[quote=no_such_reality]
Low wages are the same as the pollution coming from the car. The argument isn’t that the laborer is doing something that deserve more, the argument is that if the product or service cannot be produced unless it uses sub-living wages, then as society, we’re better off without it.
Paying the workers a sub-living wage is just externalizing the real costs of your product and allowing you to practice predatory pricing against a business that isn’t externalizing the costs of having employees.[/quote]
The problem is sub-living wage is something subjective and varies greatly while skills required to execute a particular labor function are relatively fixed.
This is exactly why outsourcing happens. The “living wage” in China is significantly lower than the “living wage” here. Yet the skills required to put together an iPhone are the same. China’s workers have a competitive advantage even after you factor in various transportation costs and IP theft costs.
The solution offered by US labor is to not allow businesses to access this more competitively priced labor and force them to use higher cost labor because people in America deserve some kind of minimum standard of living.
I don’t really have a problem with the goal of raising the standard of living and GDP for the citizens of America. I just believe that government interventions via regulations and labor protectionist policies isn’t the best way to grow the economy. Purely focusing on the consumer demand side for the pass 30 years has lead us to this slow growth economy we’re in now. Protecting labor from the natural forces of competition slows down innovation and growth.