The New Slaves--Offshoring Manufacturing

The people who provide the cheap labor for offshored manufacturing are far away. We don’t see them or hear much about them on television. Sometimes we find out that they are children or prisoners. More often they are people who have fled poor farm villages looking for a better standard of living.


I have seen television programs about the living conditions of people in Chinese factories. They worked very long hours without good food or breaks. Their dorms were cramped and dirty and uncomfortable. The workers who were interviewed had the same opinion of those living conditions that an American would have, but they were willing to put up with the discomfort they suffered because jobs were hard to come by and they wanted the money.

It is a big planet we live on but it is overpopulated and there are not enough jobs to go around. Unemployment is extremely high in all those places where people are doing jobs for less and less money. Wherever wages start to go up, factories leave and move to locations where the people are more desperate.

While we Americans receive relatively little information about offshored manufacturing and the people who hold those jobs, their impact on our economy is increasingly obvious. Moving jobs abroad means fewer jobs for Americans.

Products manufactured abroad in third world countries are cheaper for Americans to buy, but how many television sets do you really need? No matter how cheap television sets become, how many will you be able to afford to buy after you have no income at all?

I feel that we do not get quality with cheaper items from overseas. I've purchased so many items manufactured abroad that were broken when I opened the package, that I now feel physical symptoms of anxiety when I have to purchase any expensive item manufactured abroad. Shopping for a proposed purchase, my questions focus on how the store will make good on defective merchandise before I ask any questions about the item itself.


For example, I have not had a working oven in my kitchen for several years now, but every time I set aside money to buy a new stove, I chicken out. My current stove has no working ovens but the burners work and it doesn't leak gas. Should I, perhaps, be satisfied with what I have?


I don't buy many new items of clothing now that I'm retired, but when I do, I avoid clothing made in certain countries because I've purchased so many items that quickly fell apart. It isn't really cheap to buy a knit top for twenty dollars if you can only wear it three times before the seams shred in the washing machine (on delicate).

We Americans talk about the virtue of free trade, but we don't really have free trade with our trading partners. They are free to send goods here. They are also free to manipulate their currency to disadvantage our exports. They are free to dump goods below cost until they kill off their American competitors. We are not free to do any of the above in their countries. Many countries only allow us to import the equipment required to turn over our manufacturing processes to their workers but do not allow us to bring any of our finished goods into their markets.


Because cheap goods are produced by cheap labor, the foreign labor that produces the cheap television set or the stove of my nightmares will never earn enough to buy products made by American labor unless we lower our living standard enough to compete at their level.

Yes, more and more Chinese are now middle-class and buy cars, but they are not buying new American cars unless those cars were made in China. The government of China likes it that way and sets up the rules to keep things that way, as do the governments of many of our other “allies.” And somehow, even before we went into debt to the government of China, we lived by their rules as if we ought to be grateful that they allowed us to "be their friends."

The game is fixed. It is a race to the bottom. We think we are getting the goodies but in fact, we are the losers. And the loss is greatest for those of us who are older and more expensive because of our experience and the added cost of our health insurance. 



There are lots of good books on free trade vs. fair trade. They are not page-turners and probably none of them will ever be made into a movie, but they are worth reading if you want to read something that makes you angry as hell!