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by Brian Peacock » Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:58 pm
He's got a point though - kinda. The mid-Western factory worker who was earning $30 ph + benefits as an skilled electrician in the 90s saw his firm up stick and outsource their job to Texas in the mid-90s. The governor said that they were going to retrain the workforce as computer programmers, but apparently the governor preferred the pecuniary transfers of tax cuts rather the skills transfers of retraining, so the guy ended up working in a call center for $15 ph + some benefits. Then in the 2000s that firm outsourced its jobs to India, and with his wages falling every year, his credit limit maxed, his kids in escalating student debt, and his wife working two part-time jobs the guy found himself working for the biggest employer in the US - Walmart, at $7.25 ph + no benefits other than a snazzy uniform.
The thing is, it's not China, or India, or Mexico, or immigration, or Muslims, or Black Lives Matter, or Antifa, that caused household income for the bottom 60% of the US workforce to barely rise in real terms since 1980, it's good old home-grown American firms simply taking advantage of an internationalised labour market to boost profits, bolster share prices, and generate humongous wage hikes and lottery-sized bonuses for CEOs and company directors.
It wasn't China that killed the beast - it was Capitalism, plain and simple.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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