I write this as i wasn’t aware that people thought China could save the global economy or the U.S.’s. I actually find the fact that people thought that it could save the economy laughable. Although it might cause more profits for oil rich countries and oil investors or car manufacturers, there’s no way it could help much on a global scale. Why is this? It’s simple, they manufacture most of the goods being sold in the United States and likely manufacture a lot that gets sold in other countries. How is that going to help other countries maintain jobs or even retain a boost to the economy?
Most of the jobs these days in the U.S. are linked to service or retail oriented jobs. Manufacturing positions are getting rarer and harder to find. If you compare the salaries of service and retail workers to manufacturing jobs previously held in the United States, there is a huge gap in hourly wages. A lot of manufacturing jobs in this country used to pay around $10.00 to $20.00 dollars per hour. As a comparison, most retail and service oriented jobs start at minimum wage or $7.25 an hour and may get up to $10.00 an hour. This is actually a detriment to the economy. People are now making less wages than they previously did and cannot afford most products of good quality, so they have to settle for whatever comes up as cheap in the local retail or grocery establishments.
The problem with this is it fuels even more products made in China, a great deal of them low quality. So now people in the United States might be getting cheap products, but usually are having to buy more and more of them when the previously higher quality made United States products lasted longer, offering an actual savings to a consumer in the long run on most items. I have bought socks at a dollar that were ruined in one to three months, but previously I have purchased socks at two to three dollars that lasted a year or more. At the least, I could be saving at least a dollar a year per pair of socks if they were higher quality.
I also noticed the influx of foods from other countries. There are foods imported from many other countries, which I feel is okay if that is where it is primarily grown. However, I found a can of pineapple from China and brought it home once because it was cheap. It tasted awful and I tossed most of it out. I think maybe we should stick to Hawaiian pineapples.
Not to mention the poor taste of food from some of these import sources, there are also food quality/safety issues to consider. The United States has certain standards for food people eat, but I don’t believe these other countries do. How else can melamine used for fertilizer in these countries get in United States consumables? Also, what are they feeding their animals and where are they getting the fish that are imported from? Could be anything or anywhere, even polluted areas, as far as we know.
That being said, the U.S. economy simply cannot get any better with low paying jobs and cheap junk products being shipped in. No one will ever be able to afford a decent product, thus cutting profitability. Cheap junk products only degrade trust in companies that bring it in sold as inexpensive, but actually either causing the consumer to constantly buy new at more cost or getting the consumer so disgusted they start avoiding buying the product or even start to make their own version to save money. After all, if when a person goes to the store and they get junk, he/she can likely find that they make their own at the same quality or even higher quality–eliminating the need for these products altogether. Profits are more likely to sink rather than rise as these items end up in clearance bins just to get rid of them.
Now I get to the spenders in China. Sure, there are more people buying there than before–however in the United States people are buying less–so I assume that cancels each other out. They will just end up like the United States likely, with a top 1%, followed by a top 10%, and then 90% is everyone leftover who makes middle class wages or lower. How can that make up for consumer spending going down in the United States?
Can China save the U.S. economy? In my opinion, it’s not very likely. To sum up there are less well paying jobs in the U.S. and more junky products getting imported in that cause people to become disinterested in them. I think it’s bad for business and likely is a nail in the coffin of the U.S. economy.