Reverse Pilgrimage

The United States was once held to be the virtual engine of the world of trade and manufacturing, exporting its mass-produced goods and importing the human capital potential of the developing world to train new minds to science and the philosophy of ingenious enterprise. The country with its vast consuming appetite was fully committed to producing as many enterprising new goods and services as the appetite of its large middle-class population counted upon.

And just as the efficiencies of scale meant that desirable objects and modern conveniences became less expensive to acquire, making it possible for almost everyone to own a never-ending panoply of devices and gadgets to enhance their lives, the American public clamoured for more and even more, and more financially accessible goods. In stepped the Far East. Post-war Japan, once known  unkindly for its cheaply made goods was transformed into modern Japan with its scrupulous quality control producing expensive goods.

Newly Communist-capitalist China entered the vacuum to convince the consumers of the world that its prodigiously vast, hard-working workforce and churning manufacturing facilities geared to mass production could provide really inexpensive goods to an international public grown accustomed to and tolerant of built-in obsolescence and high-replacement needs, satisfying both the needs of consumers and their compliant goods-providers.

Just as unions were increasingly becoming obsolete in tandem with disappearing factory jobs that guaranteed a decent wage for a decent day's work to produce goods that were too expensive and languished on the shelves while imported goods were being snapped up at bargain prices, the service industry picked up steam, and part-time, ill-paying employment fast became the norm.

Today, in Europe and North America where consumers continue to demand cheaply produced and inexpensive-to-acquire goods most of which are now imported from China, unemployment is high and state finances are in low dudgeon. International investment is landing anxiously in China, even while China is reaching out its investment tentacles abroad to acquire the huge volumes of natural resources it needs for its production machinery.

Increasingly greater numbers of millions upon millions of once poverty-stricken Chinese farmers and country-dwellers have migrated to become urban dwellers with full-time jobs taking them into a burgeoning middle class. China's poverty levels are decreasing at a fast pace. In Europe and North America, unemployment has soared and poverty has increased; the divisions between the wealthy and the working poor ever widening.

Mayors from towns and cities across Europe and North America fly to China in search of investors interested in building factories to employ their populations. "In 2007 on average, an American mayor touched down every two months ... by 2013, it was one every ten days. In October that average rose to one every three days as mayors from Kokomo, Indiana to Portland, Oregan flew in to sell their cities", wrote The Economist magazine.

Part-time and service-industry workers earn insufficient wages to adequately care for their daily living needs and those of their families. They are increasingly dependent on social welfare and food assistance in North America. In New York City where banks are rolling in huge year-end profits, bank workers earn a paltry $11 an hour in a city where the cost of living is sky-high.

In Canada the proliferation of food banks offering top-ups to people on welfare or the working poor unable to afford the price of the weekly food basket for themselves and their families has increased at an alarming rate. The family trip to the food bank, university students visiting the food bank to help stretch their living funds are on the increase. And this, in a country that celebrates its 'recession-light' status, now struggling with the loss of full-time employment.

International economies are recovering from a deep recession, although some countries remain deeply mired in debt and high unemployment, especially among their youth seeking gainful work. Europe and North America appear to have regressed on the financial front to where China was decades earlier before it embarked on its economic transformation.

The drive by consumers to have their lives enriched by cheaply produced products led to a downward spiral in employment opportunities and living wages that continues to this day.

Cheap goods for people whose incomes are strained to the point where they have no disposable income represents a very poor outcome for countries that haven't looked far enough down the road to choices and consequences.