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Notes -
Forgive my ignorance: if globalization suppressed the wages of
blue collarmanufacturing/farming workers, why didn't it then commensurately suppress their cost of living? Naively, if the cost of labor inputs to everything made by those workers goes down, the prices of all relevant end products should go down. I get that a significant part of the cost of living crisis is housing, healthcare, and education, which are all affected by various forms of natural and artificial scarcity, but have most other goods actually gotten any more affordable than pre-globalization?If not, where did all of the savings and productivity gains of globalization go?
If so, then is the "cost of living" crisis more accurately just a "cost of specifically housing, healthcare, and education" crisis?
First, globalization didn’t suppress the wages of blue-collar workers, it suppressed the wages of manufacturing workers. Blue-collar service workers are doing fine.
Second, it did suppress their cost of living. The idea of going to work “to put food on the table” is an idiom in modern-day America. When an American loses his job, he doesn’t stop being able to literally feed his family. He doesn’t lose the clothes off his back. He doesn’t lose his refrigerator. He doesn’t lose his microwave. Instead, he loses his house, his healthcare, and his children’s formal educational opportunities.
Not even this. You might have to switch school districts because you lost your house, but universities offer scholarships. Harvard is 100% free including room and board to students from families earning under $100k (and has lesser benefits for other income bands).
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