America's fastest dying cities

[kandrathe]

Of course this happens, and of course I understand, but that is (even without trading restrictions) still capitalism at it simplest. You cannot expect a country that is changing so fast and has such an economic growth to directly work with the same standards of workers rights than we have. When a country gets richer, people get richer and richer people want better rights....this is how things change.

Even when a country would be able to start producing and directly conforming to all standards it would be able to produce for a fraction of what you can in the US.......just look at the price of a kilo of rice in different countries. In the end 'ideally' (according to capitalism) this would result in a global redistribution of wealth.
And if you are in one of the richer countries....that means that at least your relative wealth will decrease.
Anyway for you in the US the problems are far less then e.g. in A small country like Holland. We will not have enough space and natural resources to support our population with food and goods.

There are many factors at play.

The first has been discussed, that of internationalization. For whatever reasons (labor, environmental, tax laws), it is cheaper to buy some components/commodities from overseas, and ship them back to the US than to mine/make the materials here.

Another, is production efficiency. The total number of industrial jobs world wide is dropping, due to technological and process advances in manufacturing. We can do more with fewer people.

Another, is materials sciences. We no longer rely on steel for fabrication as we once did. Automobiles are being constructed with a mix of various metal, and non-metal composites. So, ecological effects on the steel industry include regulating smoke stacks, but also CAFE standards in reducing the weights of vehicles.

Need to run, so I'll add more later.