[ninenot]

Please use your bump-lists. I left the sidebars in because they contain some very good links to very useful graphs.

Contrary to its usual style, the Journal-Sentinel did some good homework here and seems to have a grip on the facts.

[waterstraat]

We are probably witnessing the greatest economic boom in the history of the world because of free trade. We are also witnessing the reversal of american and european power to asia, with the asian peoples being better off since all those jobs and factories are now transfering to asia.

[A. Pole]

She spends her evenings in the factory dormitory in the smoggy industrial boomtown of Dongguan, sharing a room with five other migrants from the inner provinces and reading romance novels. Starting at 8:30 a.m., she works in a crowded concrete complex of 600 workers that clangs at capacity. Not counting breaks to eat, she puts in 10-hour days, six days a week, helping build kitchen appliances sold in U.S. stores under the Nesco brand. She makes 27 cents an hour.
[...]
Deng's post-reform nation has lifted a phenomenal 400 million people out of poverty, the World Bank estimates. "This," said former U.S. Trade Representative Carla Hills, "is the fastest change in human history."
[...]
According to Beijing's economic master plan, China will double its $1.236 trillion-a-year economy in the coming decade. In the following 10 years, it will double it again, Cheng said. By then, China will attain an affluent, or xiaokong, society after more than a century of famine, civil war, Leninism and occupation. Cheng knows the "20-year strategy" sounds like daydreams outside of Asia

It is great that the largest nation in the world has chance to move out of poverty in 20 years! But while this is going to happen, United States need to have the "economic master plan"/wise national policy too. Blaming unions, lazy workers, welfare/safety net, regulations and public schools is not enough.

Waiting for the "free market" to make a correction will be way too expensive - the trade can be balanced by the unregulated market through the collapse of US dollar to the level that will make Chinese imports too expensive. It is not feasible socially and politically.

A mad cow problem is a good ilustration of the folly of free market fundamentalism. Freemarketeers preferred voluntary "ban" on feeding cows with carrion over mandating natural the vegetarian diet. Free market will intervene in the end but in a destructive way.

[boycott]

Our government needs to put some heavy taxes on these products because it won't be long before they no longer have a tax base in this country.

We are witnessing the raping of America.

[The Duke]

The USA has a LONG WAY to fall before any of us are kicked out of our comfort zones. Remember when the inflation-adjusted price of tennis balls was so high that players had those clever little pressurized containers in which to preserve them? What were little treasures yesterday have become the worthless junk of today - and I'm not sure we're better off for it.

Sometimes, when Al Queda threatens some sort of massive blow against the US I find myself whimsically thinking..."What are they gonna do, blow us back to the 90's, the 80's... the 70's?" Hey, it wasn't so bad in the 70's as long as they don't reinstate Jimmy Carter's 55 MPH speed limit!"  Dear God ... it just occurred to me, maybe Al Queda is planning the RETURN OF DISCO!!!???

In all seriousness I will suggest one omninous aspect of current trends, though, which is the potential for massive corrections in the US real estate market.

[RussianConservative]

America on short path to slippery slide to own Communist experience...one closed factory at a step. Poor peoples vote Communist, always...stupid Free Traders not understand simple rule...or maybe they do and want results.

[ninenot]

Ping.

[Walkin Man]

"How can you compete with $70 a month, plus room and board, compared to my employees who make that in less than a day?"

Drumm bristled with exasperation. "What they are making now is what I was making when I started work in 1943: 25 cents an hour."

We are witnessing the planned destruction of the American middle-class.

The Republicans, Democrats and communist China walk hand in hand as one in this endeavor.