Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Factory Jobs Are Tough AF... Why Do We Want Them Back So Badly?" video.

@chiquita683 Um, what? The Democrats are the only party that's actually concerned with that right now. The GOP mostly wants to bring back slavery and indentured servitude by making it harder for employees to negotiate a living wage. Not that either party really cares, but one party definitely cares less than the other does.
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Precisely, and keep in mind that by offshoring all this stuff, we also offshore the ability to keep our nation safe from potentially defective products coming in from overseas. It's a lot easier to visit all the factories in the US, than to worry about the factories overseas where the local government might not care at all about the harm that's done here. And good luck suing a foreign factory with no ties to the US here, or possibly anywhere else.
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@ There's like 3 counties tops in the entire country where you can afford to rent an apartment earning minimum wage and keep within the recommended portion of your paycheck going to rent. It's hardly just a matter of people being irresponsible with their spending, there's also an entire system set up to take advantage of people.
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@codycast Um, a ton of people make minimum wage, far more so than in the past and for far longer. And getting a roommate is not the solution to corporations refusing to pay a living wage. It wasn't that long ago that people could afford a decent apartment on minimum wage.
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@Corgiking521 BS, that's only the case because robber barons have gotten used to stealing the proceeds of the labor. Just keeping up with productivity from back in the '70s would yield a wage of at least that much.
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Also keep in mind that things being manufactured overseas puts us at risk of what they're doing as it's harder to inspect overseas factories and if we somehow manage to find our way to a non-nuclear WWIII we won't have the ability to repurpose factories to the war effort. And as we're finding out lately, foreign technology firms can be rather slippery in terms of the stuff that can be slipped into computer products, or just secured in a way that's less than competent because their interests lie with their government and not us.
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@ Yes, part of the problem is that we're locked into this model where a "fulltime" job needs to be 40 hours a week. For a lot of those higher paying jobs, it would make sense for them to be closer to 20 hours and just hire an additional worker to make up the difference. The productivity would probably be higher.
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@Xoxososowi We're already seeing manufacturing moving to cheaper places than China and if we cut back on the useless crap we don't really need, it wouldn't be an issue to manufacture most of the stuff we need with an investment in tools and equipment.
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@kyleolson9636 You can fix that with tax policy and not signing those stupid trade deals. One of the issues with things like the WTO is that they don't allow countries to enact environmental regulations or worker's rights if they cut into trade.
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@ Yes, although we don't really even need the wages other than that's how we keep score and track where the proceeds of production are going. With sufficient automation, it's entirely possible that a society could eventually arise that wouldn't require wages or work.
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@skygradient6248 I agree, I think that if we can get the oligarchs in check we'll probably get to the point where hardly any traditional work is done and we convert over to just paying people to engage in hobbies.
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@ericsmith6394 Sure it will, there's little incentive to go with the cheapest labor if you just have to give the proceeds to the government. A large part of why there was such a drive to offshore everything possible is that the taxes were cut to the point where nearly all of the additional profits were being kept by the people deciding to offshore things.
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@CuriousCrow-mp4cx No, the WTO has the power to punish countries for the sorts of policies that i referred to when they're considered trade barriers. So, you get to have the bare minimum of those things in a lot of cases. It's been the case for roughly 30 years that the WTO can punish countries for being too aggressive in terms of addressing environmental or labor issues.
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@anonymous.2471 Nonsense, that is what tariffs are for. Tariff the countries undercutting our factories with unfair competition. Increase taxes on the wealthiest and offset them with incentives to build up the infrastructure. Nothing about this is really that complicated, it's just that the people who own all the businesses don't want to be in a position where labor has any leverage.
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@anonymous.2471 You're not though, this is a bunch of rightwing talking points. We got here via bad tax policy, but somehow tax policy can't push things the other way?
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@JemieBridges So, at that point, just pay folks to engage in hobbies, because there is a reason that "idle hands are the devils playthings" is true even beyond just religious views. People need something to do or create or they get horribly depressed. I've kind of lost track of where I am here due to YT's lack of threading, but I do think that a lot of the disastrously terrible stuff being done by oligarchs is because they aren't actually building anything of value.
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