China's Comparative or Absolute Advantages?

Memorial Day

Okay, let's face it. Labor in China is so cheap that there seems very little rational reason to make much of anything in the United States and China's infrastructure is so much better than Haiti's that there seems little incentive for selecting Haiti (a low wage metaphor for much of the so-called Third World) over China. China has discovered, thanks in part to the serendipity of Nixon's trip to meet with Mao and the long Republican Party dominance of the U.S. executive branch, the value of forging closer economic ties to the United States and other post-industrial capitalist nations. It took the death of Mao in 1976 to open the door for modernist elements in the Chinese leadership to finally capitalize on the Nixon opening, but once they decided to do it, the rest is history. China's leadership realized that they could use the already well established consumerism of these post-industrial societies (especially the U.S.A.) as the basis for Chinese industrialization and modernization --- it can make all the shiny toys the consumers in those nations desire and do so cheaper than just about anyone else and then use the dollars received from the trade to purchase the technologies needed to upgrade China's scientific infrastructure. Free trade (as practiced by the Republican administrations and Clinton, that moderate/liberal Republican in democratic party clothing) has been quite good for China. It is the basis for accumulating mountains of U.S. dollar denominated assets. It is the basis for acquiring the technologies developed (largely with "Third World" talent) by research institutions and corporations in the post-industrial world. Thus, China has managed to do to the U.S. what the U.S. once did to the British, take the free trade argument away from the previous proponent and use it as a club to batter that proponent/opponent into the dirt. Of course, China isn't really for complete and unfettered free trade, any more than the British or the Americans were. Protectionism has always been a dance partner of free trade. Nevertheless, the problem for the U.S. is that if Americans do not embrace protectionism, move sharply away from their previous commitment to forcing free trade agreements on the rest of the planet, then there may be such a serious gutting of what's left of American manufacturing (as well as many post-industrial sectors, such as computer programming/software) that the U.S. economy will be so badly wounded that it may not be possible to sustain American economic hegemony going forward. And this may threaten the already decimated social contract between the American government and the American people (can you say "social security"). As an economist, I find this an interesting period of transformation, with conservative (so-called) republicans playing a pivotal role in the transition from U.S. economic hegemony to Chinese economic superpower status (and, more quietly, the rise of the European Community, which is helping to modernize China and getting plenty of dollars in return). As a citizen of the United States, I find it a bit distressing.

Stepford University

The Rural Development Leadership Network is hosted at the University of California, Davis. The campus and the Davis community have struck a number of these rural community development practitioners as lacking in diversity and heavy on conformity (to a rather, for them, odd culture). One of the rural leaders coined the term "Stepford University" for U.C. Davis, which seemed to immediately gain widespread acceptance as an appropriate appellation among members of the group.

Another Death

My stepfather called me and informed me that my maternal younger brother, Kerwin, was admitted to hospital yesterday, as a result of having difficulty breathing and then diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He died tonight at 11:15.

During my current sabbatical year, my father had an accident that resulted in him going into a coma. Two weeks later he died. My younger paternal brother, who felt responsible for the accident, committed suicide, after admitting himself into a hospital for depression and suicidal thoughts. He killed himself in the hospital, on medication. And now Kerwin. Kerwin had been misdiagnosed at least a month earlier as having asthma (not that a correct diagnosis would have changed this outcome, given the advanced stage of the disease).

All I can think to say to you is carpe diem.

Support Bush's Choice of Bolton to UN Post

President Bush has every right to have John R. Bolton as UN ambassador. Ambassadors represent the governing administration, including the ambassador to the U.N. Ambassadors are almost always political appointments, often people who were close financial backers of the president. This is not a supreme court justice, who will rule for life and shape the future of Americans across the rule of various presidents. Unless Bolton broke the law, I say stop fighting his appointment and save your energy for the real battles ahead.

Cons to Honor Delay

Conservatives to Honor DeLay With Gala

The only real problem I have with this story and other similar ones is why we call these people conservatives?

You Just Paid Halliburton a Bonus

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3277066a12,00.html

The Judicial Branch is Broken

Most federal judges were appointed by rightwing presidents (and that's excluding Bill Clinton from the category of rightwing). I wonder how many ordinary, hard working, wage earners will, at one time or another (or even multiple times), end up cursing, even hating the judicial system because of the way it seems to abuse its power in favor of the giant transnational corporations over individuals and yet go to the polls and elect the very people who appoint the sort of judges who place corporate power on a pedestal and individual rights and, more generally, justice and fairness in the trash heap. The real story behind G. W. Bush will be his ability to further push the judiciary away from any resemblance to a fair system and make it all the more beholden to the giant transnational corporations that have come to govern this country (and much of the world).

Post Modern Lawn

I'm at least temporarily rooted in the strange almost suburban landscape of upper South Hadley. My neighbors do all the usual suburban things, like spend enormous amounts of time and money on their lawns and shrubbery. We, on the other hand, have fallen off the modernist wagon --- our modernist lawn, with its carefully sculpted structure and just the right color green, has, during my two years of writing the China text, morphed into a post-modern lawn, with many shades of green, interesting weeds, happy grubs, and a few patches where the happy grubs have devoured all the green. Having spent some of my childhood on a farm, I can't fathom paying someone to take care of my grass, so I guess now that the book is done (and the next one is just on the drawing boards), it is time to take on the grubs (preferably with benign biological organisms, such as nematods --- I'm definitely not a modernist when it comes to such things!) and cut the grass.