Hat tip to Ed Lyons and his daughter...
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I told her, "See how much you can get done without building inspectors, crony capitalism, environmental impact statements, union politics, strikes, project labor agreements, and professional licensing?"
Bob and Wendy's crew would have finished the Big Dig in 2 years.
And [Brown] urged that restrictions be eased on American businesses, saying the country can never compete globally as long as it takes 10 months to put up a building in China or India that would take up to four years to build here.
Problems stem from a number of places, [Brown] said. Thanks to layers of bureaucracy, it takes the U.S. years to build a 500,000-square-foot building that can be constructed in China in months, he said. Other countries are putting up wind turbines in a fraction of the time that states here are able to do the same thing, he said.
Is there a difference between Warren's China comparison and Brown's China comparisons? --- "That it ceased to exist, I'll grant you, but whether or not it failed cannot be definitively said." - Metropolitan (1990)
To Patrick's point:
Brown laments that we can't build stuff nearly as effectively as China can. He implies that it is bureaucracy, unionization, PLAs, environmental roadblocks, and more.
Warren laments the percentage of investment, nevermind that percentages aren't meaningful and that China is years behind us. But the snapshot 22 seconds into her ad showing a person putting on a union hat (along with everyone else there being union) is her saying that the current series of roadblocks to progress is just fine in her mind. She just wants to steer money to unions.
So Warren and Brown are lamenting different things.
Do I want to be like China? In some ways. For instance, their government is much smarter and better educated than ours. (Did you know that most high-ranking Chinese officials have degrees in math or science? Even Hu Juntao is a hydraulic engineer!) I want us to be able to build things like they do. I want us to have as dynamic economy as they do. There are many other examples.
Of course, in most ways I don't want us to be like them. But I would absolutely love to see a China-only topical debate between Brown and Warren.
This looks like an own goal, Team Red. Awkward.
Hardly the same "we"...
Though Barry's "we" adds more government involvement in directly creating business. "I acknowledge having racist and classist and sexist feelings of white male superiority." -John Howard
