OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Originally Posted By: Burt
Let me get this straight. Like Lt. Columbo, I am easily confused. If jobs are lost to due technological advances with non-living machines, like electricity, computers, automated robots, lasers etc that's quite ok. And if some company moves from a high wage location to lower wage area in the same country, that's sort of ok. But if jobs are lost due to people taking lower wages, particularly in formerly communist countries, that's bad. Those commies should know that everyone should be paid the same wage.
But wait a minute, I thought the commies were the ones that thought everyone should be paid the same regardless of circumstance! Yet now the capitalists are saying that. So confusing. And who gets to decide minimum wages in each country? Everytime the US raises the minimum wage, I guess we expect all the other countries to follow suit?
First-world nations, like the name implies, have a higher standard of living. Therefore, it is more expensive to live in a first-world nation than in a place like China. On the flip-side of that, a person living in a first-world nation, on average, is going to make a lot more money than somebody living in third-world nation.
If an American company chooses to move to a state that is less expensive to operate in, they are still operating in America. Still paying American taxpayers and taxes, still giving those Americans, who live in America (the first-world nation in discussion here) jobs. Whether they make $2/hr less in Alabama than they do in California is irrelevant.
If an American company automates, they aren't going to lay off all their staff. Yes, overall staffing of low-tier jobs are reduced, but people can be re-trained and learn new jobs at the same company, and there are going to be Americans doing the work of installing the new machines, configuring the new machines and ideally, BUILDING the new machines for the automation process. There is a lot of automation in car assembly, yet we still have a huge percentage of autoworker jobs in this country. Automation does not mean total unemployment.
HOWEVER, when a company leaves its headquarters in America, but lays off all its labor and ships that work to a third-world nation, they are screwing their fellow Americans. There is no cost-savings realized by the end-user; these products don't go down in price when production is out-sourced. Jobs are displaced that can not be re-trained for within the company, since the entire SYSTEM is gone. A veritable employment vacuum is created and the only people who see any benefit from this are shareholders and the people running the company.
The Chinese laborers ARE likely all paid close to the same wage. Mind you, that wage over the course of a year is less than many first-world'ers earn in a week. Probably yourself included. Do you honestly think that because Apple makes billions at Foxconn city that the Chinese workers are making any more than they were beforehand? That they are BENEFITING from living in an industrial city? That coming out of the rice fields to work in a slave-labor factory was GOOD for them?
It is a fool's errand to think that creating an employment vacuum here is somehow benefiting the average worker in China who ends up with that job. Working 14hr days, 7 days a week leaves time for little else in one's life other than work. Poisoned by their work environment, things workers in first-world society are protected from. These are people used as tools in an industrial machine, a machine who's goal is to simply make money. And of course the Chinese government is sitting there, pulling the strings to make sure that it stays that way. Its population is huge and expendable. Do you think the same of your fellow Americans? Do you feel that they deserve unhealthy working environments, slave wages, living at their job, unable to go home to their family at night? Do you think that these would be ACCEPTABLE conditions in America?
You do your fellow Americans no favors thinking that somehow their loss of a means to live is resulting in some sort of Utopian society for the average Chinese worker.
Let me get this straight. Like Lt. Columbo, I am easily confused. If jobs are lost to due technological advances with non-living machines, like electricity, computers, automated robots, lasers etc that's quite ok. And if some company moves from a high wage location to lower wage area in the same country, that's sort of ok. But if jobs are lost due to people taking lower wages, particularly in formerly communist countries, that's bad. Those commies should know that everyone should be paid the same wage.
But wait a minute, I thought the commies were the ones that thought everyone should be paid the same regardless of circumstance! Yet now the capitalists are saying that. So confusing. And who gets to decide minimum wages in each country? Everytime the US raises the minimum wage, I guess we expect all the other countries to follow suit?
First-world nations, like the name implies, have a higher standard of living. Therefore, it is more expensive to live in a first-world nation than in a place like China. On the flip-side of that, a person living in a first-world nation, on average, is going to make a lot more money than somebody living in third-world nation.
If an American company chooses to move to a state that is less expensive to operate in, they are still operating in America. Still paying American taxpayers and taxes, still giving those Americans, who live in America (the first-world nation in discussion here) jobs. Whether they make $2/hr less in Alabama than they do in California is irrelevant.
If an American company automates, they aren't going to lay off all their staff. Yes, overall staffing of low-tier jobs are reduced, but people can be re-trained and learn new jobs at the same company, and there are going to be Americans doing the work of installing the new machines, configuring the new machines and ideally, BUILDING the new machines for the automation process. There is a lot of automation in car assembly, yet we still have a huge percentage of autoworker jobs in this country. Automation does not mean total unemployment.
HOWEVER, when a company leaves its headquarters in America, but lays off all its labor and ships that work to a third-world nation, they are screwing their fellow Americans. There is no cost-savings realized by the end-user; these products don't go down in price when production is out-sourced. Jobs are displaced that can not be re-trained for within the company, since the entire SYSTEM is gone. A veritable employment vacuum is created and the only people who see any benefit from this are shareholders and the people running the company.
The Chinese laborers ARE likely all paid close to the same wage. Mind you, that wage over the course of a year is less than many first-world'ers earn in a week. Probably yourself included. Do you honestly think that because Apple makes billions at Foxconn city that the Chinese workers are making any more than they were beforehand? That they are BENEFITING from living in an industrial city? That coming out of the rice fields to work in a slave-labor factory was GOOD for them?
It is a fool's errand to think that creating an employment vacuum here is somehow benefiting the average worker in China who ends up with that job. Working 14hr days, 7 days a week leaves time for little else in one's life other than work. Poisoned by their work environment, things workers in first-world society are protected from. These are people used as tools in an industrial machine, a machine who's goal is to simply make money. And of course the Chinese government is sitting there, pulling the strings to make sure that it stays that way. Its population is huge and expendable. Do you think the same of your fellow Americans? Do you feel that they deserve unhealthy working environments, slave wages, living at their job, unable to go home to their family at night? Do you think that these would be ACCEPTABLE conditions in America?
You do your fellow Americans no favors thinking that somehow their loss of a means to live is resulting in some sort of Utopian society for the average Chinese worker.