It makes their lives worse because it puts the workers in competition with workers in those other countries.
Since you asked for metrics, here is a site for working remotely as a freelancer [1]. You'll quickly notice the pay rates are abysmal. $7/hr for a three.js developer. $250 (or lower, possibly as low s $30) to make a fully functional & tested app on android+iphone (would normally take an entire dev team probably well over 1 or 2 weeks).
These are rates below minimum wage for highly technical skills.
This is even more true for hardware too but it's hard to quantify, because e.g. you can't just compare the price of buying capacitors wholesale from Shenzhen with the price of buying capacitors wholesale from Cleveland, because Cleveland doesn't manufacture capacitors.
However, I do have some data (though it's not the most sophisticatedly obtained). Sticking with capacitors as a benchmark, I was expecting there to be 0 US companies manufacturing capacitors, but apparently there are 7 [2]. In contrast, there are apparently 228 Chinese companies manufacturing capacitors [3].
All of this is just to say it's pretty clear that globalization has moved these jobs overseas (and significantly dropped the market rate for those who remain local).
I agree with this but think it misses the actual point. To paraphrase a popular pundit, “People need to realize that things that are bad for the US may not be bad for the world.”
To clarify the point, the US largely rode a post-WW2 manufacturing boom for a couple generations where the relative quality of life for US citizens disproportionately outpaced other countries. Globalization has started to erase that disparity. So while it’s bad for the US middle and working classes it’s largely benefited pulling people out of poverty for other nations, exemplified by China. The irony is that much of this is driven by the US’s addiction to cheap shit.
I’m only saying the above because I think people are confusing the discussion, not because I think that it’s the best long term strategy
I do think it's benefited other nations, but -- getting more into personal opinion -- I also think the "help other nations" argument is mostly used to justify cheapening wages. If companies were paying foreign workers the same rates that they would have paid US workers I'd be more empathetic to the argument. But something about the fact that the top 90th percentile of Americans has seen huge gains in the last 40 years, while the middle to bottom percentile has seen neutral or losses [1] raises flags to me that the push towards globalization was selfishly motivated. I know it's a huge inference to say the stagnating wages are caused by globalization, but realistically I would say it's the combination of outsourced labor/manufacturing, immigration, rise of women in the workforce, rise of minorities in the workforce, and automation. Most of these are positive changes, but I still think the average blue collar worker suffered a cost that the hyper-wealthy elite did not, so at the moment I don't see the push for globalization as a very selfless initiative.
Yes, 100%. I don’t think it was an altruistic motive on either side. The US was acting on behalf of the monied interests and counties like China were acting to become a more dominant economy on the world stage. The fact that it lifted so many out of poverty was a by-product. What I think will be interesting is how China handles a burgeoning middle class that may want a more freedoms as their numbers grow
Since you asked for metrics, here is a site for working remotely as a freelancer [1]. You'll quickly notice the pay rates are abysmal. $7/hr for a three.js developer. $250 (or lower, possibly as low s $30) to make a fully functional & tested app on android+iphone (would normally take an entire dev team probably well over 1 or 2 weeks).
These are rates below minimum wage for highly technical skills.
This is even more true for hardware too but it's hard to quantify, because e.g. you can't just compare the price of buying capacitors wholesale from Shenzhen with the price of buying capacitors wholesale from Cleveland, because Cleveland doesn't manufacture capacitors.
However, I do have some data (though it's not the most sophisticatedly obtained). Sticking with capacitors as a benchmark, I was expecting there to be 0 US companies manufacturing capacitors, but apparently there are 7 [2]. In contrast, there are apparently 228 Chinese companies manufacturing capacitors [3].
All of this is just to say it's pretty clear that globalization has moved these jobs overseas (and significantly dropped the market rate for those who remain local).
[1] https://www.freelancer.com/jobs/ [2] https://www.company-list.org/capacitors_in_united_states.htm... [3] https://www.company-list.org/capacitors_in_china.html