>>488522>We have to remember why they stopped in the first place: it wasn't profitable anymore.The falling rate of profit seems very inevitable. I think that they were so eager to spite the domestic labor-force that they didn't pause to think that if they transferred the means of production elsewhere they would cease to be the agents of history.
Consider that they did have the choice to accept reformist socdems slowly phasing out capitalism into socialism as the next mode of production. They might have ceased to be rulers, but they would still have been part of the society that shaped human civilization by virtue of having the most advanced m.o.p. They basically maneuvered the west onto the side lines by choosing to go with neo-liberalism.
I guess it's not so bad, the Chinese only emulate the part of capitalism and markets that serve the purpose of developing the productive forces, and the Chinese bourgoisie can't really become imperial capital. So there is very little danger of getting bullied around by the next empire because there isn't going to be one.
Still we're now in the side-car, just along for the ride, as the next stage of human civilization will be born in China. I guess for most people it's not really all that different, because they didn't have much of a say before. But for the ruling classes that used to shape the world, it'll be different.
>if you somehow managed to drive US wages into third-world sweatshop levels.I don't know why this nonsense is so persistent. If you design an economy you want to have rising automation, meaning better tools for workers, because that means every worker can produce more in less time, and better quality stuff while using more abundant resources. You need to have relatively high wages in order for the accounting sheet to say that the cost of developing technology is worth it. If you have low wages, new tech looks more expensive in comparison and that means it's not happening.
If the west would raise wages and lower the worktime its economy would begin improving. The Neo-liberal formula doesn't work. Look at China where workers had wage increases by a factor of 6 in the last generation, and their economy is booming.