How much will taxpayers shoulder?

[eppie]

I worked for a firm once that attracted Filipino programmers to come over and work for about 1/2 normal US wages. It was double or triple what they earned in Manila. Within 2 to 3 years, they realized their value and things normalized with their pay. They were exploited, but because they were free to negotiate things tended to balance out in the long run.

PBOC prevents the balance from happening. I'm hopeful that Obama will do as he said, and get tough on PBOC. They are not "THE" source of pain for workers, but they are "A" source of pain which could have been dealt with over the past decade. I'm sure the economic "sell out" by Bush was also due to fighting wars, and needing the Chinese to keep North Korea in check, to withhold certain arms deals and probably stay a security council veto vote or two.

I'm just a frog that has noticed the temperatures rising in the pot here. Maybe you are content with the status quo, but I for one, can at least admit that I don't like the status quo and I'm willing to do something about it. Maybe you will care when your job is better done in India, or China at a fraction of your wage?

As MEAT remarked, I also agree with what all of you are saying. But 'doing something about it' seems rather difficult to me.
To me it is just the basic rules of capitalism. Even if governments wouldn't do anything, stuff will get produced in places where it is cheaper, creating more jobs over there, raising wealth, increasing labor costs after which stuff will get produced in even cheaper countries until we are all equal (man I sound really right wing here). When can a country do something about it? If it is able to produce everything it needs itself. The US makes a pretty good chance, of course no more luxury goods for everybody, wealth will go down. But you are lucky, Holland for example will never be able to produce everything within its own borders....we simply don't have the land area and natural resources for that....so the only thing we can do is play along.


One other point; with fuel getting scarcer, transport will get more expensive and it will be more and more convenient to make things where they are used, instead of on the other side of the globe.