I just lurv the tagline in this post:

Average American Owes Average Chinese $4000

It sums up everything that is problematic about “our” economy. Did you sign a promisary to Yueh T’en-Chih, resident of south side Beijing? I sure didn’t. And yet, you and I will pay, and pay, and pay…and Ms. Yueh is unlikely to see that money, if she’s a Bad Han and reads Chinese blogs.

Seriously, what’s going on here? How did we get to the point where you and I “owe” people on the other side of the planet four grand, and rising? Um, does that include my 3 year old nephew? Cause I’m fairly sure he isn’t legally resposible for any debt yet. We buy him toys without lead, usually made in the US or Yurp.

Sometimes, I just can’t wrap my brain around it- why do people accept this? I’m not trying to be racist and pick on the Chinese, this same sort of post could be made for any of the larger foreign debt-holders who’ve propped up the Bush regime’s irresponsible spending habits these last eight years. Still, I do wonder- what is the breaking point? What will “we” sacrifice, in order to make good on promises made by people who have essentially run this country into the ground…for nothing?

I think that’s the part that my mind breaks upon- what did we get, for all this debt? Peace in the Middle East? Universal Health Care? A chicken in every pot? An lifetime supply of ramen? What?

I know most American’s can’t be bothered to think about “boring” economic stuff, but hopefully this oversimplification of the issue will spread and catch on. Because someone is going to attempt to enforce the payment of this debt. As in, when your property taxes go so high you can’t pay them and you’re about to lose your home, all because federal expenditures on actual American communties are so low that states are forced to raise revenue in any way they can, just to continue to function.

I have a hard time seeing the “Brittney Generation” paying this debt, I really do. But at the same time, I get the fact that many political heavies and their Republican/head in the sand/I got mine constituents just don’t care. They got out with a nice vacation home and enough health insurance and retirement funds such that they don’t need to think too hard about how exactly they managed that.

Pay if forward, not. From the link:

This is really an astonishing number. From James Fallows’ new essay, “The $1.4 Trillion Question:”

Through the quarter-century in which China has been opening to world trade, Chinese leaders have deliberately held down living standards for their own people and propped them up in the United States. This is the real meaning of the vast trade surplus—$1.4 trillion and counting, going up by about $1 billion per day—that the Chinese government has mostly parked in U.S. Treasury notes. In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China.

Based on 2006 per capita GDP numbers that means we’ve sucked almost 23% per year from the average Chinese earner’s income.
Can you imagine what you’d do if someone was borrowing 22% of your income a year and forcing you to endure a lower standard of living in the process? You’d be rather unhappy, no?

And I am, Sean-Paul. Very much. Not only because of what it’s done to the average poor Han person, but also because I know someday, they will expect me to pay it back.