alt text: 18 of our 40 employees are located in the Philippines. Insanely competent, great judgement, and $5 per hour. If you run a small business and don’t have overseas help you’re at a disadvantage
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Wow it’s almost like capitalisms profit motive encourages businesses to exploit the less fortunate because not doing so puts your business at a disadvantage.
$5 in the Philippines probably has vastly more purchasing power than it does in the United States. If you’re supposed to pay them the same salary as to someone working in the US then why not just hire an American and have the dude in Philippines go back to picking coconuts for $2 and hour or something. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Philipino worker is more than happy with their salary and you might even be able to employ several people for the same amount of money.
This same effect applies to charities aswell. Donating money to some poor african country helps many more people than it does when given to a local charity.
Sure yes short term it is probably a good option for the average Filipino or any other person taking an American job in a foreign country for less money than that company would pay an American because yeah it does pay relatively well in their situation. However, it takes advantage of their material situation to pay them monetarily less than they would be paid in the US. Essentially it uses the fact that they need the money more (their demand) to pay them less. Is this not similar to paying any American poor person less because they need it more?
Regardless of how you feel about the morality of all that it’s fucking terrible for the Philippines. That Filipino labor is not benefitting the Filipino economy it’s benefitting the US economy. This might not be so bad if they were being paid more or even up to the amount that they make for that American company (though this would never happen under capitalism bc a company needs profit) because at the very least that loss of labor power would be supplemented with equivalent monetary gain.
So in short, outsourced jobs takes advantage of poor people to pay them less and strips foreign economies of their labor power
Is this not similar to paying any American poor person less because they need it more?
No because the poor american still has to pay high US prices for everything they buy. You can’t live a decent life in the US with $5 an hour but you can in the Philippines where the minimum wage is around $10 a DAY. Another commentor in this thread told how their relative bought a restaurant dinner for 12 people for 50 bucks in the Philippines and that includes the tip.
That Filipino labor is not benefitting the Filipino economy it’s benefitting the US economy.
This is not entirely true either. That Philipino working for the US company spends their earnings in the Philippines and that benefits their economy.
I covered both of these points.
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The company is still using a person’s material situation to pay them less. More purchasing power in their subjective economy is part of their material situation. They are still receiving monetarily less as is their country.
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I directly covered your second point, while they do spend the money they earn from their American job within their economy they are not being paid the exact value of their labor because profit is being extracted so the amount of money they stimulate their economy with is not as valuable as their labor would be. I don’t want to explain the entire labor theory of value here because it would take up too much time and space but you can look into it if you’d like. Put simply, the profit that company makes is extracted from that employees labor meaning that some of their labor is being used not to benefit their country or people but another’s. Outsourcing is an extraction of mans most valuable resource from the less fortunate to the more
Yeah I’m not claiming these practices are without their issues but consider the alternative: if the company was forced to pay the Philipino worker the same salary they would pay an US worker then why would they hire a person in the Philippines? They wouldn’t. They’d hire an american instead and now the Philipino worker would need to find a local employer and it’s unlikely they would pay as much as the US based company does now.
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LOL, I’m the guy you quoted. The arguments in here are straight childish, with a child’s view of how money works. They see $5/hr. and scream.
Summary of cost of living in Philippines:
A family of four estimated monthly costs are 1,935.7$ (108,196.2₱) without rent.
A single person estimated monthly costs are 559.5$ (31,274.4₱) without rent.
Cost of living in Philippines is, on average, 54.1% lower than in United States.
Rent in Philippines is, on average, 81.7% lower than in United States.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?country=Philippines
And I question even those numbers! From what my wife and her friend’s American husbands have told me, and from the videos I’ve watched, it seems even cheaper than that.
Then there are the idiots saying we should flood the country with American dollars, blow up inflation and the wealth gap. Sound economic planning right there.
Showed my Pilipino wife your post (she doesn’t understand social media like lemmy):
“Who is this person? Why do they say these things? I do not understand. This is not true.”
LOL, she just shook her head and walked off.
Her son is working tech for Amazon and another for a different American firm. They’re WELL off in the Philippines. You should let them know they are not, in fact, doing well.
This might not be so bad if they were being paid more or even up to the amount that they make for that American company
Well hell yeah! Let’s flood the country with American dollars, spike inflation through the roof and exacerbate the wealth gap. You should be running the Federal Reserve.
Explain how $5/hr. is exploiting a Pilipino. I’ll wait.
$5 an hour is an exploitative wage, it fundamentally does not matter the country we’re talking about. And there are no explanations because you gave 0 effort except for inviting an argument and no one was in the mood.
This part has never been quiet.
Came in to say something similar…
Bleeding our economy has always been celebrated, and the people who are being bled are always demonized.
My uncle visited the Philippines. When he came back he went on and on, “They’re poor, some don’t have running water and they got dirt for floors. They work so hard though, and they’re so loyal. I wish I could find people like that here in the states. Not people constantly asking for more. People who are happy with what they have and are loyal. You can’t find anyone loyal to anything but themselves here.”
I nearly vomited hearing that shit.
“Why won’t people just make me rich here without worrying about their piece of the pie. I don’t have enough luxury vehicles. My house isn’t a castle like it should be.” Was all I heard.
It’s disgusting.
Tell him to “be the change you want to see in the world”
And then smash his floor so it becomes all dirt
Absofuckinglutley. My God… “Only loyal to themselves.”
Yeah dude… We got rid of slavery and no one exactly feels like volunteering to be a
slaveloyal worker especially when owners aren’t loyal to their employees!I should serve you and your best interests with vigor, but the next cheap labor opportunity you find you drop me like a bad habit… <No, Thanks.>
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There was already a software developer that got two contracts with different companies, then “outsourced” his workloads to four guys overseas in secret.
Iirc he spent a tenth of his salary on paying this people and did nothing but attend meetings, but the output was pretty bad so eventually they found out.
It’s wild that people celebrate folks sending jobs overseas as “smart business people”, but then demonize workers asking for wages to keep to with inflation as “greedy”.
I wonder if this guy’s anti-immigration too.
Yes, but not anti temporary-migrant-workers.
Or anti-cheap visa workers that can be abused and threatened with being sent home.
What about those that send jobs overseas without the demonizing? Should they be equally criticized?
I automatically block anyone in my feed who has a sentence as their job title. They are always garbage.
I think it’s fine to outsource some things overseas, but don’t criminally underpay them!
$5/hr is a decent wage in the Philippines. Minimum wage there is ~$11/day, so $5/hr is quite a bit more than minimum wage.
Minimum wage may not be the whole story, our minimum wage is $7.25 still and I dont think anyone believes that can be lived on here. The cost of living is more significant a measure of the pay’s fairness
Cost of living is also much lower in The Philippines vs the US. A quick search says a 1br studio near Manila costs ~₱6,500/month, which is ~$115/month. The same thing costs about 10-20x that here in the US in a city.
So $5/hr would be enough for a pretty nice lifestyle there, whereas it would be significantly below the poverty line here in the US.
Right, he is paying about 4x minimum wage, which would be about $29/hr, that’s doable.
I think your math is off.
Funny note on that: Went to stay with a friend in Manhattan back in '91. Stunned by the prices I asked, “How does anyone survive on minimum wage?!”
He laughed, “Man, nobody gets minimum wage here!”
I’m in a poor county in Florida. 6 years ago, jobs could be found at the very bottom, no more.
Apparently the US government does, otherwise they’d have changed it…
Their labor creates expensive value in an expensive market. Share accordingly.
“It’s a great pay where they are” argument is bullshit.
Exactly this. If they are making the same product as a local team that generates the same revenue, you’re just taking a bigger slice of their surplus value. In other words, exploiting them harder.
It doesn’t. Since the dolar has usually a higher value americans pay little but when you convert the people there make ok money. It’s a win x win x lose (in this case the american people that need jobs too :/)
I think that companies shouldn’t be allowed to change wage/salary based on locale.
But I have no idea how that could be enforced.
Taxes
And how do you enforce the taxes?
The problem i was alluding to was shell companies, subsidiaries, and all the existing popular tax avoiding strategies used by big companies (that’d also be used for avoiding counting those employees)
More taxes?(im gonna keep saying more taxes everytime you reply, please keep replying)
For the record, I agree with more taxes. I’m ok with you replying more taxes.
But we need new laws in addition to new taxes, that prevent companies from splitting up their companies (money/employees) into distinct legal entities based on geographical location. Good luck with that, though.
More taxes
More taxes
The minimum wage in Philippines is ~$6 per day in the provincial regions (350Php). $5 per hour for 8 hours is damn well nearly a king’s ransom; equivalent to 2,200Php.
Thank you. ITT: Bunch of spoiled, outraged clueless people.
Just ask my Pilipino wife if $5/hr. is good money back home. She stared at me for a beat, “Oh yeah! That is very good!”
You can live damned well on $40/day. Her ex went over there and took her whole family out to dinner at a nice restaurant in Manila. 12 people, $50 including a generous tip. I make $81K/yr. and I couldn’t take half that many people out to eat on a day’s pay.
Damn wtf
I wonder how many execs are paying someone in the Philippines to take their online MBA course?
In Canada we import people to work the jobs deemed beneath Canadians… then they’re put up in company housing.
Pretty much modern day slave trade. The money doesn’t even stay in the country, a lot of it is remitted back home to their families.
Uhhh… slaves didn’t get paid at all.
Allowing people to immigrate into a developed country, make way more money than they would at home, get put up in company housing, and send the majority of the money back to their families seems like a pretty good deal for all parties.
#entraprenure
Joke’s on them, I don’t have $5
I haven’t had $5 in 7 years
But have you had “5 on it” though?
Globalism doesn’t really disturb people the way it used to.
