
Goldman’s Blankfein on Skipping School Work, Wishing to Be Chinese - jimsojim
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/10/goldmans-blankfein-on-skipping-school-work-wishing-to-be-chinese/
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danielrpa
It's sad to see how much of society's time and resources goes towards
investment banking and the mindset that comes from it...

~~~
melling
Could you elaborate? Are you talking about the number of people? I feel like
some other low-tech jobs, like truck driving or cleaning people, are more
wasteful. Say, for example, that the 3.5 million truck drivers become
automated out of a job then they work in finance, technology, etc., wouldn't
society be better off?

Consider, for instance, that a company like Renaissance Technologies has over
100 PhD's in physics and math.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies)

~~~
notNow
_Say, for example, that the 3.5 million truck drivers become automated out of
a job then they work in finance, technology, etc., wouldn 't society be better
off?_

Is this even attainable? Is a high-tech driven economy even a mass employer?

The primary (agrarian), secondary(industrial), ternary (services) sectors and
economies served well the humanity over the past centuries esp accommodating
and absorbing the exponential growth in population during the 20th century and
onward but will the nascent knowledge based (quaternary) economy be able to
keep it going or more than 6 bln humans have to suffer greatly to earn just to
survive and have a sustenance level of income?

I have my deep doubts about this prospect and I believe that at least that
having a knowledge based economy doesn't need all this amount of people on
Earth to advance and that the transition from a consumerist led mass market to
a non consumerist small one is going to be very painful if we haven't
addressed the structural problems in the global economy esp. income inequality
and wealth hoarding by the 1%.

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MathsOX
I'm at Goldman this summer and come from a pure mathematics background (in an
area that's not very quant-focused, by choice). The first part of the article
is unequivocally true. Most in my area are incredibly interesting, diverse
individuals with non-finance backgrounds.

I think it's somewhat fitting that these comments are made at the best
university in China, however. It's emblematic of one of Goldman's recruiting
challenges: those who have done interesting things prior to college, often
continuing through college, may be less likely to get into top schools and if
you aren't from a top college it's demonstrably harder to get your foot in the
door with these summer internships.

~~~
__Joker
This is one of the recruiting challenges to solve and companies have not that
much of a incentive to alter it. As most of us agree, colleges has simply
become filters and kind of a costly filter from the students perceptive for
most of the cases.

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melling
This graph is a couple years old but it shows China's incredible economic
growth.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#/media/File...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_China#/media/File:Graph_of_Major_Developing_Economies_by_Real_GDP_per_capita_at_PPP_1990-2013.png)

By one measure (PPP) China has already passed the U.S.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483762](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30483762)

~~~
adventured
The PPP reference is about as worthless of a concept as you could get in
measuring economic scale.

If I make $80,000 and my cup of coffee costs $4, and the person in China makes
$4,000 but their equivalent cup of coffee costs $0.10 - they'd have you
believe that person has a meaningful purchasing power advantage.

Right up until that person earning $4,000 tries to buy a BMW, take a vacation
to Paris, or save more than $400 per year.

The last five years of China's growth has been entirely fake. Their return on
invested capital has plunged, and it now takes an extreme amount of debt to
generate each dollar of GDP growth. Their economy stopped growing normally
with the end of the global consumer boom in 2009. They've spent the years
since accumulating one of the greatest piles of debt in world history. Within
two to three years, they'll be the most indebted nation, with their total debt
to GDP ratio already exceeding that of the US.

It now takes $4 to $5 trillion in new debt per year, just to stay near their
6%-7% GDP growth target. Put another way, they have to take on $7+ of new debt
for every $1 of GDP growth.

Their PMI, electricity usage, imports, exports, and real estate market are all
signaling imminent disaster. Up next their record-shattering stock market
bubble is going to go bust, causing trillions of dollars in damage.

The next 20 years are going to be extraordinarily painful for China. They're
making the same mistakes Japan did, except they're doing it at warp speed, and
with a billion very poor people to deal with.

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ucaetano
If you make 80k and your "average life package" costs 40k/year, and a Chinese
makes 4k but the same package costs 1k/year, we'd all say that the Chinese is
way better off than you. PPP is not the "cup of coffee index", nor the Big Mac
Index.

Currency exchanges are meaningless when you're talking about quality of life
and purchasing power, and PPP is meaningless when you're talking about total
production.

On the other hand, you did the remarkable feat of using an example of when PPP
is being used CORRECTLY (comparing purchasing power and quality of life per
person) to argue against using it.

[Edit] Besides the PPP issue, I agree with the rest of your post, China is
desperately looking for a way out of the demographic and political trap it dug
itself into.

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TimPC
I'll disagree strongly here if the $80K and $4K are after tax. $40K in savings
with an average life is highly preferable to $3K in savings with an average
life. Yes there are smaller impacts to immediate choices, but I'd bet on the
$40K to have a higher impact in the future. PPP is very sensitive to things
like rapid economic growth, changes in immigration, changes in popularity of
location, etc. You could very quickly find $3k/year of savings obliterated if
that $1K goes to $4K. It's a lot harder for a $40K cost of living to go to
$60K or $80K.

~~~
ucaetano
Make the 80k and 4k after tax :)

"$40K in savings with an average life is highly preferable to $3K in savings
with an average life."

Your comparison is meaningless, unless they are in the same country with the
same cost of living.

"You could very quickly find $3k/year of savings obliterated if that $1K goes
to $4K. It's a lot harder for a $40K cost of living to go to $60K or $80K."

Again, meaningless, unless they are in the same country with the same cost of
living.

That's what PPP is for.

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anti-shill
I wanna be black

~~~
shiggerino
Lucky for you and Mr. Blankfein, being “transracial” is now a thing:
[http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/rachel-dolezal-
social-m...](http://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/12/us/rachel-dolezal-social-
media/)

