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The main reason that outsourcing is cheaper is that foreign countries don't have safety or labor standards.
All the progress that unions made suddenly evaporated when we allowed employers to hire foreign companies with lower safety and labor standards.
Now, maybe we should just accept that economic competition and economic competitiveness demand including those unprotected workforces. Fine. For third-world countries, even exploitative factory jobs might be preferable to alternatives.
If we accept that that's the case, is still unjust for business owners to reap the rewards of circumventing labor and safety standards while American workers lose jobs and have their wages depressed.
Every single cent of outsourcing profit should be taxed at 100 percent, and redistributed to American workers through government programs or tax cuts for workers.
They can also pay people much less there if they're living in poverty.
It’s like to see some of that profit go to the exploited workers who make the product, though. Nets vs decent working conditions shouldn’t be debatable.
Personally I think an externality tax should be applied.
Every dollar saved by skirting quality of work standards via offshoring is taxed at 150%.
Would significantly hasten the manufacturing shift to developing world democracies since in a lot of cases the cost differential is down to the same quality of work being genuinely cheaper in those countries.
Mexico for example is beginning to absorb a lot of auto and cellphone manufacturing jobs, and early reports seem to indicate that aside from the typical corruption one can expect out of Mexico, that these are the same kind of fiscal benefit that comparable jobs used to be to rust belt families in the US.
Every single cent of outsourcing profit should be taxed at 100 percent, and redistributed to American workers through government programs or tax cuts for workers.
Bit of a hot take, but I did find myself onboard and considering your point for a second. It feels like at a certain point we'd have an issue - if businesses start to decide that the US is hostile towards them, they'll happily move their business off shores. Then can they import, worry free? Or what other miriad of ways will they squirm out of the way and change nothing or even make things somehow worse.
Governments seem to like to strongly dissuade you from doing something by making the alternative you were avoiding now more appealing. In this case, perhaps world governments enforcing/controlling the wage that those outsourced workers receive - this leaves the door open to use outsourced labor more for situations like a factory's close proximity to resources and other financial incentives, or for using specific, highly skilled labor and craftspeople internationally. But by elevating their wage paid to our own (hopefully at that point also VASTLY improved) standards, you truly support the people and reduce poverty and suffering, or the jobs come home and hopefully do the same.
Feels like the world might have to come together on this too anyways, because these companies and their incredibly expensive lawyers will always find a way to wriggle out of the noose on their necks and remorselessly rake in their cash regardless. Either plan works I suppose, should the world be united in their rejection of these practices. But we're all so divided internally, I don't see how. The EU doing their best to reign in big tech lately has been heartening.
I think what they mean is an importation tax on those externalities. The only way to skirt that would be to just stop doing business in the countries which implement it, which, now you've just handed that market to companies that won't run afowl of the law.
The actual reason is socioeconomic.
China was still agrarian and America had already shifted.
Labor was drawn from the farms and exploited.
America did this a hundred years ago and all those pesky union effort created a workplace that was harder to exploit.
Luckily they've manage to convince Americans that being exploited is an acceptable trade off just as the socioeconomic conditions in China has slowed.
Exploiters are going to exploit. Doesn't matter if it's communism or capitalism. The ones with the least social consciousness climbs to the top.
Us plebs can be easily tricked into blame an other.