Well, you WERE the first emperor of China, no? 
-XT
I keed, I keed. Actually, I’m the rightful Emperor of China. My reign-name is Dong Hang Lo. Of the Wang Dynasty.
Listen: What you are supporting is evil. In simple words, you are proposing that large numbers of Chinese people should be murdered for the crime of being more attractive than you. Employers have every right to choose who they want to hook up with and the miscegenation of American employers hooking up with non-American employees is not a capital offense.
Yes, the jobs over there in China are low wage high volume jobs, but Isn’t that why labor unions exist? I know that in China, there are no unions, because the government is supposedly one giant labor union. If we move jobs back here, we can just have the labor unions push execs to give higher wages.
War in China so we can get new contracts with factories in Indonesia?
Doesn’t that fall under justifiable homicide?
Well, I never heard of any Communist country that allows labor unions independent of state/party control.
[QUOTE=humanafterall]
Yes, the jobs over there in China are low wage high volume jobs, but Isn’t that why labor unions exist?
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You lost me. What have labor unions got to do with the fact that the jobs you want back in the US are low wage and high volume? Do you think the Chinese are going to organize labor unions to agitate for higher wages? They are a communist state…by definition the whole country is already one big labor union. 
(kidding aside, the Chinese are already agitating for higher wages, and no doubt their wages will go up…but that just means that eventually the low wage high volume jobs will move somewhere else or be automated, not that they will come back to the US)
Right. And? They aren’t forcing those folks to take the jobs at gun point…the people in China are dirt poor. Working for low wages in dirty and dangerous conditions is a step up for most of their population. It beats being a dirt farmer in some village backwater in east bumfuck China, that’s for sure.
Are you going to push the consumers to pay higher prices for the goods and services we all currently get from low cost goods coming in from China and other low wage nations? Because here is the thing…even if you could move those manufacturing plants back to the US by force, and even if you could force ‘execs’ to pay higher wages, that will mean the products will cost more…and, most likely, that those companies forced to be here in the US will use automation instead of masses of high paid low skilled workers. Do you REALLY think that moving jobs from China to the US would be a one for one deal? More like a one for a hundred, or one for a thousand proposition, realistically.
Seriously…do you not understand that the US actually has quite a bit of manufacturing in right here in the states? Our manufacturing output was actually on the rise for the past decade or so before the recession. But the jobs in manufacturing have been declining in the US for several decades because US companies don’t use masses of low skilled high wage workers anymore…we automate.
-XT
Ironically, it’s a bit of a “You’ll take what money we give you and like it” situation. I just feel that outsourcing creates more problems than it solves. I don’t exactly see how it’s a sound business plan. Besides, if the American workers don’t like how low the wages are, that’s why labor unions exist.
You know, some of our prepackaged food comes from China. When you pause to think how many lead-contaminated products and frozen prepackaged meals full of harmful bacteria come to our shores and into our homes, it kind of makes you wish for better quality that comes only from America.
[QUOTE=humanafterall]
Ironically, it’s a bit of a “You’ll take what money we give you and like it” situation. I just feel that outsourcing creates more problems than it solves. I don’t exactly see how it’s a sound business plan. Besides, if the American workers don’t like how low the wages are, that’s why labor unions exist.
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How will you get American consumers to buy higher priced American goods? Will you force them to? How will you stop other countries from importing cheaper goods and services and undercutting American companies who are forced to use higher priced American labor that gives no economic benefit aside from them being Americans? An American working a similar assembly line to a Chinese brings nothing to the process and adds no additional value…just additional costs. The value add for American companies is all through our automation and expert systems…which all use substantially less labor both in terms of quantity and cost to Chinese companies.
How will labor unions force consumers to buy American goods that are the same as imports but cost more? How will companies force American workers to work for below minimum wage with no benefits? The only way you could make this fantasy happen would be to first off put massive tariffs on imported goods and services…which will automatically mean that our goods and services that we export will have massive tariffs placed on them (which will mean that right off the bat you are going to cause Americans to lose jobs…lots of jobs). Then you will have to force American flagged companies that want to stay American flagged (and thus avoid the tariffs) to use only American labor.
And do you know what you will accomplish with all of this? You will create a few jobs (perhaps) in manufacturing and an initial boost in construction as US companies build automated manufacturing plants to make the goods and services you want to force back to the US…at the cost of US trade and at a huge cost to the US public in goods and services that they now have to pay a great deal more for. How do you think the public will react?
(You really didn’t need a new thread on this, since this is essentially a repeat of an ongoing thread that Le Jac has been posting about in GD and the Pit for months now…you could just look for any post by him and put your thoughts in there, since it’s the same thing over and over again)
-XT
Let’s be fair. They’re making great gains, yes, but it’ll take a while for them to catch up to American capitalism.
Well, then, what about the morality of outsourcing?Is it morally right to make 13 year old Chuk Sim manufacture shoes in a hot and steamy factory, full of dangerous machinery and tools, only to receive at most 15 cents at the end of the day?
No. But blowing him up is not a morally superior alternative.
[shrug] So let’s send them women. American women. They’ll be running the country in six months, and all the guys will learn English or else they’ll learn English.
[QUOTE=humanafterall]
Well, then, what about the morality of outsourcing?Is it morally right to make 13 year old Chuk Sim manufacture shoes in a hot and steamy factory, full of dangerous machinery and tools, only to receive at most 15 cents at the end of the day?
[/QUOTE]
Where is the morality of dictating morality to another country? What are your 13 year old’s prospects if s/he wasn’t working in that factory? What would they be doing if not that job?
Ultimately it’s up to the Chinese to decide what’s best for them, as a whole and as a people. As they become more affluent then they will, perhaps, make similar choices to the ones we and our European buddies did wrt child labor laws. Or, maybe they won’t…it’s up to them to decide.
If it bothers you then by all means, vote with your pocketbook. If enough people vote with their pocketbooks and decide that importing goods and services from another country that uses child labor is unacceptable then that will make a change…either those countries will change their practices, or the American consumer will be prepared to pay more of a premium on goods and services they buy for the privilege of those goods and services not being made by children.
But really this isn’t about child labor or the poor downtrodden Chinese worker…this is, again, about American exceptional-ism, and some sort of divine or whatever right that Americans supposedly have to high paying low skilled jobs. The trouble is, they don’t have any right to a high paying low skilled job because their labor is no longer in demand for those jobs as it once was. When we were the only game in town then we could force that situation. We aren’t the only game in town anymore, and US labor has to compete with labor from around the world now…and much of that labor outside of the US is willing, even eager to work for a hell of a lot less money and in a hell of a lot more trying and dangerous conditions and with a hell of a lot more risks.
As long as people are given a choice in the goods and services they buy, and as long as a large percentage of them make decisions based on price, that situation is not going to change. And attempting to force through some sort of change is not going to get the results you think it will wrt all those jobs supposedly taken from the US coming back here.
-XT
I again stress however, the many product recalls of products from China that were found to have unsafe levels of lead, because the manufacturing standards are so lax over there. We all have the right to safe products, and I, for one feel that price is no object on the matter of safety.
Stress it all you like, but until there is a fundamental shift in the US consumers views of goods and services from China it won’t really matter. I’m all for higher levels of regulation on imported goods, but that isn’t going to change the fundamental equation here. All it would do is, perhaps, drive American consumers to buy goods and services from some other country, or to cause the Chinese to spend more on quality control and PR. It’s not going to bring those jobs back to the US.
-XT
Like a lot of people with “do the math” solutions, you’re ignoring a lot of messy reality. I hope China becomes more democratic, but saying you’d like them to have an enormous civil war just to bring some low-paying jobs back to the U.S. is twisted.