Jason,

I want to make clear that nothing would satisfy me more than to see every person in this wide and wonderful world of ours able to live and play the way we can here and in Europe and a handful of other countries.

China certainly is not the place to be spending ANY money on manufacturing plants or anything else if that is the objective of "globalization" (though of course we all know full well that that is NOT the objective of globalization, no matter how often our government officials say so (as they take their handsome payoffs and goodies from the corporations who need them to be saying this).
Yet China is THE magnet for such endeavours! Why is that... I answered it before - total CONTROL of the "workforce" (read that as slavery without the name attached).

If the corporation truly had the beneficence of their workforces paramount they would:
1) hire them directly rather than through third parties;
2) build factories that do not pollute;
3) ensure safety throughout the workplace;
4) pay their workers reasonable wages and NOT as low as they can get away with (Henry Ford doubled the wages of his workers so they too could afford his product. You'll never see a corp. todat thinking that way!
5) Provide reasonable room and board sitautions for its workers, much as "company towns" used to here, to allow workers to have their FAMILIES with them.
6) Provide for medical requirement both at their factories and for the worker's families.
7) add some yourself...

These things would make for a genuine betterment of the sitaution for the workers, but at some cost to the good old "bottom line". So take this to the bank - you'll never see it in your lifetime!

Now I'd agree with you that CEOs know the value of their employees. BUT they are only human, and they also know the COSTS of those same employees. Their (INSTITUTIONAL) shareholders will push them to increase profits and so they will be forced to join this (to now) inexorable cycle... wage cuts > benefits cuts > layoffs > longer hours > closure after building in China.

The dollar is NOT the only factor for corporate "citizenship". Would it be satisfactory to you if Maytag relocated to China and as compensation they guaranteed the town they just left $1,000,000 "donation" per year??? Money just doesn't fix the problems that are caused by the pursuit of the lowest cost. By the way it turns out that it really is "the lowest cost, at any cost". It feels fine when it's someone ELSE who has paid the "any cost" part of the equation, but when taht bit hits you I am sure you will feel differently.

Jim


>Jim,
>Agreed for the most part.
>
>I don't necessarily share your view about employers' concerns for their employees. On the contrary, I believe that CEOs know the value of their employees. But, as usual, capitalism demands those concerns are balanced against the financial bottom line... and in the end, it's the dollar that wins.
>
>And you're certainly correct about level playing fields. But if we (the global/royal "we") don't find a way to help them achieve the same level, they never will.
>---J
>
>>The problem is, Jason, corporations don't really want "competition" (they want it all) and more importantly they have little regard for the "workforce".
>>If these employers has a modicum of concern for "their" workers there wouldn't be child labour and there wouldn't be sweat-shops and there wouldn't be workers earning 80cents a day and paying 40cents back as 'room' (a bunk in a barracks) and 'board' (2 bowls of rice a day) and there wouldn't be 14-18 hour days in those places and there wouldn't be workers getting sick or hurt in big numbers at their workplaces and there wouldn't be huge smokestacks spewing untreated emissions over the countryside and there wouldn't be rivers and lakes polluted with crap that harms the people who are so used to using that water for drinking and washing and cleaning and there would be... you get the picture.
>>
>>I put "their" (workers) in quotes deliberately because the workers doing the work are surely making the corporation's product BUT they are employed by third-parties. The corporation love this - it's similar to "part-timers" here but with far more flexibility for the corporation! The corporation is able to push for higher quotas and it becomes the real employers' problem to meet the new quotas. The corporations push for lower prices and the real employers have to meet the new lower prices somehow. And so it goes. And, by the way, this is the WalMart model to a tee!
>>One final factor... the "workforce" in China particularly is totally controlled by the Party elite and there is no room for dissent of any kind. You do what you're told or you're sent back whence you came!
>>
>>So you see it isn't a question of "compete against the rest of the world's workforce" - there's no question in my mind that any workforce in the world is roughly comparable when given the opportunity. Rather, it is the "benefits" I enumerated above that make for prices that cannot be met in a country where the environment matters, where child-labour is outlawed, where there are safety standards for workers and where general exploitation has been curbed to give the worker some relief!
>>
>>The net result of companies "offshoring", by the way, is a displacement of the funding of governmental programs that we all rely on from the combined load of the corporation (taxes) and workers (taxes) to NO ONE!!! This results in governmental (all levels) deficits, which result first in layoffs and then in cuts in services to finally no more of many services (but don't worry, you'll always have a military and possibly the biggest one in the world soon when all the displaced workers join up as the only source of income left).
>>
>>Jim