[pseudocomposer]

Obviously, the “higher pay and significantly better benefits” are not actually significantly better. I’d rather we address that than just exploit some other workers overseas where they’re out of sight, out of mind. Honestly, it seems like tariffs on imported goods would be the way around this, but also, we need to be sure that money is going to the people doing the work, not just the owners.

Speaking of which, I don’t really know your business, but a post starting with “my family owns a business” and ending with “we lose workers to Walmart even though we pay them more” (with no specificity as to how much more)…. This really comes off like a problem with the business itself, not the overall market.

[Spooky23]

I’m not the OP. Heavy labor is… a lot of work. It’s rough in the body and some people aren’t cut for it.

In the 90s as a high school kid, I made $14/hr as a farmhand when the minimum wage was $4.75. They’d hire 4 crews of 4 guys each and we’d lose about half through the summer. They were great family to work for, but the work was hella hard. You could go retrieve shopping carts for $4.75 an hour and smoke weed all day, and many of my former coworkers did.

[diffeomorphism]

That just tells me that the pay was bad for the job.

If job A pays 80k and job B pays 100k, but job A is 40h and job B is 60h, then job B pays worse. They pay more but not better.

[ozgrakkurt]

They wrote per hour rates though, it is just more difficult per hour

[diffeomorphism]

Same point. Much more difficult per hour but not appropriately more pay.

[yibg]

I'm not sure I agree. Tariffs adds cost, unless domestic manufacturing can be done in a more or less cost effective way. Manufacturing works benefit of course but that's a overall small proportion of the population and ought to be (we probably don't want most people to be doing manufacturing work). But the added costs end up be a tax on everyone and a regressive one at that.

I also don't see offshoring manufacturing as inherently problematic or being out of sight, out of mind (of course exploitation can happen, but that's not inherently a part of offshoring manufacturing).

Workers in China, Vietnam etc are paid significantly less, but their cost of living is less as well. Plus unlike in the west, where manufacturing jobs are not desirable, in places where those manufacturing jobs land they typically provide an economic opportunity that isn't otherwise there.

Basically, why not have high cost of living places produce higher cost goods that pay more, and low cost of living places produce lower cost goods that pays less?

[teyc]

why does this arbitrage exist? Why is the cost of energy, the fundamental input into every economy, cheaper in Asia? Tractors consume fuel, fertilisers do too. Human labour is the least efficient at converting fuel into energy. When you dig a little deeper, you'd find an economy structured around keeping rentiers away from the basics: housing, energy and food.

[yibg]

Energy doesn’t come from just raw materials. It takes extraction, refinement, transportation etc in the case of petroleum, or manufacturing, installation etc in the case of wind and solar.

If you mean in terms of general economics, why are some countries cheaper than others, I’m not really qualified to make a statement there. I’m also not talking about if it’s right or wrong. But it is the reality today.

[teyc]

Don’t you think if we understand why energy, the fundamental unit of economics is lower in China we can gain much insight into the rest of the economy? Economists have often praised an energy tax for its non distortionary effect.

[phillyboy82]

Wrong. Kids brains are fried from phones / social media so much that they struggle with repetitive labor.

I see this all the time at an automotive plant. UAW wages are good, especially after the last contract, but we still get people who struggle putting a sticker on a car for an hour straight before their break or task switch.

[dangus]

So are you saying China doesn't have smartphones or social media?

UAW wages are "good" but you have to realize that you are competing with a service economy's leftover labor pool. All the good candidates left your manufacturing town already to get a job in an office tower where "good" UAW wages aren't really much to write home about.

For the last multiple decades graduating students have been facing a declining manufacturing job market where it makes just about no sense to get into manufacturing when they can get a degree and work a desk job with better pay and actually be in a job market that's growing over time rather than shrinking.

UAW wages are "good" but only compared to other jobs that are probably in the bottom 50% of desirability, and you're under constant threat of plant closures or the shift toward non-union plants in places like Alabama and South Carolina.

And oh yeah, you're stuck in some declining semi-rural rust belt manufacturing town rather than getting to live your best life in a vibrant growing urban area.

A full 35% of Americans have a bachelor's degree or higher, and those numbers are even higher when you are looking at states/counties that have the major population centers. The county map makes it look like basically every urban area has at least 40-50% bachelor's degree attainment, with standouts like the Boston area having some counties with over 60% attainment.

Almost 30% of Americans work remotely at least some time during the week.

So, basically half of the urbanized population has better options than working in a factory.

In China, working a factory is being compared to a much worse prior standard of living that was much more recent. Today's factory workers were yesterday's subsistence farmers. Americans haven't experienced that level of widespread poverty in at least 100 years.

[denkmoon]

Then long hours of repetitive labor are a skill which needs to be attracted for.

[antonvs]

> we still get people who struggle putting a sticker on a car for an hour straight before their break or task switch.

That seems wholly reasonable to me. Expecting humans to be able to do work like that, and especially to get satisfaction from such work, seems like the aberration.

[hitarpetar]

finally a positive framing on social media addiction

[antonvs]

“Get addicted to this phone, son, or you’ll end up working in a factory!”