Cheap Labor and Exploitation

Funny thing about labor is while we want the top dollar for ours, we want to pay the lowest amount for it. The amazing thing is that in a free market system, we all get to agree on each transaction or we just go somewhere else.

I'm reading one of my favorite authors. I have a neighbor who is also a fan and has loaned me his last 4 books which I haven't read. He writes a pulp action story with a little interesting history thrown in and while I decided that I matured beyond his books years ago, I have been seduced.

On a sidebar, I don't believe that anyone can really be seduced if they don't want to be.

In the book I'm reading right now, the hero is going to butt up against an evil Chinese human smuggler who in enabled to operate due to the "United States insatiable appetite for cheap labor."

Maybe it's garbage like this that made me put this author down years ago and not my maturing. He's implying that the US is at fault for the inhumane smuggling of illegal aliens.

I'm sure when the neighbor kid offers to mow his lawn for $5, he says "No, I must pay you atleast $20 to fight the exploitation of the labor force." At which point the kid says "Well then, make it $30."

If a someone is willing to work for an agreed upon wage it sounds like a legal agreement to me.

My previous employer had a plant with a large Hispanic workforce. Signs in the plant were in Spanish (which peeved me to no end) and the joke was that half of them were probably illegals.

One day the INS showed up and removed almost two thirds of the labor force as illegals due to be deported. Isn't all humor based on a grain of truth?

The auto industry runs on Just In Time (JIT) inventories where the autoplants only have 8-12 hours of inventory on hand (this reduces wharehousing costs) and constantly receive shipments of parts and sub-assemblies. This causes a downstream effect of constant shipping and receiveing for components.

The plant with the gutted workforce received daily shipments of fuel filler neck assemblies from a plant in Saltillo Mexico. With the illegals gone, and a new crew receiving an unusual item was found in the items received. Just over 200 pounds of the finest Mexican Marijuana was packaged in with the parts.

You gotta figure that this was a regular shipment smuggled in with the retgular and legal parts. I do wonder if this was a monthly, weekly, or daily event.

Then I read this and wonder what will be in the cases of aid that they are bringing in. Are they helping us or are they taking advantage of the situation?