I have one thing to say in response: Tiaiman Square. First, China is not competing with free trade, as a matter of fact, the only ones playing free trade is us, and we're paying for it. All other major nations are putting up various protectionist barriers: Japan, EU, China, India, Russia, etc. We are the only ones who aren't and we all know where our jobs are going. Sure, we have job growth: checked out where? Lower end (why DollarTree and other "Dollar" stores are posting record gains, since their primary growth sector, the $25,000 and below demographic is the one that grows the fastest) and government jobs. Uncle Sam is the biggest producer of jobs in the past 5 years, yup, more government, more socialism. As it stands, counting all levels of government, some 25% of the US work force is government employeed.
Further, while there is a middle class in China, it is trivial, compared to the billion plus slave or near slave labor. China by WTO rules is required to have freely organized labor, environmental and work safety features, etc. The WTO has given China sweeping access to various markets but they have failed to comply by any of the rules, while no government complains, except Taiwan.
Lastly by your standards, we should never have gotten rid of Saddam, or the Taliban, nor should we pressure N.Korea or Iran or anyone else. We should simply have free trade with them and all the ills will be solved.
And which of these economies do you prefer to ours?
since their primary growth sector, the $25,000 and below demographic is the one that grows the fastest
You wouldn't happen to have a link to back up this assertion, would you?
You make a lot of unsupported assertions in this reply. Do you have statistics that back up your claims of wage stagnation or shrinkage in the US?
You keep talking about the conditions in China today. You're really not backing up any of what you say with hard data and I have reason to believe that you can't.
You keep confusing political and institutional China with the cultural and economic China that I am talking about. Until you understand that those should be separated, we really don't have much to talk about.
Try taking off your ideological blinders for once and try to see the potential I'm talking about. We're talking about a HUGE MARKET that is largely unexploited. Sure, they pirate our products and set up trade barriers, but do you think that this is an economic problem or a political problem? Which one do you think we'll have more success dealing with?
That's an excellent point! If lower prices to consumers and free trade are the two highest priorities in our existence, why should we care about any other issue? Freedom, democracy, ethnic cleansing of whatever variety must be subordinated to the two master passions - low prices and free trade.
Free traitors - still supporting slavery in the 21st century!