A guy who was absent from my dance club for four months decided to show up last night. His name is Ken (last name not for publication), who grew up in Hong Kong and was recently in Hong Kong for an extended period because he and his wife were taking care of their latest grandson.
I told him that I had visited Hong Kong in 1967 on the way to Seattle from the Philippines. I said I found Hong Kong very progressive even back then, though it was not the safest place to be at night, since there were nightly bombings going on, courtesy of communist agitators. He called 1967 Hong Kong's "political" year. He says Hong Kong is peaceful now. However, it is not the place to be anymore, according to Ken. Every day almost, he said, people are protesting the high prices. People who make $10,000 HK a month have to shell out about $7,000 HK to rent a tiny tenement. That means they have to live on about $3000 HK a month, something that Ken says is almost impossible to do if you have a wife and kids. Most people in Hong Kong, according to Ken, are unhappy. The social services are terrible. Prospects are bleak. People remember when Hong Kong was a British colony. There was adequate health care, there were pensions, there were social services. Nowadays, health care is the pits, there is a very inadequate pension system, people rent almost all their lives because they can't afford to buy the super-expensive housing. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened substantially since the communist government of China took over. The difference between the British system of governance and the governance of the People's Republic is night and day, according to Ken. There are no labor unions because the Communist Party is *the* labor union. People are demonstrating daily, in small groups, and some are carrying the Union Jack flag, begging to bring back the British government. Maybe Americans should do the same. Maybe we need the British to come back here and install a more fair and just system. Here's the latest flash from Newsmax: *Breaking from Newsmax.com* *Richest 1% Earn Record Share of US Income* The income gap between the richest one percent of Americans and the rest of the country widened to a record last year, according to an analysis of Internal Revenue Service figures dating back 100 years. The analysis of IRS records back to 1913 found that the nation's very wealthiest — those making more than $394,000 — earned 19.3 percent of all household income in 2012, while the top 10 percent took home a record 48.2 percent of total earnings, The Associated Press reported. In 2012, incomes of the top one percent rose nearly 20 percent compared to a one percent increase for the remaining 99 percent. *Read More Here<http://news.newsmax.com/?KKO6.HlQ7Y063Azic701vG-HRDgfNLU1K&http://www.newsmax.com/US/wealth-inequality-income/2013/09/11/id/525061?ns_mail_uid=29895797&ns_mail_job=1537175_09112013&promo_code=14D6B-1> * C -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Center for Good Governance" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/center-for-good-governance. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
