Read what I said. Labour Unions, not corporations.
Comment on Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars
KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months agoYeah I’m confused by the charity argument. When have American corporations ever done anything out of the kindness of their hearts?
alvvayson@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Aceticon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The “good for people” argument (which has been misportrayed here as “charity”) was made by politicians to justify tearing down the trade barriers that allowed localized higher-income bubbles within the wealthiest countries such as the US.
Once those trade barriers were down, all those jobs which had no other price protections than said trade barriers (jobs like, for example, assembly workers, but not things like Legal professions specialized in a country’s Law and which require registering with a local Law Society to practice) were suddenly competing with similar people all over the World, and a lot of countries in the World are full of people who would sell their work in those areas much cheaper than equivalent workers in high-income nations.
The people it was good for were the ones with such occupations in low income but reaasonably safe countries like China (whose income went up as manufacturing moved there) and the people who owned the means of production (who got higher dividends due to the higher profits being made by paying low-income country manpower costs and receiving high-income country prices for products and services) but nobody else as even the eventual fall in prices that occurred (slowly, as all those companies with China costs started competing on price) was not enough to make up for the faster and deeper downwards pressure on high-income country salaries due to said manpower competition with workers in countries with much cheaper salaries (hence, for example, in the mid-70s about 23% of corporate revenue in American went to salaries, whilst by 2012 it was down to 7%).
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Heres the problem with the talking point of needing to bring manufacturing jobs back: we can’t fill the manufacturing jobs that we have
I work for a company that sells services to warehouses and industrial facilities. We can’t fully staff our locations, we can’t keep most of the people we hire and neither can our customers, and it comes down to the fact that the jobs absolutely suck. Who wants to work in a loud, poorly temperature controlled factory with heavy equipment and a high risk of injury while doing backbreaking work when you could work at a store or resteraunt for not much less and put far less risk to your life, limb and sanity? Bring the automation on, these jobs need to become a thing of the past.
Aceticon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Sounds like the one thing you’re not mentioning - pay - is probably shit.
If the salary offered was enough for a whole family of 5 to live of it, including a good house and a car, like in the old days, I bet you would have trouble keeping candidates away.
The “people don’t want to work nowadays” arguments invariably forget to include the little detail that even a “competitive” salary in industry today is in real terms (of what it actually buys) nowhere as much as it was 50 years ago.
Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 6 months ago
Most industrial jobs start at around 50-60k and in many cases it’s the best paying work someone can get without a college degree.
Also I’m not saying “people don’t want to work” I’m saying people have standards now and don’t want to work in factories, because really, who would?