I wish more people would take the time to step back and try and see the big picture. It’s a confusing messy picture with so many pieces and interconnections that it’s really difficult to try and see how everything comes together, and it sure doesn’t lend to tweetable, meme-able talking points well.
I’m not going to claim I’ve gotten the best grasp on world economics, domestic economics, and how various policies and trade deals specifically effect the reality of individual american workers. (Sometimes I feel like no one can really understand these things, but hopefully that feeling is wrong) But I feel like a lot of people haven’t bothered to even try by the ideas they hold. When they say things like the American minimum wage made it too expensive to manufacture goods here so companies sent the jobs to China* (as a rule no one cares about WHY it’s cheaper to pay the Chinese) so, instead of raising the minimum wage here we should abolish or lower it (because minimum wage forces companies to pay poor employees as much as great employees, thus hurting everyone but the awful lazy folks) so companies will make their goods here again, and this will make the runaway inflation disappear and all the goods more affordable (for the hard working people who will of course get raises now that companies don’t have to pay everyone such a ridiculous amount of money)…
It doesn’t hold water, because companies flock to cheap labor markets because their goal is to earn the most profit by using the cheapest, most effective means of production and selling the most units at a profit-maximizing price point. Making American labor as cheap as the labor in locations jobs have been outsourced to isn’t a solution because it would require making Americans too poor to consume the goods they would then be producing. The uncomfortable reality is that many of the goods in our markets are made by people too poor to say no, working in conditions that we outlawed in this country decades (or longer) ago for being too dangerous or horrible.
It’s easier to demonise another country or culture than look at reality and realise it’s complicated, extremely unfair (and not even the most unfair to us american working folk), and not simple to fix. Also easier than embracing the fact the world is made up of flesh and blood people who are always more like us than different, no matter how “exotic” their physical features, habits, ideas, food, or art might seem.
*Chinamis being used here as a stand in for any (usually predominantly non-white or western) country/area where goods/services can be produced more cost effectively because of the local labor market and regulations.
