Technology and Human Rights issues

[mrstickball]

Marks said:

mrstickball said:
Jobs wanted to bring the jobs (pun!) back to the US. Unfortunately, the heavy restrictions placed on manufacturers make it very, very expensive to bring the work back here.

Unless you are willing to pay $1,000 for an iPhone, that is.

Yeah, this exactly. Regulation, minimum wage, taxes, etc. make it not worth it to have factories in North America. 

Its not so much the minimum wage as it is everything else. I've never seen a factory where I live that has ever remotely paid minimum wage.

The problem is that, in America, the costs of manufacturing are generally outrageous in regards to permits and regulatory adherance, then of course, taxes on the corporation. There is usually a pretty notable distinction against hiring lots of full-time employees, as the larger a business grows, the more taxes and regulations are applied to it. For example, if you have over 20 full-time employees (which is almost always needed for a manufacturing company), you have to adhere to many more regulations and offer certain benefits...Making it very difficult to keep costs down.

Comparatively, if such laws weren't there, you'd likely see the cost of manufacturing plummet in the US. From my understanding, some states have focused so intently on removing these regulations (such as the Carolinas), that the cost of business is *almost* as cheap as China, and because of that, jobs are pouring into the state. Heck, in Georgia, there is a woodworking factory that is selling chopsticks to the Chinese at a rate of almost 1 billion units a year. Simply because their productivity is so high, and regulations are so agreeable (finally).