Andrew writes: "It is time, therefore for China (and India) to start acting like developed nations, and start enabling preferential access to their own markets to the least developed countries in the world."

And the 600 million abject poor in China's west? They can just suck it up, presumably?

China becoming your headline "black hole" has also represented one of the largest transfers of wealth anywhere, anytime, ever. Two hundred million people have joined the "middle class", begun to pay taxes, begun to send their children to school, begun to upgrade the standard of their lives and the standard of their communities. More are following every day. China will have to build thousands of high schools every single year for the next fifty years just to keep up.

And you'd have China halt that process?!

A factory job making toys that are gleefully purchashed by first-world parents for an extra 89 cents when fattening their progeny on a "Happy Meal" may not be the kind of job that you would take -- but it's a huge improvement over being essentially an uneducated indentured slave on the "family" property (that you'll never see a share of) in China's dry, dusty west.

Workers come to these factories poor, often illiterate, and desperate for a job. Their pay gets sent home and sustains whole communities. While working at the factory, they can attend the factory school and learn how to read. When they go home, they take a lump sum that is used to put children through school, start a small business, or in some other way upgrade their lives and the lives of their families.

And this is called, by you and others, "hurting workers" and stealing jobs? Hurting which workers? Stealing what jobs?

The "poor" first-world workers, whose jobs are so unjustly "stolen" can retool, retrain, and are supported in most cases (the US being the self-inflicted exception) by huge and effective social welfare systems.

Cry not for them. Cry not at all.

Or rather, if you must rant and rage and blame, look no further than yourself and your Walmart-addicted lowest-price-regardless shopping habits. Or your singular obsession with voting for politicians that do not have "a single standard for all global workers" as part of their platform.

You have choices. Those "theiving" workers in China have, finally, and for the first time, jobs.

If you had to pick one thing to advocate, one thing that would bring about the greatest good to the greatest number, you'd advocate accelerating this process, not halting it!

The editors (in their wisdom) picked this:

Eat sh*t and die, dumbas* American worker bees. Your time is the sun is done. Give up your children to the machine and prepare for grueling poverty in Old Age.

Yeah, that's an excellent summary of what I said.

I guess I could summarise what you're saying in similar terms:

Eat dirt and die, voteless Chinese worker bees. Your hopes of something better for your families just don't matter against the cries of the haves wanting to have more. Give up your children to sex slavery and prepare for... oh, wait, you are already in gruelling poverty. Well, prepare for more!

Meanwhile, in America, the working poor will continue to vote for the party that continues to piss their inheritance onto the sands of Iraq, while blocking increases to the minimum wage of service-sector workers at home.

You're right (again), it's the "Liberal Elite" that doesn't care for workers.

Your politics are as confused as your logic, camilleRoy. Mission Accomplished.

I love the comments that begin "I flew Airline X once, years ago, and they sucked!"

There's a word for opinions formed by one experience. What was it again? Oh, that's right, meaningless.

Even more fun are the folks who know this, and pad the story a little: "I flew Airline X hundreds of times in my former career as an international celebrity...." (here comes the part where they nail themselves in the foot) "... and their service in coach was lousy."

Ooops.

There are, on observing a dog walking on two legs, two kinds of people, as has often been noted. One kind says "Oh my god, a walking dog!" The other kind says "It doesn't do it very well, does it?"

As has been perhaps observed less often, there are, on deplaning after a 14-hour flight across half the globe, from coach, two kinds of people:

One kind says "Oh my lord, I am on the other side of the world! I've only slept for a couple of hours, I'd already seen all the movies, the food was, well, it was at least warm, and I'm tired. BUT I'M ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD!"

The other kind complains about the service, (six flight attendants, 300 passengers, yep, you're going to see them for a couple of seconds, get over it), they complain about the seat pitch, (you paid less than $1,000 to cross half the world and you wanted leg room?) and they even complain about the in-flight "entertainment" (take a good book, for the love of Mike!)

They're right, of course. Dogs walking on their hind legs don't do it very well.

Where's the romance? Right in front of you, if only you'd look.