Farewell to the G20 Freeloaders
Instead of asking the shirkers of the world for help, maybe it's time to cut them loose.
What exactly did the G20 meeting accomplish? This European junket was sold to Americans as this century’s Yalta conference or Bretton-Woods agreement. Yet those of us with functioning frontal lobes knew exactly how it would turn out. Obama appeals to a shared sense of responsibility and asks the world for its support, and the response ranges from feeble support to even feebler criticism.
Every working group has its share of freeloaders, those coworkers-in-name-only who show up for the first meeting and then find plenty of excuses to avoid taking on new commitments or delivering on the few that they already have made. Asking freeloaders to help you solve problems is like asking arsonists to put out fires.
But the G20 should rename itself the F19, because virtually the entire group is made up of sponges. Let’s take a page from the Obama administration and start naming and shaming.
China
Chairman Mao envisioned a workers’ paradise in China, but his wretched economic stewardship condemned the country to decades of poverty, slavery, and even starvation. Now the country’s economic prospects look far brighter and most expect it to lead the next century. The American assembly line has been shipped to China, a land where young workers clamor to earn two dollars an hour sewing our baseball gloves.
But throw away your unread copy of The World is Flat — it’s not globalization, free market economics, or international competitiveness that has sent the factories there, but an American economic policy of capitulation. We don’t want to make products any more, or at least that’s what one can deduce from our thicket of regulations, taxes, etc. However, we have no problem importing goods from anywhere, no matter what the local conditions.
And so the factories go to countries like China with little more to offer than cheap labor, minimal safety and environmental regulations, and some political stability. The politicians that wrote the laws that favor unregulated imports over heavily regulated domestic production may even blame Benedict Arnold CEOs for the job migration when election season comes, but they will still be sure to collect their campaign contributions.
But China’s sin isn’t selling us cheap products. It is that they then treat America’s most valuable export as if it were free. For more than two decades China has been at the top of the list of nations stealing intellectual property. And this isn’t just movies, music, and software. Chinese firms will copy everything from Wrigley chewing gum to Pfizer Viagra to GM auto parts and then sell them worldwide.
This rampant abuse was supposed to stop when China agreed to join to World Trade Organization in 1999, when China finally did join in late 2001, when the U.S. filed its official WTO complaint in 2005, and then when the Olympics put the nation in the international spotlight in 2008. Nonetheless it is as bad as ever.
China’s excuse is that they are doing the best that they can, which is the same excuse they have for selling poisoned food and toys. Yet the government displays considerable competence when it comes to suppressing political speech that threatens its power. China is a freeloader.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia qualifies for G20 membership only because of its mammoth oil industry. Petroleum accounts for 50% of the nation’s GDP, 75% of its budget revenues, and 90% of its exports. Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company, holds oil reserves worth more than $13 trillion at today’s prices and is the most valuable company in the world according to the Financial Times.
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Tristan Yates is a management and investment analyst and the author of Enhanced Indexing Strategies. His articles and research have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo! Finance, and many other publications.
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27 Comments
1. Gary Ogletree:Scrape the freeloaders off our backs? Include NATO and the UN. Yes we can. Begins with introducing American values and integrity to Congress in 2010 and putting a patriot in the White House in 2012. You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…
Apr 13, 2009 - 4:36 am 2. Northern Light:I’m just going off to work now, so I’ll just make the quickest point I want to raise right now.
You didn’t mention Canada. I know that we Canadians often come off like a very small yapping dog in things like this, but why wasn’t Canada mentioned as a freeloader?
You need an example? Check out Canada’s military budget.
Apr 13, 2009 - 5:32 am 3. Fragmentarian:Northern Light, I hope you’re a Minnesotan and not a Canadian. By that twisted logic, the US is a freeloader too. Canada, except for alliances, even more isoloated than the USA, entered both world wars well before the US. In WWI, the Americans showed in time to take all the credit. In WWII, they may well have sat it out a lot longer had Japan been a little more patient. Anyway, after WWII what should Canada have armed itself with? Modern weapons? When we developed the Arrow, the most advanced jet interceptor in the world at the time, the US put enough pressure on Diefenbaker to force Canada to scrap the project which led to the collapse of an entire aerospace industry and gave us useless Bomarc missiles in return. The only country ever to interfere with us, attack us and the only country we would be compelled to arm against would be … the USA. Good thing we’re friends, eh?
Apr 13, 2009 - 6:25 am 4. Roger Godby:Today Canada is participating in the Nato alliance, pulling much more weight than it’s European allies and you say … freeloader. I count over a hundred dead Canadians in Afghanistan. I’d like to pull your sweater over your head and talk some hockey with you.
With a warm hug and a hearty handshake, give NATO a big kiss-off. Close all US bases in Europe, even when the native plead to keep them open for local jobs that will be lost (replay German whining in particular). Quit the UN. Close US bases in South Korea. Quit paying for those who can pay their own way and thank us by giving us the finger.
Apr 13, 2009 - 6:29 am 5. Marie Claude:The most maddening aspect of freeloaders is that instead of being grateful for their unearned welfare, they are often the first to complain about their situation and lay the blame elsewhere. And this brings us to the land of self-delusion that lies across the Atlantic.
umm the same proportion as in the US 50/50
For decades Americans protected Europe from Soviet assault by putting more than 50,000 soldiers on the front lines and spending hundreds of billions of dollars to blunt the USSR’s considerable advantages in both technology and manpower. These sacrifices allowed Europe to live in peace and prosperity for decades and still permit its citizens and firms to conduct business in the many other countries around the world that also enjoy U.S. protection.
talk of the Germans ! We were not under your umbrela since 1967, and that allowed us to develop independ nuclear energy and military power
But when the United States was attacked and activated the NATO alliance, our continental allies were nowhere to be found. As of today, the five largest nations in Europe have 11,300 troops total in Afghanistan, most of which are instructed to avoid combat. And NATO’s role in Iraq is limited to training, as if the war was not yet begun!
Because you undertook the wrong war first, had you decided to invest Afghanistan and Iran, you would have had more followers
Europe still clings desperately to the belief that it occupies the international moral high ground, despite a hundred years of historical evidence to the contrary. The region responsible for two world wars and three genocides in the last century is now either unwilling or unable to provide any significant assistance in the defense of civilization from the existential threat of Islamic extremists. Europe is a a freeloader and a tragic warning to others.
the difference with the US, is that we don’t call influence “moral”, but “cultural”, and you can’t deny its reality, even the US have been shaped with it. Though I understand that moral for you is a disguised name for interests, and there they come in concurrence with the Europeans’, now you got a bigger fish to deamonise, Chineses, and I can assure you that they don’t talk of morals but of tradings.
in the bloody comparaisons, you forgot to mention your civil war, and may-be it’s gonna happen one more soon, let’s not forget your “unfortunate” expedition in VietNam and Camboge from which also genocides were the result.
The islamist threat is more powerful in the US because of your laws and constitution that allow communitarisms and freedom of speeches.
Don’t dream, we will not call you for rescuing us from islamists, we know how to drive religion wars, besides America’spopulation is the resust of them ; umm, wait , our muslims might emigrate there too !
Apr 13, 2009 - 6:50 am 6. savage24:It’s not bad enough that they are like barnacles attaching themselves to the bottom of a ship, but they whine like stuck pigs everytime they are ask to do anything. Get rid of them, if scraping them off don’t work gunpowder does.
Apr 13, 2009 - 7:48 am 7. rocketeer:Fragmentarian: Most of us understand that Canada has participated in the recent conflicts around the globe with us and we appreciate your (countries) continued support. It dwarfs most of the rest of NATO (except England) and is not really the topic here.
Roger Godby: I’m totally on-board with this concept. We need to get out of NATO, get out of the UN (and get the UN out of the US), and let the chips fall where they may for all of the deadbeats that currently enjoy our protection and yet hate us for it. South Korea can take care of themselves, and if they can’t, too bad.
Marie Claude: Maybe your points are a little convoluted because English is not your primary language. What are “communitarisms”? And our civil war? You’re bringing up history from the 1860’s? You’re German, do you really want to go down the road of discussing atrocities committed by our respective governments through time? You still have a lot to pay for there.
Apr 13, 2009 - 8:56 am 8. Marie Claude:Rocketer, it’s easy to remarck other’s faults, and make generalisations out of them
Apr 13, 2009 - 9:06 am 9. LawhawkSF:Rocketeer: Marie Claude’s problem is not a failure of language skills. It’s a willful failure of comprehension. The Germans “haven’t been under your umbrella since 1967.” So we gave them twenty-two years of freedom under that umbrella to develop their own military and nuclear power. Does he forget that there were two Germanies until the 90s? And how was it going for them in the East?
If we had chosen the “right” war in the Mideast first, we would have had more followers. How many more? Two? Three? And why do we have to be the leader for them to follow? Because they won’t do a damn thing on their own unless we force them off their accommodating butts. When they see tyranny and mass murder, they wait for us to act, then wait to see how it’s going to come out before committing their minimal troops. That way they don’t have to be responsible for a failure, but can claim credit for a success. Sad that the Germans are becoming more like the French every day.
And yes, the Europeans and their friends do indeed know how to “drive religion wars.” My Lutheran ancestors in Prussia and my Catholic ancestors in Bavaria could certainly attest to that. We call it the Thirty Years War. If they want to bring up our Civil War, turnabout is fair play. No need to bring up the five hundred years of deadly land-grabs and totalitarian states in Europe that followed the religious wars.
And finally let’s be sure to count our freedom of speech as a bad thing according to Marie Claude. Much better to remain silent, avoid “hate speech,” let the government do our thinking for us and protect us from Islamic jihadism. When The Netherlands become the first Islamic nation in Europe since 1492, we’ll see how well that worked out, too.
Apr 13, 2009 - 10:21 am 10. Marie Claude:“willful failure of comprehension”
I guess it’s a contest “who gonna win the trophee of the bull”
My Lutheran ancestors in Prussia and my Catholic ancestors in Bavaria
my bad, I didn’t know that I still had to Heil to the very same country that my parents thought it was done with alliees and our resistance !
Apr 13, 2009 - 10:48 am 11. LawhawkSF:Marie Claude: Thank you for proving my point.
Apr 13, 2009 - 10:56 am 12. Free Quark:Manufacturing jobs went to China because Americans preferred to buy cheap stuff made by the Chinese than more expensive stuff made by their fellow citizens. It’s specious to ignore the consumer’s contribution to the situation.
Apr 13, 2009 - 11:09 am 13. Marie Claude:LawhawkSf
I suppose you wanted to show that you are aware of how to conduct an investigation, umm, sorry it doesn’t work on the same basis here, no raisonable agreement can be reached if you aren’t working on the same documents ; apparently you know only the title of them.
That you are the good Samaritans, and the we are the selfish evil appeasers
Work on the file, and we may find something common
Apr 13, 2009 - 11:23 am 14. LawhawkSF:Marie Claude: I have no idea what your are talking about. Do you?
Apr 13, 2009 - 11:38 am 15. Marie Claude:yes, but I was sure you couldn’t take it
Apr 13, 2009 - 12:40 pm 16. A Clay:We haven’t had a president, let alone presidential candidate, since 1998 who is bold enough to behave like an American overseas. Maybe after Obama’s bow to the Saudi king and trashing of the US to foreign plutocrats, enough Americans will support a foreign policy that advances US interests and vote for a President with a spine. But who are the contenders? Petraeus? Palin? I suspect the candidate selection process as covered by the MSM will make sure no one of interest emerges sufficiently unscathed to win an election.
Apr 13, 2009 - 2:30 pm 17. Northern Light:#3 Fragmentarian. I AM a Canadian. That is if you think that Toronto is a part of Canada. I’ve debated Albertans that weren’t so sure.
I was making a point/joke. I have had Americans point out that we don’t spend nearly as much on our military as the States does. I have taken flak from Americans who think we don’t pull our weight and somehow America is the only thing standing in the way of Canada being invaded (this is funny when you consider that the only nation that has ever tried to invade Canada was the USA). I know as well as you do how we fought in both World Wars and what we are doing in Afghanistan right now.
In fact I was working in Halifax a couple of years ago and it was a real eye opener. Halifax is a military city and the women I was working with all had boyfirends and husbands in the Forces. They worried constantly about their spouses being sent over. I was there on November 11th and it was the best Rememberance Day I have ever attended.
Both my grandfathers fought in World War One and two of my uncles were in World War Two. Thankfully, all came home, but my grandfathers both lost brothers in France.
I guess Tristan Yates knows how tough Canadians are which is probably why Canada wasn’t listed as a freeloader. If my silly early morning quip insulted you as a Canadian, I apologise.
As to pulling up my sweater, I haven’t been on the ice with a stick in decades, but I was known in my day for having elbows like Gordie Howe. However, I don’t think we have anything to argue about so I hearby invite you for coffee and Timbits.
Apr 13, 2009 - 3:40 pm 18. Tristan Yates:Thank you for the comments, always very much appreciated.
savage24:
haha! I really do love it when I write 1500 words and someone sums up my entire point in a pithy and witty phrase.
Northern Light:
Well there is a principle here. NATO is a defense pact. If you’re not willing to commit to having tens of thousands of your country’s soldiers on standby ready to defend any one of the 28 member countries in case they are attacked, then you really don’t belong in NATO. You belong in the UN or some other organization that will wring its hands and maybe pass a stern resolution in the event that your countrymen are murdered. That said, Europe is a freeloader because they owe their freedom to American soldiers twice over and still won’t commit any troops to the defense of the West. Canada doesn’t have quite that level of “shirk” – and yes, perhaps I am scared of Canadians!
BTW Europe’s personal for me – my grandfather was drafted, sent to London, shot down over Germany, and then sat in a POW camp for almost a year. Three of his four brothers also served in the toughest of conditions and the family’s lucky they made it all home. Yet when my own city was attacked (I’m from DC, grew up near the Pentagon), Europeans told me directly (I was overseas) that Afghanistan was a graveyard for superpowers and we would never succeed there.
FreeQuark:
The consumer responds to market choices heavily influenced by the government, but your point is well taken. Mine is not to advocate trade barriers but more to make the point that access to US markets shouldn’t be a given. These “cheap labor” countries need us a lot more than we need them. If we cut off trade to China, all of those factories would just move to Brazil or Mexico or India and we wouldn’t even notice. We should insist on some prerequisites from our trading partners, like respect for intellectual property (our only real export) and some basic safety standards. Otherwise we’re just giving away our jobs and our intellectual property and then paying increased costs to deal with a supply chain of deadly products.
This article is also intended to denigrate the concept of the “international community”. Not because I am an isolationist – I would love to see 100 countries in NATO, all pulling their weight and contributing to world security – but because when you have communities in which people have lots of rights but no responsibilities the result is tyranny.
Apr 13, 2009 - 7:59 pm 19. Marie Claude:“Europe is a freeloader because they owe their freedom to American soldiers twice over and still won’t commit any troops to the defense of the West.”
yes, but if you repeat everyday to the Europeans that they owe you their free asses, that doesn’t help you to to go further with them. It took to Churchill a few years and many travels to Washington to convince Roosvelt to help Europe, while your former administration leader didn’t even try to cross the Atlantic to meet the political leaders there, but displayed anathemas from his bunker : “you are with us or against us”. Mr Bush might be a god man, but he hasn’t the patience to explain what he was in a hurry to decide.
Besides France waited for 150 years that your country pay her back
Apr 13, 2009 - 9:23 pm 20. Dave Surls:“Scrape the freeloaders off our backs? Include NATO and the UN.”
Hear, hear. We never should have been in either the UN or NATO, nor should we have entered WWI or WWII, both of which we could have stayed out of if we had competent leadership.
Let the Europeans and Asians pay for their own defense and fight their own wars. Not our problem.
“But when the United States was attacked and activated the NATO alliance, our continental allies were nowhere to be found. As of today, the five largest nations in Europe have 11,300 troops total in Afghanistan, most of which are instructed to avoid combat. And NATO’s role in Iraq is limited to training, as if the war was not yet begun!”
You can forget about securing any advantage from alliances with these guys. The alliances that the idiot liberals put us into, after they bungled us into WWII, were always one-way affairs…entirely to their benefit, entirely not to our benefit.
George Washington said it all more than 200 years ago:
“The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connexion as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop.”
“Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.”
“Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality, we may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.”
“Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? ”
“It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world…”
True then…true now.
Apr 15, 2009 - 3:57 am 21. Michael:The purpose of NATO has been perverted. It is an organisation designed for the DEFENCE of its member states. I don’t deny that action must be taken against failed states like Afghanistan but there must be better ways than the way we are doing it now. We are fighting the only sort of war the opposition can fight. We should think outside the box and fight in ways that they can’t match.
Apr 15, 2009 - 9:23 am 22. mudpie:France waited 150 years for us to pay her back?
Apr 15, 2009 - 11:47 am 23. Marie Claude:For what? She sided with England in 1812. Our small navy had to intercept the French fleet in
mid Atlantic. This allowed Baltimore to be
defenseless. The French wanted to retake The
American West. She gave no help durring the revolution and sided with the south in the Civil War. One French Nobelman worked with and financed Washington, far from France. France is lucky we will never “pay her back”
France is lucky we will never “pay her back”
I let you imagine your debacle LMAO
umm in 1812 you decleared war against England, can’t see that Napoleon was unfavorable to it.
oh, wait, because the access to european harbours were closed to the american merchandises (the mutual anglo-franco embargo was the cause,when the Brits looted your ships (USS Chesapeake) and forced the american (some of them were former British) seemen to enrol in their navy, and that your country forbid the continental ships the access to the american harbours and caraibean colonial’s, when Jefferson wanted to conquer Canada, that’s were the real fighters, the Canadians, the french canadian helped for good reasons (Salaberry anyone ? 2000 vs 6000 Americans), that is how Canada become the the country Canada.
But there were no continental French in the battles, even in New Orleans, Canadians, french Canadians
so you invent your conflict, though if Napoleaon would really had wanted to side the Brits, you might be talking french on this board today
Apr 15, 2009 - 2:43 pm 24. Bill:Mudpie, France gave no help during the Revolution?? Are you mad??
I would remind you that the army which defeated Cornwallis at Yorktown was half American under Washington and half French under the Comte de Rochambeau.
And, in case you were sleeping that day in history, in 1812 France and Britain were at war with each other, Wellington trading blows with Napoleon’s marshals in Spain and Portugal.
Marie Claude, Jefferson was no longer President in 1812. It was James Madison.
Apr 15, 2009 - 10:33 pm 25. Krimper:I’m British and can honestly tell you that 80% of Britains don’t give a stuff about Europe apart from the fact it’s a cheap place to get to on holiday.
Apr 16, 2009 - 9:35 am 26. Seerak:Sadly, democracy has failed in Britain and 22% of the electorate can vote in a government and all 3 main political parties are indistinguishable.
We pay billions a year to be ‘part’ of Europe and still have a massive trade deficit with them. We pay nothing to the USA, we have a trade surplus and you protect us at the same time. Things are changing though, people are getting fed up with the Lefty bias of all the media. The pendulum is starting to swing the other way.
Fragmentarian: most of your comment relies on old history. During the two World Wars, Canada was indeed a significant world power militarily, as part of the British Empire (I remember the figure “seventh strongest navy worldwide in WWII”, but not the source alas). Our armed services still produce some of the best soldiers in the world, who consistently punch “above their weight class” in Afghanistan.
The fact that Northern Light cites, is in fact our “weight class”. The fact that our soldiers do amazing things with minimal resources does not alter the fact that they have minimal resources. It is entirely true that Canada’s military budget would be orders of magnitude larger than current if the U.S. wasn’t around (or collapsed), especially in the Arctic. If the North opens up with climate change as predicted, that will come into sharper focus.
As to why that is, notwithstanding American involvement in what looks to me like a typical Canadian government Operation Foot Bullet w/r/t the Avro Arrow, I don’t doubt for a second that the Canadian government and Left are quite happy to have the U.S. military “subsidy” help pay for socialized health care.
Apr 19, 2009 - 3:40 pm 27. Seerak:The islamist threat is more powerful in the US because of your laws and constitution that allow communitarisms and freedom of speeches.
That must be why America was destroyed in the 19th century by all those waves of foreign immigration; the nation collapsed after it could no longer maintain its sovereignty in the ‘hoods around its own cities.
/sarcasm
Apr 19, 2009 - 3:53 pm