Made In China

Here is a recipe for disaster: China and other Asian countries, being pressured at home by rising inflation, is forced to raise prices on all those goodies we buy at Wal-Mart, but not high enough to encourage us to compete again. This would be a formula for runaway inflation along with job shrinkage, or the perfect storm for stagflation.

The huge problem with this scenario is that we could do nothing to solve the problem! In the past, stagflation would eventually take care of itself as interest rates went up shrinking the money supply and as we eventually produced more, but this time, since the increase in prices has nothing to do with our internal production or our money supply, the genie is out of the bottle – we no longer control our own destiny.

China owns big chunks of our national debt (what we have run up to maintain our leveraged, high-on-the-hog-standard of living while the rest of the world gleefully loaned us the money), and if China ever decides to cash in the chips, replacing the debt with Euros or something, the dollar will sink faster than the titanic. So we can't be too rough with China, which now could be considered our local banker that is holding our mortgage. I'm afraid that we've crested the mountain, and it's all downhill now. Our good life has been possible because of the backs of poor workers overseas, credit, and is therefore on borrowed time.

We might as well face it; the world is leveling out. Every country that wants to be involved is now trading with everyone else, meaning that whoever can produce a particular good or service most efficiently wins. If they have a billion people, labor will be cheap. If they have intelligent people; scientists and engineers, they will excel in technology. If they have raw materials or oil, they will get rich that way.

As far as America is conce
ed, only in one area are we certain to do extremely well, and it won't be in technology, because our educational system is falling by the wayside since we are broke. And it won't be in oil, or manufacturing because of our limited labor force. Unbelievably, it will be in agriculture. Long after our manufacturing and technology fades, we will become the food basket of the world because of our natural vast plains, our perfect weather, water, and farming methods. America will change.

Free trade, the only thing that will effectively prevent nuclear war, is leveling the waters. Globalization is not just a catch-phrase. America no longer produces electronics, shoes, clothes, or a host of other things we produced previously. We simply cannot compete. This is being played out on the world stage and in the halls of congress every day in many ways, from immigration, to trade policies, to militarization. In China as well, and in Russia, where the development of nuclear weapons makes war unthinkable. War won't solve our problems this time. We will have to pay our debts, and it will be painful.

Now consider the lowly monk and nun of so many of our religious traditions. They require very little, only a warm, dry place to sleep, some simple food, maybe some medicine and some help when they get sick, and their faith. That's all, and that's what we should expect – a quiet place to sleep, some food, health care, an education for our children, and our faith. These are the essentials that all industrialized countries should insure for their citizens, regardless of their social status, because this is enough for spiritual people grounded in their faith. They can be happy with this. Jesus would have been happy with this. This is the spiritual life.

There is only one solution to the problems we soon face –to simplify our lives and find our faith. We need to make sure that everyone, all of our brothers and sisters, have the basics. That no one is left behind regarding basic food, shelter and health care. And to make certain that every child, regardless of their color or status, gets the same education as everyone else, all the way through college, and financed by all of us, which is the government, and not by some opportunistic loan company charging exorbitant interest rates and saddling our kids with a lifetime of debt. Big business is choking the life out of truly spiritual people. Health care, college loans, tuition, medicine, it's all about money and profits now, not about people. We have gone way off track.

If we don't simplify and get back to basic principles; how will we ever survive? We will surely blow each other up because of our twisted values and egoism, and because we never have enough. n