Originally Posted By: jcwit
So instead of trying to turn this around on me by calling me a "class act" how about some comments regarding the facts I posted? The $0.75/hour is real, whether he gets room and board as part of his employment or not.
No, that room and board is very real, plus the cost of their living is completely different than over here.
You bring up while I was serving? Well I was ready 24/7 for whatever and yes I received room and board as you put it, along with my base pay of $90 bucks a month. Comes out to $3.00 a day.
Well yes, I am curious. What did you make a year while you were in the armed forces? Obviously you cannot support a family on $90/month in a first-world nation.
And I am aware that the room and board is real (look at Foxconn city) however, these people are not working to serve their country, they are working to feed their families, whom they rarely see.
And of course the cost of living is completely different! That's part of the argument here. Do you desire to live like these people? Because that is the "competition" for our blue collar jobs.
You cannot survive on 3rd world wages in a 1st world nation, and as a labourer you cannot earn 1st world wages in a 3rd world nation.
This is how we end up with the trade imbalance and the entire argument for supporting labourers in FIRST WORLD nations, because they have similar living expenses to our own.
If your neighbour makes $12/hour working at a factory making tools, he is paying taxes and putting his money BACK into the pockets of Americans. He is helping support the US infrastructure and the US economy.
When you ship his job overseas, then he goes on unemployment or welfare and then becomes a DRAIN on that system. While his job goes to China to a person makes 1/12th that wage, and the price of the good he was manufacturing doesn't change, the company making the product makes MORE money that they spend to off-shore more of their products to put MORE Americans and first-world workers out of jobs so they can increase their profit margins. The only people who benefit from these actions are the shareholders and the people running the show, everybody else who was dependent on this company for employment gets screwed.
This is how you end up with a growing number of angry unemployed people who lost their jobs to people in India and China, this is how you end up with a staggering national debt that is growing at a rate of over a trillion a year. If the money spent in China was instead given to Americans, Americans working American jobs, paying American taxes and buying American goods, do you not think things would be different?
I mean, you obviously served your country, a place you respect. Does it not bother you that the economy of that country is headed down the tubes and it is preventable? That people's buying habits and the off-shoring of American manufacturing are key components in this downward spiral?
