RE: too rich?
January 24, 2013 at 3:34 pm
(This post was last modified: January 24, 2013 at 3:34 pm by Mister Agenda.)
Hundreds of millions of Chinese have gotten out of absolute poverty (as defined by the UN) over the last 20 years, significantly reducing the global percentage of people in extreme poverty. This has a lot to do with manufacturing moving to China (and India, which has seen similar gains, together they have 700 million people who have gotten out of extreme poverty in the last 20 years). Part of the cost of this has been loss of manufacturing jobs in developed countries. Presumably as costs rise in China and India, we will finally turn to Africa, where some of the world's fastest-growing economies are to be found.
Preserving American jobs comes at a cost. I'm not a nationalist, if ten million American jobs are lost and force 20 million people into relative poverty (would not be considered poverty at all in an undeveloped country) and 50 million people are raised to moderate poverty in the process, I call that a net gain, and I am probably overstating the poverty resulting from outsourcing and understating the reduction of poverty resulting from it. Workers in undeveloped countries working in outsourced jobs are certainly underpaid by American standards, but typically are making double the prevailing wages of their region and learning manufacturing skills.
Preserving American jobs comes at a cost. I'm not a nationalist, if ten million American jobs are lost and force 20 million people into relative poverty (would not be considered poverty at all in an undeveloped country) and 50 million people are raised to moderate poverty in the process, I call that a net gain, and I am probably overstating the poverty resulting from outsourcing and understating the reduction of poverty resulting from it. Workers in undeveloped countries working in outsourced jobs are certainly underpaid by American standards, but typically are making double the prevailing wages of their region and learning manufacturing skills.
