Dragon Babies to the Rescue

Ask some of the people running for the presidency why we don't have enough jobs, and they'll tell you.  It's China's fault.  China has destroyed the US economy through job stealing, currency manipulation, and a wide range of unfair trade practices, they tell you.  And you're sitting there thinking, "Gee, I know about the environmental problems, food safety issues, intellectual property infringement and human rights violations, but are the Chinese really stealing our jobs?  And if they are manipulating their currency value, should I care?"

Well, let's face it, the Chinese people are willing to work for much less than we Americans are, which means they are willing to accept a much lower standard of living, including not ever being able to afford to buy the products they work to produce.  And there are 1.3 billion of them, so their labor force is both big and cheap.  Not surprisingly, American companies can keep their costs low and grow their profits by having their products made in China, and we American like to buy lots of inexpensive stuff, so we're not really complaining much.  Even though low production costs have helped us improve our national bottom line (GDP), The Chinese economy has experienced tremendous growth, and it will most likely be larger than ours soon.  Sorry, that's pretty much a sure thing.  As you begin working through the Five Stages of Grief,  let me just say that according to a recent Bloomberg article, "Luxembourg has a GDP four-tenths of a percent the size of the U.S. economy, about the same output as the state of Delaware. And yet it is more than twice as rich per person as the U.S."  So, fastest growing economy and biggest economy don't mean richest, and apparently even after the Chinese overtakes us, we will still live much better than they do.  Still feeling kind of bummed?  Well, our GDP is still twice that of China, so you probably have a few more years of meaningless bragging left.

Here's a little trivia:  China was the world's biggest economy for most of the 300 years before it was overtaken by the U.S. in 1890. 

But since It seems highly unlikely that the 12.8 million unemployed Americans will suddenly be willing to work for $2 a day, "How will we compete for jobs?" you're wondering.  And the answer is: Dragon Babies!

Of the 12 Chinese Zodiac signs, by far the most desirable is the sign of the Dragon.  The Dragon can swim and fly, traversing the seas as well as heaven, symbolizing a life with no obstacles, and big time success.  Well, guess what year we're in?  Yup.  And guess what's illegal in China?  Surrogacy.  So rich Chinese couples with fertility issues are flocking to American clinics to try their luck.  American clinics are considered superior medically, and a Chinese couple can get an ethnic Chinese American surrogate here to carry their baby and give birth to it in the U.S., giving the child the added advantage of American citizenship.  Surrogacy costs about $100k, but If the couple needs donor eggs, it's even more.  They'll have to pay a premium (like $30K) for eggs from an ethnic Chinese donor, and a bit more if they want a donor with high SAT scores, or one who's a student at Harvard, for example.  If you have enough money to pay for all this, then paying the fine for having more than one kid in China shouldn't be too bad.  

Kathryn Kaycoff Manos, co-founder of Global IVF and Agency for Surrogacy Solutions in Los Angeles reports a 250% increase in business over the last two months.  The business of making a Dragon Baby is booming!  According to a recent LA times article on the subject, "Kaycoff Manos' company created the Dragon Baby Special, a personalized service that helps Chinese clients deliver babies in time through in vitro fertilization or surrogacy, connecting with bilingual fertility clinics and hiring Chinese translators."  One stop shopping!  We should all be so enterprising.

Isn't it interesting that Chinese are coming here to make Chinese babies while Americans are going to China to adopt Chinese babies?

But I can't distract you with all this talk about babies.  You're still wondering about all those accusations of currency manipulation.   Well, the people who invented paper money (in the late Tang Dynasty, 618-907) may very well be keeping the value of the Yuan artificially low, but as they have been letting its value float up over the past few years, a stronger Yuan has meant more Chinese companies are now looking at moving production to the United States.  Why, you may ask (if you're not an economist)?  Because Americans are still the world's biggest consumers, and making your products in their country so you can get it into their hot little credit card wielding hands more quickly and easily is a huge competitive advantage.  Now that the American labor force has gotten a little cheaper, and now that you can buy more dollars with each of your Yuan, making your products here in America and saving transportation costs starts looking a lot more attractive.  Has anyone noticed the rise in oil and gas prices?

So to sum up:  Americans want Chinese products made in the U.S., Chinese people want Chinese babies made in the U.S.,  Americans want Chinese babies made in China, but not black babies made in the U.S. (oh wait, that's another topic entirely).  Americans want cheap goods produced by cheap labor in China, and that's created more wealthy Chinese business people, who want expensive goods (babies) produced in the U.S. by expensive labor (literally).  We need the Chinese to keep making stuff cheaply, and they need us to keep buying it.  The Chinese want surrogacy services and we need them to spend their new found wealth here.  What we have is codependency.  We need each other.  It's kind of a love/hate thing.  

And what service will we be able to sell the Chinese in 2013 when the year of the Dragon ends?  Snake babies!   Next year is the year of the snake.   Or maybe we'll come up with some other ideas by then.  Get to work!