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In Reply to: Ask China if they mind selling their cheap stuff to us.. (NT) posted by jo on March 28, 2003 at 21:11:25:
I mentioned this to someone once, that I thought it was a crummy thing to do to trade with them. The answer back made me think - well, she said, many of those people would be dying if they did not have a job - even the cheap job we give them, because to them, that is a lot of money. So true too, I saw that in Asia. When we first went there we would hire maids to do our laundry because washing machines were too expensive and nearly unobtainable. We could hire one for $50 U.S. a month, not bad, so if someone sent you a donie for $50 you got a maid for a month. Anyway, I left and returned a few years later and as time went on it became increasingly harder and harder to acquire a maid, and just where do you think they were going? These poor people who barely could eke out a bowl of rice were now working at factories making U.S. and Japanese products. They were making more there than as a maid and under better conditions. It's easy to say everyone in the U.S. is Kathy Lee Gifford and all the corporations are milking the poor 3rd countries using slave labor, but that isn't always necessarily the case. I'm sure it happens, but it's not always the norm. These countries economies are actually benefitting a lot from the U.S. dollar. Even the Saudis love us, we provide billions of revenue to their homelands. On the one hand, their mullahs hate our western infidel ways and freedoms, but their countries love selling to us. Go figure. The world is one messed up place.
