There's this:
- And if manufacturers are ranked on a scale of 1 to 100 for exposure to import competition from China, between 1992 and 2007, workers in firms high on the exposure scale lost nearly half a year’s pay, compared to workers in firms at the low end of the scale.
But also this:
- The Obama administration’s decision to restrict tire imports from China, they contend, “saved a maximum of 1,200 jobs” at “the total cost to American consumers from higher prices” of $1.1 billion in 2011. “The cost per job saved was at least $900,000 in that year. Only a very small fraction of this bloated figure reached the pockets of tire workers. Instead, most of the money landed in the coffers of tire companies, mainly abroad but also at home.”
It amazes me how economists always miss the big picture on this when they write about it. China's and India's middle classes are thriving because they can dependably rely on a Dickensian peasant class two billion strong thrust irrevocably into wage slavery. The CIA estimates that Chinese population estimates are off by 40% or more. It's likely that the 300 million "middle class" Chinese are part of a population of 1.4 to 1.5 billion people. They're largely agrarian, 3rd-world poor, and lead nasty, brutish and short lives. Between 5 and 10 people die in Chinese coal mining accidents every day, for example. China and India are experiencing the success they are because they're reliving the Industrial Revolution. They're in the age of Robber Barons, the era shortly before the US experienced the IWW and Pinkerton riots. To call it an unfair labor balance is to call Debtors Prisons detrimental to consumers. And then we get giggles like this: The domestic auto industry faced pressure first from Germany, wholly rebuilt via US dollars in The Marshall Plan, then Japan, rebuilt 65% with US tax dollars. India and China didn't figure into it at all - the industrialized nation of the United States faced pressure from the industrialized nations of Japan and Germany, both of which modeled their economies after the US and Britain from 1890 onward. Fucking economists.Echoing Bhagwati, Frost mentioned the positive outcomes for American consumers, like the way that foreign competition forced the domestic auto industry to pay attention to quality and to stop producing “crummy cars.”
Yeah, you know, rational players in the market.It's likely that the 300 million "middle class" Chinese are part of a population of 1.4 to 1.5 billion people. They're largely agrarian, 3rd-world poor, and lead nasty, brutish and short lives. Between 5 and 10 people die in Chinese coal mining accidents every day, for example.