Pauper and Sweatshop Fallacies

[Michael Bailey]

 alice wellintown quoted:


> one never teaches the Ricardian model without emphasizing precisely
> the way that model refutes the claim that competition from low-wage
> countries is necessarily a bad thing, that it shows how trade can be
> mutually beneficial regardless of differences in wage rates.

a) trade, maybe...but supranational corporations relocating already
profitable enterprises to take advantage of low wages, lax ecological
requirements, tolerance for child labor & abusive supervision, et al,
and - can you deny this - interfering with political process there to
keep things that way, so that predatory growth rates can seem to
justify exorbitant executive & shareholder pay  --  that isn't trade,
really, is it?

b) it's like the old, "we have to support this dictator to oppose
communism and we do not interfere in their internal affairs"
canard...(like, by supporting the dictator they aren't already
interfering in the internal affairs?)