Sorry to distract you from the "But teh labour is too expensive in Amercia" rant but a $3/h repair job in China is fine when you're on US$40K a year but when you're on US$2K it's just as expensive as the "hyper inflated cost of labour in America".
Economy scales, you're paying roughly the same in the US as the Chinese are in China. Any differences can be attributed to skill shortage/abundance. For a Chinese person, Chinese labour is not cheap.
This is nonsense. Manufactured goods are not radically cheaper in China than in the US. Labor is. Think about what you're saying for a second. Manufactured goods are highly transportable. If the exact same goods sold in China for a fraction of the price they sell for in the US, how long would it take for large importers to make a fortune arbitraging that price difference until the prices balance out? In fact, Walmart has already done this. The fact that China keeps its currency devalued against the dollar only exacerbates the matter. Labor is cheap in China. Goods and services that are labor-centric and based on local market pricing are cheap (food, housing generally) compared to a Western nation. But prices for manufactured goods are pretty similar to what they'd be anywhere else. Labor is cheap in China, EVEN FOR CHINESE PEOPLE. In that sense, a Chinese company will simply throw more manpower at something that in the US we would instead deploy more machinery and technology (e.g., construction, agriculture). And people in China do repair everything because taking it to a repairman is cheaper than buying a new one.
Obama, a strong supporter of Net Neutrality, expects to achieve this goal by appointing a Chief Technology Officer that would ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards.""Together, we could open up government and invite citizens in, while connecting all of America to 21st century broadband. We could use technology to help achieve universal health care, to reach for a clean energy future, and to ensure that young Americans can compete and win in the global economy"
Old programmers never die, they just hit account block limit.