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dZeppETH t1_j1ztu0k wrote

Reply to comment by jbman42 in How AI innovation is powered by underpaid workers in foreign countries. by eddytony96

No, it’s exporting exploitation. American Industry has had constant “cheap/free” labor supply issues since the abolition of slavery and through the years have always been seeking a replacement in that loss of profit. This is why we moved to Chinese Labor (railroads), Child Labor (factories), Female Labor (pay gap), etc. Now our solution is to export that exploitation to the 3rd world where most Americans don’t see it day-to-day and therefore don’t have an emotional connection to it enough to protest against it like we did for civil rights, and workers rights, and child labor rights, and women’s rights. This is a problem America has been fighting since the late 1800’s.

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jbman42 t1_j1zw35g wrote

Listen, the labor is cheap by your standards. It's definitely good enough for us. And those children end up in factories not because companies want to profit more with cheap labor, after all they're not nearly as smart or strong as adults and they get involved in more accidents. The reason there were children in factories was that their parents' income was not enough. Also pay gap? Really? Debunked at every turn and people still have the gall to use that argument.

Companies exporting labor is a direct consequence of the cost of labor laws. There comes a point where it just becomes a lot cheaper to bring the whole production chain to another country and ship the result back home. That is not by any stretch detrimental to said country, in fact it's quite the opposite. It is only indirectly detrimental to US workers, who will find it harder to find jobs. Then comes the government to apply tax on the shipping to try and make the outsourcing more expensive, and thus encourage companies to stay in the US. This is called protectionism. This is a bad thing because it artificially inflates prices in trade for saving US job positions.

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dZeppETH t1_j1zxdf8 wrote

Hopefully someday you learn to view all humans as equal people and not fodder for the consumerist capitalistic machine… If you think the wage gap through all of American history is “debunked at every turn,” you are grossly misinformed and I implore you to actually research the history of women’s pay in the American workforce.

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jbman42 t1_j1zz2nx wrote

I have. I know for a fact that it is a gross manipulation of the facts. The research authors just blindly gathers all women and all men and see that there is a difference in income, while completely ignoring underlying factors like job areas, occupational risks, hours worked, willingness to move, willingness to humor unreasonable requests, life priorities, etc. And this is true even in Scandinavian countries, where they supposedly have more equality. But this is already digressing from the original topic of the post. I suggest you take your own advice and do a little search around the topic.

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dZeppETH t1_j1zzlz5 wrote

Again, your explanation is a gross oversimplification of a systemic issue that has been an evolving problem for the better part of a century. Do you think secretaries in the ‘60s were adequately compensated for their labor when compared to equivalent male roles at the time, and if so I would love a single example.

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pedroelbee t1_j2241t1 wrote

I agree with many of your points, but oftentimes the reason that labor is cheaper in other countries is because they don’t have worker or environmental protections that more developed countries have. This makes the work much more dangerous, worse for the environment and workers. It’s not always black & white.

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Future-Spirit7874 t1_j214oyf wrote

Lets also not forget that people are fighring corporations which are given the same rights as people. However corporations never die due to old age and continue to accumulate wealth.

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MobileAirport t1_j21vqz5 wrote

This is a net good though. If companies seek cheap labor, they move their industrial investments to the poorest places. This has resulted in prosperity for places like singapore, taiwan, japan, south korea, china, india, and vietnam, among others.

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