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Comment by patrickg_zill | Hacker News Reader

What will it matter what a US-based slaughterhouse worker is paid, when WalMart gets its way and is able to import Chinese-produced, Chinese-slaughtered, and Chinese-packaged meat?

Already much of the seafood is from Thailand and Chinese sources (check the label at your local supermarket).

(And how often is such food tested for antibiotics that are legal there, but banned here? Is a question I would like the answer to...)

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Agreed. And also, wouldn't effectively raising the minimum wage to ~$20 and jacking up wages across the board cause the price of goods to increase enough such that a $20/hr wage is below the poverty line? That money has to come from somewhere, and I imagine most employers would elect to pass those costs on to the consumer.

Smaller companies would fold, larger companies would pay more in the short term, and become much more capital efficient in the long-term. When the minimum wage increases, the ROI of replacing people with machines changes, and yields higher R per I.

If just the "companies that can bear it" bear it, you'll get less of those stores, as the expected profit yield per store decreases. Less stores is less competition, which will yield higher prices.

A big challenge with imports is quality, and the quality of imported Chinese food products has been found highly wanting.

It's even considered suspect in China, which is among the reasons Smithfield Foods, an American pork processor, was bought by a Chinese company last year:

http://www.pigprogress.net/Pork-Processing/Meat-Companies/20...

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