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by AnimalMuppet 2430 days ago
In that alternate history, I don't think that the subsistence farmers would be middle class.

That doesn't mean that I think the US was in the right. I don't. But it does not follow that all the problems in Guatemala are our fault.

1 comments

They would be making closer to 3000 every two months instead of 300. It wouldn't be a utopia, but it'd be a lot better than if we hadn't bled Latin America dry for our benefit.

My point is that a factory moving overseas isn't some platonic transaction. There is a history and a context to why labor is so cheap and regulations are so lax.

How, in your world, would they be making closer to 3000 every two months?

[Edit: Forming unions doesn't automatically lead to rising wages - or if it does, it may do so at the price of fewer jobs. It isn't automatically going to lead to all the subsistence farmers getting good-paying factory jobs.]

> There is a history and a context to why labor is so cheap and regulations are so lax.

In Latin America, perhaps. In China? Korea, back in the day? Vietnam?