"Carl Byrns" wrote in message
...

I'm not endorsing any extreme answer. I am asking some hard questions
and getting soft answers.
If the labor rate in China really is 80 cents an hour, then it's game
over, the Chinese are the winners, and the rest of us better get
comfortable with being farmers because we will be the new peasants.

The official minimum wage in China is 31 cents/hour. In the interior,
footwear and textile workers often are paid 17 cents/hour. In the coastal
cities, the "illegal immigrants" (those are the rural peasants who moved to
the cities without permission; the number is well up in the millions) also
make less than 31 cents/hour.

The 80 cents/hour figure comes from a report of what moldmakers are paid in
coastal cities. Engineers often make $1/hr or more, sometimes more than $2.
An engineering director in a substantial manufacturing company may make
$10,000/year. Roughly half of the people in China are rural peasants, and
they make almost nothing per hour. They live in a classical peasant culture,
which is to say, it is nothing like living in true poverty in the US.
Chinese peasants have a life.

No, the game isn't over, unless you think you have to sacrifice yourself on
the pyre of "free" trade ideology. It pays to remember what Mickey Kantor, a
former US Trade Representative (that's the head of our Trade Office, Dept.
of Commerce) said about free trade. He said there is no such thing.

Don't forget it. And then analyze our policies with a critical and
non-ideological eye, questioning every presumption. That's the only way
we'll figure a way to deal with it.

And remember: Ideology kills.

--
Ed Huntress
(remove "3" from email address for email reply)