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The "average" manufacturing worker, if there are still some in the workforce, gets paid for, or discounted medical insurance, vacation time, a pension plan, and possibly a few more perks. Decades of these perks have become "normal", therefore expected. They, in turn, drive up costs for any business that wants to operate in the US.
On top of that, do you ever hear of an EPA or OSHA in the Pacific Rim factories? Again, they add costs.
Combine those two factors, and it explains why the jobs have left the US. And when you have hundreds of thousands of people, who desire food and shelter, they'll work for peanuts, and the factories take advantage of that fact.
Because Chinese workers are actually not as productive as American workers. This doesn't mean Chinese workers are lazier. It means that American workers are boosted by past and present capital investments. American workers are also better educated. Remember that hundreds of millions of Chinese work in subsistence agriculture. Chinese tech workers on the other hand are quite efficient and can command salaries that, while lower than American salaries, are still at a developed country level.
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 ?
You don't have to go overseas to find disparate wages.
The mayor of San Francisco makes an annual base salary of $351,000. The mayors of Los Angeles and NYC make $281,000 and $258,000 respectively. (all are 2020 amounts).
And poor Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago only makes $192,000.
Is being the mayor of San Francisco (17th largest city in US, population 888,000) so much more difficult than being the mayor of Los Angeles (2nd largest city, population 3.9 million) or NYC (largest city in US, population 8.9 million) that they are paid 25% more? (2022 population figures)
Adding in the value of benefits increases the mayor of SF total compensation to $435,000.
Or how about San Diego, with a population of 1.4 million. Their mayor only gets $100,000.
Prices are modelled as to what the market will bear, generally.
China=communist. If the workers quit their jobs they will starve.
India=overpopulated and underdeveloped.
USA has a part in the poor wages because of our purchasing power and being high value customers who can make or break foreign suppliers. Wall Street demands increased profits year over year so Retail in our country puts the pressure on these slave factories to make more goods at the cheapest possible price or they threaten that their order will go to another manufacturer. And these foreign companies cave. If were not for the almighty greed, so many companies in America would be still in business, instead of US orders farmed out overseas to take advantage of slave labor.
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 ?
I see from your profile you mostly post in Politics & Other Controversies sub forum. That explains quite a bit about the way your original post is worded.
First, "fair" is a place where farmers take their prized tomatoes and giant pumpkins, where pies are judged, and where you can buy deep-fried twinkies on a stick. "Fair" is a non-concept in economics.
Second, "deserve", like "fair" is a non-concept in economics.
Third, tax attorneys in Shanghai command compensation of a quarter-million US dollars (equivalent) at a minimum. University professors, on the other hand, just recently started to see compensation exceed that of a taxi driver. This is sort of how things work in a command-and-control economic system where things are not left to the free market.
Fourth, since you've posted here in the Economics forum, it shows you have some interest in the topic, even though you haven't had much in the way of economics education. That's OK; it isn't for everyone. There are some excellent free introductory economics classes for free online, and many of them you don't even need high-school level Calculus. Why don't you start with Kahn Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/economic...n-to-economics) and work your way up to free online economics classes from Stanford or MIT. Note for those you'll need to brush up on your calculus.
It's more fun when most people are ignorant of economics. Nothing more entertaining when posters start talking about fairness and believe there is some higher power that decides these things. If I can't sell my products for what I do, well I'd live like a Filipino. But thankfully I can get what I do for my work. Get to the higher levels of business and you'll understand.
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