[joannanewsom]

> On the other side of the equation, the company paying you a pittance used your capitulation to drive down wages elsewhere, including in its home country. There's a reason why maybe women as a group in this day and age continue to earn only 82 cents on the $ that men make [1].

How much do you think wages are in Nigeria to the US? A quick googling gives approximately 3 cents to the dollar. That's a 33x difference. You would rather not improve the wages of someone making $0.03 / dollar. Because it _might_ hurt someone making $0.82 / dollar. Yeah equal pay for equal work is about protecting the relatively high US wages. And I don't think it's at all clear that exporting these jobs specifically hurts women workers and not male workers.

> Sure, you got your quadruple pay, while some woman here went without money for medicine and died before her time.

The average life expectancy in Nigeria is TWENTY FIVE years lower than in the US. Quadrupling the pay of someone in Nigeria has a far greater impact to their health than it does to someone in a first world country where there is significantly more access to medicine and other resources. If you are trying to help someone, wouldn't you want to focus on the population that is dying 25 years before everyone else?

> Now the (actual or philosophical) descendants of those Europeans play off the impoverished Nigerians against the local Women to exploit both groups.

How are Nigerians being exploited here? If it had been a local Nigerian company offering them a wage of $2 an hour (which is over their minimum wage) would it be exploitation? Or is it simply because the company operates multi-nationally does it become exploitative.

> Equal pay for equal work is not a hard concept to understand - it is basic fairness.

What is your proposed change here? The minimum wage where I am is $18.50 an hour. Therefore under equal-pay-for-equal-work, if a company based where I am living wants to offer a job outside my area must pay $18.50? Which means, the jobs would never get exported to Nigeria. Sure that is a win for people living in the US, but not for the people living in deep poverty on the other side of the world.

[ninjagoo]

These are straw-man arguments [1]. Nice try. The original argument is equal-pay-for-equal-work and these are all arguments for why unequal-pay-for-equal-work is justified, or why much lower lifespans in Africa justify reducing the lifespans of Women in High COL locations, or that Nigerians being offered higher pay doesn't mean that they are being exploited, completely ignoring the fact of collective historical exploitation leading to the current impoverished Low COL conditions, making their current life "cheaper".

Is it really that hard to wrap one's head around the equal-pay-for-equal-work argument? Around basic fairness? Offer the same pay across the board for the same work - whether that worker is a Woman or a Nigerian. That's the basic exploitation at play here: the value of the work is $1 (for argument's sake), the US man gets $1, but the US Woman gets $0.82 and the Nigerian gets $0.03. On what basis? Being born a Woman. Or being born in Nigeria. It's not even based on skills, which is this whole different ball of wax. No, it's based on what 'your kind' make. Not what the work is worth, not on any kind of rational basis, simply based on what your kind make or what those around you make. That's deeply unfair. Offer them all $1.

Sure, now the counter argument can be, life is unfair, it is what it is. If the follow on to that is that the status quo is acceptable and that no change needs to be made, then that indicates a lack of empathy, or in the extreme, capitalistic psychopathy (which needs to be regulated, within reason, for an actual greater good). If there is empathy, which there presumably is - because I see an argument above to export jobs to reduce poverty, or to improve African lifespans - let's start by changing structural injustices. And using impoverished Nigerians to exploit US Women is not it. Pay them that da** $1 for $1 of work! Not try to get away with $1.85 for $3 of work.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

[joannanewsom]

You are arguing from an "fairness" standpoint but none of that matters if your proposed policy would the lives of people in poverty worse. That's where we differ. I think that if you enforce an equal-pay-for-equal-work law, you will see an increase in wages in the US and a decrease in wages in low-income countries. That is the opposite of the desired effect and a negative outcome.

> Offer them all $1.

Everyone regardless of where they are gets payed the same. Am I understanding this correctly?

So, like I said in my area the minimum wage is $18.50/hr. So a multi-national company that has people tagging data in my area would pay a minimum of $18.50/hr. And under your proposed equal-pay-for-equal-work, if that company were to hire people in Nigeria to tag data they would _have_ to pay $18.50/hr. Correct?

Would that company have an incentive to outsource work to Nigeria if they had to pay people the same $18.50/hr? This is a country ranked 154/180 on the corruption index. It is the 17th least peaceful country and has far worse infrastructure relative to the US. I think these companies would be significantly less motivated to outsource jobs Nigeria if they can hire people locally for the same price. Would you agree? If you think that companies would be more or equally likely to outsource jobs to Nigeria if they wages were $18.50/hr please elaborate.

Far fewer jobs being outsourced to Nigeria, means less job opportunities for Nigerians and worse economic outcomes. Right?

If requiring equal-pay-for-equal-work leads to worse economic outcomes for Nigerians then isn't it a bad policy?

[ninjagoo]

Since you are so interested in reducing poverty and improving economic outcomes for those people abroad, what percentage of your first-world income/wealth are you sending to these impoverished regions? And for comparison, how does that amount compare to your donations to church and conservative causes?

Or am I confused and your concern only extends to reducing other people's (say for example less fortunate US women and unfortunate Nigerians) net income and definitely not your own income?

[joannanewsom]

I donate 5% of my income to Malaria Consortium and Clean Air Task Force. It could be more, but it's significant for me. I would encourage you to look at givewell.org and donate to help people living in extreme poverty.

I'm surprised you think I'm conservative. :)

[ninjagoo]

In that case, I apologize. I mistook genuine questions for obtuseness and the typical misdirectional hand-waving. With this new insight let me try again. You are right, I agree that as a policy equal-pay-for-equal work will indeed lead to a reduction in outsourcing. The solution to poverty in that case can be 2-fold (a) direct reparations, and (b) Marshall plans like for Germany and the world after WW2 [1].

It turns out that the Marshall plan was a large set of grants for billions of $ (big money in those days). There were some loans too with reasonable terms and reasonable payments, and because of natural inflation over time the payments became insignificant compared to the size of the German economy [2]. Maybe a modern day Marshall Plan with a mix of reasonable loans and grants is a good way to not shortchange either us Americans or the recipients.

Compare that with the outsourcing fiasco that has been Industry moving to China due to cheaper labor there. This did make the Chinese better off, and made the industrialists very very rich, but it gutted the American heartland and impoverished the people there, leading to the rise of Christian extremism and fascism in the US. We don't know yet if this was a fatal blow to the body politic and democracy worldwide, it's an ongoing crisis.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/18/who-still-owes-what-for-the-...