Cost of Living
The residents of the United States of America do not deserve a better standard of living than anyone else in the world. All men are created equal! However, we do have a higher COST of living.
Corporations are not sharing the wealth with the rest of the world. They make the value of their stocks rise so people who are rich enough to buy stocks can make even more money. Having workers make Nikies shoes for 67cents a pair and selling them for $85 dollars a pair allows a corporation to pay high dividends to their wealthy stock holders. It does not do much to raise the standard of living for the foreign worker.
If you think it will, please see the information about labor unions. Also it took about forty years for Japan to increase their wages to a level comparable to the USA. China will not allow labor to unite. The US economy will not survive 60 years of competition with China.
The following information does not reflect cost of living. I am still working on that.
It does give you an idea of what global wages are and what USA workers have to compete with.
Hourly compensation http://www.bls.gov/fls/flsfaqs.htm#HourlyCompQuestions
Note from the following information that it is a lot cheaper to have things produced in some other countries.
Rates for some earlier years were left out of the following table. Please click on the following link to view the entire table.
ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/ForeignLabor/ind2000.txt
Prepared By: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Office of Productivity And Technology, June 25, 2001.
HOURLY COMPENSATION COSTS FOR PRODUCTION WORKERS: INDEX U.S. = 100
PAGE 6
ALL MANUFACTURING
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COUNTRY OR AREA 1996 1997 1998 1999-------------------------------------------------------UNITED STATES 100 100 100 100 CANADA 94 90 84 81MEXICO 9 10 10 11 AUSTRALIA 95 91 80 83HONG KONG SAR (1) 29 30 29 28ISRAEL 64 66 64 62JAPAN 119 107 98 109KOREA 46 43 29 35NEW ZEALAND 61 59 48 48SINGAPORE 47 45 42 37SRI LANKA 3 3 3 ..TAIWAN 34 32 28 29 AUSTRIA (1) 140 120 119 114BELGIUM 147 125 124 119DENMARK 136 121 122 120FINLAND (1) 132 117 116 110FRANCE 113 98 98 94GERMANY, FORMER WEST (1) 176 152 147 140GERMANY, UNIFIED (1) 171 147 143 136GREECE 54 50 48 ..IRELAND 79 74 72 71 ITALY 100 96 92 86LUXEMBOURG 127 104 100 ..NETHERLANDS 131 115 113 109NORWAY 142 130 126 125PORTUGAL 32 29 29 ..SPAIN 76 67 65 63SWEDEN (1) 138 122 118 112SWITZERLAND 160 132 131 123UNITED KINGDOM 80 85 88 86
Please review the information at the following site.
http://stats.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2002/06/art3full.pdf
You will find the following graph
You will notice from the text and the graph that some countries (the ones we do not buy much from) have an increased wage.
You will notice that others (ones we do buy things from) have a much lower wage.
Following is the conclusion
that the US Government came to.
It is no wonder that manufacturing is leaving the USA and our economy is in trouble.
Note – Japan is having things manufactured in Mexico and China. This still makes them completive with the USA. They are doing the same thing the USA does, exploiting cheap labor wherever they can find it. And why do we think Europe will not buy from the same sources Japan and the USA buy from??