of savings obliterated if that $1K goes to $4K. It's a lot harder for a $40K cost of living to go to $60K or $80K.
"$40K in savings with an average life is highly preferable to $3K in savings with an average life."
Your comparison is meaningless, unless they are in the same country with the same cost of living.
"You could very quickly find $3k/year of savings obliterated if that $1K goes to $4K. It's a lot harder for a $40K cost of living to go to $60K or $80K."
Again, meaningless, unless they are in the same country with the same cost of living.
