• Hismama@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Maybe if wages actually rose with productivity, Americans could actually afford goods made within the United States.

    • MisanthropiCynic@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      It’s not even about wages. The precision tooling and engineering equipment would probably take a decade of development to get the US equivalent with China. We just don’t have it here.

      And it’s not about rising wages with productivity. Americans by and large don’t want to work in factories or manufacturing. The pay would have to be astronomical to fill the needed positions.

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        The sheer amount of money being removed by the 1 percent is regoddamndiculous. It’s something like 45 trillion dollars since wages diverged from productivity in 1975.

        • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Hahaha

          This whole presidency is raised for maximizing CEO income and no taxes for everyone at the top.

          It will be interesting if Trump actually manages to pull it off, because he’ll make the US swap places with China:
          No one trusts the country anymore, but if it has low enough wages and proper production capability it will produce everything cheaply just to export it all overseas where the luxury goods will be sold. Of course all profits will be made overseas, not in the US because hardly anyone can afford the luxury items no more.

          Meanwhile the production states will get deep smog clouds and intense small coal particle pollution in return. And the need for face masks will be back…

        • sfu@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          That the real issue right there. But that’s why all the manufacturing went out of the country in the first place. Often because businesses were sold, or passed on to their children. Then the new owners were only doing it for the money.

            • sfu@lemm.ee
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              2 days ago

              Yes for the money, but often people who start a business do it because they have an personal interest in what their business is about. As opposed to those who later take over the business and are then really only interested in the money.

      • MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works
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        3 days ago

        That’s one of the issues with how we’ve (most western capitalist countries) been doing this.

        People are struggling for money so minimum wage goes up. Labour to create things is now more expensive and prices go up.

        There is only one solution and that’s to theoretically (or technically) eating the rich that are hoarding all of the wealth.

        • Dragomus@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          What really needs to stop is the obscene bonus culture. It is quite disgusting to keep reading a company needs to lay off 500 people only to then give some CEO a bonus of 15million. Or banks running a deep 9 digit number loss in a year but still the higher ups get a bonus for some reason or a vague years old contractual promise. The top should feel loss first before it “trickles down”, and honest pay for honest work should include the top as well.

          And while I am at it, senseless management jobs should be allowed to be contested, no more “manager toiletpaper” who only shows up once a week to make an order, yet makes 5x the wages of people under him.

          • sfu@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Yeah, like a couple years ago, the CEO of Sanford Health hospitals quit / retired, and when he left gave himself a 17 million dollar bonus. No wonder medical bills are so high. Gotta have that needless bonus.