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because they pay what the work worth
we pay living wages to people that don't deserve it
You can't be serious................flipping burgers at MickeyDs is a highly skilled job, and certainly deserves a $15/hr pay rate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by moguldreamer
The OP has not come back, so I assume his post was a statement rather than an inquiry for discussion purposes.
It's only been a couple of days. While many of us have the time on our hands, that allows us to frequent these websites, others only have a couple of hours, here and there. Having said that, if the OP doesn't come back, within another day or two, then yeah, as you say, we're being trolled.
Only the financially uneducated will think that our higher salaries are better than the lower salaries in other countries.
The purchasing power of the US has shrank a lot faster than those countries, you can be a millionaire in America and still can't afford many things that a similar well to do person in those countries can because the dollar has sank in value vs other currencies.
The reason why the Chinese are the world's biggest consumers right now because their purchasing power is much greater than ever before. While their median income is less than Americans but they aren't taxed to death by their government. There's no such thing as sales tax in China, higher education, healthcare and transportation are all affordable and housing is also much more affordable than here.
Labor is a lot cheaper, here you have to be a DIYer to take care of your house. You can hire contractors in China to take care of your house without breaking the bank like here.
Or maybe the question I’m trying to ask is how is this fair that across the Far East and USA, there’s extreme unequal pay for the same exact work efforts….
Worse than that even…. Our stimulus and unemployment insurance checks for NO work ….. are multiples higher than the wages of 115-hour week sweatshop factory jobs in China, jobs filled by the very same large multinational companies that hire US retail and pay the required min wages to us but 35¢/hour to them? Have we no human dignity? Why isn’t it an equal wage for equal work for all ? If it’s that their prices are lower why then do we not help them inflate their wage so then they can inflate their price and then if they want to visit another place they aren’t broke poor in networth
Imagine for a second that we were in their shoes. Imagine there was a country idolized in global news and movie box offices and in this country imagine everything we worked for was consumed for their pleasure and they worked 5 hours per day, only 3 days per week and then chilled and partied the rest of the time. Imagine their minimum wage was $250 per hour …we would be loaded with all the cheap factories to support their consumption and we would just smile and say cool ? Why aren’t Chinese locals mad over this ?
Why aren’t they up in arms that they deserve higher a wage ? Why are they cool with this low wage? Now suppose I start a small business in China and sell all the stuff to US market but I decide I will pay Chinese workers $50/hour , would they not quit their 35¢/hour jobs in the blink of an eye ? How is that allowed ?
Hey Op,
Let's pretend we're going into the lemonade stand business. I go outside of my house in Silicon Valley. The weather is hot. The street has a fair amount of traffic. I think I would do pretty well and could sell $3 cups of lemonade. If I'm selling 20 cups in an hour, maybe I could even afford to pay someone to make the lemonade while I sell it. Assuming 30% of sell price in restaurants go to labor, that person and I could split $20/hour.
Or, I could call a friend in someplace far away. I know that they will make it for much less. Maybe even $1/hour would be fine.....then I realize it would be really tough to ship cups of lemonade from the faraway place to where I need it in time to make any sale
But....what if I was selling something that could store and be shipped in bulk....like auto parts? Then it might make sense to take the increased transportation expense instead of the increased wages. As long as i could warehouse it here, I could keep an inventory while the next shipment came in.
China was paying attention when they saw the rise of Japan. They just outdid Japan....(as Japan got expensive). They kept their labor inputs lower for longer....not just from having more people, but also by subjecting them to Hokou laws and making capital harder to access fairly without connections. Yet they did something really sneaky as well. Another problem with supplier nations is that the US has the best purchasing prices in the world.....because everyone wants to sell here. To compete with that, China setup steel mills to operate at a loss. Now companies willing to forgo the transportation issue could have both cheap labor and cheap sources of materials only avaiable in their borders.
China is no longer cheap though. Neither is India. It's just there's more winners and losers in those societies than the US finds acceptable. It's on more of a contribute or die plan compared to our contribute or make memes and watch cat videos plan. Hence low worker participation rates...more expensive labor....gigantic trade deficit.
To answer the question....the price is largely set by proximity to the end market and/or accessibility to the end market.
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