America’s Lost Work Ethic and the End of its global Exceptionalism – Part 1/5

December 9, 2011

Unless many Americans change their attitudes toward parenting and work, the United States cannot compete long term with China.

With about 14 million Americans unemployed, millions of illegal aliens still find work in the US.

In February 2011, the New York Times reported, “Despite continuing high unemployment among American workers, record deportations by the Obama administration and expanding efforts by states to crack down, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the work force — about eight million — was also unchanged, the Pew report found. Those workers were about 5 percent of the American work force.”

Then on November 4, 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, “Both the number of unemployed persons (13.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.0 percent) changed little over the month. The unemployment rate has remained in a narrow range from 9.0 to 9.2 percent since April.”


Unskilled immigrants are competing with unskilled Americans–mostly high school dropouts.

Imagine, if the government told unemployed Americans, “Work or starve! If you need a job, we will train and/or transport you to where that job is even if it is a job that only illegal immigrants have worked before.” If that happened, the unemployment rate in the US would drop from 13.9 million to less than six million and hover around 4%.

If these shunned jobs were the only choice after the standard unemployed “benefit year” [which is 52 weeks] ran out and the benefit checks stopped coming, the choice would be work where there is a job, any job, anywhere or possibly become homeless unless a friend or family member is willing to support you.

However, taking jobs away from illegal immigrants and giving them to unemployed American citizens is not why I’m writing this series. I wanted to know why Americans spurn jobs millions of illegal immigrants are paid to work at in the US.

In addition, China may learn a lesson from the mistakes Americans are making today.

Continued on December 10, 2011 in America’s Lost Work Ethic and the End of its global Exceptionalism – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

Changing China through its Youth – Part 2/5

January 31, 2011

In Part 1 of this series covering a PBS Frontline documentary of how China’s youth is changing the country, we ended with  Ben Wu who had been away for more than a decade gaining a business education in the US and New York.

Recently, a Chinese-American friend returning from China after a long visit complained of the younger people (under 30) not saving money and using credit cards running up debt to buy consumer items (what I call mostly junk).

What Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times wrote of this Frontline series was true. “Soon it becomes clear that everything about them (the younger Chinese) is just like us. …” Learn more of The University Influence from the US and Europe.

This is scary since Money-Zine.com says, “The total amount of consumer debt in the United States stands at nearly $2.5 trillion dollars – and based on the latest Census statistics, that works out to be nearly $8,100 in debt for every man, woman and child that lives here in the US.”

Imagine what would happen to the world if China and America both had economic meltdowns equal to what started in the US in 2008? Instead of $64US trillion lost globally, the numbers would have been much higher.

Anyway, back to Ben Wu and his venture to start up an Internet cafe franchise. After months of living on caffeine and cigarettes (working two jobs–one to earn money and the other starting up the cafe), he opened for business.

By then it was probably 2005 or later. Soon after opening, Ben Wu reported, “The cafe is doing very well. It’s pretty much what I estimated.”

The next Chinese youth Frontline focuses on is Wang Xiaolei, a Chinese rapper using his music to express “his” dark view (opinion) of China’s new boom times.

In my opinion, Wang Xiaolei’s ignorance is on display. Since he doesn’t know how dark it was in China before the economic miracle, he has no idea what he is talking about. His own music says he’s never been to the US but it is apparent that he must have a gold plated perception of the US.

Facts say otherwise. Even the CIA reports that only 2.8% of China’s population lives in “absolute poverty”.

Meanwhile, in the US, the latest Census numbers reported by the Associated Press say “The number of poor people in the US is millions higher than previously known, with 1 in 6 Americans (almost 17%) – many of them 65 and older – struggling in poverty…”

Wang Xiaolei says, “There is a lot of discrimination in China. Like, if you don’t have money, people look down on you.”

How is that different from the US?

Try walking the streets of downtown Berkeley, California and see how many homeless beggars ask for money. Then drive around San Francisco and see if you can keep count of the homeless that live on the city’s streets.

In fact, “There is anecdotal evidence that many Americans complain about the presence of homeless people, blame them for their situation, and feel that their requests (begging) for money or support are unjustified.” Source: Wikipedia

Several years ago in this report, Frontline said that 70% of Chinese had no medical insurance. That was before current plans to improve medical services in urban and rural communities from 2011 to 2015. Source: Xinhuanet.com

What Frontline doesn’t say about health care in China is also important and puts the situation into perspective. The CIA reports that life expectancy in China for total population is 74.51 years. In 1949, life expectancy was a meager 35 years.

Return to China Changing through its Youth – Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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Homeless

September 16, 2010

The East Asia Forum (EAF) reported September 1, 2010, on the impact of the global financial crises on China’s migrant workers.

It turns out that the impact wasn’t as significant as first thought in 2009 as most laid-off workers went home to the rural, collective village farms.

Two years after the world economy collapsed, the EAF was surprised to discover that migrants who stayed in the cities suffered very little.

Instead, workers who stayed in the cities continued to work while about 15 million migrants, about 10% of the workforce, went back to the farm, where they had already worked on average 52% of the year helping grow the food China eats.

The EAF suggested that small landholders, since most Chinese in rural China cannot own or sell the land they farm, should be allowed to sell their land and that China should move toward a universal welfare system.

Huh?

In America, which has a universal welfare system, when a worker loses his or her job, he or she collects unemployment benefits until those benefits run out. The next choice is to become a homeless beggar.

A report on PBS says that since 2007 there has been a 12% increase in homelessness and that about 2.3 to 3.5 million people in the U.S. experience homelessness.

The suggestion from the EAF that China must allow rural peasants to sell the land they farm is wrong.

As long as those farms exist, few people have to go homeless in China. Being a poor peasant farmer may not offer many choices in life, but it has to be better than sleeping in an alley in Shanghai and going hungry.

It was difficult to discover how many homeless people there are in China.  It appears that most who are homeless lost their homes through floods, earthquakes and other acts of nature and live in tent cities while the government has new homes built.

See China’s Stick People

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

If you want to subscribe to this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse