Why are we kowtowing to the Chinese Government? Why are we treating this overpopulated two-tier perverted ruthless dictatorship with a distorted mercantile-capitalistic system so nicely? What have they done for us in return to merit such respect? They don’t deserve special treatment because they have a long history, nice cuisine, limited natural resources, and a lot of people.
THEY MADE THEIR OWN CHOICES
No one forced China to buy nearly a trillion dollars of U.S. Treasuries. No one forced their leaders to artificially peg their currency to the U.S. dollar. No one forced them to engage in massive seller financing to dump their excess products around the globe.
No one forced China to engage in a vast and brutal domestic cultural revolution that stripped away the country’s ancient moral and ethical foundations so now its young people are completely mesmerized by shallow consumerism and beholden to a dangerous nationalism vis-à-vis the rest of the world.
No one forced China to ignore the vast majority of its population’s basic consumer needs in favor of overbuilding their manufacturing capacity. No one told them to egregiously pollute their air, land and water, and callously ignore the safety of their citizens in mines, factories, and food production just to achieve economic progress that maintains social peace and avoids an honest reassessment of their dictatorial regime.
CHINA IS NOT AN EQUAL PARTNER TO THE U.S.
China is not in any way a functioning representational democracy. Of course its leaders can make economic, political and military decisions in a matter of weeks because there is no meaningful opposition or even any opportunity for dissent. Ultimately the U.S. cannot fully trust or work with a regime so removed from the principles of open Western societies.
China has a rudimentary legal system. It heavily censors its press and the Internet, keeping far too many of its people woefully ignorant of reality. Many of its regional and local governments are a sorry collection of corrupt petty officials that depend upon central spending and planning.
China provides little of no worthwhile legal protection for foreign patents and copyrights. It actively steals technology from abroad because its people, educational system, and governmental structures are too rigid and unimaginative to produce enough independent and creative thinkers. Reasonably compensating all artistic creativity is doomed to their vast pirating sub-economy.
It has followed an outdated international mercantile policy despite the interconnectedness of the global economy. It ignores global nuclear proliferation, huge trade imbalances, and the multiple and serious violations of human rights in neighboring countries in favor of its short-sighted economic and energy needs.
China manipulates its trade policy and currency to ensure that it illegally undercuts the superior products of its global competitors. It maintains an artificially underpaid workforce so it can suck up manufacturing from around the world. No country can possibly compete with a perverted economic model that China maintains.
China provides no meaningful healthcare or pension systems for its huge population. Perhaps 200 to 300 million educated and working Chinese are doing relatively better than the other 1 billion Chinese in the country. However that wide disparity in economic wealth and income will become equally corrosive and debilitating as it is in the U.S. and many other countries.
WE ENABLED CHINESE GROWTH AND ARROGANCE
Of course, we in the U.S. and others around the world have enabled it and continue to be concerned for it because many multinational corporations have such major investments in that country. Our political and business classes happily abandoned our domestic manufacturing base in practically all consumer products to the search for ever-cheaper labor. We are now outsourcing professional, technological, engineering and office jobs as well to China and other low-labor countries around the world. The simple reason the world’s largest well-educated, highly skilled, and most productive people cannot compete globally is that most Americans are not willing to work for less than $2 an hour.
Why should we give a damn about the various Chinese sensitivities and its excessive national pride? Is everyone so special for various cultural, religious, ethnic and national distinctions that they may refuse to tolerate any valid criticism? Our country has a long history of verbally ripping apart with no mercy those with whom we disagree domestically. Why should they expect anything less from us – particularly if they deserve it?
WE OWE CHINA VERY LITTLE
Why are we so afraid of their cash holdings that support some of our deficit spending? Why should we comport our national priorities and policies and our unrelated international relations to keep the Chinese leaders and its general population pleased? Does the U.S. now exist solely to placate and worship these shady, corrupt and hyper-arrogant world upstarts? Why should our President be lead around their country as if he were no more than a cardboard cutout?
Why don’t we recognize their passive-aggressive long-range and very patient plan to completely destroy our country’s economy? Why do they constantly turn down our invitations to share in leading the world on various economic, environmental and military fronts? They are still concentrating on taking us out before we actually realize it through sheer force, numbers and subterfuge. We have no global partner in China, Europe or any other group of countries. We should live with that reality. Chinese leaders have always politely listened to us and then done just as they please for their own best interests.
If we say or do something that displeases them, what are they going to do? We should really suspend all our international trade agreements and determine which ones actually serve the long-term best interests of our country and the majority of our citizens. Free trade is a not a one-way street when the other side engages in intentional massive unfair trade practices.
I don’t care where the Chinese will get their chicken feet that we seem to make in great abundance. What are they going to do with their many substandard consumer products if we stop buying them? Maybe they should build up their own domestic consumer market and do more seller-financing in the rest of the globe to prop up their one-dimensional economy.
CAVEAT EMPTOR
Why are we fretting needlessly over current zero interest rates are and the total federal debt that most Americans will never have to pay off? It’s not as if we’re going to default on any interest or principle payments of Treasury Bonds and someone is going to foreclose. In fact, it is not even the responsibility of U.S. citizens because the debt is owed by our 220-year-old legal fiction called the United State Government. If we don’t pay those obligations, where will the creditors go for meaningful financial and legal redress?
One of the precipitating factors in the recent economic crash was that so many American households and businesses could not pay many overpriced residential and commercial mortgages that were bundled and sold globally by our shady, greedy and clueless financial sector. Every economy slows down from time to time in a free enterprise system causing unfortunate fallouts. Just because we were riding a huge real estate bubble does not justify the rest of the world also joining in the irrational exuberance. No one told them to invest in these crappy securities without actually assessing the likely risks and true values of underlying assets.
We made our domestic financial entities whole through public bailouts but we owe nothing to foreign or Chinese investors who foolishly tied their economies to ours. They claim they’re big boys now so they should be able to care of themselves. Didn’t anyone explain caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) to the many loony Chinese officials?
The senseless fear of inflation and our temporary large federal deficit will not be significant drags on our economy for at least the next 3 to 5 years. A total lack of adequate investment in our people, infrastructures, new technologies, and smaller enterprises over the past 2 decades has brought our country to this dismal point in our history – not deficit spending. Besides, our 50 states and all local governmental authorities must balance their budgets each year. American households and businesses have their own $40 trillion total debt to eventually pay off. If we don’t educate our people, support our domestic new businesses, invest in renewable energies and greatly improve our nation’s transportation infrastructures, will the Chinese do those things for us?
Are we going to listen to Central bankers in Europe, China and our discredited Wall Street financial wizards, plus various international business executives, on how to run our country when their interests are no longer tied to the vast majority of our citizens? They are no longer coupled to caring how the American economy and people do in the future. Their investments and principle sources of revenues are now worldwide or located wholly outside the U.S. Why do you think we have a stock market bubble while unemployment rises? Many of the companies on our various domestic exchanges no longer rely solely on the U.S. economy for their survival. Many have gone global and simply uncoupled themselves from the rest of America.
DAMNED IF WE DO, DAMNED IF WE DON’T
During the Bush Administration, we were accused of being the world’s sole bully superpower that acted unilaterally in our own self interests. So now the Obama Administration finds that the world is only content when we act as if we were no different in world power or influence from Belgium or Bolivia. Thereby they can avoid supporting us on any global initiatives, and still complain that we should not act in our own nation’s best interests. Despite our continuous efforts for decades to juggle global concerns with our own, many other countries are never pleased unless we place their narrow self interest far above ours.
If the world community constantly harps on environmental issues to the exclusion of economic, military and other pressing global issues, it is no wonder we dismiss valid environmental issues because everything is essentially interrelated. Is China, Russia, or any other group of countries around the world is fully capable of being a world power? If the U.S. disappeared, there would be a massive power vacuum for several decades.
So what happens when world bankers, leaders and the IMF assert that we can no longer afford Social Security, Medicare, our global Military peacekeeping role, and all our internal infrastructure and social spending because their financial investments might suffer? If it were not for the massive global military and economic presence of the U.S., would China, Europe and much of the world remain decades behind us? They should all be reminded that they might all resemble Detroit if we had not chosen to make massive public and private investments in their countries over the past 50 years.
U.S. DEFICIT PRINCIPALLY CAUSED BY HELPING THE REST OF THE WORLD
Should not most nations share in our large annual security expense that protects open trade and relative peace and prosperity for most of the world? Our national taxes would actually support most of our domestic programs but for our Military expenditures that benefit all countries around the globe. Simply because they are footing part of the bill, does not grant them much of a say in anything. Perhaps we should demand a greater financial contribution from other countries to support global economic and political stability. If we unilaterally cut our Military to balance our fiscal books, would any other country step forward and willingly balance many global interests as we have for decades, and not just pursue their own self interests?
Is there any other nation that can physically invade us to impose fiscal discipline? With our vast military, 2nd Amendment, and our ornery and fiercely independent citizens armed with more guns than people, no nation stands a chance. China and the rest of the world can complain, grouse, criticize, buy more commodities, and slowly sell off their dollar holdings and hoard other currencies. In the end, that result might be better for Americans if we did not depend on the rest of the world. They could impose huge trade barriers to our exported goods but then we could do the same in reverse. We might be forced to start manufacturing more things domestically for our own internal markets.
TIME TO FOCUS ON OUR LONG-TERM BEST INTERESTS
We should not care what the world thinks about us. We don’t get any more global cooperation or assistance, or sane actions on the part of foreign countries, just because we’re popular and likeable. It is more important to be respected than to be considered the big dumb sap in the global community. I expect my all my country’s political, civic and business leaders to first concern themselves with our country and people – the rest of the world can be an afterthought.
Instead of hyperventilating that much of the world and an ignorant and fretful domestic minority are upset with our policies and deficit spending, we should maintain a different attitude. “If you don’t like it – it’s just too bad. It’s time to get over it and move on. We’re the world’s sole superpower and we’ll do pretty much what we damn well please.” And our President should realize that as well or he’ll be replaced by Sarah Palin faster than you can say Jimmy Carter.
Submitted by Marc Pascal who happily rants from Phoenix, AZ. He wishes all good Americans including those of Chinese descent a Very Happy Thanksgiving and encourages everyone to eat lots turkey legs and but not any chicken feet. Take that all your crazies on the Left and Right!!