[JoeAltmaier]

Wait - average wages a decade ago were like a dollar a day. So tripling that sounds like something I guess. I'd like to see something like parity for wages doing the same work anywhere on the planet. That would be progress.

[danielweber]

> I'd like to see something like parity for wages doing the same work anywhere on the planet

I'd like a pony.

Saying, in the year 2015, that wages should be the same anywhere on the planet is telling poor countries with no infrastructure "fuck you, got mine." Because the only reason someone opens a factory in Cambodia or China instead of South Carolina is because of the low wages. That is those countries' competitive advantage.

If a worker in Cambodia costs $10 an hour and a worker in America costs $10 an hour, there is no reason to build a factory in Cambodia. They have poorer infrastructure, little to no respect for IP, and the stuff is now a world away from its customers.

[JoeAltmaier]

That's pretty mean, putting abusive words in my mouth to make a tangential point. How about, just mention that low wages have an upside to balancing economic growth, and leave me out of it?

[eli_gottlieb]

>I'd like a pony.

All right, have an over-worked pony and stop pretending not to know about marginal costs and prices. As long as the worker in Cambodia remains cheaper by anything over the exact cost of shipping than the one in South Carolina, rather than by orders of magnitude, his country has a comparative advantage.

http://fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2011/196/0/f/tired_appleja...

[danielweber]

Thanks for the pony!

It's not just shipping costs. It's also the fact that doing business in a well-functioning first-world country is much easier than doing business in a third-world country.

Also, just declaring that Cambodian workers will get $7 an hour wouldn't just magically spill money into the workers. If the market wage is $1 an hour, a bulk of that difference is going to go into pockets of the people handing out the jobs via kickbacks.

An awesome solution that doesn't work in the real world isn't an awesome solution.

[JoeAltmaier]

Nobody's suggesting solutions. Just what they would look like if they existed. And they wouldn't look like a shift in poverty-stricken populations to a different point under the poverty line.