Well you guys are right about being able to mature at much younger age if forced to. Main thing I can think of is war. WW2 probably made a lot of kids grow up pretty damn fast. I guess starving would fall into the same line.

Apparently everyone in third world China (I remind you that China has one of the world's largest economies) is an incompetent 13 year old.

Making generalizations is fun.

Sorry Montana I did generalize a bunch but please name me some good reliable products made in China.... They produce cheap shit is what they are good at. What do you say about all the lead paint in toys or toxic crap in toothpaste?

A large portion of the electronics you buy from Japaneese and American companies are actually manufactured in China and India; and a large portion of computer components are manufactured in China.

And they are repaired in USA and other countries...  Those electronics you speak of usually don't last more than 4-5 years.  However, Chinese can make good products if companies from other countries make them and give them the right materials to.  Chinese have a very bad rep right now with the toothpaste, lead paint in toys, and powder milk for babies.  Their own milk killed tons of babies..  Sure heads rolled after that but it still happened.  Basically I don't trust shit coming out of China. 

China makes crap because it's a business decision to do so. It's not because they can't make things as well as other countries. They make things cheep because that's what companies that hire them to make things want out of them.

When it comes to high end electronics (like Apple computers for example), China makes some very good stuff.

Well I guess we got to the real point. Companies need to get their act together and stop cutting corners. Then we might actually have products that last.

There are a lot of pros to the concept of mercantilism or running a country like a company. Inflows being imports ought to be the same or smaller than exports. A fiscally prudent country can be run a lot like a large multinational company. I suspect that a lot of economic policy is made without the understanding of how other countries actions may effect the local initiatives, like for example cheap credit for consumers. People don't need to replace their TV's every 4 years.

I see absolutely no reason for cheap credit for consumers, all it does is get the people with the least self control into trouble and take money away from productive enterprise.

Im also appalled that governments have lost sight of cheap energy as a source for economic growth. When a machine can replace human labour at a higher productivity, everyone benefits.

As much as I personally agree with this approach as a short/mid-term strategy for most countries, a large portion of the world economy needs to be a net importer; and eventually the economies of the net-exporters will exceed the size that the net-importers can handle and some countries will be forced to switch positions. The long term strategy for a country is to invest the money they receive from their trade surplus, and to use that to finance their trade deficits, in order to avoid going into debt to grow their economy.

Invest money from their trade surplus to finance their trade deficits? How does that work? Most countries which currently have trade surpluses have had them for a while and the same applies to countries with trade deficits.