Sino-U.S. Mid-Life Foods and Happiness

Compared with the middle class in China and the United States, the income class of the middle class in the United States is happy, and it need not worry too much about the decline in the purchasing power of money. In the United States, a capable housewife needs only about $20 to get daily food. The monthly food cost is $600. With a middle class income of $5,000 a month, $600 is a small figure. U.S. ordinary clothing is cheap, mainly from Mexico, Guatemala and other Asian and South American countries, and China, Vietnam, and other Asian countries. The general brand apparel is frequently discounted, and the price is lower than the domestic brand clothing by more than half.

The result of the author's inquiry in the United States is that in the past decade, the United States has not increased its prices for food and clothing and other necessities, and the currency has maintained sufficient purchasing power for necessities. This is the key to maintaining the quality of life of the middle class in the United States. Under the condition of high debt, the United States can actually maintain sufficient currency purchasing power in the country. It is undoubtedly the result of massive imports of cheap goods and foreign currency devaluation to maintain internal credit. The U.S. issue currency harm is other economies, not the United States itself.

Therefore, for the United States, what is needed is not to maintain domestic currency purchasing power, but to increase employment. With full-time employment opportunities, a middle class can be born and a stable social structure can be established. Obama is very clear about this and said that the first priority is to generate employment and vigorously develop the manufacturing industry. After more than 10 years of layoffs, U.S. manufacturing increased 500,000 jobs in the past three years.

There are three means to increase employment. Obama said in his speech, "As a country, we should ask ourselves three questions every day: How to attract more jobs to the United States? How do we make our people have the necessary job skills? We How to ensure that hard work will make life better? In the future, promoting the backflow of manufacturing, developing free trade, nurturing skilled workers, and maintaining technology and currency status will all be the focus of US economic policy. Correspondingly, the trade friction between the United States and China will inevitably increase.

The problems facing China are completely different from those of the United States.

First of all, most of China’s workers do not necessarily become middle-income earners. The number of unemployed workers announced by China is not large, and the registered unemployment rate in urban areas is maintained at around 4% all year round. Because China's job market is divided into different levels, a large number of migrant workers and underemployed workers are at the bottom of the workers' income. Their income is only enough to make ends meet. These workers are far away from the middle class, with huge obstacles such as household registration, labor income protection, and technical training.

The biggest problem faced by the middle class in China is the decline in the actual purchasing power of money relative to the necessities of life. Although the CPI has been slowly increasing at a rate of around 3% to 4% per year, people's conclusions in real life have caused them to seriously question the CPI. Taking the consumer prices from 1978 to 2009 as an example, the price of flour rose from RMB 0.185 to RMB 0.22 per catty to RMB 1.19 to RMB 1.92, with a range of 5.4 to 10.38 times, and clothing from RMB 10 to RMB 20 to RMB 100. 500 yuan, which ranges from 5 to 50 times. For instance, the Beijing metro fare category for transportation has risen from 0.1 yuan to 2 yuan, a rate of 20 times. The residential category has risen from 0.12 yuan per ton to 3.7 yuan, as an example. Yuan, with a margin of 30.8 times. Roadside barbecue stalls, which are the markets that are free from all costs and are overshadowed by the shadows, can reflect the food costs that the lowest living standards need to pay. From 2010 to early 2013, a small fish rose from 6 yuan to 10 yuan, and the price of vegetables doubled. That is to say, in terms of food, it has doubled in three years and it has risen by as much as 16% annually.

Not only that, it is very easy to degenerate from the middle income class to the poor, as long as someone in the family is seriously ill or the company goes bankrupt, or you do not want to do anything, just follow the rules and work in the factory to get wages, and the standard of living will be reduced step by step.

China needs not only to reform the system, to cultivate more middle-class income classes, but more importantly to maintain the standard of living of the middle-income earners, and not to return to poverty because of the decline in the purchasing power of money. In this way, the number of middle-income earners in China can rise sharply, and then develop a citizen group whose educational level, way of thinking, and lifestyle are basically at the same level.

This is the key to China becoming a modern country.