Posted On: Tuesday - February 2nd 2021 8:16AM MST
In Topics:   China  Economics
(continued from part 1.)
I guess not all PS readers got the joke of the title and image last time either. It's from an old famous scene in The Brady Bunch, in which sister Jan, the middle girl in age, is jealous of all the attention given to he older sister Marcia. Go figure. Marcia Brady was cute!
This post gets to why Peak Stupidity IS all "China, China, China!", as opposed to Part 1, in which we expounded on why we need to get over China as a military threat of any kind, at least for now.
"It's the economics, stupid", in the words of a guy who was one of the most guilty of giving away Americans manufacturing might to the Chinese. (Getting attention and getting laid by anyone, ANYONE, but the Hildabeast was much more important to Bill Clinton than some silly thing like the future of America.)
I have mentioned this before, in that post about Paul Tsongas, that I can recall a snippet of a conversation I had with a friend about this subject, way back in the middle 1990s. We used to talk politics for an hour or so each week. He asked me how it's going to turn out for America when all these jobs we had (still a lot) went off to China for the Chinese to do at cheap rates. He was very prescient, but I, being a hard-core Libertarian economically (and not knowing the history of tariffs in America) argued for these free trade deals. "Well, it'll work out to whoever can get the job done for less. That's the way it should be. Thing will equalize out." Ooops, yeah, I don't show enough humility on here, but sure, I was wrong. This equalization had happened, as our former solid middle class gets down to a level of the Chinese pseudo middle-class, and it'll get lots lower if we don't start creating our own wealth.
I don't want to repeat things said before many times on this blog, most recently in the 6 part series Will America be looted by China? - - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6. Therefore, I'll just restate that we have been losing an economic war with China for a long time. OK, not just losing, but giving away territory for the simple hell of it. As we wrote last time, giving Most Favored Nation status to, and making unfair (to us) trade rules with, China for 25 years is like having started the Pacific war with Japan by first renting out our bases in Hawaii, the Aleutians, and the entire West Coast to them in 1940.
I give ex-President Trump lots of credit for being the first high official to do a few things, or even talk about, for that matter, the problem with our unfair trade deal with China. This is why, no matter his incompetence, bumbling, and bullshitting, I still think Donald Trump was on the side of actual Americans. With Zhou Bai Dien in office, I think things will get back to normal or worse for us in the economic war.
The reason Peak Stupidity has fixated on China lately is not that I didn't already know about this economic war for a long time. I've inherently known that this Service Economy* wasn't gonna cut the mustard for America. Perhaps for a decade now, especially as I got into Zerohedge for a spell, I could see that this massive outflow of US dollars was getting us into big trouble. The numbers (i.e. the yearly trade deficit vs. the value of American assets) are scary.
The thing is, I didn't see China as so much of a threat until I learned, very recently, how the Chinese Communist Party has such control of the place still. It's much worse since even 3 years ago, as Xi Jinping has become President for Life (head of the CCP comes with that). This isn't a benign economic juggernaut, as perhaps the Euro Zone may have been thought of, that we are dealing with here.
Americans had better realize how important this economic war is, because we don't want to lose this one. It won't be those nice Chinese small businessmen, the software guy you know, and those cute illegal alien waitresses at the King Buffet that we'll be dealing with.
Problem #1 for us is the likely civil war to come. Problem #2 is the economic war during which we've been taking a huge beating, whether we see it or not.
* That's a link to Part 1, here's Part 2, and Part 3 is linked to above with mention of Paul Tsongas.
Comments:
Moderator
Wednesday - February 3rd 2021 3:59PM MST
PS: Not only that, Alarmist, but, from what I see online, as with an example of some lefty commenter I insulted on a Ron Paul thread, if you don't HATE HATE HATE Russia, you are a FOV, that is personal Friend of Vlad, I guess. Geeze, is there no middle ground, as in "let's leave them along, seeing as this country ain't any less Communist, but, no, I am not on the payroll of Vladimir Putin."?
Moderator
Wednesday - February 3rd 2021 3:56PM MST
PS: Fixed, Rex. Thank you.
Rex Little
Wednesday - February 3rd 2021 1:01PM MST
PS Marcia, not Marsha.
MBlanc46
Tuesday - February 2nd 2021 9:59AM MST
PS The Alarmist: The Russkies have to be the villains. It can’t be the Chinese. The Chinese are the buyers that our elites are selling the republic that our ancestors built to.
The Alarmist
Tuesday - February 2nd 2021 9:11AM MST
PS
And yet, with the Dems, the Deep State, and the MSM, it’s still “Russia, Russia, Russia !”
And yet, with the Dems, the Deep State, and the MSM, it’s still “Russia, Russia, Russia !”