> What I am calling "slavery" for lack of a better word I would object to calling a mutually beneficial arrangement "slavery", but whatever. > I'm just saying

> What I am calling "slavery" for lack of a better word I would object to calling a mutually beneficial arrangement "slavery", but whatever. > I'm just saying that no one really wants something made 100% in the USA because very few people could afford it While this is true, it invites reasonable-sounding criticism to the effect of "well if you can't make your cheap toys without exploiting people then maybe you shouldn't have it at all" and so misses the most crucial point. Forcing something to be made 100% in the USA is bad for _everyone_. It doesn't empower workers at the cost of the rich or empower Indians at the cost of Americans. It simply satisfies some misguided and/or nationalistic sentiment while leaving everyone worse off for it. > I would say that low wages alone are no longer the primary benefit of having something made in China. It's much more the scale and loose environmental regulations that are valuable now. While yes, a huge component is the vast amount of manufacturing expertise and capital that has been built up in China. It may have started as a country from which you bought cheap junk manufactured for low wages, sure. But after decades of that unsavory and seemingly exploitative relationship, China is now home to lots of advanced, high quality manufacturing with skilled and productive workers that can demand better pay than ever before. In a funny sense, it reminds me of that quote about how "the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them". At no point did any of the foreign industries investing in China have any intention more noble than "exploiting" cheap, undifferentiated labor from a developing country. Yet that very behavior has apparently driven wages so high that companies are willing to spend billions to start the process all over again in another country.