Much is being said about China nowadays, most of it not good. I was in China in l996, and the people were good to fair to shitty, to nice. So somewhat like a few other countries I know, but not as bad as France, and not as good as South American countries; so all-in-all, not bad. We have been trying hard to get China to join the world for a long time, a very long time, and we have; matter-of-fact, it was the United States who opened the doors for them into the WTO [World Trade Organization]. But of course somethings have gone wrong, and when they do, we blame them for other things as well, guilty, even if not so guilty, although most of the time they are guilty but we should perhaps not connect them to the same issue: its one of them things though: monkey see, monkey do.

So Europe and America for the most part are upset with them dumping cheap crap on our doorsteps, because of their cheap labor, and we cant compete with our high labor costs; something like that. And it makes sense; like anything, we are for self survival, like the Chinese: everyone (or most everyone) wants a job, to work, to bring home the beans and the bacon: sort of speaking. It is similar to the war with the EU and US over subsidizing aircraft, and so forth and so on.

There is of course a way to settle this, and from my eyes it would be fair: just match the labor costs of China with the US, and tax the difference (if they get $1.00 an hour, and the US pays $`10. an hour, you got a tax of $9.00, if the item, it took one hour to make that is, something like that]. Nothing is so simple, but the brains can figure that out, and the system would be balanced, and whose items would we buy? But is this right?

In a like manner, we let the Mexicans come over to work for $3.00 an hour, when we pay others $15-dollars an hour, and half the time their employer dont pay them. Separating this from other issues: pay what you own, not what you wish is the correct thing to do. A deal is a deal, but we got some real assholes for employers out there.

When I was working with the Prison system, when the inmates came out, the employers did, or tired to do, the same thing: not pay, or pay them less after a deal was struck.

Anyhow, I do not know the solution, but we got what we asked for, China is doing the duck walk, they will follow the US, everyone does sooner or later and if we cheat on the deal, so will they. They, like Russia, and South America want to live like Americans: the picnic is just starting for them.