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comment by ecib
ecib  ·  4040 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Jobs Are Never Coming Back

It seems the most obvious logical extension of the free trade, capitalist ideology we embrace (and zealously export) in the United States.

The moment it becomes economically feasible, production and services shift to the cheapest labor pool on the planet, irregardless of which country that is. This has the effect of lifting raising the standard of living for the poorest on the globe, and reducing the standard of living for the middle class of the country losing the jobs to the more cost effective producers.

As soon as the standard of living is raised in the beneficiary country to a level where they are no longer the cheapest labor pool and other countries can offer competition, production and services begin to shift again.

In the US, we are a victim of our own ideology, but nobody seems to want to admit that. We've seen what production moving to China has done for that country. Now labor is expensive there and manufacturing has already began to shift to India, -the next cheap labor pool. This will take a bit of time as their supply chain is nowhere near as developed. But the costing is already right for the shift to have begun.