How much will taxpayers shoulder?

[Vandiablo]

You see, he always thought it was fair to win because he was stronger as his victims, but loosing apparantly implied that I cheated somehow.

So the U.S. is a bully, and China's actions are a well-deserved punch in the stomach?

I hope you live to see interesting times. The U.S. has made mistakes, especially during this administration, especially regarding security matters, and especially in the Mideast. Historically speaking, though, I disagree with you. My feeling is that you haven't seen many U.S. administrations.

China is "winning" and the U.S. is crying "unfair" because it is "losing"?? The real losers here are mainly Chinese workers. The bully is not the U.S. The bully is the Chinese leadership that takes the labor and keeps almost all the wealth.

It is not that manufacturing work (or telephone support) is "beneath" us, it's that most of us in the U.S. believe that people's time, no matter their training level, is more valuable than peanuts per day. (a phrase meaning "very cheap")

It is a great disconnect that consumers in the U.S. just buy the cheapest stuff (even if it really is low quality) without regard to long term effects. Most people don't care because they're not directly in manufacturing and it's someone else's problem.

Businesses in the U.S. are often faced with paying more for labor than their competitors and possibly going out of business, or shipping the jobs out to where people will work for peanuts. Companies like WalMart that try to circumvent labor laws exacerbate this process.

It is not the fault of the laborers on either side that this disparity exists. In the case of Chinese goods, it is the Chinese leadership taking most of the value-added from labor and only paying laborers enough to survive. There's your bully -- they bully their workers.

So when you have a story about bullies, I'm thinking more about a Chinese worker and his "manager".

Now a few caveats...

Of course, some of the blame also must go to the first people to buy from sweatshops. The money they "made", if there is a Hell, ought to be enough to send them there. ("The love of money....")

From what I hear, in recent years, China is a little better about giving to labor, and it is more likely that you are paying sweatshops if your product is made further south, e.g., Vietnam or Thailand. Or so I hear.

I feel that relations with China reveal one of the great hypocrisies of the Bush administration. They "un-signed" Kyoto because there would not be a "level playing field" with developing countries with regard to air pollution, but at the same time they were perfectly willing to accept exploitive Chinese labor practices that prevent a "level playing field" for trade. (Is this the paragraph where Occhi tells me I'm wrong?)

-V