@edg

for something that they had no control over. Again. You posted this comment in another essay here.

I find it amusing and ironic that the vaunted "Chinese miracle" was brought about by US consumer passion for cheap big-screen TVs and other cheap goods financed by trillions of dollars of US debt funded by China using American consumer's hard-earned dollars.

And then you look at what actually happened..

Our manufacturing base wasn't stolen. It was given away by greedy corporations, fueled by consumer acceptance of cheaper goods, and facilitated by bribed politicians. The middle and lower classes are paying the price for the loss of manufacturing jobs.

WE did not do that. The corporations did on Wall Street's orders because they insisted profits came before all else. Where were we suppose to buy American products from if this country's manufacturing sector was sent overseas? I remember when products sold here lasted much longer than the cheap crap that comes from wherever it's made now. My coffee machines used to be made of more than just plastic crap. But then companies offshored their factories and I now have to buy a new one every year because I can't afford to buy one that lasts longer at the time of purchase. This is not my fault. And not all products come from China.

#4.1.1

Our manufacturing base wasn't stolen. It was given away by greedy corporations, fueled by consumer acceptance of cheaper goods, and facilitated by bribed politicians. The middle and lower classes are paying the price for the loss of manufacturing jobs.

@CB

You really are a trip, dude or dudette. Of course "coolie" is pejorative. That's why I put it in parentheses.

And the "coolie" system was a European innovation, not American. According to Britannica,

Coolie, (from Hindi Kuli, an aboriginal tribal name, or from Tamil kuli, “wages”), in usually pejorative European usage, an unskilled labourer or porter usually in or from the Far East hired for low or subsistence wages.

The so-called coolie trade began in the late 1840s as a response to the labour shortage brought on by the worldwide movement to abolish slavery. The majority of these contract labourers were shipped from China, especially from the southern ports of Amoy and Macao, to developing European colonial areas, such as Hawaii, Ceylon, Malaya, and the Caribbean.

By the late 19th century, free immigration began to supersede the coolie trade. The Chinese, Japanese, and Hindustani workers who came to Australia and California after the discovery of gold in these areas around 1850 were commonly regarded as coolies, but they were technically free immigrants, not contract labourers.

Source: Encyclopædia Britannica

#4.1.3
in building America's transcontinental railroad.
(Side note: Calling Chinese or East Indians 'coolies' is now considered disparaging and offensive - equivalent to calling blacks 'ni**ers'.)

Building the Transcontinental Railroad: How 20,000 Chinese Immigrants Made It Happen
At first railroad companies were reluctant to hire Chinese workers, but the immigrants soon proved to be vital.

They toiled through back-breaking labor during both frigid winters and blazing summers. Hundreds died from explosions, landslides, accidents and disease. And even though they made major contributions to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, these 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese immigrants have been largely ignored by history.
...
Leland Stanford, president of Central Pacific, former California governor and founder of Stanford University, told Congress in 1865, that the majority of the railroad labor force were Chinese. Without them,” he said, “it would be impossible to complete the western portion of this great national enterprise, within the time required by the Acts of Congress.”

More Chinese immigrants began arriving in California, and two years later, about 90 percent of the workers were Chinese.
...