Great leaps forward

A banker told me that Saipan garment workers returning to China typically empty their accounts of about ten thousand dollars before making the trip home. Ten grand. I don’t care who you are, ten grand is a lot of money. And for the Chinese, it’s a whole lot. These folks are returning home as freshly minted members of the middle–or, for all I know, the upper-middle–strata of Chinese society. They’ve been able to do this thanks to the opportunities available in Saipan’s garment industry.

To put ten grand in perspective, consider that per-capita Gross Domestic Product in China is a mere $738. By contrast, the United States stands at $29,950. That’s fully 40.6 times higher than China. Applying this multiple, we can see that a Chinese going to China with ten grand in her pocket is like an American toting about
$405,827. You don’t see this calculation made by the lefties in the U.S. though. Why not?

The dirty little economic secret of the American “pro-labor” types is they’re not really pro-labor. The last thing they want to see is laborers bootstrapping their ways up the food chain into the upper-middle, or, worse to the lefties, the entrepreneurial, classes. Social shepherds (and their attorneys, thugs, bodyguards, and other organized crime trappings) need human sheep to tend. If the sheep become self-sufficient, the shepherds lose the game. It’s that simple.

It’s not surprising, then, that when you make the necessary adjustments to account for the different contexts between countries, Chinese guest workers here are doing comparatively better than the average “Joe Six Pack” American dunder-head, who squanders his life watching television, eating Cheetos on the couch, and is lead around by the nose until the day he’s buried.

As we’ve noted, ten grand in China, in terms of the per-capita GDP multiple we’ve look at, comes to about $406 grand in America.

And I’m talking ten grand free and clear. Profit–sweet profit. By contrast, how many Americans do you know who aren’t up to their eyeballs in debt? Show me a semi-skilled American white- trash union flunkie, and I’ll show you someone with an ugly pickup truck (bought on a loan), a color television set (bought on credit), and a home stereo (put on the Visa, with interest accumulating at 18 percent per annum).

And “flunkie” is no idle term. Consider this: According to Messrs. Thomas Stanley, Ph.D., and William Danko., Ph.D., financial wonks and authors of “The Millionaire Next Door,” the average American household has a net worth of just $15,000, excluding home equity. Note the term “household,” not “worker.” Households frequently have two workers, Mom and Dad (or, in the U.S., Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad…take your pick). Take a two-income household, then, and you’ve got $7,500 in average net worth per worker (excluding, again, home equity).

Yep, that’s it. $7,500. In the land of prosperity, no less. How does that stack up against ten grand, or the theoretical $406 grand we’ve calculated? You tell me.

So who’s being “exploited?” Nobody. On one hand we’ve got guest workers making and saving substantial amounts of money. Good for them.

On the other hand, we’ve got the left side of the Bell Curve in America snoozing in front of the television set, doing…well, doing nothing at all. Hey, that’s their business. But if they’re not happy, the reason for their problems is in the mirror.

Stephens is an economist with Stephens Corporation, a professional organization in the NMI. His column appears three time a week: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Mr. Stephens can be contacted via the following e-mail address:ed4Saipan@yahoo.com.