The New Moon Missions: Is it pointless?

[Shaun]

Some of you have probably heard about the proposal to spend billions of dollars establishing the first base on the moon. So, what are your thoughts on this? Do you think it is a good idea or a waste of money? Why?

[Imelda]

I want to move there. Not only would there be no chavs, but I could eat more chocolate because I'd weigh less! :D

[Shaun]

Yeah, but you'd also end up being shorter, you'd have severe health complications after a while, and your body would get wider as a result...So, you might weight less but you'd start to look like a really big midget...

[Imelda]

You have a problem with that?

[Shaun]

Yes...I'm afraid of midgets. You can thank Oompa Loompas for that...

[Eve]

Haha. Oompa Loompas won't be bothering us there. They live in Loompalannd.

(Sorry, I never debated before so I don't know anything about accussations and yadayadayada)
The problem is not with the fact that huge sums of money is being pitched into this scientific research. There's no end in money in the world, only resource and strength but put in the right direction, you get success. The moon base is actually very ingenious. If mankind could somehow develop a kind of technology to have a base on the moon, it would not only aid them in studying the moon up close, they could devise a way to actually live on it. Due to the rise in chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) in the atmosphere, the world is subjected to global warming. We can have two options- to live on the moon which would be involving very high technology or to find resources that are not obtainable on earth but on the moon instead to help us 'cure' our blue planet.

[Shaun]

That also assumes that global warming is as they are saying, which evidence would suggest otherwise...
The moon would be a really bad place to live really. If we wanted a new home we'd need to choose somewhere more stable...

[Eve]

And where would you suggest? As the earth located on the right path where it is not too hot nor too cold. Also, advanced technology has shown that there are no other planets or moons near our earth. The moon, currently at the right position, is a core for life.

[Shaun]

Mars is only uninhabitable right now because of the following reasons:
a) It doesn't have an atmosphere that can support us.
b) It doesn't have a magnetosphere that can repel radiation.
c) Its dead core and smaller size are a result of the above two reasons.

However, given that one could possibly force the core to ignite again, and one could create an artificial atmosphere, it could become a viable solution to population growth . If an atmosphere can't be created it would still be a better option than the moon for the following reasons:
a) with a magnetosphere there would be a later of protection against a good portion of the radiation that otherwise would fry us to a crisp
b) it has a lot of resources that could be used for building and cultivating farms, etc.

The moon, however, could never support life. It has no molten core, and no core that could be ignited. It has no atmosphere. It is also tidally locked, meaning that it doesn't rotate like the Earth does. There is no night and day. The problem with all this is that without an atmosphere we would rely entirely upon human creations. It would be horribly cold (a problem that does exist on Mars, but if an atmosphere could be garnered there it would solve a lot of the issues). And there's no way to create a magnetosphere to protect against radiation, meaning that human settlements not only have to highly shielded against radiation, something which is incredibly expensive and requires a lot of upkeep and careful monitoring if one is to use such devices for very long term uses. Mining, also, has to be carefully considered too. If you mine on the moon alone, it may have little affect on the tides and environment of Earth. But if you mine and transport the materials off-planet you could run into a big problem. The moon is rich in resources that we could use, particularly some forms of helium that could be used for better space travel. However, because the tides depend on the moon being where it is and exerting forces of gravity on Earth's water, any significant removal of its weight could very well destroy the stability of the ocean.
Another problem is that the moon is actually moving away from us. It's not by much, but sooner or later it's going to get far enough that the Earth will simply let it go. That will be a lot sooner than the sun turning into a red dwarf, which is something we should really be considering. So the idea of building a permanent settlement on the moon is rather stupid. It's a waste of money really, considering that the only people who will get to go there are the incredibly rich, and the money that goes into building it will be partially from tax dollars.
There are much better solutions. We could be spending money figuring out new technologies for space propulsion. Things like figuring out how, if possible, to break the light barrier, or to devise ways around it. The billions of dollars that will go into sending people back to the moon, which is pretty much pointless since we can send a robot over there to do the work for a fraction of the price, could be used elsewhere.

[Eve]

However, not all robots are reliable and none have their own mind. If it comes to the point where scientists lose all contact with it, the robots will not help us at all. Furthermore, they are extremely expensive.

To expand on your first paragraph, it is not impossible, the earth once had an uninhabitable place and atmosphere. The moon has an atmosphere but it is very weak. The moon can be a place to live in but only in a place where solar flares cannot be in contact with the person himself. .

[Shaun]

However, not all robots are reliable and none have their own mind. If it comes to the point where scientists lose all contact with it, the robots will not help us at all. Furthermore, they are extremely expensive.

To expand on your first paragraph, it is not impossible, the earth once had an uninhabitable place and atmosphere. The moon has an atmosphere but it is very weak. The moon can be a place to live in but only in a place where solar flares cannot be in contact with the person himself. .

Robots are actually really cheap. Especially since we don't need them to have a lot of the equipment that we give the Mars landers. They would require very little in the way of machinery. That and we could have to worry about losing contact unless the robot breaks. Since the moon has no atmosphere, no wind, etc. there is little likelihood that it will break from atmospheric stresses. We have satellites that are orbiting the moon as we speak, so that is an easy way to keep contact.
And we don't have to program that robot to do everything we want it to. Since it's not that far to the moon we can send instructions to that robot easily.

The moon has an atmosphere that is so thin it's basically untraceable, meaning that really it doesn't have atmosphere at all because anyone trying to wander around on the surface without a suit would die much the same way as you would wandering in the vacuum of space. To avoid the solar flares you'd have to be on the dark side, which would provide perpetual darkness for the people there, and wouldn't be immune from radiation. Solar flares would still get there, but in less frequency, and the people living there would still be exposed to loads of radiation (cosmic radiation especially). No matter where you live on the moon you HAVE to have radiation shielding, and it has to be extensive.

You're also forgetting that the differences in gravity would bar anyone from living on the moon for any extended period of time. Why? Because the health effects on the individual would be great. You couldn't send people from Earth that have been exposed to the regular world for any amount of time to the moon because anyone on the moon would have a weakened immune system and could die if they caught something that a tourist brought with them. We're talking many of the same effects of zero gravity, but in lesser form. Regardless, that means frequent changes in employees (bad term for them, but you know what I mean), and a lot of quarantining upon return. This adds up to billions of wasted money. At least Mars has more gravity and the effects on the individual would be minor and could easily be counteracted, but since we cannot build true artificial gravity (using gravitons mind you) and have to use machines to do such things, it would be very difficult to put any structure there and expect it to be useful to human beings.

[Eve]

(Sorry for the late reply)

Unfortunately, as our climate is becoming more and more unpredictable, we should think of a place to live in if the earth would be destroyed. At the moon's south most poles, we can try finding underground water ice. That way, we can build a ground station on the moon. Rocket fuel depend most on water and that could possibly be found on the moon. We could also build an underground colony to protect ourselves from radiation and space junk. There are also many products that can only be made in micro-gravity, It would also be far easier to travel in our solar system because there is no earth's gravity in hindering us. Large amounts of fuels would be saved.

[Rafael Domination]

Well...I think it's a good way to test out our rockets...keep building em' faster, stonger and more efficient until we're sure they can last in deeper space...

[Shaun]

(Sorry for the late reply)

Unfortunately, as our climate is becoming more and more unpredictable, we should think of a place to live in if the earth would be destroyed. At the moon's south most poles, we can try finding underground water ice. That way, we can build a ground station on the moon. Rocket fuel depend most on water and that could possibly be found on the moon.

There are only two ways the Earth is going to be destroyed:

Nuclear War
Asteroid/Comet Collision or Massive Solar Flare or similar space phenomenon


The earth isn't going to die from global warming. People who seem to think this have also ignored the fact that this planet has gone through regular stages of cold and warm periods. The Earth was significantly warmer during the age of the dinosaurs than it is today and there have been plenty of warmer periods that have accounted for the increase in natural disasters (flooding, hurricanes, etc.). All that we're seeing today has happened before. Hence why global warming needs to be taken with a grain of salt because we don't know anything about what is going on and people seem to ignore the real evidence, which suggests that maybe this is just a regular trend, and listen to a bunch of politicians who would failed 8th grade science today. The fact is there is little real, conclusive proof that global warming is the 100% cause of human intervention in the environment. Did you know that volcanoes pollute the environment more than humans do? And they've been around for a lot longer than we have, so how does that change our environment?

Rocket fuel doesn't depend upon water. It depends on oxidizers as in this lovely passage:
"We call these chemicals "oxidants." Examples are Potassium Permanganate
KMnO4, Hydrogen Peroxide H2O2, and Nitric Acid HNO3. When kept by
themselves, they are fairly easy to handle. When mixed with other
compounds, violent reactions can occur."

Hydrogen Peroxide is not water, although it is a liquid and contains the same elements. All of those above are liquids. Flammable liquids burn more efficiently than solids or gases. So, there's no dependency on water at all, just the fuel component and an oxidizer to keep a steady, consistent flow of oxygen to the flame.
There's no water on the moon. None, zero. It has some of the same elements as Earth but it lacks any organic compounds, making it grainy and sand-like, and exceedingly dry, since there is no water there. So, we couldn't harvest water from the moon. All nutrients would have to be transported from the Earth to the moon, which is another problem because of population growth.

We could also build an underground colony to protect ourselves from radiation and space junk. There are also many products that can only be made in micro-gravity, It would also be far easier to travel in our solar system because there is no earth's gravity in hindering us. Large amounts of fuels would be saved.

Do you know how difficult it would be to build an underground colony? You'd have to find a rare section of the moon that is harder than the rest, which would probably be an impact crater. Then you'd have to dig and build a structure using materials that aren't present in refined form on the moon. The cost would be astronomical.

It wouldn't be easier because we'd have to transport so much in materials to the moon to be able to build anything there. In the end we'd spend a lot more on space travel than we do now by having to constantly bring supplies to a moon base. We're talking billions upon billions of dollars to maintain such a facility.

[Hypocrit]

Moon base is pointless. Sorry, we can't possibly begin to justify this while 80% of the earth's populace is living on or under two dollars a day.

[Shaun]

The U.S. could easily justify it. It's not our responsibility to take care of the rest of the world. We just act like it is and make stupid policies and the like. I honestly don't care much about the rest of the world so long as they're not trying to kill us. There are so many issues that mankind cannot possibly expect to resolve through the action of a few rich countries. Throwing money at things hasn't worked and won't work. World hunger is a more complex problem than people would have us all think. You have to be concerned with local governments, militia presence, violent organization presence (such as terrorist groups), willingness of the people to cooperate, religious beliefs, etc. Which is exactly why all those little donation programs to help solve world hunger haven't worked and won't have any marked impact on the issue. Not to mention anything a nation like the U.S. or England tries to do to fix some foreign issue, both nations are met with hatred and violence. There's little incentive for us to help a lot of these smaller, third world countries when any sort of presence on our part is unwanted. They'll take our money, but they don't want us involved with it and that's, quite frankly, unacceptable because the very governments that insist on this are the same governments that have put their citizens in the position they are in in the first place. It's an idiotic loop. I'd offer to remove all foreign aid from the budget if it were possible. Maybe then people would realize that the U.S., despite its faults, does a lot of good in the world.

[Eve]

Sorry, I forgot about this thread again.

[Hypocrit]

The U.S. could easily justify it. It's not our responsibility to take care of the rest of the world. We just act like it is and make stupid policies and the like. I honestly don't care much about the rest of the world so long as they're not trying to kill us. There are so many issues that mankind cannot possibly expect to resolve through the action of a few rich countries. Throwing money at things hasn't worked and won't work. World hunger is a more complex problem than people would have us all think. You have to be concerned with local governments, militia presence, violent organization presence (such as terrorist groups), willingness of the people to cooperate, religious beliefs, etc. Which is exactly why all those little donation programs to help solve world hunger haven't worked and won't have any marked impact on the issue. Not to mention anything a nation like the U.S. or England tries to do to fix some foreign issue, both nations are met with hatred and violence. There's little incentive for us to help a lot of these smaller, third world countries when any sort of presence on our part is unwanted. They'll take our money, but they don't want us involved with it and that's, quite frankly, unacceptable because the very governments that insist on this are the same governments that have put their citizens in the position they are in in the first place. It's an idiotic loop. I'd offer to remove all foreign aid from the budget if it were possible. Maybe then people would realize that the U.S., despite its faults, does a lot of good in the world.

I am not going to begin to argue that last statement. It's just... funny. In fact I'm not going to argue most of this post because it is not only offtopic but vague, so I have nothing to truly argue against.

What I will say is this, there are people starving here. There are people in horrendous situations here. It's getting worse, not better.

[Shaun]

Yes, I realize there are people starving here. That's the whole point. I'd rather see us solve the problems at home first than go off throwing money at problems that cannot be resolved with simple money. There shouldn't be anyone in this country without health care, without food, or without a home, especially considering how rich this country is.

[Rafael Domination]

That's true...if the Movie Stars, Billionare Company Presidents, etc, decided to live normally, we'd be far better off. But, won't that overcrowd our planet much quicker, with so much people living and no one dying?

[Shaun]

Actually, this is really interesting. It has been found that families in which money is not a factor, the number of children they have is significantly less. In families in which the woman works equally as much as the man, or more, there are almost never any children at all. So, really, if we were all living (in the U.S.) at the level of say the upper middle class, it is quite possible that our population would stabilize, or at least grow at a very slow rate.
But that assumes we'll ever get to a point where the filthy rich are instead only rich and at least everyone is living comfortably and can work towards living the lives they want rather than scrounging for food and to pay rent...

[Rafael Domination]

I see...that certainly is a rather bright future...I don't see it coming anything soon, but yes, that would be nice...

[Eve]

Really? That's interesting...

[Shaun]

Yeah, I mean it doesn't work all the time, but overall the changes have been noted. So, if everyone could basically acquire what they wanted I can see population growth slowing. The benefit of all this is that we wouldn't be so rushed to figure everything out...

[Hypocrit]

Yes, I realize there are people starving here. That's the whole point. I'd rather see us solve the problems at home first than go off throwing money at problems that cannot be resolved with simple money. There shouldn't be anyone in this country without health care, without food, or without a home, especially considering how rich this country is.

While we're talking in idealism, why should there be anyone else?

We have enough food for everyone to eat over 4 pounds of food a day. Why can't we all be happy?

Sorry, just came off as rather nationalist and selfish.

[Shaun]

How do you mean enough food for everyone? Everyone in the U.S. or everyone in the world? Because that's probably true but the cost of getting all that extra food to the people that need it would make things very difficult. If you're talking about the U.S., well for a country as rich and materialistic as this I don't see why we have any starving people here.
But what I said is extremely nationalistic because I don't think the U.S. has any right telling other people what to do to solve their problems when we can't and won't solve our own.

[Eve]

I agree, I'm not from the US so I don't know what life is like down there. But there are people out there who can't even make ends meet. People are starving in the streets while we are always having a plate before us during mealtimes. But if someone does not stand up and help, the people would just vanish slowly from the face of the earth. True, the US does not have any right telling others how to solve their problems. But surely there are better ways to help the starving?

[Shaun]

Get rid of all the governments that are killing their own people with genocidal tactics...remove all governments that aren't helping their people in any way...that's basically what has to happen. A lot of third world countries are controlled by violent governments and nobody can expect to do much such countries if such governments exist.

[Eve]

Could the government not help the people in a tactic way? Like Myanmar's case, where the United Nation stopped trading goods with Myanmar to stop the violent cases happening in that country.

[Shaun]

It doesn't always work. Not to mention, economic sanctions on countries that have very little foreign involvement as far as economy is concerned will do nothing to stop the genocide. Not to mention, by cutting them off from the outside world, where they import a lot of food from, it will have the opposite effect. That's the sad part of the whole thing...

[Eve]

Unfortunately, yes. That is true but finding themselves scarce of food, the authorities know that the country would slowly die off. They would stop whatever they are doing and hope that the United Nations would release their hold on the trade

[Shaun]

That's not how it works. Otherwise we'd see a lot more cooperation with the UN in such matters. Remember, these governments don't give a flying shit about their people. Not even a bit. At least in the US we care a little bit, these governments just don't care at all. The rich will still be rich in the end and there is a point where UN sanctions border on the cruel if it starts killing innocent people.
The sad thing is that a lot of times military intervention is necessary, but it shouldn't be done by any one nation. The next problem is getting various nations involved together, which almost never works, which is why the UN is such a failure. If the UN does anything it's usually with the power of a couple nations (U.S. and the UK mostly, occasionally other nations get involved, but not by much). It's so vastly complicated...just waltzing in and saying "hey, here's some money and food, stop starving" just doesn't work.

[Eve]

Well, yes, you can say that. But a study in India examined the factors that have led to reductions in poverty between 1957 and 1991.
States that started with better infrastructure and human resources saw significantly higher long-term rates of poverty reduction. Growth rates in farm yield per hectare also helped. There are certain measures governments from all over to world can help to prevent poverty. For example, they can send teams of missionaries to go to the countries suffering poverty and help the people there. The government could also open up more possible jobs in their own country so that people from the poor countries can come over and be employed. Singapore has done this and proved to be successful. This not only solves the poverty problems, it also helps in the economy growth.

[Shaun]

1. India and China are countries in which cheap labor helped develop said countries. An American company can hire 100 Chinese people for half the cost of a single American. So, they go to China and save millions of dollars on labor by exploiting the poor and underdeveloped (industrially). Thankfully India is improving, but it's not from some big massive effort of any sort of charity. It's only because it has developed a business sense due to English and American influence, which wasn't positive influence to begin with. India was owned by the English at one point, unless I'm mistaken, and the U.S. never had intentions of making it into a powerful economic power, which it is slowly becoming.
2. Missionaries don't work, never have and never will. There are several reasons. One is that there aren't enough missions to affect change. Two is that missionaries tend to be Christians or some similar sect of believers and the people they are trying to influence tend to be of a different religion. Missionaries have a disturbing tendency to try to force their religion on these people and make it so these people, who need help, have to renounce their old religion and become Christian. Luckily the amount of violence towards missionaries is minor today as compared to back in the old days of China and Japan, in which Christian and Buddhist missionaries were actually killed.
3. Employment: That's counterproductive. It takes jobs away from people in which jobs are being opened. And it doesn't prove successful. What makes Singapore successful is that they exploit the people of Singapore, while opening up high paying jobs to foreigners such as Americans and the like. This doesn't benefit the country as a whole, it just benefits a couple people. Singapore is one of the biggest technology contenders with America and it is winning because of dirt cheap labor and production costs. Most of the semi-conductor market is in Singapore, and what little remains in America is suffering. I know this because I worked for a semi-conductor company for three years, manufacturing parts. While our quality was better, quality rarely beats out quantity in the global market.

If you're going to use examples of third world countries rising up and becoming better, you have to use examples that make sense. We'd have to go back to the 1700s to get any real results. Take Canada and America. Both were, at one point, like third world countries. While there are still a lot of poor in both countries, both are doing a lot better economically than the third world. Generally speaking almost everyone can afford to eat. Yes, we still have some starving, but the only reason that they are starving is because the government and the people are doing little to help them. We have more than enough money in the system to give food to the starving in America or Canada. But, a third world country doesn't have that food. A lot of African countries, for example, have very little in food to distribute. Sure, the leaders are filthy rich and exploit their people, but the difference is that these countries used to be nomadic in nature. The Bushman people, for example, used to have free reign in Africa. Now, thanks to White (yes, I'm using a color here because America, England, France, and the Dutch, all white peoples, were involved in damaging Africa permanently) people we see that these nomads are put on reservations, are not allowed to hunt their traditional game (because said game is now endangered thanks to White hunting techniques) and are forced to live off of a form of corn meal that has little nutritional value and of which there isn't enough. This happens all over Africa. But making changes in these countries is extremely difficult. There are revolutions happening all the time in Africa, which makes cooperative efforts to affect change impossible because the person you would be dealing with one week might not be there the next.

So, yeah.

[Rafael Domination]

Erm...some missionaries are violent, not most. And, they're not actually missionaries, cuz' their commission is to TELL people about religion...not force it down their throats. The moment they do that, they're not to be considered missionaries anymore.

Anyhoo...

I don't think the new moon missions are such a big deal. I think the west has enough juice to support those and send help to people. I just think the moon missions would have been better developing our rocket technology instead of just flying to a barren rock.

[Shaun]

I didn't say that missionaries are violent. I said some peoples are violent towards missionaries.

Well, unfortunately your point about them ceasing to be missionaries doesn't work. Missionaries set up churches in these other countries at provide food and education through their Christian ideals and don't allow for the native thinking to coexist, which produces tension between the Western ideology and other ideologies. You can force religion on people without actually forcing it on them. You can manipulate, which is what religion is damn good at.

As for the moon missions. I see them as a waste of money. I'm more interested in sending people to Mars. It seems like a waste of money to have a moon base. We can have robots do things on the moon for a fraction of the cost of establishing the colony. Going to Mars has a good purpose. We've never been there before. We've been to the moon...a bunch of times. Let's do something more interesting.

[Rafael Domination]

I agree completely. Let's start something that can actually get us somewhere, like colonizing this solar system. Mars seems to be a good target, since it is the only planet we can land on at the moment. There's got to be a way to utilize all the metal on it, and hey, if there was water on that planet before, then it would have been a potetially life-holding planet. The moon is just the moon. It might not be a waste to test out new rockets, but missions there for the sake of it are pointless.

Oh, and yeah, I get what you mean about the missionaries now...

[Shaun]

I agree completely. Let's start something that can actually get us somewhere, like colonizing this solar system. Mars seems to be a good target, since it is the only planet we can land on at the moment. There's got to be a way to utilize all the metal on it, and hey, if there was water on that planet before, then it would have been a potetially life-holding planet. The moon is just the moon. It might not be a waste to test out new rockets, but missions there for the sake of it are pointless.

Oh, and yeah, I get what you mean about the missionaries now...

Mars USED to have liquid water, but there are some huge problems with mars that make it uninhabitable and especially difficult to terraform.
1. Mars has no molten core. Without a molten core it has no magnetosphere. Without a magnetosphere it has almost no protection from solar and cosmic radiation. Meaning, life on that planet would die.
2. Mars has almost no atmosphere. It's not like Earth where air pressure is just right, where the combination of nitrogen and oxygen is just right, etc. If you were to go out without a helmet you would die almost as if you were in the vacuum of space.
3. Mars is frigid cold because it lacks an atmosphere. Meaning, it's freeeeeezing.

If we can start the core, which would take a lot of power and energy that we currently don't have (we could use nukes, but the problem with that is the radiation...), then we can create a magnetosphere and it might be able to hold an atmosphere again. However, we'd have to create an constantly rejuvenating atmo because Mars' lower gravity would make it hard to keep an atmo.
Once you managed to get Mars to have an atmo and got the core spinning to protect it from radiation it would warm up a bit, but it wouldn't be anything like on Earth. It would be, most likely, significantly cooler, but livable. You could expect it to be similar to northern climates, I think, but I can't base that on any fact.

It's a nice thought, but we don't have the ability right now...

[Rafael Domination]

If we poured in our resources to feeding, caring and policing our populations, maybe more people would reach the age where they can join the workforce, speeding up our trek into improving our technology, and that would lead into machines and concepts that could actually work...

It's easier said than done, but hey, one can hope...

[Shaun]

If we poured in our resources to feeding, caring and policing our populations, maybe more people would reach the age where they can join the workforce, speeding up our trek into improving our technology, and that would lead into machines and concepts that could actually work...

It's easier said than done, but hey, one can hope...

Umm, yeah, it's a lovely thought but right now the only countries doing anything significant in the fields of science are the countries who don't have a high infant mortality rate: Japan, U.S., UK, and a couple others. The problem isn't just making people live to adulthood, it's teaching underdeveloped countries values that they don't already hold and don't want to hold. A lot of third world countries still believe in the enormous family concept and a country like that cannot survive if that mentality maintains after it industrializes and becomes more like a powerhouse economy. The world is too damned complex for its own good. If we all thought the same it would be easier, but thankfully we don't so we have a vast expanse of culture and varying thought.

[Rafael Domination]

The world is too damned complex for its own good. If we all thought the same it would be easier, but thankfully we don't so we have a vast expanse of culture and varying thought.


I kinda agree on that one. But somehow, I perfer variety. Besides, it's villains and idiots that forve the human race to progess. If everyone was happy and content, we'd be stuck like that for good. We improve because we have to...or die

[Shaun]

The biggest problem with being different is that we're all so narrow minded we can just accept that we're different. We use things like 'God' and 'skin color' as a way to make use feel superior to someone else rather than just accepting that just because you don't look or believe the same things I believe doesn't make you any less human...

[Eve]

3. Employment: That's counterproductive. It takes jobs away from people in which jobs are being opened. And it doesn't prove successful. What makes Singapore successful is that they exploit the people of Singapore, while opening up high paying jobs to foreigners such as Americans and the like. This doesn't benefit the country as a whole, it just benefits a couple people. Singapore is one of the biggest technology contenders with America and it is winning because of dirt cheap labor and production costs. Most of the semi-conductor market is in Singapore, and what little remains in America is suffering. I know this because I worked for a semi-conductor company for three years, manufacturing parts. While our quality was better, quality rarely beats out quantity in the global market.
But you have to understand that Singapore was once a very poor country. The economy growth is mainly due to employment of foreign workers. The people in Singapore are all multi-racial, evident from the taking in of people from all parts of the world. As you go down the streets, jobs are done by Chinese, Malay, Indian etc.

[Shaun]

Singapore still is a very poor country if you look at who has all the money. It's like saying that China is a rich country. China has a lot of money, but hardly anyone has it. It's all stocked in a small group of people and what sets it apart from the U.S. is that the majority of people here have at least some sort of decent wage. That's not the case for places like China and Singapore, who use near-slave-wage labor.

[Eve]

Singapore still is a very poor country if you look at who has all the money. It's like saying that China is a rich country. China has a lot of money, but hardly anyone has it. It's all stocked in a small group of people and what sets it apart from the U.S. is that the majority of people here have at least some sort of decent wage. That's not the case for places like China and Singapore, who use near-slave-wage labor.

That is not entirely true. Singapore is very rich. The people are paid large amounts. Compared to Malaysia, some of the employees are paid three times that of the people in Malaysia. In Singapore, if people do not have enough money, the government gives them free money. Children are all required to attend school and for the poorer people, these children can attend school for free. The poorest will still have a home to live in and enough food for themselves.

[Shaun]

http://www.reuters.com/article/inDepthNews/idUSSIN20069020071109?pageNumber=3&sp=true
Really? Cause that article right there would contradict your point...

[Eve]

Hehe, really? I live there.

[Shaun]

Your point? Just because you live there doesn't mean that the gap between the rich and the poor isn't expanding.

[Eve]

Oh no, I'm very sure there's a huge gap. There was an article about that. Hold on. I'll try to scan the paper in.

[Shaun]

Hey Eve, what is the gross domestic product in Singapore? I wonder just how much money your home brings in. Do you know by chance what the percentage of wealthy is too? Because Singapore is such a huge business country, I imagine there are quite a lot of people who actually have money. I think maybe Singapore has a problem of no middle class. Maybe you could shed some light on that.
Is there a minimum wage in Singapore? Last I knew about Singapore, they were still working off slave wages, so if perhaps you have some personal knowledge on this subject, that would really be helpful.