Can we not dilute the definition of "slave labor" here?
American consumers would give up their own labor standards before facing the ruinous economic consequences of a world where they could only consume goods made by laborers earning $15/hour with health insurance and OSHA oversight.
> the ruinous economic consequences of a world where they could only consume goods made by laborers earning $15/hour with health insurance and OSHA oversight
Was economy of 1950's USA ruinous?
US did not import manifactured goods from China / almost anywhere at the time. The rest of the world manufacturing was a bomb crater after WW2.
Western manufacturing isn't uncompetitive because of OSHA and health insurance. There are third world countries that have health insurance.
Western manufacturing is uncompetitive because of insane inflation of real estate has parasitic effect on the rest of the economy. You cant pay a worker less than he has to pay his ladlord
>US did not import manifactured goods from China / almost anywhere at the time. The rest of the world manufacturing was a bomb crater after WW2.
Agreed, and unless you propose returning the rest of the world to a bomb crater then you cannot reinduce the 1950s by simply... regulating real estate prices or whatever. You cannot go back to a world where unskilled blue collar laborers earn massive wage premiums in the US vs. India/China like they did in the 1950s, and imagining that you can have "1950s prosperity" or whatever without this (thankfully fleeting) premium is pure delusion.
Are you volunteering to get off your computer and get back into factory work? Bolting some cars together on an assembly line 50 hours a week?
US knowledge work exists because we outsourced manufacturing and physical labor. You can't work a cushy software job and then whine that the economy hasn't improved since the 1950s.
More like economically literate weirdos who understand that the reason why people like cheap consumer goods is not because evil corporations have imposed a false consciousness on them that prevents them from realizing true class consciousness and releasing themselves from their chains.
Any jurisdiction can try to ban goods that are created through low-wage labor, or more generally labor that does not adhere to the regulatory regime of that jurisdiction. It basically never happens in the western world except for the most extreme cases (eg. actual slave labor) for obvious reasons, and when it does it almost always reflects a shameful form of protectionism.
Can we not dilute the definition of "slave labor" here?
American consumers would give up their own labor standards before facing the ruinous economic consequences of a world where they could only consume goods made by laborers earning $15/hour with health insurance and OSHA oversight.