The aesthetics around here is what one muttering husband charitably calls baroque. Typical is Provençal-bright unmatched china on a wildly-patterned plastic tablecloth spread under an umbrella'd outdoor table serving soup to nuts.
So when our local sale-outlet Tuesday Morning offered glass drinking tumblers in a variety of colors, it was a no-brainer. Grape, mustard, watered-wine, other rainbow colors. And the ubiquitous Made in China stickers to scrape off before they clog the diswasher.
For varied cultural and economic reasons, given a choice we do not willingly buy Chinese commodities. However, very often there is little choice. From the POV of a household of consumers, China is cleaning the West's digital clock on functional, inexpensive, daily-use merchandise.
And now comes news out of Dongguan, China, a manufacturing center, that workers are striking and rioting for longer hours, for more factory time, more work to produce more goods and earn more.
The main cause for the riot was the limitation on working hours at the factory. The shorter hours have been requested by US companies so as to avoid criticism from various groups on long working hours.
"Back to the drawing board" for "worker input" into these questions seems to be the order of the day. The lockstep assumptions of uninformed, and it turns out, unsympathetic-to-the-workers demands rising in volume Stateside show themselves as unproductive. What workers rioted for in the early 20th century in the US may have as little to do with contemporary reality as hats with egret feathers have to do with
woollen hipster shorts worn with a long-sleeved woollen jumper, designed by Guo Pei for Beijing's Heavenly Horse Clothing Company.
Via Marginal Revolution.
China, clever, resolute, often ruthless, deft with rice and diamonds. We all share interesting times.
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