the complexities of U.S.-China trade...

I hadn't read this when I posted earlier but they had a sub-chapter on "waste and scrap".

After China joined the wto (World Trade organization) in 2001, the value of U.S. "waste" and scrap to China increased 15x from 740 million in 2000 to 11.5 billion (non-adjusted for inflation) in 2011.

Out of the top 10 non-manufactured U.S. exports to China in 2009, #s 4-7 were scrap & waste: ferrous waste & scrap--2.51 billion, paper waste & scrpa--1.57 billion, Cu waste & scrap--1.36 billion, and Al waste & scrap--1.26 billion.

I watched the National geographic 'scrapmetal at Gershows yard' programme a few days ago.

The Chinese were buying 'auto fluff' the shred that comes off the car crusher and is about the size of a beer bottle cap.
And sorting it by Hand!
Imagine that, hundreds of workers picking out beer bottle caps from mush...
"It helps with our job situation" was the Chinese chaps quote. Wow, watta job..

And Gershow was happy to be able to sell his plastic car bumpers after all, but when he told the Chinese buyer, "Two containers a month". The chap looked like he was expecting two every day.

One of the biggest concerns of the Chinese gov is keeping "people busy". You know if people aren't constantly working they may have idle time to think about things, I don't know, like maybe like full voting rights democracy!! I've never been there but know people at work who have. I remember one of them telling me about all the people standing around in larger Chinese restaurants waiting to do something. Drop a fork (or a chopstick) on the floor, another is being presented to you about the time you start bending down to pick the fallen one up. The demographics are changing (I'll post more about that after I go get my book) where the Chinese might not be so needy to find employment for everyone but right now that appears to be the case.

The US regulatory laws makes in imposable to profitably process scrap metals any more.
Shred it, send it to China, wait for fished product to arrive.

(( The US only has 7 steal smelters left - the last lead refiner closed last year - 3 copper smelters left ))

Excellent post rog. Demographics is a fascinating topic. These age cohorts are the reason for many many market swings and is especially important in housing markets.
Supply and demand.
Markets are down now. Lots of supply it would seem. I got anywhere from 130 for appliances to 200 net ton Shred appliances mixed in this week.
Demographics can explain why many things are the way they are, you only have to be able to make the connection which may be difficult to realize at first.

Originally Posted by DakotaRog

Took a while for me to get back to this thread to post about Chnese demographics. We tend to think that China has an endless supply of people but even a nation with a billion and couple hundred million can get themselves sideways, especially when the heavy hand of the government tells you how many kids to have. The Chinese gov has had a policy for 30+ years of one child per family. Although not totally effective, especialy in the rural areas, this policy has skewed the population cohorts. China, along with the developed world, is getting older and young people to enter the work force, especially in manufacturing, is decreasing.
.

There's a much greater concern here. The root cause of almost every major global problem we're facing today is exponential human population growth. With wise policy we could gently ease our population back down to sustainable levels within a few generations.

The alternative is to do nothing and allow nature to run it's course. The natural forces of disease,famine, and war will kick in and restore the balance.

The Chinese way of doing things isn't very nice but it's preferable to the alternative.

Scrappah- I taught 4 semesters of Intro to Human Geography between 2004-2008. The data in the books was all about circa 2000. I don't think you can call the growth of the global pop "exponential" any more. Most of the pops of countries with advanced economies are flatlining or decreasing. The U.S. grows in pop mostly through immigration and natural increases of these folks 1st and 2nd born generations here. Thomas Malthus was saying the human pop was going to crash because the inability to feed itself 200 years ago already. It hasn't happened yet. The key is can we maintain our type of lifestyle on less?? As scrappers, I think we're part of the solution

I feel bad for guys growing up in China. The one kid per family thing coupled with the fact that everyone wants a boy means very few women to marry which will also cause a nosedive in the population and more importantly civil unrest. Any Chinese nations with money wants to leave that place (smog doesn't help either).

The Chinese US trade only works because of money rigging and debt. Trade will collapse sooner or later.

Many years ago Japanese products were in the same boat as Chinese, inferior and dangerous crap. Japanese got their act together and made some nice cars and high end electronics. Give it some time and China will quit making cheap products for Apple and will produce their own high end brands cutting US middle men out (they just need to work on marketing). Even now China is too expensive to make some cheap items and they are shifting manufacturing to other Asian countries or bringing production back into the US (fully automated).

@ unknownk
LINK

Originally Posted by DakotaRog

Scrappah- I taught 4 semesters of Intro to Human Geography between 2004-2008. The data in the books was all about circa 2000. I don't think you can call the growth of the global pop "exponential" any more. Most of the pops of countries with advanced economies are flatlining or decreasing. The U.S. grows in pop mostly through immigration and natural increases of these folks 1st and 2nd born generations here. Thomas Malthus was saying the human pop was going to crash because the inability to feed itself 200 years ago already. It hasn't happened yet. The key is can we maintain our type of lifestyle on less?? As scrappers, I think we're part of the solution

Ummm ... i see what you're saying. It's just kind of freaky. I was born in 1960 and in the short time span that i've been around the global population has roughly doubled from somewhere around 3.5 to over 7 billion !

I've witnessed the changes too !

I live on an island off the coast of Maine. Our economy is mostly comprised of fishing & tourism. When my father was growing up here during the 1930's we used to harvest at least thirty kinds of creatures from the sea. As time went on, and global demand for our seafood products grew, we overtaxed the resource and ruined it. We're down to only a handful of things that we can fish for now.

If demand had been in balance with what the ocean could provide we would have had a sustainable future.

There are far too many hungry mouths to feed.

===================

Think of the global ecosystem as only being able to (sustainably) support so many humans. The big question is what is that number ? How many people are too many ?

Are you noticing any signs that resources are dwindling ? Is competition for resources intensifying ? Are these resources getting harder to extract ? Is the global economy showing any signs of distress ? How about the global environment ?

There's no excuse for wanton waste and as scrappers we are making an important contribution but it's only a stop gap. It's not addressing the core problem.

We may need to start thinking in terms of reducing the global population to more sustainable levels.

We feed people now by using high grade fertilizers (nitrates, oil), massive mechanization and bio-engineered foods. Go look at what an ear of corn or a chicken used to look like in 1950 and compare it to what you eat now. We eat all kinds of fish these days that would never have been caught 50 years ago because we destroyed all the fisheries in the ocean.

An example: Orange Roughy:
Save the Deep Sea: Where have all the Orange Roughy gone?

They don't reproduce until they are 30 years old, can live to 150 years , and are pretty much gone already.

The way chickens, cows, and pigs are raised we could have an epidemic and a whole food chain will go bye bye (sucks now for bacon lovers).

What will happen is prices for food will continue to go up and poor people will continue to starve to death. Problem is there are a lot more poor people then their used to be.

Resources are dwindling which is why prices have gone up and people are looking for other materials to do the job. Once oil production gets tapped out we are in for a major implosion of the population. Steaming oil out of shale/sand and fracking shows me we have run out of economical oil and gas deposits.

Too tired and too much stuff left to do tonight to get into much more. Hopefully have fur to gather and skin tomorrow and maybe the boys and I will roll a couple of turkeys as well. I think things are more complex and mixed than you guys have indicated. There are species that have been hammered and there are species that a flourishing because they adapt well to various human land uses. People in advanced economies could produce a lot of their own food if they wanted to but choose not do although trends are changing (the growing trend of backyard or garage chickens). People are both wasteful and resourceful. The future is not totally known. Once genies are out the bottle, the knowledge is there and a lot of people aren't satisfied in giving up their advancements. We'll see...

P.S. I didn't have the textbooks I used when I taught my geography class home here but I did find an interesting graph of global pop change since 1700. I would argue we are in the middle scenario now (I;m not sure which scenarios these guys are talking about, there a number of them out there).

https://www.google.com/search?q=grap...il%3B600%3B400

Newer EPA regulations, land use restrictions, and high taxes are putting farmers out of business ...
As of when I posted this, the average age of a farmer int e US is 57 .

Lets say I was younger than I am now, and wanted to start a farm ... first I would have to buy land , which is not cheap .
Than I would have to buy equipment, which is not cheap .

After paying all the bank loans, insurance, legal fees, and property taxes it would be impossible to make any kind of profit ... LINK
So there is no motivation for any one to take up farming .

Corporate farms can make money because they can process thousands of acres of land.