Quote Originally Posted by joebloggs View Post
In 1985 average income in China was $293; in 2006 the average income is $2,025.
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTE...318950,00.html

but

About 13 percent of China’s population—about 203 million people— live on less than $1 a day. About 42 percent of China’s population—about 593 million people— live on less than $2 a day. Most are in the countryside.

Children in textile and garment factories often work 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and sleep by their machines. Boys in Green Mountain City gets paid about 18 cents a load for carrying 55 pound bags of coal up a mountain. Even in the cities, a school teacher with a salary of $50 a month—good by Chinese standards—might have to save for two years to be able to afford a bicycle. Married couples often live apart, sometimes in opposite corners of the country, working at different places. They only time the get to see each other is during holidays, three weeks a year.
http://factsanddetails.com/china.php...11&subcatid=70

what ever happened to communism
average was is $2000 yet 40% live on less than 2usd a day
Which makes it all the more obscene that they are America's number one bondholder. China helped to keep America's long boom funded, if western governments end up defaulting on the bonds or if the west inflates the debt away over the next decade or so then it's these self same impoverished slave driven workers that in modern parlance "take a haircut" :( one way or another.