I will put up another perspective on the pay, which as many, many posters have pointed out correctly, is relative.
They pay $.70 for a meal. Assuming that in the US the average meal cost $6, that is an 8.6 adjustment factor.
And what is in that meal that you can compare it to an American meal at $6??? Let me give you a hint. Most Americans don't find eating a cup of plain rice with a vegetable or two for lunch to be acceptable nor is it comparable to eating a big bacon double cheeseburger and fries at Wendys. You don't normally live 17 people to a dorm room in the U.S. (well come to think it will come to that as our cost of living on the coast gets completely out of touch with reality) unless you're in the Army. I hear so many excuses to justify using these people to save labor costs, but they're mostly just that, excuses. So Chinese companies treat their people even worse. That makes it A-OK, then. Yup. The standard of ethics is on a curve based on the worst possible denominator of human beings in the world. How sad. You might as well ask to get rid of child labor laws and put your 11 year old to work in a coal mine. After all, that's how it used to be in the U.S.
We fought hard here to raise living and safety standards so people aren't just shills for the robber barons. But believe me, those robber barons have been trying to push us back in time for ages now. Moving jobs to China (with tax laws that encourage it) is a nice 3rd world loophole. Similar things used to happen with Japan, but Japan is no Communist nation. When their wages grew, they started outsourcing just like us. Work ethic doesn't mean squat if someone else will do it for less because they're starving. Take advantage of that! Or someone else will! That is our mentality. That is our failure to our fellow brothers in mankind. We don't treat others as we'd have them treat us. We treat them like crap and hope to get away with it. We hope there's nothing after this life so we don't have to answer for it either.
Of course, a well balanced and honest look at things doesn't make for sensationalist headlines. Everyone knows that "Apple is exploiting Chinese workers and only paying them $1.78 per hour." will draw more readers and more outrage than the more accurate, "Foxconn pays their workers a decent wage of $15.31 per hour, US equivalent."
Yes, comparing 17 people to a dorm and a cup of rice to American standards of living is fair and balanced. They don't need more money. They're still alive. They're 5 feet tall on average, yellow from jaundice and skinny as a twig, but they're still alive (except for the ones jumping out the window). They have carpal tunnel syndrome from repetitive work without breaks, but that's OK. They don't need a break and pain doesn't matter. Work double shifts 7 days a week with no days off, no vacation time and THAT is FAIR and BALANCED...if your standard is Fox News....
But hey, other companies are doing it, so we must too! Don't create FAIR TRADE laws that level the playing fields. Don't set moral and ethical standards for the rest of the world to look up to! Don't be the land of the free and the home of the brave, but be the land of the greedy and the home of the jumbo waist band.
China is greatly investing money here, if you knew economics you'd know that a current account deficit has to mean a capital account surplus.
Yes, they are buying our country's debt (to make us in debt to them) and buying our infrastructure (e.g. they own several toll roads and your money you pay out to drive on a road in the U.S. then finds it way back to a Communist country that would just as soon see us all gone and all their people living here. Oh wait, that's why they're buying it all up and running an economics war that we are LOSING. Most people don't see it as war, but that's what it is. And people like YOU tell everyone that it's just economics and that WE don't know anything about economics. Yet it's your people that have LOST THIS WAR and one day we may all be speaking Mandarin and saluting our new Communist flag.
Normalizing relations with China and not protecting our country against trade imbalances with 3rd world countries is the reason we have a problem in the first place. People say we cannot possibly be an isolationist country in the 21st Century, but I'll tell you we were all a lot better off when we were more of an isolationist country and were self-sufficient. Just imagine getting into a physical war with China today. We wouldn't even be able to make our own clothes and uniforms because almost all of it has moved off-shore (vast majority of it to China). We are stuck in a society that wouldn't work as an isolationist one because we've moved all our manufacturing off-shore. We have enough natural resources to be self-sufficient, but cheap goods from Wal-Mart has trapped us in that bind while making the Walton family richer than over two-thirds of the entire United States income level COMBINED!!!!!! Talk about having most of the money in the hands of a select few. Yes, keep shopping at Wal-Mart. Keep saying how unions that demand better wages and working conditions for the people that make it possible for the rich to be rich should be destroyed, etc. etc. I know who and what you are. I know how the system works. But it works that way because of people like you not in spite of it.
The issue is not just if you are willing to pay 20% for your Apple products, but are you willing to pay 20% more for all your products? In effect, are you willing to take a 20% reduction in your pay to return all those jobs to the US?
The part you are conveniently leaving out is that if all those jobs were still over here instead of overseas, we'd be making a LOT more money and have a lot more jobs overall. People get stuck in this "I don't want to pay 20% more for my clothes" attitude, but if you're making 50% more money working that computer science job you lost to India, you're still coming out ahead. Under the Bush years in the U.S., WE LOST HIGH PAYING JOBS and gained low paying ones in return. THAT is why we can't afford 20% more. And yes many of our own people helped to create the problem by shopping there in the first place. They always want more for less, but never think about the consequences of putting other higher paying jobs out of business and putting a Mega-Corporation in their place that then spends tons of lobbying money to rig the game even further.
I thought the people have it good in their context. I feel better about buying/using Apple products having watched the special.
But you wouldn't want to move there and live like that. You're happy you didn't see whips and chains. That's not how it works these days. The chains are the low wages and the whips are losing your job. You can't just go grab some piece of land and start farming it. Look at the Middle Ages in Europe. You could be executed for hunting or gathering in the King's Forest (normally the entire country) or for stealing a loaf of bread. So you either stayed in your place a peasant (not much more than a slave) or you risked death. And THAT is how the ultra-rich like it because it keeps them in control and in wealth and you in your place as their servant.
