Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

It is getting better. Having a government that consists of people from all backgrounds there has helped a lot.

Sadly, she doesn’t get back there very often – but I hope she gets to go next summer. Of course, we want to go too but it is more important for her to see her family first.

I could actually get a job there quite easily, but it would be a big adjustment lifestyle wise. I’m used just walking to the variety store, and so forth – you can’t do that there, unfortunately… but we still want to go to see the country.

Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

Yes, gated with 12-foot walls around the houses, with electrified barbed wire sometimes. It is all interlinked, wealth and race – though there are wealthy and not so wealthy people of all backgrounds, it is definitely skewed in favour of the people who were originally European settlers. My wife’s relatives are probably in the minority by not having firearms, too.

I’d like to go visit as it is a very beautiful country, though I want to wait until the children are a little bit older first.

Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

So I don’t think we’ll be devoured by them, we just might be reenergized by them. I think we need to be an artery on that Silk Road for sure. (Although, I think there’s a lesson in the age issue on the cute little girl gymnasts.) I can’t wait to see the rest of the series Scoble is doing.

( Kelly, thanks. )

Brett- Gated? in S.A.? Because of the difference in levels of wealth?Or a Race thing?

Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho

It is no secret that two of the very best countries in the world for quality of life (Norway and Finland) also have the highest tax rates – and I believe that the taxation schemes are such that if you make more money, well, you pay more tax.

A lot would say this “isn’t fair”. Well, I know of another example of what happens when you change this, because of personal interest. New Zealand used to be a “welfare state” in the real sense of the word, prior to about 1985. Taxation for middle class and up was around 65 percent, if my research is right. There were no homeless people, medical was very good, very low crime, and so on. But due to intense lobbying from the better off, there were sweeping tax cuts after 1985.

Guess what? Homeless people started appearing, crime rates went up, health went down. Well, of course the rich got richer, as usual.

I see it happening here too. I expect that if you live in a Canadian city 20 years from now, you’ll have to be in a gated, patrolled community for safety. Just like Cathryn’s family back in South Africa now, in fact.

Unless we can change it. Maybe we can learn how by watching people in other cultures, such as China.

-Brett

Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

If the gov didn’t bail us out at least half this country would still have no electricity. We’d have very few paved roads. The stock market would have collapsed, not just tanked, 2001, nevermind now, and a half a dozen other times since the Great Depression. People like that don’t see that though it isn’t direct, the government is involved in practically everything all around us, anyway.

As you say, we’re always on the hook. The alternative is anarchy. So if we like growth in the industrialized nations (and all the less-industrialized nations that are right on our heels like growth, too), we bail out occasionally as necessary. ‘Fraid that’s the price we pay for the good times. Sometimes, the gov has to step in and smooth out the bumps in the bad times.

I sincerely hope for your well-spoken solution. Let’s learn (individually and at the governing level) from all this. Let’s rebuild the right way. Nice dream. Fingers crossed… and nose to the grindstone.

Whoa, that’s enough politics for me today!

Janice,

“Meh will dull your palette.” Great phrasing.

Twenty years ago I wanted to take Chinese classes because I thought they were the next big thing we in business were going to have to reckon with. (Then I found out that it’s considered twenty times as difficult as learning any other language and even then there are dialect barriers, and that whim passed.) I’ve always watched with great interest, as they went from being associated with cheapness (like Japan) to being associated with industriousness, if not yet high quality.

What made me want to learn Chinese back then is that the industriousness was always there. We assume they’ll just stay in one place, but that is nonsense. They don’t have that western sense of entitlement that makes us all so darned lazy. They have an incredible competitive spirit. I think it’s beautiful, but I wish we weren’t just watching them innovate and grow. I wish we were being infected by a desire to learn from their spirit instead of fearing it or hoping to shut them out somehow.

Who knows where a post will turn in the comments at MCE?

Certainly not the author…

Until later,

Kelly

I know. I remember reading somewhere (and I’m paraphrasing here) “the 20th Century belonged to America, the 21st Century belongs to China”. My company realizes this and is pinning it’s hopes to reactor sales over there (China wants to build dozens of nuclear reactors over the next 50 years).

But, we must not fear it – we must embrace it. They are our neighbours, our partners, and we can help each other. So we cannot compete with them in a manufacturing sense? Okay, then, it is up to us to find something else to do. Services perhaps. Something. It is the biggest market in the world, and is ripe with opportunity.

I tell you, if I were 25 and single I’d probably be living there already. But there’s nothing to stop me from tweaking one of my numerous ideas for that market, right?

-Brett

Brett Legree’s last blog post…the game.

Janice Cartier’s last blog post…Hi Ho Hi Ho