That’s partially true but lots of Mexicans can go to the big cities to worked in Car factories or sell goods from push carts instead of coming to the US. In fact Mexicans in LA have a higher unemployment than their counterparts in Baja California but they make higher wages in the US.

Some nice thoughts, but they fly in the face of reality:the virtual absence of government here, rather one which does not do a thing in the midst of deep depression to alleviate joblessness but instead pursues macroeconomic policies to the benefit of the already filthy rich. The ‘government’ of this ‘nation’ is far along the path of reconfiguring it into a 3rd-world economy. The slave wages prevalent in China and Mexico are harbingers of the ‘new normal’ here.

George, who invites those ‘illegal’ immigrants? Which free trade agreement has destroyed those people’s ability to support themselves on living wages back home? Don’t blame the victims. Capital has successfully turned one group of victims against the other, a perfect recipe for endless domination.

Shpping jobs overseas which can also be blame on the right as well, same does for high skilled immigration. Ted Cruz wants 320,000 tech vistas a year which takes a lot of the native born out of work for foreign born from India and so forth to do tech jobs or eventually shipped overseas. Automation and Robotics are destroying jobs.My idea would be to have the government set land again to farm or do crafts business like it was in the 19th century. A hard thing to do.

Christian, I see your point, but do you not see that the importation of millions of illegal aliens has driven down the wages of the native working classes?

Regarding the article’s lament re the vague terms ‘consumerism’ and ‘materialism’: There is an aspect of excess a Christian must appreciate. But if communication is about what the hearer hears more than about what a speaker intends, we have have to work harder in writing.

Christian authors that uphold human dignity in the workplace will find ears to hear. Writing that suggests church leaders ought declare winners and losers on the product shelves risk appearing little different than the government ‘establishment’ overlords lamented of in the foregoing.

‘slave wages’ ‘high cost of living’ ‘businesses that feel no responsibilities’….

Businesses that ‘feel responsibilities’ don’t exist for long because the ones that do ‘feel responsibilities’ sell products that cost more and eventually go out of business because— deeply caring people who read articles of this sort, and everyone else, when shopping buys the lowest cost product that meets their needs, without regard to any of the laments in the article whatsoever. You know who you are. In fact, you are everyone. Oh you might pick this or that product you shop for to bandaid over the guilt, but in the main you shop for a deal. This includes clergy families, and mightily pious liberal politicians who go across state lines to buy gifts for their families hoping they won’t be recognized out of state then have them mailed 15 miles across the line to avoid paying the sales taxes they voted for.

If any think that ‘slave wages’ exist in the USA, it’s because they haven’t toured Southeast Asia or the greater part of China where wages and working conditions make the worst legal job here seem safe and wealthy. And it is there that nearly every ‘unfeeling’ company must make what it sells leaving American workers on the sidelines NOT because of some lack of moral fiber in the managers of the business, but because if they don’t, a competitor will, and they will be themselves closed down and out of jobs. Why? Because you and the authors of the above lament buy what you need at the lowest price you can find.

This language above “negative and corrosive sense of detachment from one’s responsibilities” is tragically wrong on it’s face because it utterly fails to understand choosing otherwise is choosing workplace death. One must choose from among the alternatives one actually has.

The unstated and completely false presupposition in the article above is that if only some managers at businesses had changes of heart, were not such scrooges, had personal epiphanies they could, at the stroke of a pen ‘pay people right’. Well certainly they could, for about two years, then then everyone at that business would be out of jobs and that business would be closed– because their competitor based overseas where wages are less and working conditions horrific would make good products that sell for less here and you’d buy those.. you’d feel bad of course, hearing of the job loss in the news, the plant closing, but not for too long, because you got a deal. Let’s own our stuff here.

How many brands is it that you buy that exist in the USA as marketing organizations only — with all their guts being made overseas? If it can be put on a ship and not spoil along the way: it won’t be made here.

Economics is not subject to politics or money printing policies. It is no more possible to deny actual economics than a speed limit on a hairpin curve on a mountain road. There are two sustainable ways forward. One is to lower living conditions and wages until it’s as bad here as it is there— passing laws to raise the minimum wage will result in greater unemployment with fewer lucky folk with ‘good paying’ minimum wage jobs and the rest being paid tax money we don’t have in aid. There is another way forward, one which I think has the better moral argument: Do not allow the import of products made under working conditions and wages so poor as to be illegal here. Not raising taxes, but banning imports made under horrific conditions.

Right now, we pay others in countries where dictators rule and, to save money, to do morally awful workplace things we would never tolerate here. We do it because products cost us less that way. Much the same as paying someone else to do an abortion so we can say ‘we are against abortion’.

Only by banning the fruits of imported slave and near-to-slave and awful-working-conditions labor across the board will the jobs come back here. And I do not mean ‘raising taxes and import duties’ because then the government profits from overseas slave labor, we are still complicit. After some small quota enough to be sure of the facts: banning imports that include horror-show offenses to human dignity.

“It is a feast for Hallmark Cards and brewers and turkey farmers. The hospital accident and emergency departments are overflowing with blood and vomit and violent drunks. Obama and Cameron and the EU are literally hell-bent on exporting this consumerism to the world. I see this trajectory all around me in UK and Europe, and in the USA. The end result is Gotham City, or Dean Swift’s Yahoos. It is a world given to drink, drugs, violence and fornication. While we remain rich, we will continue to slide into the abyss.

Most of the world does not see it this way especially in Africa, India, Russia, etc. The infection has taken root in the western cultures, weakened by 200 years of liberal Protestantism (much of it quietly adopted by Rome) and by the experience of wealth beyond the dreams of Croesus. There may be any number of crises ahead of us – economic meltdown when the current generation becomes too spineless to work, and chooses to rely on handouts. The UK is well down this road.”

I agree that people not working is a serious problem. But, in America anyway, this also goes hand in hand with slave wages combined with a relatively high cost of living, and businesses that feel no responsibilities to the society that gave them the opportunities necessary to allow them to flourish. This negative and corrosive sense of detachment from one’s responsibilities goes hand in hand with that spirit of Ayn Rand and Antichrist that says people should only be interested in themselves.