Tell your boss you want to cut your pay to 60 cents/hour

[Career Prole]

in order to remain competitive in a global market.
According to this December 2nd article in BusinessWeek Online, Just How Cheap Is Chinese Labor?, average employee compensation of a bit over sixty cents an hour will help convince the world's businesses (including our own U.S. companies) to hire us instead of Chinese workers.

"Every year the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics compares manufacturing labor costs in the U.S. with those of about 30 global rivals. Its latest report, on Nov. 18, showed that average hourly compensation of foreign factory workers rose 12% in 2003, measured in dollars, compared with 4% in the U.S.

But these statistics have a glaring omission: China. The BLS can't compare Chinese and U.S. factory labor costs because reliable statistics from the Asian giant don't exist. That makes it hard to assess China's competitive strength.

TALE OF PATIENCE
Now, the info deficit is starting to be remedied. This past summer, the BLS hired a Beijing-based American consultant, Judith Banister, to dig through China's mountain of incomplete and sometimes unreliable statistics. The goal: to calculate average manufacturing compensation in China in 2002 -- the last year for which data was available. BusinessWeek was given a preview of her findings, which she will present to the BLS later this month.

Her estimate? The cost of Chinese factory labor is a paltry 64 cents an hour. Although that figure is rough, since it's pieced together from sketchy statistics, it's still the most thorough estimate ever compiled. It includes both wages and employer contributions for benefits and social insurance. And it covers not just city factory workers, who get the most attention, but the more numerous rural and suburban factory workers as well. For comparison, hourly factory compensation in the U.S. in 2002 was $21.11, and an average of $14.22 in the 30 foreign countries covered by the existing BLS report."

So next time you hear some repuke saying we need to overhaul health insurance and enact tort reform to remain competitive, you'll know they really want these things to further line their own pockets before our economy crashes and burns.
No amount of tort reform will make us competitive with a 64 cent an hour workforce.
Call them lying sacks of sh*t to their faces.

[Divernan]

1. Chinese workers basically in prison camps

A friend whose company imported from China said when Americans visiting the factory asked why the factory and workers' living quarters were surrounded by razor edged barbed wire, the Chinese officials said it was to keep others out of the facility. The Americans, looking at the slave-like labor conditions, believe it was to keep the workers from escaping.