ZT: A comment on KRUGMAN’s recent piece of Take On China

Article Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/opinion/01krugman.html

As a nation we believe in child labor laws, environmental protection, occupational safety and health, a federal minimum wage, social security, medicaid, etc… We require our corporations and manufacturers to meet these requirements, however we leave these same corporations free to manufacture in other countries that do not have our same values and none of these requirements. These corporations can go oversees, pay low wages, mess up the environment, provide a dangerous work environment, pay no social security or medicaid and then sell their products in the United States without any recourse. If we want to level the playing field in the global economy than we should require corporations who sell their products in the United States to meet the same requirements that US corporations meet for wages, environment, safety, social security, etc… If they do not, then they pay a tariff or do not sell their product here. This would expand our values or create more manufacturing jobs in the US. In either event we win. Now the playing field is uneven and our workers are laid off by their employers who have no choice but to send their jobs overseas to retain their competitiveness. Our Congress, Corporations, and Government can and need to do better.