His life must have really sucked before if he took this crappy job.
But your standard of living isn't too bad -- you just bought this super cheap TV from China.
How is taking my TV away going to increase my standard of living?
American workers are competing with people who have wretched lives. They work cheaper than we do. Which is why they have jobs and we do not.
We don't have jobs? I know Obama is trying really hard, but we're not there yet.
It's becuase we send our money overseas and we tell ourselves that this is making us rich.
North Koreans and Cubans don't get to buy much, if any, foreign goods. Their standard of living must be better than ours.
You are making the point that Cubans, Chinese, and North Koreans have poor standards of living. That's true. I admit it. Hey, in my last post I described a Chinese guy with a low standard of living.
But that's not the point of this discussion, and you know it.
If you and I live on the same street, and if we do business together, we would have a level playing field. If we mutually agree on an exchange of goods and services, then we can both come out ahead.
If we live under different economic and political rules, then the playing field is not level. Manufacturing moves to China because the rules in China allow very cheap manufacturing. The rules in America make manufacturing very costly. Labor laws, environmental laws, tax laws, etc. We cannot compete and so some jobs that were in America go to other countries.
The end result may be that we can buy really cheap stuff from China. But where are we getting the money? Well, we have a $15T deficit because we've been living a standard of living that is not something we can pay for. We have an enormous debt because we think we're rich and we are not. We manufacture money out of nothing, creating a US deficit SO THAT we can continue to send money overseas and buy things. The trade deficit exists because we have magic money from nowhere. That's how we pay for stuff.
This is not making us rich.