The house rebelled recently.
I came home after a not-so-great day at work, and while I was changing I noticed the sound of running water in the bathroom, which was odd as I don't normally just leave water running all day. Investigating revealed the toilet was no longer shutting off when the tank filled, and the excess water was pouring out the overflow valve. The shut-off mechanism appeared to have simply failed at some point while I was at work.
Wanting more light to inspect the innards of the toilet tank, I pulled (in retrospect perhaps a bit too vigorously) on the chain of the ancient wall-mounted light fixture in the bathroom. The light snapped on with a fascinating new sound which, it turns out, indicated it will never turn off again. So now my bathroom featured never-ending water
and light. Great.
I cut the water to the toilet and, with the aid of a potholder, removed the light bulb from the fixture. At least things were stable until I could get parts. I went into the kitchen to make dinner and enjoy some
Big House Pink. It was a complex recipe: open can, pour soup into Pirex, cover with cling wrap, poke holes in wrap, put in microwave. The oven light came on, but that was the only normal thing it did. The soup wasn't rotating in the chamber, and the oven made an ominous low rumble and grind. I quickly pressed Stop, then tried again. Same ominous low rumble, and by now I could feel the radiation pouring out of the appliance and metastasizing every abnormality in my body.
That was it. Clearly I needed to wander the house, shouting obscenities at everything that wasn't working. Oddly enough, that didn't fix anything, but it did convince Jake to go hide on the bed until I was done.
Thus it was I headed to
Crapitola the following weekend to get what I needed to put the household back in reasonable working order. First stop was OSH, where I learned the part I needed for the toilet has the rather improbable name of "ballcock." (I assume it was an old plumber's joke gone wrong.) Then I searched for new bathroom wall fixtures, but couldn't find any suitable. So I tracked down a pull chain switch so I could attempt to fix the existing fixture. It was about then I noticed that both the ballcock and pull chain switch, along with every light fixture I'd looked at, were made in China. Curious, I wandered OSH and found a surprising number of items for sale were also made in China.
Then it was across the street to Sears for a microwave oven. They had a nice, basic, little oven on sale for $49. Sure enough, made in China. As was every other microwave oven they offered.
My friend Mark had tried, several years ago, to avoid buying anything made in China based on his concern over their apparent disregard for human rights. But he'd eventually given up because, it seemed, some things were just no longer made
outside of China. Judging from my experience shopping the other weekend, nowadays
most things aren't made outside of China.
Now I've never been a protectionist, but I'm starting to wonder about just what, in fact, America does for a living. And I'm not the only one. Even globalization fanboy Thomas Friedman is noticing a disturbing imbalance in U.S.-China trade, as he said in
his column of 20 July:
"So many U.S. dollars and jobs are flowing to China, it is becoming politically and economically unsustainable for the Bush team."
For a man who
thinks unfettered global trade is the bee's knees, he's certainly worried about one specific trade deficit. Beyond the sheer financial implications, Mr. Friedman acknowledges a point that many have been making lately, and that I tried to make to my friend Todd just last week:
"While we have been focused on 9/11 and Iraq, China and America have become, in economic terms, Siamese twins."
But why would this be an issue? Why would the current regime be waiving their Iraq hand in our faces while their China hand is up a sleeve, out of sight? The August issue of
The Progressive postulates an answer in their editorial 'The Bush Plunge:'
"[Bush] and Cheney and Rumsfeld understand that the world economy runs on oil, that Saudi Arabia's supplies are peaking, that the House of Saud is unstable, and so Iraq, with the second largest oil reserves in the world, is 'vital.' By controlling Iraq's oil, the United States also can have more leverage over the Pentagon's enemy on the horizon, China, which now desperately needs to import oil to keep its economy chugging."
While it's tempting to dismiss this idea as liberal folderol, do note how similar it is to the "Tiananmen-Texas Bargain" Mr. Friedman
attributes to Steven Weber of the Institute of International Studies in Berkeley, to wit: China offered their middle class steady economic growth in exchange for voting rights, growth fueled by the U.S. trade imbalance that allows China to underwrite vast amounts of our debt.
So, what can save the United States, besides a dubious and costly war in the Middle East? Lately many talking heads, including Mr. Friedman, have opined that China needs to revalue their currency, the yuan. And
that's exactly what they did last Thursday. No longer pegged at a fixed rate against the U.S. dollar, the yuan will now "float against a basket of currencies," as the BBC said in their indubitably British way.
So now it's all good? Everything's going to be OK? Well let's not forget the concerns about human rights that had my buddy Mark checking labels a few years back. And the fears of environmental damage spurred by China's breakneck industrial growth. However,
recent events in China suggest the very large and ever-more-informed populace is deciding they won't be sacrificed to their government's economic dreams. Riots are said to be sweeping the nation as the Chinese seem to be less willing to tolerate government indifference and corruption.
But where are we on buying Chinese goods? Listen, if I had all the answers, I wouldn't be penning a blog,
Lone Gunmen-style, at almost Midnight on a work night. Besides, I need to fix my toilet.
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