ROBERT REICH_Competing on the basis of labor costs is nuts

Robert Reich via Facebook.com

3 hrs · Edited · 

The one good thing about Donald Trump is he says what other Republican candidates believe but don’t dare say. "Having a low minimum wage is not a bad thing for this country," said Trump on yesterday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program. "We can't have a situation where our labor is so much more expensive than other countries' that we can no longer win."

Baloney. Competing on the basis of labor costs is nuts. It would push American wages down to $2 a day or lower. We have to compete on the basis of higher productivity, which is what Germany and other advanced nations are doing. German workers have a higher median wage than we do, along with far more generous benefits (paid family leave, 5 weeks vacation, universal health care). Yet they’re more competitive globally than we are, with a positive balance of trade. How do they do it? They (1) invest like mad in education (including technical education) and infrastructure, (2) their workers are involved in corporate decision making, and (3) Germany doesn’t have a billionaire class (only 11 percent of German national income goes to the top 1 percent, while 20 percent of our national income goes to the top 1 percent).

Higher productivity requires more investments in our people, and less money going to speculators like Trump.

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