Thread by @rhinosoros

I wonder if the recent anti-Chinese rhetoric coming from our Democrats and Republicans alike has anything to do with the fact that China has overtaken the USA by GDP in terms of Purchasing Power Parity.

America cannot exist without an unbeatable foe.

China, USSR, Taliban, Al Qaeda, "radical Islamic terrorism," Communism in general, etc. etc. etc..

Absolute trillions wasted on these attempts to reign supreme have only enriched multinational conglomerates.

In the past EIGHT years (from 2012-2020) Chinese wages have DOUBLED.

The average Chinese worker has TWICE the income they did eight years ago.

In USA the MINIMUM wage has not even kept up with inflation and has remained unchanged since 2009.

Real wages for the American worker haven't risen since the 1970s. We're now entering the sixth decade without a raise in wages compared to our cost of living.

What's worse, to compete with jobs that have gone overseas (initially mainly to China) we are 6 times more productive.

Any shred of social democracy that American workers had was a result of labor organizing through the Great Depression, buoyed by a Post WWII Economic Boom.

With that came complacency that eroded labor rights mainly throughout the working lives of the Baby Boomer generation.

Eventually women (mainly white since women of color always had to work to make household income) entered the workforce as (mainly white) men were no longer being paid a "living wage" due to this stagnation in real wages.

Fast forward to today in which often times a single full-time job can no longer afford you housing that you need to work multiple full/part-time jobs or share housing with family, friends, or strangers.

All the while, multinational conglomerates have been benefiting from this arrangement by profiting from cheaper overseas labor, and using that leverage to increase domestic worker productivity (working you harder) and suppress domestic wages (though overseas competition).

Long story short, this was always going to happen. And now, predictably, the United States in its quixotic quest to blame anyone but the arrangement between gov't and corporations has settled on the new boogie man: China.

Anyone to blame but ourselves.

As we've seen increasing in the last month or two, these anti-Chinese (and due to ignorance, broadly anti-Asian) racist attacks have increase, led to deaths, and Democrats, now behind the driver's seat of that culture war, are stoking those fires.

And all along, the corporate media is all too happy to abandon their post as the fourth pillar and manufacture all the consent the government needs to beat the war drums.