The title sounds a little strange, I know, but I have been thinking about this for a while. And it first came to my mind when China was beginning to experience economic bubbling, which from what I have read was mostly due to its transition from an export/raw material based-economy to a consumerist economy. There is now the potential for approx. 1 billion consumers to be introduced to the global market, and these people will look to get cheap goods from somewhere else. What if the same thing for China occurs in East-Asia/India, then Africa and South America. Eventually there will be a point where mass-cheap labor sources to produce products will dry up. Right? Do you think this is viable?
Seeking labor elsewhere is just a way to remain competitive. When labor becomes too expensive other alternatives might be automation, robotics, new technologies, innovation, etc. take over. Regarding 'cheap labor', in the grand scheme of things, there will always be cheaper labor available. This is what competition and creativity provides. All nations or workforces on Earth are not going to increase in cost at the same rates and time...
Yeah I don't see this as much of an issue. Virtually everything that requires cheap labor is going to automated on way or the other. The problem for China and other developed or developing countries is finding employment for their people in an age when cheap labor is all done by machines.
One comment about automation, and technology, is that most of our products today compared to 50-100 years ago cannot be made by a human today. Consider the gigantic market of electronics products which are injection molding, precision sheet metal and machining, state-of-the-art electronic components, with many items so miniaturized that humans cannot see or handle them with any precision, many with very exotic plating technologies, etc. etc. most all of which require some form of automation. Another issue we have today different from yesterday is today we build billions of things...not dozens of them. Perhaps it made sense at one time to fabricate hand-made bricks but today when we are fabricating billions of bricks lots of automation must be designed into the manufacturing process. Lastly, today we can easily transport products around the world which we could not do 100 years ago. Electronic documentation can be sent around the world at the speed of light, like CAD documents. Look how many cargo containers (17 million) are moving around the world at any given time (6 million) hauling everything we can imagine?
