[Vision2020] Food/gas prices

[Andreas Schou]

Donovan --

By pegging the value of the yuan to the dollar, the Chinese government
has undervalued it by around 30%. This, effectively, serves as a 30%
subsidy to goods sold in the US -- an advantage that we can't bring up
to the WTO because China owns such a vast quantity of
dollar-denominated debt.

Aside from the fact that this gives China a tremendous trade advantage
with the United States, this screws Chinese workers out of 30% of the
value of their paycheck. Not to mention the fact that Chinese workers
lack the factors that brought up the living standard of American
worker (a labor movement; a responsive democracy).

-- ACS


On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 9:18 PM, Donovan Arnold
<donovanjarnold2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Garrett,
>
> I am afraid that I don't see economics the same way you do.
> I think Wal-Mart increases the quality of life for people in China, and here
> at home. I think the reason that so many Chinese people compete for jobs at
> factories that contract with Wal-Mart is because they are better than the
> other jobs in China.
>
> A factory worker in China lives higher on the economic scale in his country
> than I do in mine. A factory workers in China gets $300-$400 a month, plus
> there housing and medical care are provided. $300 in China, will buy a lot
> more than it will here. Add to this fact that they don't own automobiles,
> and your life is comparatively better than the average Chinese person.
>
> A good reason why China has such poor human conditions has to do more with
> their overpopulation and lack of resources to provide for them all than it
> has to do with willful human rights and environmental abuses.
>
> The United States had just as bad of a human rights record just as little as
> a 100 years when we were in our industrialization age. We had children
> working in coal mines. We had women working in inhuman and unsafe working
> conditions. We denied people jobs on the basis of gender, age, disability,
> race, and religion. We are only better because we grew wealthy and were able
> to slowly change the working conditions one issue at a time.
>
> I think China will eventually get there. But if we all stop buying from
> them, they will take longer to get there. It costs money to update and make
> all factories safer for workers, the only way they get that money is through
> the labor of its workers and landing big US contracts.
>
> I believe, if you wanted to help the US workforce, both in wages, and
> working conditions, you would start by shutting down companies that employ
> illegal immigrants. We need to lead by changing our own working conditions
> first.
>
> The reason why oil prices are high is because environmentalism will not
> allow us to drill here at home. If we could drill off our own shores, maybe
> drill for oil in Mexico and provide jobs there, we could drive down prices.
> I think we should also look to the long term and start finding alternative
> sources of energy, in a very serious way.
>
>
> On a side note, can you tell me where the closest biodiesiel refinery plants
> are located? Thanks.
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
> Donovan
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Garrett Clevenger <garrettmc at verizon.net> wrote:
> Donovan writes:
>
> "This is why you need a Wal-Mart Super Center in
> Moscow, the competition keeps the prices low."
>
> Donovan,
>
> I wonder, do you not see the problem Wal-Mart poses to
> not only our local economy, but of the unsustainable,
> and exploitative, nature of Wal-Mart's leverage?
>
> I ask this because I assume you would have a problem
> with the ethics of a company that seems to violate
> moral reasoning, such as exploitation of workers in
> China who, no matter how deserving of earning money to
> live, are still treated as expendable.
>
> These Chinese companies Wal-Mart purchases from, on
> top of competing with American companies, do not have
> to follow the same environmental, labor or other
> regulations that the US makes American companies
> follow, so are thus at an unfair competitive advantage
> as they dump their wastes into their rivers, and send
> their pollutants into the air that the US Park Service
> is now able to sample in our National Parks.
>
> How many poisoned products do we have to import before
> you say this isn't right?
>
> How many small businesses that go under because they
> can't compete with the buying power of Wal-Mart do you
> think is acceptable?
>
> Will you recognize that Wal-Mart is a major instigator
> of Chinese trade, and thus our trade deficit? That
> the Wal-Mart/China relationship is a major factor in
> the down-turn in the US economy? After all, it's
> reported that China is holding $1.5 trillion of our
> dept, a lot of it for the Iraq War, which has caused
> oil prices to increase as you recognize. The hundreds
> of billions of dollars Wal-Mart spends in China on
> cheap goods is now being lent back to us to support
> the war machine. Kind of ironic, I think.
>
> It seems if we focused more on our local economy, and
> limited the amount of foreign made products we could
> be providing for ourselves, we would in the long run
> be keeping prices low. After all, as fuel prices
> continue to escalate, we are only going to find how
> important it is to reduce transportation costs. What
> better time to start that than now?
>
> I believe in the long run Hawkins, and Super Wal-Mart,
> will be more of an expensive burden on Moscow than if
> we were to start using those resources to build our
> local economy in a more sustainable way, rather than
> subsidizing the wealth of China.
>
> gclev
>
> =======================================================
> List services made available by First Step Internet,
> serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> http://www.fsr.net
> mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> =======================================================
>
>
>
>  ________________________________
> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
> =======================================================
>   List services made available by First Step Internet,
>   serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>                http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>  =======================================================
>