Just watched a CBC piece on the effect of the recession on China. Makes me mad to think....

[Locut0s]

This was a mini documentary following the lives of the working poor in China. Those working in textile mills and electronics factories. I know outsourcing is a sensitive topic here and everywhere in the west but for the sake of this post lets drop that topic. These are the livelihoods of hundreds if millions of people in the developing world and while their living standards may be low they are MUCH higher than they were only a few years back before China started to boom. Millions of people migrate from China's rural areas into the cities to get jobs and until the recession this has been the engine that has been driving China and much of the developing worlds rise from poverty. Now with the start of this global recession things are MUCH more uncertain, many many factories have closed and more are closing still, people are left wondering what to do next. If things get much worse unrest will start to settle in.

What makes me mad is to think that those in government and on wall street frittered away Hundreds of Billions of dollars KNOWINGLY without even thinking for a second that it was going to impact REAL peoples live in a big way. Everyone from auto workers in Detroit and IT professionals in America to factory workers in India and China are feeling the effects and are going to feel the effects of this all because of the greed of a few thousand at the top!!:mad:

[Idealism]

1. Something everyone should understand:

Capitalism is not inherently beneficial to the masses; It benefits the few who have more "ambition" (See: greed), luck, and personal connections. Its not what you know, but who you know often times. There are always great success stories of capitalism, but the majority of people don't have those breakthroughs. Instead they tell us often about the latest "slumdog millionaire" in a vain attempt to dangle the carrot in front of our faces. Any society that has a great concentration of wealth at the top, and abject poverty at the bottom is not truly free.

[Locut0s]

3. Very true in any Capitalist country except it skirts my point a bit...

I wasn't arguing for or against the Capitalist system of which I fully understand its flaws. I was arguing that until recently hundreds of millions of people in the developing world were seeing a meagre but very definite improvement in their standard of living.

[Idealism]

5. I was trying to relate that to our system

These people are benefiting in China and other countries that have cheap manual labor because of Capitalism, American "free market" dogma edition. Thanks to Globalization, a pseudonym for capitalism on a world-wide scale, you have a "I'll meet you in the middle" scenario where the more wealthy country is hurt by globalization in the forms of labor but benefits from temporarily lowered prices. Globalization means you lift everyone else up from the bottom, while slicing the wealthier down a few pegs. China soon will start to become so wealthy that they no longer need the US consumerism, and will in turn become self-sufficient, raising wages there. This will eventually lead to them outsourcing their labor elsewhere, probably Malaysia or India. Some will find amusement in this irony...

[Locut0s]

7. Agreed but point was that as much as the system seems like satire it has actually produced results..

People in developing countries have been lifted out of poverty. Can the cycle continue indefinitely no of course not but as an engine for bringing the world out of poverty and spreading education and raising standards of living it does work. It's the best hope we have right now and the global recession we face no could not have come at a worse time and could not have been caused by more idiotic behaviour.

[Idealism]

8. One could argue if it is the best solution the world has

The thing with globalized capitalism is that it takes a long, long time to work its way across the world. China has been mass-producing things for less than 20 years, yet they aren't halfway to self-sufficiency. Perhaps you can lay some of that blame on them holding unto Communism, but I think these things just take time either way. So lets give them 50 years per country to lift out of poverty and transform into a Great Power. There are hundreds of country's in the world to do this to... We will all be long dead before then.

Globalization isn't truly good for your country. For this reason, and it being god-awfully slow at producing results in those other countries, I believe Socialism is the way to go. Look at Venezuela since Chavez came to power. He hasn't been able to shake off the old aristocratic society completely, but he has done several great things for the average, working poor. Since he was elected, the rate of children enrolled in government-paid for college has tripled. They pay for it out of the profits from the state-owned oil industry, much like how they pay for health care clinics, hospitals, and infrastructure. Before Chavez, you had an oligarchy in place of a democracy. Globalization would not have helped these people much, considering they would get exploited and pillaged by the aristocrats who owned the factories.

[Frustratedlady]

2. And, those few thousand at the top will remain faceless, for the most part.

Their gains will be stuck away on some island and they will avoid paying taxes on much of their profit. They should be publicly shunned.

[shanti]

4. shunned?

they don't give a shit, they're shunning US!

[Locut0s]

6. I don't want this to turn into a discussion about...

the flaws of Capitalism which I understand. Nor a discussion about Communism, China bashing, outsourcing etc... THAT is NOT the point of this post. My point is just that until recently hundreds of millions of people in the developing world were seeing a meagre but very definite improvement in their standard of living. The rich were getting much richer but many of the poor were starting to get a little less poor for the first time in a long while. There was NO guarantee that this could continue of course!!! BUT this current economic downturn WAS STUPENDOUSLY STUPID and greedy even by wall street's usual standards.

[aquart]

9. Uh huh. People are going to suffer. People are suffering.

But I am hugely amused that there is still this grandiose thinking that OTHER people will be suffering more than we will.

[ddeclue]

10. The basic problem is that the Chinese are being used for slave labor

in place of people in THIS country getting paid an honest day's wage.

The result is that NEITHER the Chinese worker NOR the American one can afford to buy anything that is being produced and thus demand must eventually fall leading to the inevitable layoffs that are now happening.

If companies want to outsource to the third world they need to pay Western wages and follow Western labor, environmental and safety laws or the system is doomed to fail.

The Chinese need to be allowed to unionize and there should be free speech and a multiparty system of government or it really doesn't matter what else China does - it will fail.

Doug D.

[exboyfil]

11. I see another glorious workers revolution in the works

I wonder if they will send their newly minted capitalists to the farming communes like the intellectuals in the last workers revolution. I wonder how many of these capitalists will head for Taiwan to start the cycle all over again.