Must read- Instead of being disgusted by poverty, we are disgusted by poor people themselves

[PA Democrat]

26. Gresham's dynamic, not lazy poor people in the US is responsible for the outsourcing of jobs.

Gresham's dynamics: a process in which bad ethics drive good ethics out of the marketplace. The Gresham's dynamic tilts the world in favor of fraudulent firms operating in fraud-friendly nations. It also tilts the world against workers in the developed world.


From an article on Apple by economist William Black in response to an Apple executive's claim that the US was not producing employees with the skills that Apple needed:


The statement seems to be absurd. The U.S. produces people with the substantive skills to manufacture iPhone and iPad components. Most of the jobs are low skill processes involving tasks learned at the job site by workers with no job experience. America has millions of unskilled workers. The real argument is about our supply of engineers, which is limited. But the kicker is the unusual skills that Apple's suppliers are looking for in their engineers and managers. The suppliers want engineers and managers who will selectively apply their substantive skills. American engineers and managers cannot be counted on to provide the necessary selectivity. Apple's suppliers' often seek managers willing to order their workers to exceed the lawful workweek, to refuse to pay them for significant portions of the wages they have earned, to unlawfully employ child labor, and even to coerce abortions. American managers are often unreliable in terms of their willingness to engage in these forms of illegality. American engineers are generally even more unsuited than American managers for exercising the selectivity required of engineers working for Apple's suppliers. Apple's suppliers must recruit engineers and senior managers who are willing, as the second NYT article illustrated, to produce high quality components, cheaply, with limited regard for worker safety if safety would impair either of the primary goals.

In January 2010, workers at a Chinese factory owned by Wintek, an Apple manufacturing partner, went on strike over a variety of issues, including widespread rumors that workers were being exposed to toxins. Investigations by news organizations revealed that over a hundred employees had been injured by n-hexane, a toxic chemical that can cause nerve damage and paralysis.

The engineer did not order the workers to use the nerve poison because he hated the workers. It was "just business." The nerve poison reduced cleaning time, so an engineer knowingly ordered the workers to use it and scores of other engineers did nothing to prevent the usage. U.S. engineers have the skills to recognize the greater efficiency of forcing workers to use a nerve poison to clean the screens. However, even if motivated solely by concerns about their own health, it is difficult to believe that more than a handful of American engineers would have ordered workers to use a nerve poison to clean the screens.

The second article also gives the example of aluminum dust at two of Apple's suppliers. The Chinese engineers had the technical ability to know that the dust posed a high risk of explosion. The Chinese managers at one of the suppliers were expressly warned that the build-up of aluminum dust posed an immediate risk of explosion. The managers and the engineers refused to act on their expertise, in response to the warning, or even (in the case of the plan with the second explosion), in response to the explosion of aluminum dust. It would have been expensive, however, to close the plants and fix the problem and Apple was demanding the fastest conceivable delivery of the new generation products, so the engineers had to use their expertise to improve the quality of the components and produce them faster while not using their expertise to protect the workers from what could have been catastrophic explosions. Apples' suppliers do not trust American engineers to ignore the risk to workers in order to increase production efficiency.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-k-black/congress-threatens-to-sow_b_799016.html