Should we stop importing goods from countries that dont have a minimum wage

[L00b]

What a world we live in where the idea of being a winner is getting goods we don't really need at cheap prices

<...>

Whatever happen to the concept of a fair days pay. It's just dog eat dog, pile it high, flog it cheap, I'm aright Jack.

Nothing has changed in some millenia, you know. It's human nature, and will always be there.

[Vague_Boy]

Its the only feasible way I can think of of getting our manufacturing going again

People won't do this voluntarily and so the only way it could be enforced is via tariffs and sanctions, and that's a very slippy slope.

 

 

Jim Rogers: Trade Wars Always Lead to Real War

 

Successful investor and author, Jim Rogers, warns that a trade war could lead to a repeat of the Great Depression along with a war between the U.S. and China. He's also bullish on the US dollar.

 

“This could be terribly, terribly dangerous if we turn into a trade war. We had a trade war in the 1930s, it led to the Great Depression. We already have small signs of trade wars breaking out: Brazil, France, other places, now America. This could be very dangerous in the end.”

 

“If it turns into a trade war it is the most momentous thing of 2011. Trade wars always lead to wars.”

 

“If America does put on tariffs onto the Chinese, the Chinese have various weapons at their disposal. They could stop buying American government bonds. They could sell American government bonds. If they did that, interest rates in America would go through the roof. The value of the US Dollar would go down a lot (perhaps a lot or, at least, a little). This would not be good for anybody, including for China.

LINK

 

Trade wars have escalated since the financial crisis, warns ICC

 

Trade war looming, warns Brazil

 

US-China trade war: Congress beware what you wish for

[foxy lady]

Its the only feasible way I can think of of getting our manufacturing going again; there's no way the minimum wage will be abolished here, so if we stop importing goods from countries that use cheep labour, it should force companies in these countries to pay people a minimum wage equivelant to ours; so in theory, company's decisions on where in the world to set up business will be based on where the skills are rather than who's the cheapest.

 

I'm sort of at a loss by this suggestion. China and India are both massively expanding markets. The majority of China's massive production output is sold to its own emerging middle class. So if they increased wages of those making the goods those buying them would not be able to afford them unless their wages also increased causing massive inflation. If we in this country stopped importing them inflation here would also reduce the standard of living until we came into line with the Chinese.

[HeadingNorth]

Whatever happen to the concept of a fair days pay.

 

£6 an hour would not be a "fair day's pay" in many parts of the world. It would transform the wage earner into a vastly wealthy man inside of a month, and would quite likely lead to runaway inflation and make things even worse.

 

 

It's a noble concept that would not work in practice.

[HeadingNorth]

Its the only feasible way I can think of of getting our manufacturing going again

 

What makes you think it ever stopped? We manufacture a higher gross value of goods today than we ever have done before.

[anywebsite]

you want to get manufacturing going, increase the duty tariff on all non-essential imports.

 

you'd kill a lot of discounters off (poundworld etc) but i agree with you.. they've cheapened everything to such an extent (to get it in for a price and retail at a £1) that all it is is worthless tat that breaks in 2 minutes... and then it takes 10,000 years to get rid of it.

 

The problem with that is most of our manufacturers export more than they sell nationally. They also trade with other companies abroad & rely on them to supply components or raw materials. We're just a small country. If we introduced high tariffs on other countries' goods, they'd retaliate & introduce high tariffs on our goods & services. So our industries wouldn't be able to export, financial services lose all their foreign customers, etc, it'd all close down.

 

Also, we can't produce enough food domestically to feed everybody, we import about 40% of our food at the moment. We import fuel too. As a country we've had to import food since the industrial revolution, a good few hundred years now.

 

So... we'd be dirt poor & have famines that kill millions, like other small countries that tried to be isolationist, North Korea for example. I think killing millions of Britons through starvation, freezing & making the world a poorer place would be a bit of a worse problem than poundland having to close.

[anubhigya]

It is very sorry to listen about a worker who work in a factory for 18 Hrs in a day and sleeping in a factory. They are not robots and we must abuse this system that is offering like this.

[*_ash_*]

Should we as a country(and all other countries with a minimum wage) only import goods from countries who's workers that produced the goods are on an equivalent minimum wage?

 

Not unless we want to make people who are poor already (by our standards) even poorer.

[MrSmith]

We have had high immigration from the new EU countries; these countries have high unemployment, a lower standard of living but do have a good infrastructure. We should have invested in these countries to help them start manufacturing the cheap good we buy from china instead of allowing them to come here as a cheap source of Labour. I was told this by a latvian and I do agree with her, she expected employment in increase in Latvia as a result of joining the EU and didn't expect to have to move here to find work.

[anywebsite]

It is very sorry to listen about a worker who work in a factory for 18 Hrs in a day and sleeping in a factory. They are not robots and we must abuse this system that is offering like this.

 

but we don't control the world, not now, we're just a small country. We can't really enforce many of our rules on other countries & if we ban imports, they'll still export to the rest of the world & it'll make very little difference - maybe the kids will be paid a bit less & treated a bit more harshly. Worse than that these countries may see it as the start of a trade war & take retaliatory action against our exports. We might even need some of these imports to cover basic essentials.

 

We can't do anything without the support of the US, EU & Commonwealth.

 

Even if we got that support, we'd need to give a lot of aid to help the countries that use child, slave & extremely low paid labour to develop, so that they can educate those kids instead of having them working in factories. Otherwise we'd just make the problem worse & make them even poorer.