Before outsourcing and offshoring everyone was afraid robots would take their jobs (they did). Personally, I care about a Chinese or Indian family's quality of life equally as much as I care about a local family. Manufacturing jobs allow them to rise above subsistence farming. I'd rather make it so they can skip the whole ugliness the western world went through during its industrialization, but that seems unlikely.
Since there are safety nets in most first world countries, I'll take globalization over unionization as the best way to improve global standards of living over time.
>Before outsourcing and offshoring everyone was afraid robots would take their jobs (they did). Personally, I care about a Chinese or Indian family's quality of life equally as much as I care about a local family.
If we really cared about those people, why allow their wages to be lower and their working conditions be far worse than ours? Just because we can, or because it's better than the alternative (substinence farming)? Well, and slavery is better than famine, should we take advantage of African countries with food/water supply problems to have them work for next to nothing?
The truth is, we "care" about them as long as they keep producing cheap stuff. We care about the cheap stuff. If they wanted equal pay, we could not care less about their fate.
As will happen, eventually, the industry people will jump to the next country that happens to offer them lower wages in a comfortable business environment, e.g Latin America or Africa. Like they moved from the US to China in the first place, crushing US working/middle class in the process.
Since there are safety nets in most first world countries, I'll take globalization over unionization as the best way to improve global standards of living over time.