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[Eugenitor]

blaming the North American Free Trade Agreement for trade with China

And this is why the 2010 elections need to be about keeping away the stupid.

[RedKing]

If you think that's bad...some guy here in Ohio is running ads somehow blaming NAFTA for trade with China and job losses, complete with scary images of swarms of inscrutable Chinese people and depictions of their "wacky" culture involving one of those dragon dances.  Now, that's not to say I don't believe more steps should be taken to have equitable trade relations with China, but the scaremongering is kind of disturbing.

If you buy a "Made in China" toothbrush, the paper dragons win. Or something.

Man, I really want to see this ad.

EDIT: Found it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agoelZyV7nE

However, it's being run by a Democrat against a Republican. Good reminder that facepalm stupidity and xenophobia runs on both sides of the aisle.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Quite ironically, the post-great-depression USA more closely met the spirit of Marx's ideas, if not the specifics, than did the "communist" nations. There were actions taken to stop workers from being exploited, to ensure that people didn't fall into the crippling levels of poverty that inspired Marx's dream in the first place. The communist nations just replaced corrupt businessmen bribing corrupt dictators with corrupt businessmen answering to corrupt dictators.


Quite disturbingly, modern rightist rhetoric is quite reminiscent of that of Stalinists and Maoists: extol the virtues of the working class (specifically, blue collar laborers (or shitraking peasants, in the case of Maoism)), condemn "them damn intellectual eel-eatists and their lie-bee-roll idears", throw in a hefty dash of xenophobia and fearmongering, then just go and fuck everyone up the ass; all that differs are the buzz words, and the specifics of how they fuck everyone up the ass (the communists liked just killing anyone who disagreed/didn't agree violently enough, and only some modern rightists believe in doing that, for instance, though both liked not giving a shit about the situation of the very people they pandered to).

[Nikov]

This is bad, people.

Sir P., taking it a little far methinks?

[Akura]

So, what's the verticle axis on that graph mean? Age?

[RedKing]

This is bad, people.

ORLY? Looks pretty stable to me. Would help if the age brackets were labelled, but I'm assuming oldest at the top and youngest at the bottom. There's a bit of a bulge in the 40-50 range, but as you can see, the ranks of the elderly in China shrink pretty dramatically above that. There's no reason to assume that the 40-50 cohort isn't going to shrink pretty fast as they age. Tai Chi and herbal medicine aside, modern China is not the healthiest place to grow old.

And the gender disparity skews slightly to the male side, but it's not horribly lopsided.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

It's a quite disturbing parallel, though I'm too tired at the moment to put it more eloquently. Though of course it's not perfect; the soviets at least had good intentions: they threw out an oppressive monarchy, modernized an agricultural backwater (coming out of a devastating war, no less), weathered another devastating war, and survived the better part of a century despite the best efforts of an established, already industrialized power that wasn't ravaged by war (and in fact profited immensely from it, in no small part due to government spending on industry to fuel the war effort, and the veteran benefits that gave the returning generation free or cheap housing and a free education, creating a vast middle class out of people who were predominantly poor), in an extremely hostile environment nonetheless. Modern rightists just want to return us to some incoherent vision of the 19th century, blaming every reform and step forward as... not having fixed what it did?


China of course has a much worse record. Under Mao they made themselves as backwards as possible with their shitraking peasant worship, and only modernized when the corrupt leaders realized they could make even more money if they started making shit for other countries (and, surprisingly, the lot of the average citizen increased a little too, since they couldn't just shove them all onto farms and let them starve to death on account of not knowing how to farm, and they couldn't have their precious factory slaves dying too much).

[Criptfeind]

And the gender disparity skews slightly to the male side, but it's not horribly lopsided.

Five million is quite a bit. Not HUGE but still.

[smjjames]

Part of the problem is that they went through the industrial revolution and modernization in two generations, fuelled in part by its massive population.

Other countries have either had time to work out the kinks and develop widsom.

@Criptfiend: The deep south actually had a milder version of the problem in the 1700s and 1800s, for completely different reasons though.

[Nikov]

I'm not sure how you can look at that and consider it stable. In about twenty to thirty years, the number of retirees doubles while the working population shrinks. That's not stable at all.

[Earthquake Damage]

You may not know this, but people die.  Sometimes even before they reach 80!  It's true!  I read it on a blog once.

[Nikov]

Unfortunately for China, people prefer not to die even if they've become an economic burden, and in a modern industrialized country like China they tend to not die for quite some time!

[smjjames]

I'm not sure how you can look at that and consider it stable. In about twenty to thirty years, the number of retirees doubles while the working population shrinks. That's not stable at all.

Um, the US is going to go through the same problem. Less dramatically, yea, but its there, courtesy of the baby boomers.

Unfortunately for China, people prefer not to die even if they've become an economic burden, and in a modern industrialized country like China they tend to not die for quite some time!

They also have bigger problems to worry about than an aging population. Like their exploding economy for one, it's not going to keep going indefinetly.

[Nikov]

Agreed, and Europe is already in it.

Agreed, but ignoring it won't improve their ability to deal with the others.

[sonerohi]

This just sets the stage
For the return of Macedon