Well, despite all the complaints here if the USA continues on this ridiculous path of trying to dictate a $15 an hour minimum wage the "Shenzhen Effect" will continue and grow. All kinds of businesses will continue to be forced, through regulation and artificial wage floors to get their work done outside the US. And this will lead to accelerating the loss of job, technology, intellectual property, independence, growth, etc.

Once you destroy your industrial base recovery could take a hundred years (or it could be impossible). The Chinese know this and happily do whatever the can do to effectively destroy US, European and other manufacturing centers by manipulating currency, ignoring environmental pressures, stealing intellectual property and more.

The lunatics (that is, those in government) are running the asylum.

The funny thing is that the world can actually force a change by hurting the Chinese where it counts: Business. We need to start a movement that is very vocal about having China be accountable for all of the violations they commit. And we need to refrain, as much as possible, from buying Chinese made products when possible. I know this is nearly impossible, but if we start somewhere they'll get the message.

Here in California I'd much rather dump 100 billion dollars into a tax free, relaxed regulation, flexible wages (meaning, market driven not minimum wage) manufacturing zone than on the stupid fucking joke of a high speed train we claim to be building. We can show the world how to do manufacturing efficiently, effectively, competitively and without destroying the environment. We can do so if we commit to creating a zone where government stays the fuck out other than to setting some basic rules and lets private enterprise take it from there.

If we don't do something like that as a State and a Country we are absolutely utterly doomed to be destroyed by a thousand cuts, and they all come from China. The same is true of European and any other countries where a reasonable manufacturing and industrial base exists that is being eroded by what China has been doing for decades.

Governments and politicians are only interested in their own survival --keeping their jobs-- and escalating in power. This interest has been proven to be diametrically opposite the idea of doing what is best for a country in the long term. Very often doing what is best is accompanied by some pain and the need to make concessions.

Using California as an example, we need to kill off all these stupid lawns in front of our homes that suck-up water frivolously. We have an intense drought to deal with. Yet, you drive around my neighborhood and you'd think we have no problem. I am one of the only homes that's taken out all grass and replaced it with a super low water utilization rock and flowers landscape. So, yes, some regulations are required and they also require the balls to make the case for them and enact them.

In other words, the problem with the way we do things is that we don't look far enough into the future. The drought problem isn't new. We could have been in a serious water conservation mode three years ago. Yet, three years ago it would have been political suicide to push for it. Being that politicians only care about their own survival and whatever advantages they can engineer through legislation rather than what is right, nobody made the hard decision that lawns had to go. And here we are.

This is exactly what is going on with China. Nobody in politics wants to attack this problem anywhere in the world. Why? Because having prices go up in Walmart isn't good for any politician. It takes balls and it takes not being guided by political ambition to swim completely against the current and push forward an agenda who's results could only be appreciated by the population 10 or 20 years later (or even as far as the next generation). Those are HARD decisions to make. I have seen no politician anywhere interested in tackling those problems, in becoming really unpopular today for the benefit of future generations.

And that's the problem.