Posted on 03/04/2009 2:43:29 PM PST by traumer
It's just after 8 and I am standing in the middle of a jobs market in Dongguan in Southern China.
It's mobbed. There are thousands of unemployed young people milling around in a car park in front of a commercially run jobs market.
The employment exchange - plays Chinese pop music at deafening volume, perhaps to give a lift to the idle young people.
Wearing (mostly) dark blue jackets and jeans, they pick up a flimsy newspaper which lists what's available today in the basic industries that characterise the vast local economy.
Its six pages contain just 300 vacancies, not remotely enough to meet the needs of those who are surging in from all sides.
And round the corner, there are hundreds more men - and they are mostly men - at similar recruitment markets (I am told that companies regard women as less bolshy so exercise gender discrimination by sacking fewer of them).
The men come in by bus, by bike, but mostly on foot. And their numbers keep swelling.
When I speak to them, they are grim about prospects: jobs are few; and vacancies so scarce that employers are ruthlessly cutting wages.
A salary of £4 ($5.60) a day is not untypical, even for a position requiring some skills. That's barely a subsistence wage, even here.
The crowd is a troubling manifestation of South China's jobs crisis. Thousands of factories have closed in the region, millions of workers - mostly migrants from impoverished rural China - have been made redundant.
And unlike last year, the global recession means that very few new job opportunities are being created.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
ha.
so now China plans a stimulus bill of its own.
does this mean no more buying US debt?
We are screwed when it comes to China. They have buying up our debt for the last few decades. No one else can now. When they stop buying our debt (which imho will be very soon), the gig is up. This whole fantasy land world of spending trillions you don’t have comes to a crashing halt. Thats a hell of a sword to hold over our heads.
To worsen matters, countries tend to resort to nationalism in tough times. China is not immune from this fact. If there are enough unemployed people they will conscript them into the Army and become more totalitarian. The last thing we need in these troubled times, being led by mental midget, is China causing trouble.
yes. but I want it to happen as fast as possible so we can get through the revolution and start rebuilding
There are no more US jobs to free trade away to Communist China
America has always created jobs and then traded them away. It's America's way of moving up the ladder. It really started way back after the second world war when the US provided massive aid to Europe and opened up the American market to European products. We're still participating with Europe till this day. In fact, Europe, taken as a whole, does more trade with the US than China.
People complain about recent off shoring, but it's been happening since WWII with Europe, and not China, as the biggest beneficiary.
The American economy is structured in such a way, as all government expenditures, local, state and federal, pay entitlements. Roughly 50% of most budgets. People can complain about illegals, welfare, and foreign aid. But the overwhelming majority of government budgets go to pay pensions, medicare, and social security. America is turning into a seniors entitlement program where the retired tasks the working class to serve them.
There isn't anything wrong with that, of course, as we all need help in our golden years. But unless unentitlements are streamlined, America will continue to be hampered by this huge future obligation.
well the oldsters are going to have to surviv the collapse too, so they better get jumping
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