> so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom
Nope.
What is going on here is the person from India gets to now enjoy a much higher quality of life (because 50% of a U.S. salary gets you a lot in India) while the person from California sees their effective take home pay decrease (because their costs continue to grow but not their salary)
Definitely not a race to the bottom but it sucks to be the person from California.
On the other hand, the person in India will relocate thousands of miles for practically any job, while the person in California will pretend that life is hard because of someone else's doing instead of moving to a place they can afford better.
Well I won't claim to be the thought leader on this, however I'm happy to look at some hypothetical ideas. To be clear I'm not looking to reverse globalization completely or stop it.
Rule 1: International trade deals forbid offshoring of manufacturing. Example, cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price. This is universal and enforceable by dissolution of companies that don't comply.
Rule 2: Stringent regulations to prevent Tax and location based gaming of Rule 1. Ford doesn't get to pay taxes in Tahiti, incorporate a mailbox in Mexico so they can make their cars there, but take advantage of US infrastructure for the rest of their business.
Rule 3: Companies reaching a monopoly size will be broken up into relatively equal sized companies, importantly those companies will be competing in similar regions. It's not like AWS and Amazon. It's like two Amazons. I'm sure figuring out the codebase and IP will make many jobs for lawyers and engineers. Maybe less for the MBA's.
EDIT: For rule 3 I forgot to add that the break up forces innovation as similar companies are competing now in the same market. It's an engine of growth built into the system.
> cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price
Sure, but then the buyers of said cars from Ford has to pay the premium.
The heavy growth of Amazon, Walmart has proven that the U.S. customer does not care about well paid workers, their benefits or their health - why would they agree to pay more for cars?
> but take advantage of US infrastructure for the rest of their business.
Fair enough. This point is basically Ford gaming the system by taking more out (take advantage of US infrastructure) than what they put in (taxes, local worker compensation)
> Companies reaching a monopoly size will be broken up into relatively equal sized companies
You and I can do this already.
You and I can get together today and force Google or Amazon to be broken up.
However, a broken up Google or Amazon is more powerful than Google or Amazon itself.
There's a practical limit to how expensive a share can get before majority can't afford it anymore. "NYSE: BRK.A" is not the norm, it's an exception. If BRK split itself up, they would, overnight, become way more valuable.
Google has already broken itself up because of this.
The only reason Bezos has not broken Amazon up is because its tremendously profitable AWS and Amazon's North American retail operations allows it to fund and offset the not so profitable (yet) international retail businesses.
Once those are profitable, Bezos will happily break them up before you or I get to it.
Regulations never help.
It cannot. It can, at best, move issues around.
The day we regulated minimum wage, we removed the only tool an unemployed, untrained but happy-to-be-employed-if-possible person had to entice an employer.
When given a choice between an unemployed, but trained person vs. an unemployed, untrained person both at minimum wage, I know who to choose every time. The unemployed, untrained person cannot even get on unemployment!
When people say they want to break up the big tech companies they are not talking about making them do a stock split. They are talking about dividing them into separate entities. This comment seems to conflate these two actions. Amazon or BRK could do a stock split if they thought it would raise their market cap, and it wouldn’t be a big political controversy. It would increase the number of shares but not change the corporate structure or affect any monopoly concerns.
Who is the "our" here? My identified in-group is rootless cosmopolitans, so I am happy to see globalists of any nationality take jobs away from protectionist xenophobes.
Do you recognize that your in-group is not widely represented? It's not xenophobia, you're trying to dog whistle something about my character that is untrue. Can you acknowledge that you're being protectionist of your privileged class?
You're suggesting that we should erect artificial barriers to prevent certain groups from accessing lucrative jobs to protect certain privileged classes from competition. It's morally equivalent to (although more socially acceptable than), e.g., banning the hiring of non-white people or women so that white males can make more money. If you can discriminate on the basis of nationality then why not race and gender and religion also?
Nope.
What is going on here is the person from India gets to now enjoy a much higher quality of life (because 50% of a U.S. salary gets you a lot in India) while the person from California sees their effective take home pay decrease (because their costs continue to grow but not their salary)
Definitely not a race to the bottom but it sucks to be the person from California.