alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don't have overseas help you're at a disadvantage
this post was submitted on 21 Feb 2024
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No because the poor american still has to pay high US prices for everything they buy. You can't live a decent life in the US with $5 an hour but you can in the Philippines where the minimum wage is around $10 a DAY. Another commentor in this thread told how their relative bought a restaurant dinner for 12 people for 50 bucks in the Philippines and that includes the tip.
This is not entirely true either. That Philipino working for the US company spends their earnings in the Philippines and that benefits their economy.
I covered both of these points.
The company is still using a person's material situation to pay them less. More purchasing power in their subjective economy is part of their material situation. They are still receiving monetarily less as is their country.
I directly covered your second point, while they do spend the money they earn from their American job within their economy they are not being paid the exact value of their labor because profit is being extracted so the amount of money they stimulate their economy with is not as valuable as their labor would be. I don't want to explain the entire labor theory of value here because it would take up too much time and space but you can look into it if you'd like. Put simply, the profit that company makes is extracted from that employees labor meaning that some of their labor is being used not to benefit their country or people but another's. Outsourcing is an extraction of mans most valuable resource from the less fortunate to the more
Yeah I'm not claiming these practices are without their issues but consider the alternative: if the company was forced to pay the Philipino worker the same salary they would pay an US worker then why would they hire a person in the Philippines? They wouldn't. They'd hire an american instead and now the Philipino worker would need to find a local employer and it's unlikely they would pay as much as the US based company does now.
Yes and that would be better not just for foreign countries but for the people of the US as well. However it would suck for business so it will never happen unless workers force it to happen
This situation would most definitely be worse for US citizens because more expensive labor means higher prices for consumers if margins stay the same.
But it would mean more employment and higher wages. How can you demand a significantly higher wage if your employer can pay some Latino kid $5/hr to do the same job? Sure, prices might go up but so would wages.
Regardless, this particular form of imperialism cannot be rolled back and I do not expect it to be. It's much to entangled with every other aspect of our economic system. I'm not seriously arguing for changing only this particular facet of capitalism, I'm only arguing that it's wrong and causes genuine harm.
Less than what? Your personal belief that they should be paid a us salary because you say so? And if so, should that be a new York city salary, a Louisiana salary, or?
Again you have this imaginary number in your mind that you feel everyone should be paid regardless of circumstances. I keep thinking this is not ethical, but from an economic standpoint the Filipino employee is better off than working for less money for a local employer or not working at all because of unemployment. And so are his family and their government.
Stop comparing with the American salary, it doesn't make any sense. If the American company was paying an American salary, they would hire someone in the states.
LOL, I'm the guy you quoted. The arguments in here are straight childish, with a child's view of how money works. They see $5/hr. and scream.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Philippines
And I question even those numbers! From what my wife and her friend's American husbands have told me, and from the videos I've watched, it seems even cheaper than that.
Then there are the idiots saying we should flood the country with American dollars, blow up inflation and the wealth gap. Sound economic planning right there.
You're straw-manning. No one is advocating for flooding the country with foreign money. I've been reading your comments and I think you might be misunderstanding the argument. It's a more nuanced criticism about capitalism, not an argument for how much workers for foreign companies in the Philippines should be paid.