However, it’s not OK to route our middle class for profits based simply on facilitating trade at any cost. Tariffs won’t equalize their manufacturing costs with ours and they shouldn’t be made to. However, they should be used as a mechanism for decreasing the strain of the vacuum and giving the developing economies incentives not to externalize their costs to non-market mechanisms. De-valuing the currency isn’t useful in this either. That’s one reason that the yuan is pegged to the dollar and we know from Jim’s posts that China is just as adept as we are at flooding the streets with money.

We all lose in a race to the bottom when developing economies destroy the environment and when they are allowed to be unaccountable for toxic and faulty products. Ask the 100,000 US families who own uninhabitable homes built with toxic Chinese drywall how they feel about the fact that most of the manufacturers are totally beyond the reach of litigation. Ask the parents of children who are permanently damaged by melamine-milk, how they feel about lack of regulation. The current trade regime is a race to the bottom and only encourages more trans-national, anti-capitalist regulation which weakens our sovereignty as well as theirs.

I don’t know about you, but I’d at least like to have the theoretical chance to elect the criminals who run my government, rather than have almost no chance of affecting the international agencies that are increasingly responsible for setting policy and regulating trade. International climate change treaties? Please, please, don’t lets start overruling our constitution and hamstringing ourselves based on some rather speculative science.

I apologize for offending you and twoyrfixed. I will make one more comment to respond to your assumption. I am not getting paid by the government here. I actually had better after tax income and quality of life when I lived in sunny CA, as you do.

I just honestly get tired of what I perceive as uninformed and reflexive criticism of China and the Chinese government. My understanding of China definitely changed since I got here. I don’t know if you’ve visited for an extended period of time (the black lung comment is dead on unfortunately), but I think it’s worth trying if you have time. Also take a trip to North Korea (what China was like a generation ago–and trips are legal now) and you will get a better sense of how things have changed in China. Then, take an extended trip to India and you’ll see what China could be like without strong central control.

We’ll have to agree to disagree about certain economic issues and the Chinese government in general (nobody that I’ve talked to here perceives them to be a “brutal regime of dictators…” though I did before I moved out here and saw the tangible improvement in people’s standard of living–as crazy as it sounds, I honestly don’t think an immediate transition to full scale Western style democracy would help China or the average Chinese person at this time).

I’m not advocating Chinese stocks now by the way. I think the odds of a big correction this year outweigh potential gain in the near term, but we shall see.

I assume by living amongst and being an apologist for a brutal regime of dictators in a country whose national policy is to imprison, maim and kill anyone perceived as a threat, including the poor slob whose job it was to negotiate iron ore pricing, you profit handsomely. Good for you; I hope the silver in your pocket justifies the black lung you’ll no doubt have in a few years time. With a little luck, you won’t wind up on the other side of a negotiation that lands you in prison.

But personally attacking those with whom you disagree is juvenile and beneath someone who obviously is quite thoughtfull.

Suggesting that reason we’re all concerned about a command economy run by, in your words, “a kind of government meritocracy” that is a dictatorship chosen by none other than dictators because we’re latent racists is somewhat facile, don’t you think? Who is to say who merits deciding who gets to be a governor and who gets to be a governed? Some asshole who did well in school? You?

In my view, the world demanding fair trade with China, who has subsidized its exports in a manner that makes virtually every other country uncompetitive- not because the chinese make a better mousetrap at a better price but because the government artificially allows it to be sold at a low price- is not akin to the protectionism in the 1930s and 1940s. You might disagree; fair enough.

But to suggest our disagreement is because I’m a racist, and you’re not, or that I’m simply anti-chinese but you are a benevolent friend of the chinese is a frigging joke. Get over yourself you pompous asshole.