Yes, I'm sure that here in the US they'd be able to afford it. Totally. And if they got help, then they surely wouldn't be saddled with crippling, inescapable debt for the rest of their lives.

Communism isn't the same thing as socialism, and promising services isn't the same as delivering them. Very few socialists would espouse communism as an ideal, and fewer still would suggest that the USSR or China were/are anything even resembling an ideal. That short-lived myth was put out of its misery over half a century ago.

name one American town where kids are regularly born with extra thumbs because of the local factory's chemical emissions

Springfield! I saw a fish with three eyes there once!

no one is mutating in the US! STOP REGULATION NOW...i want a mutant kid, dammit.

In the post apocalypic wasteland to come, mutants will be the unchallenged rulers of humanity. If the Chinese maintain their current mutant output, they will outstrip the US mutant capabilities by a near insurmountable lead. Gentlemen, we cannot allow a mutant gap!

Anyone who thinks this doesn't happen in America hasn't spent much time in the Appalachian Mountains. I grew up in Kentucky and I can tell you that with regularity there will be kids with deformation, retardation, and more instances of rare conditions. Yes, there's a lot of factors not involving the mining industry there, but the heavy metals and poisons in the water aren't helping.

I can't recall how many people I've known born with cleft palates or club feet or other badness. One guy I went to school with had his pupil connected to the white of his eye, completely through the iris. Diane Sawyer knows what I'm talking about.

It may be possible that some of the same conditions in Kentucky are present in Shanxi, like inbreeding, drugs, teen pregnancy, alcohol, smoking, and just a bad lot of genes.

Though, I do find it humorously ironic that the guy is complaining about the bad air while smoking.