severus_bro

The Chinese worker loses because instead of participating in a functioning labor market (like the ones in US, most of Latin America, East/West Europe, etc) his only choice is slave-like factories. The US worker loses because he loses his job. "The consumer" is the same as the US worker, so under this scheme everyone loses, except a small cartel of US corporations and local elites in some developing countries.

The point is not to restrict the international labor market, but to free it from this artificial pipeline that is only possible because US corporations work together with local elites in countries like China to suppress their local labor markets.

The problem is that they (US corporations and local elites in the developing countries) haven't built a global labor market. Rather they built very large pipelines into the US labor market.

This means that workers in a country such as China work 14 - 16 hours a day, eat in the company dining hall, and sleep in the company dorm. But they get paid a tiny amount, while US corporations and local elites who control the pipeline capture most of the profit.

Because of this, workers in developing countries act like a full worker (or 1.5 - 2x a full worker) but they don't act like a consumer. So you get 3-4 billion workers competing for jobs in an economy of 320 million people.

Looks like you are in a tight situation regarding income/expenses. If I were you, I would try really hard to switch markets.

Here's one scenario - you move to the US, and become nurses, both you and your wife. After a few years, that will give you at least $60k x 2 = $120k in income. But you only need about $70k in income to live well away from the coasts in the US (a little more with kids).

Also, whether this kind of transition is worth it depends on how old you are.

I don't think Amazon and the other corporations perceive this as a broken system. It looks like they want/designed it like this.

They don't have chronically overworked employees. They simply burn them out and then replace them with newer/younger workers.

I think the NYT reported that the average tenure of an Amazon worker is 1 year. Just let that sink in for a minute.

I think there are good ideas in your comment, but you are also skipping some key points. A worker doesn't "inherit" the market his company is operating in, so the competition and profits to be had in that market don't automatically flow to the workers. For instance, the iPhone dominates the smartphone market, but that matters little to the Foxconn workers who make it in China.

A worker operates in his own market - the labor market. His/her pay and working conditions depend on the supply and demand for workers with his skills in the market.

In the last 15 years or so, the US labor market was opened up to workers from all over the world through a wide range of measures - outsourcing, free trade, illegal immigration, H1B visas, etc. So now you have workers from a population of 3-4 billion people competing for US jobs. The trouble is the US economy is still sized for 320 million people.

Corporate interests want you to believe this is the "technological future", but it's really just the huge labor market imbalance that's causing low pay and poor working conditions.

Places like Harvard and Yale used to educate the elites themselves, but no more. Today the elites are the billionaires and hundred-millionaires who own the country's capital. Harvard and Yale educate the people who work directly for the elites - lawyers, CEOs, financiers, etc.

Like the Praetorian Guard of Ancient Rome, they derive significant power and wealth from the fact that they take orders directly from the elites. But since they are not the actual elite, they must endure intense vetting and culling at every level, and work hard often in harsh conditions (also like the Praetorians of old).

So the comparison in the original PDF is not exactly apples to apples.