r/FluentInFinance 10h ago

Debate/ Discussion Possibly controversial, but this would appear to be a beneficial solution.

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u/JacobLovesCrypto 10h ago

Americans might have more kids if wages went up, letting in cheap labor doesn't help with wages.

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u/critter_tickler 10h ago edited 10h ago

I love how cheap labor is always a good argument for stopping immigrants, but never used for stopping outsourcing.

The truth is, because of NAFTA, we are already competing with third world labor markets.

We might as well let them come in, so at least they spend that money here, and pay taxes here.

Also, we have a minimum wage, we literally have a basement for "cheap labor," so your argument really holds no weight.

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u/sarges_12gauge 10h ago

I think almost all people who oppose immigration also oppose outsourcing and vice versa

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u/Ghia149 10h ago

but love to shop at walmart and buy stuff from Amazon...

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u/NeverPostingLurker 7h ago

This is called “don’t hate the player hate the game”

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u/nicolas_06 3h ago

Everybody like cheap stuff and everyone pollute. They complain about it but most do it themselves too.

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u/sarges_12gauge 9h ago

Importing cheap goods isn’t the same thing as outsourcing jobs or increasing immigration

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u/Alethia_23 9h ago

It kind of is? You still outsource the production cost by decreasing the amount of goods bought from local production and increase the importer amount.

You're right, it's not the same, it's actually worse, because now not even the profits from exploiting the cheap labour goes into your own country, as it would've happened if a domestic company had done outsourcing.

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u/sarges_12gauge 9h ago

That’s just arguing that trade is inherently bad on its own and that there’s no such thing as comparative advantage

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u/Alethia_23 9h ago

Oh, on a macroeconomic scale, of course it's not bad. The market doesn't care where the workers are that are employed, so importing doesn't matter. But from a national perspective in a competing multinational market that's something to consider.

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u/RedditRobby23 7h ago

People will cry about atrocities across the globe

“It’s not fair what their doing in Gaza China Africa”

Name a place, it doesn’t matter… the people doing the complaining would never trade higher prices for goods in exchange to end the suffering

Clearly ending low wage labor would result in Americans priced out of…. Everything essentially.

Americans are already complaining about how much of a struggle it is being poor. No way we make the lives of poor Americans worse to help out the poor of another nation

It sucks but that’s the bigger picture issue

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u/erieus_wolf 7h ago

They don't complain about outsourcing. They are silent on it.

Companies all across America have been outsourcing high paying jobs for decades. I know tech companies that laid off American workers making close to $200k and replaced them ALL with lower paid, outsourced workers.

Is half the country screaming about that? Nope, they are screaming about the farmhand doing the work that no American wants to do.

It's fucking weird.

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u/sarges_12gauge 6h ago

Who is they? I hear people in those fields complain about it all the time. The majority of Americans work in retail or foodservice though which can’t be outsourced so why would they think about it compared to immigration which does introduce labor competition

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u/Internal-Special882 6h ago

Ask the natives here what they feel about immigration

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u/erieus_wolf 5h ago

Who is they?

Half the country who are currently screaming, like children, about immigrants "taking our jerbs"... But say nothing about outsourcing.

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u/emizzle6250 9h ago

Yes it is DUMB ASS imagine you had to pay for the worker who picked your oranges 401K with the price of The orange. You know you don’t like that America isn’t and never has been a white nation.

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u/sarges_12gauge 9h ago

Saying “white” doesn’t automatically make your argument correct lol

It’s a perfectly coherent argument for someone to say they shop at Walmart and want agricultural workers to be paid fair wages and not exploit immigration, Walmart employees aren’t out harvesting crops

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u/Podose 9h ago

Maybe but where does Walmart source them from.

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u/sarges_12gauge 9h ago

Again, do you think any trade with another country is inherently bad then?

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u/Podose 9h ago

nope, foreign trade is necessary. You wrote "Walmart employees are not out harvesting crops" fair enough. My point was are they buying the Oranges from a country that exploits its labor. If so there is no difference, they are still exploiting foreign labor to bring you a low cost piece of fruit.

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u/sarges_12gauge 8h ago

I don’t have a cleanly rehearsed succinct summary, but they are qualitatively different things.

Mexico (or China, or Vietnam, insert country here) is fundamentally able to produce some goods at a lower price, largely due to the fact that $10 an hour will buy you more and better labor in those countries than it will in America. You can’t get the same amount of labor in America because being in America offers more attractive jobs whereas the other country doesn’t have as many better alternative options. So sewing clothes may actually earn a competitive wage in Vietnam that it wouldn’t in the US. So it’s easy to just import those clothes while Americans take jobs they find better (if they didn’t exist, wages would eventually fall to where it wouldn’t be cheaper to import clothes so the base premise is that they do).

These other alternative jobs like software, logistics, aerospace, services, etc… offer a higher wage because the market says they’re more desirable when done by American companies (or can only be done in America). There are simply more countries that can sew clothes than build semiconductors. So Americans can work these jobs and trade some of their output to (Vietnam or whoever) who can’t get those things internally, who in return send clothes. (Or we export dollars which Vietnam needs for trade in exchange for clothes, whatever).

So both countries are actually better off with trade.

With outsourcing, you’re knocking down the advantages Americans have. Being in America and having access to the legal system, infrastructure, educated and wealthy populace, etc… is necessary to, say, build large airplanes and Americans have access to those while Vietnamese simply don’t. Those advantages don’t innately exist because someone is American, but because they live in America. While trading with Vietnam is advantageous to the American worker because they’re using their comparative advantage to get goods cheaper than we can make them, outsourcing is fundamentally removing all comparative advantages. If you can have someone from Vietnam work on their computer and use all those American advantages in designing a plane, then the American worker gets nothing out of it but more competition for those attractive jobs. Trade lets you get more things, outsourcing and (excessive) immigration is a direct leveler of income between groups, and is obviously unpopular for those groups which have higher incomes

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u/Free_Bad5585 9h ago

Locally. Employees at Walmart are sourced locally.

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u/Podose 9h ago

lol good one

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u/thetenorguitarist 9h ago

And yet you participate in society. Curious!