patrick.net

tatupu70 says

That's not comparative advantage. It's exploitation.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

YesYNot says

The two aren't mutually exclusive.

Including the ability to pay slave wages or pollute the environment as a comparative advantage renders the term useless.

If you and I run companies making run of the mill paper clips, and I pay Chinese $4 / hr, while you pay US citizens $12 / hr, I have a comparative advantage. If we are the only paper clip companies, I can run you out of business or I can keep the bigger profits for myself.

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For every action, there is a reaction

Ship manufacturing off to china sight unseen, sure the corporation saves a piss boat on labor, but the layers of implications run deep.

The paper clip no longer travels 120 miles from SE PA down to Reston on the 18 wheeler of well paid American middleclassman. It now has an energy intensive journey around the globe.
From a factory with questionable pollution monitoring
Made by people in slave like conditions for slave wages
Shipped cross land to sea
Loaded into containers
Containers loaded onto shipping carriers
Cargo ships pay a crew, fuel, maintenance, 500k canal fees, booku insurance
Arrive at US port
Pay big fees
Crane operators
And soon you'll be at the point in the supply chain where you would have been domestically

But you spent a shit ton of fossil fuel energy, and greased all the hands of the politically privileged along the way, just to avoid paying joe shlep a living wage to work the factory in our backyard. Any purported labor cost savings never go to the consumer anyways, it all goes to the very too. Corporate profits all the way up. Taxes down

That doesnt begin to factor the cost of joe shleps idle hands here stateside. at this point were no longer a free market capitalist democracy republic anymore, anyways. So if tariffs are unAmerican and paperclips go up a couple cents, id survive.

Also, the only reason the Chinese can sell paper clips in volumes enough to be profitable is because of the already developed markets in the US and elsewhere.

I'm back bitches.....

I'm back bitches.....