Chinese wages average about 75 cents per hour.

[JDPriestly]

This is our problem, guys.

Forget about everything else. We import stuff that the Chinese make at labor costs of 75 cents an hour. We cannot begin to subsist on 75 cents an hour.

That means there is a huge currency manipulation going on.

And we should not be importing so much stuff that the Chinese make at labor costs of 75 cents per hour.

We can never have a recovery if in order to recover we have to compete with labor costs of 75 cents per hour.

"the hourly wage in southern China is only about 75 cents an hour."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/08/business/global/08wages.html

The only way we can improve our economy is to stop being the lower intestine of the world and end our free trade policy. Free trade is costing us our future. It has to stop.

[Donnachaidh]

1. all that money Apple is being praised for is on the backs of people making a pittance

It's amazing that so-called liberals will shell out hundreds of dollars for gadgets made with slave labor. :shrug:

[JDPriestly]

3. all that money Apple is making is on the backs of the US

buying things with US dollars that are made overseas and not producing much to sell back to those who make those things other than bombs and killing machines.

[greymattermom]

2. how do they live?

Do they have food? Healthcare? Indoor plumbing? Apartments with separate rooms for adults and children? Electricity? TV? Internet? If the answer to any of those is yes, there has to be currency manipulation.

[Posteritatis]

4. Or, y'know, price manipulation. (nt)

[tkmorris]

5. Of course there is currency manipulation

It's not like they keep it a secret (as if they even could). This has been a longstanding trade complaint against China. The Chinese don't care though, and the rest of the world has yet to play hardball about it, so it continues.

[justgamma]

6. My counterparts in China make

$2.00 a day and they get $3.00 a day for room and board.

[JDPriestly]

9. I'm not going to ask you what you earn, but I figure it is probably

a couple of times that when you consider the benefits like unemployment insurance and the employer's contribution to Social Security that you receive.

[JDPriestly]

7. Even if the answer is not yes, there is currency manipulation.

Why? Because regardless of how well or poorly the Chinese live on their 75 cent wage, the prices of what they produce here are not low enough to justify that wage.

By permitting imports produced at wages of 75 cents an hour, we insure high unemployment in our country. Americans cannot survive on those wages. Our government's war machine cannot exist on those wages.

And the Chinese pay a tax of about 7% of those wages toward their Social Security. I think they also have some form of health insurance for it too.

I doubt that they live in houses as spacious as ours. I do not know how they live.

That is not the issue.

The issue is that we cannot live at a decent standard on those wages and therefore should not be placed in the position in which we are competing with workers paid those wages. We should tax the imports.

The reason the rich are getting so rich and the middle class Americans are becoming impoverished is that the rich take the profits on the work the Chinese do and keep it for themselves. Ordinary Americans lose their jobs and get cheap products in the stores that Americans are less and less able to buy because of the lack of work and declining wages in the US.

The economic outlook of the US is based on the earning power of Americans. And it is endangered by the fact that we import so many products and outsource so much of our work to countries like India and China where wages are subsistence level in terms of the American cost of living.

We have to pay for garbage pick-up or sewage disposal or at the least the cleaning of a septic tank. We pay for running water. You are not permitted to dig a well in your back yard if you live in a city. We have to pay for street cleaning and police and fire protection -- whether we have full employment or not. We also have to pay food prices. Very few Americans have the choice of growing and canning or smoking their own food. We live in an industrialized society -- which is a costly matter.

This is why we need to change our trade policy.

The choice is between changing our trade policy or living in the degrading conditions in which the Indians and Chinese live. What do you choose?

[Mimosa]

8. K&R [phone] n/t

[jwirr]

10. I am the only worker in America who can say they make more than

I did. That is because the government does not consider care giving for your own adult child a job. So I got welfare which added up to about $.33 an hour.

Seriously, you are correct. This is our problem. US workers vs slave labor. The corporate dream come true.