This has always been the most bull***t reason politicians have ever come up with for why Americans are losing their jobs. Because it's simply bull***t. Chinese factory workers, and I'm talking about "highly paid" ones, make $4000-$6000/year. Most make even less than this, but for the sake of argument I'm using numbers for the cream of the assembly line crop. They work almost 70hrs/week, get free community housing and free (cheap) food. But a rough guess at the total cost of a Chinese factory worker is $3000/yr adjusting for 40hr work week. The Chinese yuan currently is slightly under-valued right now, maybe 5% or so. Certainly less than 10%. Well, you can do the math. Oh, and to add, many manufacturing jobs are actually LEAVING China because the cost there is so high. Typical white collared jobs in China that require good technical skills capable of performing similar tasks to an American college graduate get maybe an $10,000-$15,000/yr. But since overtime in China is a foreign concept, you're still looking at 50-60hr/week easily. Mostly there's no benefits like 401k and stuff. China has a socialist healthcare plan though. I would say these are the jobs being stolen the fastest right now, with ever-closing gaps in terms of technology and communication among countries. Again, the Chinese yuan currently is slightly under-valued right now, maybe 5% or so at most. Certainly less than 10%. Again, one can do the math. Basically, China and freely float its currency and Americans are still going to be out of jobs. The only difference is how competitive China would be against other countries competing in the low wages warfare. Americans are still making a crapload more than any corporation would even dream of paying for workers.
Absolutely, who are you to tell another man what he can offer/accept for a service? Why is that anyone's affair outside of the parties involved? A minimum wage is just a prohibition on anyone who's labor is worth less.
An example of what I'm talking about--- http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederi...-while-paying-its-auto-workers-twice-as-much/
Or, you know, a development tool that can push countries forward, or a policy tool that can push well-being up at little cost. http://www.econ.yale.edu/conference/neudc11/papers/paper_272.pdf http://press.princeton.edu/titles/5632.html "The Card-Krueger work is essentially correct: the minimum wage at levels observed in the United States has had little or no effect on employment. At the minimum, the book has changed the burden of proof in debates over the minimum, from those who stressed the potential distributional benefits of the minimum to those who stress the potential employment losses."--Richard B. Freeman, Journal of Economic Perspectives Richard B. Freeman (born June 29, 1943) is one of the leading labor economists in North America. He is the Herbert Ascherman Professor of Economics at Harvard University.
Yeah- its not as if it's written down in the Constitution anywhere that Congress expressly has the power to regulate commercial activities like this- other than, you know, the part where it expressly says that.
the wingers hate america more and more every day. soōøõóöoôò unpatriotic. they should all move to the make believe america that has never existed.
Seriously, lets just bring back child labor and take away your holidays. Oh and Kevin Parker doesn't sound like a p***y. He sounds like John Lennon.
why pay an uneducated worker $18/hr to assemble parts when you can pay the same uneducated worker $1/hr to do the same job? If you owned a business, which would you choose?
FWIW I'm always in favor of labor going to the person willing to do a (satisfactory) job for the least money. That they will do it for the least means they need it the most. We shouldn't prevent workers here from exploiting that same advantage (a willingness to work for less).
I'm tired of hearing people complain about so and so country's workers having to make x products for a living. What would they be enjoying doing more, and why then aren't they doing it? just sayin.... Isn't it a good thing for hypothetical country A to have these jobs, rather than no jobs, or lesser jobs? Imperfect world is imperfect.
The ancient Romans, at the peak of their empire, had a trade problem. They exported no goods of real value; they instead exported a large military. The military was tasked with switching economies from a barter-based exchange system to a coin/money-based exchange system. They hooked their neighbors on an effecient way to run their economy, reaping (importing) the proceeds. When they ran out of countries to invade, the gig was up, inflation began to eat their empire apart. There may be a little historical revision in there but it lends itself to the moral of the story: this time it is different. This new era of wealth for America will see the highest stock market gains (Dow 36,000!), most effecient allocation of capital (we just use stuff better) and greatest innovation the world has ever seen (scientifically noted derivatives market). You ain't seen nothing yet, when Romney/Obama labels China a currency manipulator - the trade war will be on.
China is "stealing" our jobs, because we did everything we could to clear the roads for them to be sent there. What about a minimum wage set by collective bargaining, rather than legislation? I don't see any moral conflict there. I mention the alternative, because I do believe minimum wage is necessary to curb the monopsonistic competition that would be induced considering our current trade regulations with eastern countries. The market power would MASSIVELY be swung in favor of employers as opposed to workers.
What about when employers are all of the same mindset and effectively force employees to accept lower wages in a particular area? What if employees at a particular job band together, of their own free will, and attempt to get fair wages from their employer?
Exactly. That's what I was getting at with the monopsonistic competition. It would be exacerbated with our ability to outsource tariff free to countries with an excess in available work force.
