Comment by hvb2
3 hours ago
Americans aren't willing to pay the prices needed for the vast majority of things to be made in America or made by non immigrants. Immigrants will do the hard work in very bad conditions by American standards for very little money.
To me it's hilarious how on the one hand America is outraged about how all manufacturing has left the US, then after venting about that they buy a super cheap phone charger on Alibaba...
Put your money where your mouth is. If the customer had rejected overseas cheaper products then more jobs would've stayed in the US. Those salaries are a lot higher though so the products are more expensive...
It sounds like we need high tariffs to exclude products made in countries without living wages and strong worker protections from the American market, in addition to cutting off the pipeline of cheap labor to the US.
They might be living wages in those countries. You can save a lot of money by not living like the average American.
It's the standard of living that Americans expect. In order to afford that you need x amount of money. For example, if people in a different country don't need a car (let alone 2) and live in a 800sqft home with a family of 4. What does that mean for an acceptable minimum wage?
I don't even know what you mean by cheap labor. If you mean illegal practices below minimum wage, sure. But the average farming salary for example is over 17 [1] dollars an hour. Meanwhile in China, the average manufacturing salary was 97500 yuan [2], which is ~13680 dollars a year. That's 13680/12/168 = 6.8$ an hour.
So knowing this the basic question is: Is the American consumer willing to pay more for the same product because American workers need to be paid 2.5x more. The answer is just simply no.
Can you impose tarifs to offset that difference? Sure, the end result cannot be anything other than prices going up
1: https://www.indeed.com/career/farm-worker/salaries 2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/743509/china-average-yea...
As someone who worked in the farming and restaurant industries, and whose family continues to work in that and construction, it’s always baffling to me to see people insist Americans just won’t do it.
But yes, undercutting the labor market with immigration policy is wrong for Americans as a whole and a big giveaway to the business class. Yes, paying Americans a higher labor rate would raise prices to their natural level (much less than you would think in most cases, particularly food) and reduce income inequality.