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Comment by tootie | Hacker News Reader

Is it not a problem? Wages rose substantially in the years between WWII and the 1970s but isn't that the actual aberration?

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That’s part of it. It’s similar to China from the 90’s to the 2020’s. Likely Chinese will not see real wages go up at the same rate in the 2039’s as they did the previous decades.

That said, what’s eating real wage growth is outsourcing. It’s simple. If I can build a fridge by paying workers in China or Mexico $2/hr vs paying a US worker $22/hr in a manufactury plant, my competition will eventually lose market share and shutter if they don’t also move manufacturing to a cheaper labor market.

Without any import taxes to adjust for labor conditions and costs, thus will put downward pressure on stateside labor markets.

People know this. But they ALSO complain of stagnating wages, while at the same time NOT wanting their US manufactured good to be more expensive than those made over seas!

In the post war period the US was manufacturing goods for not just domestic use, but for the entire world. Pretty much all industrial capability was here in that period, so foreigners were forced to buy American goods. Those days are over and are never coming back. Most countries have their own industrial base now. There will never again be american employment in manufacturing like there was in the post war period, even if imports were completely banned.

It’s not only manufacturing though. And we don’t have to export to the world. We just need to support our own manufacturing and our own service workers.

My school janitors used to be able to send their kids to college and afford a humble house. Retail store clerks (Married with Children). All that is now cheap labor --you can't expect to pay a mortgage and send kids to college/uni. You may be able to afford the cheap apartment and beer --you'll probably end up with some addiction, i nthat situation.

These days that janitor is farmed out to some company that hires either cheap foreign labor or sometimes illegal labor. We see this in chicken processing plants too. And people wonder why the middle class is hollowed out. And why black and white working poor are sick and tired or corporate antics.

agree, also look to the tech giants who practice outsourcing. 50%+ of Google's employees are contractors[1], imagine if they were all employees what a brighter future so many families would have and what a gigantic boost to the economy it would create.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/28/technology/google-temp-wo...

Why do Americans deserve jobs over foreigners who are willing to do them for less?

Every State has the obligation to look after its own citizens. Otherwise, we should organize into a state that will as no other state will look after us. Can I go to Brazil or Russia and say, hey Russia, hey Brazil, you know, I'm neither Russian nor Brazilian and I didn't contribute anything to your country nor my did my ancestors, but I'd like some of your pie.

Also, we can't cry "wages have been stagnant since the 70s" and also want to continue ex-patriating jobs and ability to command better pay.

But what if you compare it to GDP? Production per capita has increased, yet the workers wages have not. I tend to think the “aberration” was due to the increase of private union membership, which has decreased since the 1980s.

When people are exploited systemically, they tend not to turn against their exploiters (which are often hard to identify) but against each other.

I think part of the promise of increasing the quality of life of everyone after WWII wasn't only out of the goodness of the heart, but also to avoid reaching the level of generalized hate that made it possible in the first place.

Could be. It might be that the existence of a substantial middle class, rather than a long tail of poverty, was an anomaly. Of course, we could choose to redistribute wealth to create any shape of curve we desire.

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