i'm neither Republican or a fanboy. i lived between Taipei and Singapore from grades 3-9. i currently attend a university that has a +20% Asian student enrollment. in my finance courses, that rate increases to over 35% with about 70% of those being international students.
i've spent 5 summers going through Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Cheng Du, Chong Qin, Su Chow, Hang Chow, Yangzte River and some other small villages along it where children as young as 5 work in souvenir shops from 7am - 9pm because that
is their income stream.
a $10 USD budget can last you week in these villages where as in Beijing, it'll last you an hour. the average $/sqft in Beijing/Shanghai is comparable to that in NYC but the average income of people working in Beijing is 7x lower. in fact, on average, most college grads in China can not afford their own apartment upon graduating and working their first job. many of these kids end up living at home with their parents for about 5-7 years.
as an emerging country that's just beginning to develop their capital markets, trying to figure out whether to peg or float the RMB, how to tame the overheated inflation growth, making a conscious effort to stabilize real asset prices etc etc etc... wages are low because of economic conditions.
it always sounds attractive to criticize Foxconn for low pay. like i mentioned before, it's low to us but many of them make do with their pay because their cost of living is also significantly lower. it is impossible (ok, possible but not prudent) for their government to implement a $5k increase just because it makes The Guardian feel better about themselves. consider what that would mean for the RMB value, pricing of goods, the huge savings depository sitting in 4 main banks, the even larger amount of loan portfolios outstanding, asset prices, economic repercussion... the list can go on forever.
this is, as someone mentioned above, completely normal for a country that is growing into a primarily export and manufacturing dominated economy. it's not a sexy, multibillion, white collar business like engineering Goldman's CDSs on CMBSs, consulting for McK at SwissAir or creating Symbian phones for Nokia. it's a no *****, i got to compete with +200k people for 30-50 positions at Foxconn/P&G/GM/Pepsi/etc where i'll at least have money to send home to my parents. students hired into P&G China's Sales and Marketing do 70 hour weeks with pitiful pay. i've heard life at Pepsi is even more hardcore. the rich can send their kids straight into CIC, Baidu or something similar. the rest will climb over each other backs to secure a position at some firm because everyone has to start somewhere and only a few make it.
so like i stated in the beginning, for those of us who have the privilege of growing up in the US, going to a university and come out with a 50k/yr job... it really is difficult to wrap your head around working in a BRIC environment.
but it could just be me...
Typical response from either a Republican or a fanboy, I'm not sure which. And what income stream? Exactly how much do you think Apple pays these Chinese workers? US minimum wage? Get real. They used to assemble computers in the U.S. a decade ago and the products were better made and relative costs were right in line with today. The only difference now is that Apple is now making record profits (that tends to happen when you use slave labor) and Steve is now one of the richest men on earth. But he cannot afford to pay US factory workers even a poverty-living minimum wage so he moved everything to a Chinese sweat shop (and left prices the same)....
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