To me it always seemed a bit similar to justifications used for the "peculiar institution" - the system can't exist without slavery, therefore slavery must exist. The benefits of cheaper labor was well appreciated; Carnegie called immigration "the golden stream which flows into the country every year."[1]
Being paid $5/hour farming in Australia vs $0.50/hour assembling shoes in Malaysia. Wow, such exploitation.
"Exploitation" is a relative term, some people would rather be exploited in the countryside of a first-world nation rather than the countryside of their homeland.
> Being paid $5/hour farming in Australia vs $0.50/hour assembling shoes in Malaysia. Wow, such exploitation.
The Australian national minimum wage is $19.84/hr.
Getting paid about a quarter of minimum wage is very clearly exploitation. There may be other benefits for actually working in Australia, but that's not really relevant here when you're trying to attract native Australians to work for you.
In particular, when the wage is low enough you have slavery in all but name. People working for your shitty pay staying in your shitty dormitory eating your shitty food because they can't afford not. The end result people leaving when visas run out with more debt, and headlines about people forced to pick fruit in bikinis and allegations of sexual assault, because that happens when some people gain that sort of power.
Which is more exploitative, working for $5/hour in agriculture in a wealthy country, 50¢/hour in an urban factory in a poor country, or $1/day in a rural peasant village somewhere or having no work at all?
Doritos aren't going to get more expensive, because like all the real staple crops, corn is completely mechanized, and you have one guy driving an air-conditioned tractor or combine, following GPS-plotted courses.
If nobody wants to buy $10 doritos, that means the product can't exist in a market without cheap labor.