Back when Hong Kong was a British colony and its wage rates were set by supply and demand, the Wall Street Journal reported that its unemployment rate was less than 2 percent. Then, after China took over Hong Kong and mandated various worker benefits -- which add to labor costs, the same as higher wage rates -- Hong Kong's unemployment rate went over 8 percent.
This was not high by European standards but it was unprecedented for Hong Kong. There is no free lunch in any part of the world.
Why cannot rich multinational corporations simply absorb the losses of paying Third World workers more than their productivity is worth? Why shouldn't they?
First of all, multi-billion-dollar corporations are seldom owned by multi-billionaires. They are usually owned by thousands, if not millions, of stockholders, most of whom are nowhere close to being billionaires. Some may be teachers, nurses, mechanics, clerks and others who own stock indirectly by paying into pension funds that buy these stocks.
Indeed, the average incomes of all the stockholders -- direct and indirect -- may be no greater than the average incomes of those intellectuals, politicians, and others who want them to absorb the costs of higher pay in the Third World.
But if teachers, nurses, mechanics, and clerks are supposed to accept less money to live on in their retirement years, why shouldn't similar donations to the Third World come from reporters for the New York Times or Ivy League professors, movie stars or others who are morally indignant?
Or is this just one of many things that the morally indignant think is worth having others pay for, but not worth enough to pay for themselves?