"If capitalism is the best way to do things, why are we $1 trillion in debt to China!?"

[Fire Walk With Me]

-Felonius Munk, can be found on youtube.

[Swede]

1. They pay laborers pennies an hour.

And then Walmart sells this crap.

[Marazinia]

2. Because their slave labor is cheaper than our slave labor

And because Americans have been, as a people, such greedy and selfish pigs that we willingly bought cheap, slave labor goods and never spared a moment to speak for or even think about the rights of the people who made them.

Serves us right. All of this is exactly what we deserve. We sowed it, we reap it.

[Lionessa]

12. For now, but seems the 1% are trying to change that right quick, huh?

Slave labor anyway, while continually forcing us to only be able to afford cheap shit.

[Marazinia]

40. The scariest part of that is

If people in power take that Plutonomy Memo seriously it means they truly believe that impoverishing the vast majority of Americans (and presumably Europeans) won't hurt the super wealthy at all.

I'm still not sure how the memo's author managed to come up with those calculations, but I do remember he was worried that ordinary people could toss a monkey wrench in the works by actually remembering what democracy is good for.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

3. Because Americans have a much higher living standard.

Americans certainly consume more per capita, and I suspect produce less per capita, than Chinese.

[Lorien]

9. No, we have a much larger military

and spend billions on contractors for our wars of choice.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

29. The US spends less than 5% of GDP on defence.

So that can't be all, or even most, of the difference. Trying to blame that is just wishful thinking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

30. But it's 50% of discretionary spending.

:think:

[Egalitariat]

4. He doesn't understand that China is the most capitalist economy on the planet

[RainDog]

11. exactly. China doesn't have democracy but it DOES have capitalism.

it's sort of like 19th c. Europe - with no protection for working people, substandard wages...sort of like what the Republicans want the U.S. to look like - and some Democrats, too.

[Fool Count]

14. So let me rephrase: If democracy is the best way of doing things,

why are we in $1 trillion debt to China?"

[RainDog]

18. how about: democracy, REAL REPRESENTATION is the only thing that stands between us and China

because the majority do not want to undo the social safety net. the majority do not jobs offshored to labor that is paid a substandard wage. the majority do not want businesses to get to have all sorts of tax breaks that benefit share holders but hurt workers.

we cannot have a middle class if we do not pay middle-class wages to people. a strong middle class is one of the best indicators of a strong democracy.

it seems to me that China loaned us money to buy their cheaply-made goods. well, maybe we don't need those things, or if we do, we can pay more for them.

I didn't know about Apple sending jobs to China and the horrid working conditions they endured for a long time. Jobs may have been a great inventor/designer, but he was no better than a Chinese communist dictator when it came to the way people were treated vs. the profit he and his shareholders could make. This knowledge taints the legacy of Jobs. Forever.

[Fool Count]

19. If majority really doesn't want all those things you list,

and US is a real democracy, none of those things would be happening. But we know that they are, in fact, happening, and moreover, they will
continue to happen, as there is no credible way or mechanism to stop them even on the horizon. Ergo: US is not a democracy. Either that or
your assumption about what the majority wants is incorrect. That follows from simple logic and elemental definition of "democracy". That also
answers the rephrased question which I posed. Democracy may be the best way of doing things, but what US has is not a "democracy" as
it is conventionally defined - the system of popular government representing the will and desires of majority.

[txlibdem]

21. +1

[RainDog]

25. the U.S. is a represenative democracy, direct democracy may be local, but not federal

and since people are people, which means some of them are greedier than others, they use their money to accrue too much power - and, of course, this is how capitalism and democracy clash.

we've had to make corrections many times.

things are out-of-balance and we need to correct the power imbalance.

we wouldn't always want majority rule - I mean, rights are protected for minorities because we have a constitution that is supposed to be a guide to correcting abuses.

that's why we have three branches of the legislature - balancing powers.

I've never been under the illusion we were a pure democracy - if you look at our history, it's a move to try to correct the injustices of power again and again. the reason those injustices occur is because too much power is centered in the economic issues of a few rather than the well being of citizens or the common good. Otherwise we wouldn't have had slavery or other abuses of power.

and the whole idea of the Senate is like a 'house of lords" while the House is like the commoners' representatives who get voted in or out more quickly based upon their actions - at least in theory. but when money decides campaigns... well, we're back to that idea of our nation's power structures being out-of-balance.

[tama]

27. U.S. is not too big to fail

no nation state or empire is and never was. Rome failed and the global capitalist empire is failing, all Ponzi schemes fail.

Centralism and hierarchical power pyramids are Ponzi schemes and they fail. New emerging order is localism and horizontal networks with global conscience.

[RainDog]

35. never said it was

I was just commenting on the reality that we are not a direct democracy and never have been.

any power-sharing will involve abuses of power because systems are created by humans. any system needs to have checks to power.

[tama]

37. Never said you said it was :)

And if by direct democracy we mean just dictatorship of majority, I'm not too happy about even that. But there are practical solutions that have been tested and work and we can invent and create even better ones.

Also, we humans incline strongly towards self-importance, even though it is clear that nothing is created by humans alone but in coevolution with all other life forms on Earth. Agricultural civilizations and all the systems developed from that base are coevolutionary relations with certain annual hay plants that are probably not the smartest of the plant kingdom, which can be partial answer to the question why smartest ape on the planet is now in this shitty situation... ;)

[Laluchacontinua]

24. In 2002 state-run industries produced 45% of China's industrial output.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

Doesn't sound like the most capitalist economy on the planet to me.

[n2doc]

5. T-bagger- Because of them soshalist Unions and regulashuns

If we were more like them commies, we'd be living the good life!

[Prometheus Bound]

6. If it's any consolation, China had to borrow that trillion from its banks/depositors.

[SidDithers]

7. Doesn't that just mean that China is better at capitalism than the US?...nt

Sid

[moondust]

8. Repug answer: Because borrowing the money means you don't have to raise taxes.

You don't really care where the money comes from. Then later when a Democrat is in the White House you can raise holy hell about all that debt and use it to convince the public that government must cut spending!

Neat trick huh?

[Gregorian]

10. Military spending.

And tax cuts.

[JI7]

13. China shouldn't really be considered Communist anymore

[ThomWV]

15. Because China has become a Capitalistic country - we didn't owe them a dime when they weren't.

And it shouldn't go unnoticed that at about the same time they became a capitalistic country we more or less ceased to be one.

[white_wolf]

20. If we aren't capitalists then what are we? n/t

[xchrom]

16. Somebody's debt is someone else's asset. There is no 'china' or u.s. of a. Or

Europe.

There is just the balance sheets between mega corporations.

[Enrique]

17. the RW would love us to become more like China

where miners die by the thousands every year, but their growth rate is fantastic!

[txlibdem]

22. Nationalize all important industries - start with the banks and the Fed

Then you can start to bring back Democracy to this faded land.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

32. How do you nationalize the fed when the government already appoints its officers?

I don't want to come across as snarky but the name "The FEDERAL Reserve" is kind of a hint that the federal government officiates the reserve.

[txlibdem]

39. I meant "Nationalize the banks and put an end to The Fed"

Thanks for pointing out.

[defendandprotect]

23. Great question -- !!!

[sfpcjock]

26. It's a monster foreign-aid program that Congress lets its corporate masters run

so they can trade your job for a 50 cent/hour slave labor in Shanghai without even environmental controls or occupational safety. Fun and profitable, um PROFITABLE! We actually pay THEM to export our jobs.

[RegieRocker]

28. Shhhh... you're not supposed to ask that question!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

31. Capitalism is a private-sector based economic model

The trillion-plus dollars of debt are public (government).

Two completely different things.

[dawg]

33. Our debt to China is a very serious problem ...

for China, that is.

For us, not so much.

[GeorgeGist]

34. Because the Chinese ...

do capitalism better than 'we' do.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

36. We will loan the capitalists the rope with which we will hang them.

With apologies to V.I. Lenin who said: "The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them."

[JuniperLea]

38. If all those GOP policies will get us back on track...

Why did those same policies derail us in the first place?