[tootie]

That's not wrong, but it does kinda miss the point. The argument isn't we should stop buying and let them go back to living off the land. The argument is they should be paid a living wage to do work that has value. If the work came back to first-world factories, they'd have to pay at least 10X the wages, so just agreeing to 1.5X or 2X is still a bargain.

[tomp]

The "living wage" is an ill-defined term, because the majority of the population will always be earning just at or above the living wage - and when the general wages rise, so will the costs (of food, rent, transport, ...).

The only way of breaking this cycle is by creating a society of abundance, but even the West isn't there yet, yet alone India/China. The only other thing you can do is earn more, but that only counts if you're earning more than other people, so that you can outbid them (e.g. when buying/renting a flat) while still having enough money to spend/save.

[imron]

This is a really tricky problem though, because what happens when factory jobs bring in more money than those that require further education and training? What you get is people dropping out of school to go and work in those factories, which then only goes on to perpetuate the poverty cycle.

I don't have any good solutions, but I do know the answer isn't as simple as just doubling factory workers' wages.

[tootie]

Nah. That Flappy Bird guy made a small fortune even by first world standards. It drove him insane too.

[imron]

The difference being that the Flappy Bird guy was doing skilled labour (programming) of that sort that is likely to help end poverty cycles.

Compare that to thousands of people dropping out of the education system early to do unskilled factory work because it pays well above average salaries.

Imagine for example you could make $120,000 a year as a programmer, or $200,000 a year doing factory work. Do you think society will produce more programmers or more factory workers?

Imagine what happens a few years down the line when the multinational that owns the factory decides to up and move to another country in order to reduce costs.

[kylebrown]

> Imagine for example you could make $120,000 a year as a programmer, or $200,000 a year doing factory work. Do you think society will produce more programmers or more factory workers?

Say I can make $25k a year as a janitor, or $360k as an anesthesiologist. Is society producing more janitors, or more anesthesiologists?

[imron]

That analogy doesn't fit what I'm saying because an anesthesiologist is a highly skilled occupation and it takes years of specialised training to a gain the qualifications and skills necessary to work in that field.

Flipping it around and you get something closer, e.g. imagine instead a janitor made $360k a year and an anesthesiologist $25k. You'd find society would have a huge shortage of anesthesiologists because why would anyone go through all that training to get a job that pays a fraction of what you could earn cleaning toilets.

You'd also find people dropping out of college to become janitors.

Now ask yourself what happens in developing countries when unskilled factory workers get paid double what you could earn as a university graduate. What happens is that many people decide they would rather work in a factory than go to university.

[mlrtime]

"If the work came back to first-world factories, they'd have to pay at least 10X the wages"

And they might have 100x the living expenses.

[foobar2020]

You need to produce wealth before you consume wealth, at least on the scale of a country.

Only after there is enough wealth available (in form of schools, hospitals, infrastructure, social security system, businesses, know-how, reliable supply chains, etc.) you can jump the poverty barrier by borrowing wealth, through the credit money-creation system. But the prerequisite is a healthy economy.