"It costs less so I'll get more of it" is how you buy ice cream, not how you hire workers. Regardless of whether labor costs $5 per hour or $500, you hire according to the amount of work you have.

people are hired because there is profitable work to be done which will not get done without hiring them. Cutting wages in half does not double the available jobs, it just increases profits for the owner, who will pay half as much to get each widget made. He will only make roughly the number of widgets he can sell. People making half the money can buy fewer widgets.... Circling around the drain comes to mind.

There is a slight potential to increase employment through lower wages, but that only happens when wages are competitive with Bangladesh. Short of that, our T-shirts and I-pods will still be made overseas. Our public health and safety codes do not allow people to live in such conditions here. Buildings like those common in the third world are condemned and demolished here.

This option has been tried and has failed miserably. Its failure is inherent in its design.

They don't understand this! You had a workforce making good reliable cars that lasted for decades. They took pride in the cars that they made. CEO's fired them for wanting more money. I challenged republican friends by telling them to look at products that come from cheap labor. "Is this what you are after? the people that make it DON'T CARE that it doesn't work right! This is what low wages produce!"
and they get a look on their face like I'm talking a foreign language!


This is why you have ipods and tv's that last a year, toys that are poisonous, and dog treats that kill dogs.

Much like the Divine Right of Kings, the belief that a king ruled by God's will and therefore had no obligation to be accountable to his subjects, they regard maximized profit as the Divine Order Of Things, and anything that so much as slows it down is treason against All That Is Right And Good(tm).