Chinese Onions
When I wrote the intro page for this blog, I said I’d try to avoid religion and politics because it’s so inflammatory. So consider this post an exploration of ideas. We live in a free country (kind of) so you can vote any way you choose.
In the groceries this week, I bought a package of frozen chopped onions. They’re quite handy when I just want to add a small quantity to a dish. So I start cooking and put the onions in the skillet, turn to put a twister tie on the bag to put it back in the freezer. The back of the bag caught my eye “Product of China” it said. I dumped out the skillet and threw the bag away! Not because of the recent run of toxic products coming out of China, more on the general principle. Onions are easy to grow! They grow lots of them in Georgia and Texas. I see no reason to import onions! You know what would be worse? It would be worse if those were American grown onions, shipped over to China to be chopped and put in plastic bags!!!
I know some economics. I know that the basic tenet of Communism is that the Central State controls the production and distribution of “stuff”, like food. That’s supposed to make everything all EvenSteven and we’ll be one big happy planet singing KumBayYa. It’s never worked in practice. Every communist government ends up with fat cats on top and weary, sometimes even hungry, working folks on the bottom. The Soviet Union fell because of lousy toilet paper, among other things!
What seems to mess things up is the cost of labor. Americans have enjoyed a standard of living we’d like to continue to enjoy. The Chinese economy is booming. Biggest country in the world, producing most of everything anymore. I guess their largest natural resource is all those people willing to work for far less money than the average American. So year by year, American production of goods declines, while Chinese production of everything increases.
I’ve been complaining because I can’t find a package of frozen fish that isn’t marked “Product of China” China now has money to build fishing trawlers, so they have and they’re going up to Alaska and catching “our” fish! And selling it back to us- how nice. Wars have been fought over less.
Thank you dear Reader for letting me speculate. I’ll leave you with a map. It’s the places in the world that are going hungry- http://www.feedingminds.org/info/world_h.htm Things are pretty bad in Africa, Afghanistan. Mongolia is starving. It’s pretty bad in North Korea. Check out China- that map says that 5-19% of the population is marginally nourished. China’s population is 1.3 billion. If 5% of the people are malnourished- that’s over 50 million people! They have no business selling food. They should be taking the money they make from the production of lead painted toys to buy food! Somewhere a fat cat gets fatter.
My mind is boggled!
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