Dear Bazz,

I'm glad that your read the link about the US.
It made me realize just how lucky we are in this
country with our health system , Medicare, our social
security benefits, not to forget our Superannuation
Schemes (enforced savings), and so on.
Our system is not perfect by any means but it sure
is better than anything that's currently on offer
in the US.

Dear Hasbeen,

China is now irrevocably embarked on the path to
industrialisation and modernization. Yet China has
a long way to go; for example, in rural areas where
electricity is available, peasant families, even
now, are often permitted only one 25-watt bulb
a year to light their homes. China is still
determinedly socialist and authoritarian. It will
be interesting to see how far the country will stray
from the socialist path and whether economic
liberalization will in turn lead to political
democratization.

Given China's size and potential, its economic future
will be of world-historical significance.

Lexi,

Good points about China.

Hasbeen,

Notwithstanding that many Chinese people are now more affluent than previously was the case, "poverty" in China is measured somewhat differently than in the West. China's "poverty line" is set at 1300 yuan a year income equivalent to around one dollar a day in other countries. 70 million people exist below that poverty line, mainly in rural areas. Added to that, an estimated 45 percent of Chinese exist on the equivalent of two dollars a day.
Severe pollution of air and environment are all attributable to the rise in industrialisation, and certainly ongoing growth at the present rate is not sustainable.

Regarding your pertinent point about medical advancements now being utilised in the islands such as antibiotics. True - but don't ignore the health ramifications of industrial society. Those islanders probably weren't the victims of too much road trauma. Nor were they likely to suffer Western afflictions such as diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

Squeers and Poirot,

I was watching a bulldozer tear down an old house the other day and do you know what ? It wasn't building anything. Just because you or I can condemn capitalism (and 'socialism' too, in my case) doesn't put one brick upon another, it doesn't contribute one bit to what needs to be put in their place.

It's fun (and not difficult) to find fault with capitalism or whatever, but the trick is to try to knuckle out what might do better. Revolutions which simply tear down, with little thought of an alternative plan, or one very vaguely thought-out, can do far more damage - surely we have enough experience now of that. And how could, say, Lenin predict what a future Soviet world look like when in the period 1918-1921 they couldn't even plan a couple of months ahead ?

Let's face it, what Marx proposed, as an antidote to those other hopelessly woolly-headed Utopias of Saint-Simon or Proudhon, was HIS Utopia which, given the withering-away of the working-class, was just as woolly-headed and probably far more disastrous.

Withering-away of the working-class ? I chucked in a teaching job back in the sixties to get a working-class job in factories and found that, even then, Australian-born workers, certainly young ones, were very much in the minority. In some factories, I was the only Skip apart from the foreman. And when I think about those jobs, I realise that they all - ALL - would have been either computerised or made redundant, some thirty years ago.

When I was running career workshops for Aboriginal kids in the nineties, I tried to make that clear, that unskilled jobs were not going to exist, so either get into trades or go to uni and then on to professional employment. Which most were happy to do, especially the girls: the boys often thought they might be football champions for life.

So how might we contribute to making life better for kids like that ?

Cheers,

Joe

And on the subject of the withering-away of the working class, there is a very interesting thread starting today:

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12645

Poirot, I'm not sure of the exact exchange rate at the moment, but 1300 yuan might be roughly $ 200 Australian, so the poverty line in China is around fifty cents a day. So fifty per cent of the Chinese population are living on a dollar or less per day. After sixty years of socialism.

Sometimes I wonder how Russia and China would have developed if they hadn't had socialism, where they would be now, which reminds us of the Russian definition of socialism, as the longest and most painful way to make the transition from capitalism to capitalism. I was married to that ideology for sixty years :( More fool me.

Joe

Hasbeen! first thought was to launch into you.
Understanding however is called for.
My Friend! cranky unfocused often unthinking mate!
As a fellow day Lillie grower you just have to be ok , in some way.
It Sir is you who should read, first my post I charged you in,with rage!
My regards and thanks,,, for confirming that is often your mind set.
My remark was addressed to the person who said it.
And I saw a rude reply to loudmouth uncalled for.
But not reaching Joe's level of support and understanding, I do have relatives who are Aboriginals.
A history of helping them, still.
A deep doubts even they,ever, would want other than a life not unlike ours.
Can any one, other than dreamers, see many of us wanting to go back to any less comfortable life.
Who will be the first in to a tent and without every thing power brings who wants bush tucker tomorrow instead of eggs and?

Loudmouth,

Re: China's poverty line:
http://www.chinese-embassy.org.za/eng/zgxw/t511211.htm