Comments by "bart thomassen thomassen" (@thomassenbart) on "Undocumented Immigrants' Impact on US Labor and Economy || Peter Zeihan" video.

No, there are very few actual slaves in China producing goods sold in the USA. Low wage foreigners are not making slave wages. They are good wages in their nations. All wages are relative. When people make these accusations, they don't understand how labor markets work in the world.
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@davidreese6519 That is what relative means. Making $1 an hour in Afghanistan will feed you and your family and leave something left over. Hence saying 'slave labor' is disingenuous or ignorant. You obviously have not understood my comment at all. Yes, some people do live in abject poverty, but that number is the lowest it has ever been in the history of the world and the UN believes, all things remaining equal, that category of humanity will disappear by 2050.
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@nathangill8404 Child labor is not the same as forced or slave labor. The Dept of Labor distinguishes between the two. You should acknowledge that all nations, including our own also used child labor when industrializing. The latest global estimates highlight that 152 million children remain in child labor and 25 million adults and children toil under conditions of forced labor, including in global supply chains that crisscross our globe. This is the list of goods supposedly produced in China by forced labor: Artificial Flowers, Christmas Decorations, Coal, Fish, Footwear, Garments, Gloves, Hair Products, Nails, Thread/ Yarn, Tomato Products Bricks, Cotton, Electronics CHILD/forced LABOR & Fireworks, Textiles, Toys The People’s Republic of China has arbitrarily detained more than one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities in China’s far western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. (24) It is estimated that 100,000 Uyghurs and other ethnic minority ex-detainees in China may be working in conditions of forced labor following detention in re-education camps. So, given this information, it seems you have overstated your case. Inflation is not due to 'slave labor' nor to 'slave wages'. Certainly, lower wages in developing nations has kept prices down but that is simply a competitive advantage and often the only one such nations have in global capitalism and competition.
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Lack of inflation is primarily due to China and low cost labor from overseas not illegal immigration.
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@bernardzsikla5640 Zeihan says the same thing.
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@bernardzsikla5640 They live in a communist country and have received varying degrees of both health care and education. What the level of wealth or other metrics you want to use is in China and other nations, compared to western nations, is irrelevant. We don't own the world. Each nation develops at its own pace depending upon multiple variables. Sure, curtailing Chinese dumping of their products to dominate industries is a travesty. Our policies regarding China have largely failed and we must retrench and bring supply chains home.
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@aruak321 You are correct, but the Uyghurs are not manufacturing much or many of the imports brought into the USA, which would impact inflation.
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@thinkaboutwhy Prison labor in country X may indeed be equivalent to slave labor, a distinction without a difference, the question however is if this translates into exportable products which undermine wages in the USA. I argue no.
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@nathangill8404 It can and is overstated.
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@aruak321 Let's see...no, yes I have a pair of sketchers, my wife buys from Costco, no, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no. I suppose it depends on which sourced product you are talking about. I also believe if your assertion were viable, it would be illegal to import into the USA, so I'm dubious of your claim. 307 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. §1307), which prohibits importing products that are mined, produced, or manufactured, wholly or in part, by forced labor, including by forced or indentured child labor. Regardless, the question is about the percentage of trade that might occupy and if it is significant as a determiner of inflation reduction. Child labor, as I pointed out, has been the norm for all nations industrialization and may be the difference between a family being able to survive or prosper or not. You insist, seemingly, that child labor should not exist, from a safe Western out post. This seems neo colonialist and hypocritical as well as immoral. Should a family starve to make you feel better?
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@davidreese6519 If you understand what relative labor costs and wages mean you would not say that people all over the world cannot buy the same amount of bread or rice. That is inherent in the meaning of relative.
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@aruak321 How do you know if it is Uyghur produced? Same problem I would say. Still, you are not proving your case. I'm not talking about 'reasonable standards or good working conditions' either. Why is your standard of reasonable etc...the metric? More Neo Colonialism? You can't see that you are imposing a very modern standard to nations which generally have no competitive advantages save low-cost labor. This is how S. Korea, Bangladesh, India, Taiwan, China etc... escaped grinding poverty. It takes time and one must pay the Piper. The people engaged in this labor are glad for the opportunity, as was the case for our ancestors previous. Your interference, were it possible to enforce, would cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and throw millions into destitution and condemn many countries to endless cycles of the same. Your last sentence makes clear you have no clue about the developing world and what those people want or how they are able to escape poverty.
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@davidreese6519 I said that labor and wages are relative, which necessarily means that people buy different commodities for different prices and amounts depending on the local market. This is called supply and demand basic economics. Your phrasing is queer and is a double negative in the first sentence and difficult to understand. People buy things depending on what the cost of the product is and their ability to pay the price. What you pay for a chicken for example, in a US grocery store, would feed a family in many countries for days. In Thailand you can eat in a medium restaurant for two, with $4, same in Vietnam, Indonesia and many other countries. This is also true throughout out Africa but you will spend even less. It's all relative. Giving someone a few coins of dirham in Morocco, can literally get them enough for a meal. So, if people are too poor to afford any food, they starve, beg, do whatever they can to get enough money for the next meal. You imposing restrictions on labor exacerbates these problems and solves nothing.
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@RICHFORD-jw2vh I have been talking about economics not morality. If that is your subject, what is your grounding and why should anyone accept your view of 'morality'? If we approach the USA from a Judeo-Christian moral perspective, I think a very strong case can be made for US morality by multiple metrics from charitable giving to US foreign policy. If, however you want to mesh macroeconomics with morality, you are on very slippery ground because they do not really work. Applying large scale economic principles to individual circumstance is basically a Marxist trope and always results in mass poverty, often genocide and authoritarianism, none of which are moral.
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@dt089 I don't know who you think you are arguing with. Did I say that living standards are not lower in China, or that unions don't exist or that labor regulations are weaker? I don't believe that I did. Outsourcing has been profitable, in China and elsewhere, did I say it was not? I believe I specifically mentioned Uyghur slave labor. I'm not sure what point you are making or why
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@aruak321 What products are the Uyghurs producing in the camps that are imported to the USA?
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@davidreese6519 Using words like all, immediately make you an unserious person. Did I say all? Nope. We are talking about relative wage advantage, and the cost of living, and what money can buy in a given economy. China is no longer considered a low-wage nation, which is one reason companies are not building factories there and have moved to other nations, like Mexico, Vietnam and Bangladesh. Approximately 50% of the Chinese population is still very poor but most of these people are in the countryside and not the workers we are discussing. I don't think you know anything about China or the economy there, right?
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@SeruraRenge11 Sharecropping was not slavery. Not owning land that your farm, is not slavery. You can leave, can't be beaten or killed or whipped, sold, worked day and night, refused a right to marry etc...and have the same rights, legally.
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@davidreese6519 Good wages is relative as I stated. You clearly have never lived abroad and don't understand the value of various currencies and economies in different nations. They are all different.
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@nathangill8404 Now we are talking about child forced labor? Y'all keep switching the topic. We used to have child forced labor in the USA and Western Europe when we were industrializing, do you know this? Child labor is a natural occurrence in developing nations and we cannot force other nations to adopt our standards, when we also did the same thing at their level of development.
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@davidreese6519 You said, "You're seriously saying everybody is paid well? There are millions of workers who live in extreme poverty. Workers who are, none-the-less, receiving good wages... So, you are misrepresenting or misunderstanding me above. First you say, "everybody is paid well? " That is not what I wrote. I said, "All wages are relative." Do you recognize the difference between the two sentences? A relative wage, means there is a difference between one wage and another, depending upon the market conditions and value of a currency in country X v. country Y. It does not assert that everyone is well paid. So, either you are being disingenuous or you simply have difficulty understanding the concept. Which is it? "Low-wage foreigners are not making slave wages", does not mean all again. You assume too much. In any case, a wage for a service is the opposite of slavery by definition. Do you also not understand these differences? Slaves don't get paid. Free labor does. Whether a free laborer is paid well or not is a different topic and again is highly relative.
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@davidreese6519 No, I did not say everyone makes good wages. I said all wages are relative. You seem to have reading comprehension issues.
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@davidreese6519 And those words are correct. Demonstrably so, if you look at the rise of China and other nations economically v. the rest of the world. Slaves don't get wages, that is a marker of being a slave. You don't know your business here.
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@thelightisbrighthere The social mobility of illegal immigrants is not important or a concern of the US govt. or citizenry. Morality is not the same as doing the 'best', whatever that means, for all parties. That is not what morality is about.
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Most of the greed is with the unions who continually seek higher and higher wages and benefits for less and less labor.
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@brucewayne4979 That is true, thank the lord. However, in the public sector, autos, planes, education etc.. Unions are still powerful
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@corywelch667 Dumb comment. Make an intelligent argument.
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@July41776DedicatedtoTheProposi When exactly was that1950s when they were actually around 30% of all labor? I don't think you understand the dynamics going on at the time which propelled wages. It did not have much to do with Unions.
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