Broken China

The Chinese Stock Market takes a rapid tumble and so does ours. Which  begs the question, if China is such a rotten destructive force on us, as some politicians and Americans suggest, why do we have so much riding on their success?

The first thing that needs to happen is our news media needs to take a chill pill and stop covering stock market flip flops like the Sun is crashing to Earth. Remember that as some are losing some money, there are others who swoop in and make money in a downturn. There is a difference between the gamesmanship of Wall Street and the real economy of  goods and services. The blips on a screen and shuffling of paper and manipulation by the money masters has cost our country and the world dearly. It is all illusion but accepted as real because we all agree to it. Reach into your pocket right now and pull out a one dollar bill. That piece of paper has value for acquiring goods and services because we all collectively agree it's worth a dollar. If tomorrow the majority rejected it as acceptable currency and decided we will now use red pebbles, that would be our new currency because we have confidence in the pebble.

Presidential hopeful Scott Walker said that President Obama should cancel the upcoming State Visit to our country by the new President of China. Walker says a State Dinner should only be held for our friends and, uh, and... What the hell is he talking about? Either he was attempting to channel the nonsense of Trump or he is truly clueless. A State Visit by a major power is important and provides an opportunity for substantive dialogue between our mutual leaders.

China is not our enemy. They are our commercial competitor in some areas and a key supplier of goods to us in others. They are also a growing power on the world stage. It is disturbing that we have people like Trump and many others who are stoking flames of resentment toward China in the same way it was done to Japan in the '70s and '80s. Over 300 million Chinese, the totality of our population, has been lifted out of poverty and into what we call the middle class. Do you begrudge them that? If you don't like Chinese goods, don't buy them, just pick the other countries of your choice and have had it.

After World War II we made a decision, and by we I mean the ruling class, that as a nation we needed to be able to project military force rapidly. That meant establishing bases everywhere possible. How do you convince a country to let you use them as a target? Trade deals. Since that time we negotiated deals that were lopsided to  get and keep those bases. NAFTA was the first major trade deal since World War II that didn't take into account our national security needs.

Our own corporations made the decision to relocate their manufacturing to other countries, blame them, not the citizens of the other countries. It is those same corporations whose greed and unwillingness to take a stand for the best interest of the American people that led to shuttered factories and shattered lives.

For those who maintain that those companies were unable to compete, it's false. Their profit margin had to be lower than they wanted. One of their biggest disadvantages then and now is healthcare costs. Which is the greatest argument to be made for universal single payer healthcare. Take it out of the corporate consideration, which is how it is in the rest of the first world. Even emerging economies are recognizing this need. Only the United States refuses to endorse healthcare as a human right and is not willing to take on the medical industrial complex.

We can build things in this country and be competitive but if you're buying into the snake oil mentality that our lost jobs are coming back or that we can pull up the draw bridge and wait out the world, you're in for a major disappointment.

If America is going down the drain as Trump and others suggest then why are they spending so much time talking about immigration and building guilded walls. Who the hell would want to come to a shitty country that's about to collapse?