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Comment by mr_toad

19 hours ago

> This is why China is eating the West.

Nothing to do with cheap labour.

No, nothing to do with that. Even Steve Jobs said so back 20+ years ago, about why Apple can't just get out of China manufacturing.

He said the labour cost is neghigible and not qualitatively different to the US. It's the availability of every part and tech you need in nearby supply centers and factories, the huge supply of appropriate resources, including the ability to have tens of thousands of expert workers on command for a fast new production run.

  • Of course you do not talk about cheap labor when you are exploiting it, from which all the speed, all the availability-at-any-time come from. The closest quote I can find is

    The story is told of when Apple did a last minute design change on the Iphone. As soon as the parts came in, 8000 Chinese workers were immediately called in at midnight to start a 12 hour shift. An Apple executive is quoted as saying that the “speed and flexibility are breathtaking.”

    Currently the reality on Chinese assembly lines is those expert workers are working 12 hour shifts for 1 day off every 14 days, and earns about $800-$1,000 a month.

    It's a huge problem in China actually, those 996-esque working schedule is everywhere now, normal 955 or even 965 schedule is almost non-existent among domestic private employers. The sad thing is that sometimes some Act (like EU supply chain law) forces factories to 955 schedule but those line workers are not happy, because that means they don't get overtime and are making minimum wages like $300 a month, not even enough to live a life. Chinese got five day work week because of WTO, yet now many have lost it.

  • I'd buy that if you're talking about developing new products/new production lines, it's cheaper to have suppliers and know how hand - and it's great for margin optimization, because they have other production lines.

    But that margin isn't funneled to pay wages and improve living standards.

    To say wages don't play a role it's more of a corporate narrative to wash those decisions.

    If wages aren't a factor, why don't they raise wages and living standards for those workers?

We're also eagerly taking advantage of their cheap labour and we're taking advantage of plenty of people here at home, sometimes to the point of literal slavery (it's okay when they're prisoners or immigrants)

Labor has very little to do with it and more about a political class that has to increase the material needs of a nation if they still want to stay in power.

What has the US government done for American's lately outside of forcing people to buy healthcare and providing monetary support for families for a small window during covid? All we have is a political class that wants to fuck Americans raw until they pump every cent out of us.

Also the US has one of the most weakened labor classes in the world, come the fuck on. Corporations convinced our governments to sell out labor at every opportunity. You're acting as if it was the 1930s where there was a national strike every month until the Wagner Act.

  • Why are you stating China competitiveness isn't related to labor, and then pivot to US labor?

    Before you go there, you should answer: what has the Chinese government done for the Chinese lately? Is everything well in their society, labor and economy wise?

No, we’re past the cheap labor. They’ve already taken the lead on 3-D printing, drones, robotics, are very close to making their own CPUs and GPUs, their lead on EV cars is pretty much unassailable, they’re in the process of building an electrostate with 100% redundancy and dirt cheap electricity, their bullet trains are on par with Japan’s, they are supplying the entire world with everything solar. I could go on and on. China has arrived and all our geriatric government cares about is creating a white ethnostate and propping up oil and gas companies.