Och

iTrader: (3)

The way its been going, US is quickly on the way to becoming a third world country, at least when it comes to standard of living for its citizen. I feel really bad for todays young generation in the US - their life will truly suck. With lack of decent jobs and ridiculous cost of living, a lot of them will never have an opportunity to own a house and decent family life - they will be confined to crappy small apartments and slaving at crappy jobs.

Cartune

iTrader: (3)

Yea young american generation have it bad. driving a car to public school while talking on their smartphone.

Joeb427

iTrader: (1)

ain't that the truth!!!

Och

iTrader: (3)

Maybe driving a car their parents bought them, talking on the cell phone their parents bought them. When they grow up and have to be on their own, thing are not looking bright for them at all. And most parents that are able to afford these things for their kids, are only able to do so because they had a chance to live before USA's economy went down to toilet and cost of living exploded.

With that being said, far from many kids are driving a car to school. A lot of families are struggling to make ends meet, and not only unable to provide material things for their kids, but are not even able to raise and discipline their kids properly. In a lot of families both adults are forced to work long hours to make ends meet, and their kids become abandoned, raised by streets and TV. This is why so many kids today are complete idiots.

LexLaw

Exactly!! The harsh reality that many if not most Americans face. Sometimes I get the feeling that some people are looking at life for others through a peephole in door of the friendly confines of their homes. To compare America to "developing nations" shows just how far we have slipped, if that's now the new paradigm for us. As "great" as we have it in this country things could and should be a lot better for most of its citizens. However they simply are not.

mmarshall

The parents also (likely) had more of a work-ethic than their kids.

Let's not get too far off-topic (auto-worker factory-wages).......but, since you bring it up, it's worth noting that some jurisdictions don't allow parents to discipline kids any more. Some places forbid even normal spankings, and judges have been known to lock up parents that simply swatted their kids' behind, a long way from any real child-abuse.

anthrax144

Market conditions prove themselves out in the long run. If VW isn't paying their employees enough, the employees will leave and go on to other jobs. However, if there are no better paying jobs out there, the employees will stay. When the economy improves and more people have good paying jobs, VW may have to raise their wages to retain these employees. Nobody is forcing them to work there. These workers are more than willing to take a $12/hr job because it's better than none.

And those of you comparing US wages stating that it's like China now, do you realize they get paid $400/month in China? With no benefits. That's a GOOD paying factory job. So while $2000/month might not be a lot by some peoples standards, that's five times what workers in China make. Don't forget all the payroll taxes, social security and medical that the employer pays here. And you wonder why jobs are moving to China?!

mmarshall

What other jobs? This is not the 1980s or 1990s, where you could go almost anywhere and start making money.

In most cases, there aren't.

More a case of "if" rather than "when". I hate to sound excessively negative (and nothing, of course, is impossible), but we have to face some facts today. A lot of traditional high-paying manufacturing jobs have left the American market for various countries in Latin-America and Asia, and it is not likely that many of them are coming back soon.

On paper, no....one is legally free to resign or leave. But the weak economy, lack of job-alternatives, family-responsibilities, kids in college, alimony/child-support, and monthly-bills like mortgage/car-payments usually means that a lot of people are economic slaves to their jobs, whether they like those jobs or not. In other words, the economic realities of life sometimes force you to hang onto a situation like the old Southern plantations, and the slaves that toiled every day without any other choice. That was also true here in America during the early days of the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, when company bosses/tycoons owned everything and all their workers were economically indebted to them for just about everything they had.


That may be true, but, as I said in an earlier post, $10-15 an hour isn't enough to make a decent living in much of America, particularly in expensive places like NYC and CA.


In China, though, while obviously not a fortune, that $400 a month goes farther than it would in many places here, and the government provides more services that the workers themselves don't have to pay for. The government also has a strict one-child policy for each family, so most workers don't have several kids to support.

Sulu

There are a number of reasons why Volkswagen -- like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and others before it -- has opened automotive assembly plants in the American South in the last 20 years. Manufacturing jobs, especially automotive manufacturing jobs, are seen as being excellent jobs for a local economy. To attract these jobs, Southern states have provided many incentives to attract transplants: lower taxes, fully prepared land, and infrastructure (local roads and access roads to the plants). (Now that the Southern States have started doing this, even industrial Ontario, Canada has to provide similar incentives to attract auto jobs here, like they did to have Toyota open its RAV4 assembly plant in Woodstock, Ontario.) Lower wage demands compared to the industrial Northern states (Michigan, for instance) and a history of little or no union action have also attracted the auto manufacturers; a great potential supply of workers helped also.

It may come with a downside, however. There may be a lack of skilled labour. Toyota ran into that problem trying to staff its plant in Blue Springs, Mississippi; tens of thousands of people lining up for a few thousand jobs may not matter much if they do not have the skills an auto assembly plant is looking for. As was mentioned in the article, skilled labour is moving down from Detroit, though, with the layoffs at GM, Chrysler and Ford.

You cannot compare absolute wages between countries, especially such dissimilar countries as the USA and China. Yes, wages are higher in the USA than in China, but then the cost of living is much higher in the USA compared to China. I even caution comparing absolute wages between Canada and the USA, which seem -- on the surface -- to be very similar countries; health care, for instance, is much cheaper in Canada than in the USA.

If you want to compare wages, you have to compare buying power. What will $2000/month buy in the USA and what will $400/month buy in China? Necessities may be different between the 2 countries also -- a car or 2 per family is a necessity in the USA but may not be in China, where large factories may provide accomodation for their workers -- making even the buying power comparison difficult.

Och

iTrader: (3)

I've never been to China, but right around this time last year I went to my home country, Belarus, which was once a part of the USSR, and people on average make an equivalent of $300-$600 per month over there. And these modest earning go WAY further than $2000 a month go in the US, especially when you couple that with the fact that they pay virtually no taxes, have free medical, free college education, very low costs on utilities, etc. IT professional make in the neighborhood of $2000 per month over there, and really live like "ballers". If it wasn't for my daughter, who was born here, I'd go back there in a heartbeat. With my skills and connections I could make even more than $2k per month and live like a king.

Not to mention that every other girl there looks like a supermodel

IXI187IXI

iTrader: (3)

you dont even have to go that far. you can make the example of what will $2000/month buy you in manhattan vs $2000/month buy you in a rural area in the middle of the country.

Alucard

There aren't that many job alternatives out there for people looking for work, so somebody at this VW plant might stay even though they aren't doing well financially.

But again, VW doesn't owe anybody anything. Plus VW's wage system is what made the factory being built in America a financial reality.

You don't have to work there, and are free to protest or boycott VW. But it's wrong to view them as evil just because they don't make as much as the employees might like.

mikez

That is incredible, I had an engineering degree out of a good engineering school and my entry level wage was 11 dollars and 25 cents...

anthrax144

If wages stay low, we'll be more competitive with those other countries. It's the reason VW located in TN to begin with. Are we better off with low paying jobs or no jobs at all?

Or those bosses/tycoons can just pack up their business and move it overseas. Then we won't have to worry about being indebted to them.

Hence VW located in TN and not NY or CA. I had a coworker here in WA a few years back who moved to Missouri. He went from $20/hr to $13.50/hr. He also went from a 1300 sq ft home with no yard to a 2700 sq ft home on an acre with a pool. Yes, his wages were considerably less but so was his cost of living. So much so that, even though he took a 38% pay cut, he is actually able to afford more.


So who's better off? A person in China making $400/month or a worker in the US making $2000/month? I'd estimate the quality of life is still greater here at that pay than in China but that's speculation on my part. And if you're only making $2000/month, you should probably only have one kid IMO (or none for that matter....).

Och

iTrader: (3)

Its not VW's fault that they pay low wages. They have to cut their expenses to stay competitive with Haiyondies and the likes. It applies to pretty much all manufacturing these days, not just just car makers, and companies are forced to pay low wages to stay competitive with companies that manufacture their products in third world countries. The US government is to blame for failure to protect the interests of this country.