Model Train Journal

The America Factory is a documentary produced by the Obama's for Netflix. It won an Academy award for best documentary.

This is not about the Obama's, it's about what is presented in the documentary

This review is from the Guardian. The guardian is not a conservative news site. It is the opposite.
American Factory review – a sobering documentary by the Obamas
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/a ... the-obamas

American Factory | Official Trailer | Netflix
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m36QeKOJ2Fc

From the review
In 2014, the Chinese auto glass manufacturer Fuyao bought a former General Motors car plant in Dayton, Ohio, that had been closed since 2008 – promising investment and hundreds of new jobs. Fuyao and its chairman Cao Dewang (referred to as “Chairman Cao”) were rewarded with euphoric praise – in a state that had been crushed by unemployment – and more than $6m in subsidies from Ohio state taxpayers.

The film shows how this good mood curdled as the workforce realised that to show their gratitude they were expected to conform to the Chinese culture of regimentation and submission, uncomplainingly working six or seven-day weeks, pushing up productivity at all costs and declining to make a fuss about decadent and lazy American indulgences such as lunch breaks and safety precautions. The management’s main concern was to crush any hint of a union. There is a major diplomatic incident at the opening ceremony when the Democratic Ohio state senator Sherrod Brown refers to the desirability of unions in his speech, to the displeasure of the Chinese management.

The publicity for American Factory has suggested that this is a tragicomic story of a culture clash. Maybe. We are perpetually presented with the spectacle of the slight, deferential and uniformly clad Chinese workers, snapping to attention and occasionally singing the mournfully determined company song in contrast to the big, sloppy and resentful Americans whose bodies are too big for the hi-vis tabards that they are required to wear on their educational visit to the Fuyao factory in China. Perhaps it is not really a US-versus-China story but the age-old story of capital versus labour, supercharged with a new managerial determination to sweat every last cent from this unreliable human worker before he or she is replaced with a machine.

There are toe-curling culture clash moments. It is excruciating when a motto is put up in the factory office: “Marching Forward To Be World Leading Glass Provider” – and none of the Americans can bring themselves to point out to their Chinese overlords that the word “the” is missing. When they go on their instructional trip to China and witness the militaristic shop floor discipline, there are cutaways to their aghast faces, making them look like Karren Brady on The Apprentice when she sees contestants doing something very wrong. It is in China that we learn that unions there are not loathed, because they are an arm of the communist state, and the thought of them objecting to or impeding the management of a state-sanctioned company is unthinkable. American unions are of course a very different matter, and Fuyao is shown to ruthlessly intimidate trade unionists. The Chinese are also shown having policy meetings about how to deal with their exotic US workforce and a manager is shown calmly saying that it is their responsibility to give the Americans guidance “because we are better than them”.

Some day it will happen.
I hope I am dead.
When it does, our country will also be dead.

I've always postulated that if an entity or person were authentically "better than them" (aside from the poor grammar) it wouldn't need to be said. The accomplishment would have been apparent to everybody.
For example, if a 7ft tall person walked into a room full of 4, 5, and 6ft tall individuals , would it be necessary for that tall person to say anything about being taller than everybody? Such a person, being authentic, wouldn't need to do so.

So, I interpret such braggadocio by a Chinese person as being indicative of doubt and having facts and reality to substantiate that doubt.

To me, it's a sign of weakness.

Apparently, they are head-and-shoulders above others in producing disease(s) that infect the rest of the world.

I think we can safely say that the only things the Chinese government and culture of 2020 that have proven superior to the Western world has been due to their implementing some minimal capitalist freedoms and their ability to build infrastructure through central planning. Creativity in most areas of science and medicine, the areas of human endeavor I am most familiar with, and the major sources of human comfort and happiness during the last 200-300 years, remain largely the domain of the Western world, particularly the English speaking Western world. This may change, but I doubt it will be because of Chinese success, rather it will be due Western failure of investment and freedom in the future. We have a President proposing to cut funding of the most successful medical and scientific institutions in the history of the world (the NIH and NSF). He's a fool of colossal proportions, but that isn't exactly news. When it comes to stupidity, he is truly without peer .

Neil wrote: We have a President proposing to cut funding of the most successful medical and scientific institutions in the history of the world (the NIH and NSF).

There was a large increase to NIH a year or 2 ago, but there's no sign of it at the NIH. I guess that funding all went elsewhere.

He's a fool of colossal proportions, but that isn't exactly news. When it comes to stupidity, he is truly without peer .

Every time there are major cuts to NIH and the NSF it's to shovel funds elsewhere - it's not actual budget cutting; rather re-arranging and diverting it for other uses that the public fails to notice.

NIH gets $2 billion boost in final 2019 spending bill
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/09 ... nding-bill

Congress has approved a $2 billion raise, to $39.1 billion, for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a 2019 spending bill approved by House of Representatives and Senate negotiators last night.

As expected, the 5% boost matches the Senate’s proposed spending level and surpasses a $1.25 billion increase in a draft bill passed by the House. President Donald Trump’s administration had requested $34.8 billion for the fiscal year that begins 1 October. This is the fourth year in a row that NIH has received a substantial increase, after more than a decade of flat budgets.

The final bill funding the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NIH’s parent agency, also matches the amounts the Senate measure had tagged for NIH research in specific areas. It includes $425 million more for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (bringing the total to $2.34 billion); a $100 million increase for the cancer moonshot, or $400 million total; and an $86 million raise for the All of Us precision medicine study, for a total of $376 million.

Historical NIH budget[36] Year
1938 0.5
1940 0.7
1945 2.8
1950 52.7
1955 81.2
1960 399.4
1965 959.2
1970 1,061.0
1975 2,092.9
1980 3,428.9
1985 5,149.5
1990 7,567.4
1995 11,299.5
2000 17,840.5
2005 28,594.4
2010 31,238.0
2015 30,311.4
2016 32,311.4
2017 34,300.9
2018 37,311.3

The total NIH appropriation for FY 2019 is $39 billion

And the public is not told.
Remember that the public really only cares about what affects them.
This is in reference to the last post by Rufus.

HONDO74 wrote:This is the fourth year in a row that NIH has received a substantial increase, after more than a decade of flat budgets.

And it seems very, very little actually stays at the NIH; the overwhelming majority of NIH funding gets distributed to the extramural through grant funding and other mechanisms.

rogruth wrote:And the public is not told.
Remember that the public really only cares about what affects them.
This is in reference to the last post by Rufus.

The public really only cares about what they think affects them......the reality is usually worse than they think or know, or understand.

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

HONDO74 wrote:This is the fourth year in a row that NIH has received a substantial increase, after more than a decade of flat budgets.

And it seems very, very little actually stays at the NIH; the overwhelming majority of NIH funding gets distributed to the extramural through grant funding and other mechanisms.

Is Trump at fault for that. ??? Who controls where the money goes ?????

China Uighurs 'moved into factory forced labour' for foreign brands
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-51697800

Thousands of Muslims from China's Uighur minority group are working under coercive conditions at factories that supply some of the world's biggest brands, a new report says.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute said this was the next phase in China's re-education of Uighurs.

China has already detained about a million Uighurs at internment camps, punishing and indoctrinating them.

Officials say the camps are aimed at countering extremism.

HONDO74 wrote:

Rufus T. Firefly wrote:

HONDO74 wrote:This is the fourth year in a row that NIH has received a substantial increase, after more than a decade of flat budgets.

And it seems very, very little actually stays at the NIH; the overwhelming majority of NIH funding gets distributed to the extramural through grant funding and other mechanisms.

Is Trump at fault for that. ??? Who controls where the money goes ?????

In part, yes. His appointed Sec HHS has considerable influence on that as does Congress as does the Director of NIH, yet another WH appointee.