[gurumeditations]

Exporting working class jobs from a higher cost of living area to a lower cost of living area is on the whole a loss for the vast majority of people who are not wealthy and a gain for those who are wealthy. It’s a blatant wealth transfer from the masses to the wealthy few. So Americans get cheaper cars but no way to pay for them, and wealthy Americans get record levels of wealth.

Globalism is a sham and it’s surprising to still see someone parrot its hollow logic that only makes sense if you look at it in the short term and on a small scale instead of as a long term society-wide trend.

[neilparikh]

What about those who live in the lower cost of living area, who now gain access to new jobs? Isn't it a wealth transfer to them as well? And these people usually aren't wealthy (usually less wealthy than those in the US), so calling it a wealth transfer from the masses to the wealth few isn't fully accurate.

And a dollar goes much further in Mexico than it does in the US, so even if the net labour spending by companies goes down, more people will be able to have jobs. I think it's reasonable to believe that 2 people with jobs is better than one person than with a job, even if the 2 are in Mexico, and the one is in the US.

[gurumeditations]

As an American I see it from an American perspective. So a job loss here is a loss of wealth here, no matter what country it gets transferred to. The globalist perspective is one that damages every single person in the West whose society relies on a healthy well-paid middle class, that is now well-gutted, and we’re seeing the horrible chaotic effects of it over the past 5 years. Every father who made $25/hr at a plant years ago now has a son who makes $9/hr at a Dollar General, and both father and son are happy to back the next Hitler or Putin so long as he promises to make their lives great again. The transfer of wealth from Western society to poor societies is demolishing all of us. The US is rapidly becoming like Putin’s Russia and Europe is still in danger of falling apart despite its stronger safety net. Globalism has made freedom and prosperity very precarious these days.

[ksk]

Well, nobody is "owed" a job. Markets transform and respond to pressures. When you operate in a saturated market like the US the only line item on the balance sheet that is easy to tackle is labor costs, not revenue or profit. Your customers aren't going to buy products from you because you gave a raise to your janitor instead of replacing them with a roomba (relax, its a joke :P). The China/Walmart economy is here to stay. For retail companies, the only growth markets that you can sell into are the developing world markets around the world. These are also the companies your retirement funds are invested in, unless you don't want your savings to grow. If every country turned protectionist, it will trigger a massive economic depression. I suppose we'd come out of it eventually, if global warming doesn't kill us first :)

[cmxch]

So what do you do for those that end up on the wrong side of the equation, especially those who have been there for a long time?

[thephyber]

I don't understand why some HNer is expected to have an answer for this because no part of US society does.

We've underfunded career counseling in public schools for generations. We don't have any healthy career retraining system like other OECD countries do. Unemployment systems in the USA are nearly useless when it comes to retraining employees -- they really just act as job boards. Most states don't seem capable of attracting different industries, so when a batch of jobs leave a region, those employees struggle to find a near replacement. We have massive mental health and addiction problems so companies spend a lot of effort to avoid hiring anyone who might raise these costs for the company.

US society doesn't actually care about employees who don't take care of themselves. It's time we stop pretending like we do and call a spade a spade.

[mbrodersen]

Yep agree. At least be honest about not giving a s* about other people. That would be a small improvement.

[nine_zeros]

> So what do you do for those that end up on the wrong side of the equation, especially those who have been there for a long time?

Tax the capitalists to reduce inequality and also fully fund better programs like healthcare, education? This funding is wages for workers and as a society we remain developed?

The only problem with all our systems is disproportionate gains at the top.

[gurumeditations]

Everyone in western society is owed a good well-paying job so long as they’re also willing to work for it. It’s our birthright and expectation. You can believe that no one is owed that and that everyone can just work for pennies from Walmart as America and the Western world continues to go down in flames.

[ksk]

Well, that is certainly a major difference between our points of view. I'm not going to say that you're wrong. Global labor arbitrage is an expected byproduct of Capitalism. There is no easy fix for that. Economies will have to transform as the requirements of the workforce change. The trend is certainly towards more automation and off-shoring, and just like we don't expect people to be ditch-diggers anymore, maybe we won't expect them to do menial jobs too. And on top of that the current population of the world is simply not sustainable, doesn't matter where you live.

[cestith]

On the other hand, if factories in Mexico competing for that workforce now have to look at $16 per hour, the competitiveness of an LA or San Diego area textile and clothing factory just became very slim until US wage in that sector rise.

[SpicyLemonZest]

What do you think of the argument that foreign imports are just another kind of technology, allowing us to produce things cheaper with less labor? Surely it wouldn't be helpful for us to ban industrial bread machines so that more Americans have jobs as bakers.

[ixvvqktiwl]

Fun fact: in some states they passed laws that make it illegal to pump your own gas just so gas station attendants wouldn't lose their jobs.