Thanks for putting it in context Lmo, in that case yes as an operating engineer there is much more value in being skilled in all of those things and I agree. Getting to the level that you’re at takes more training, experience, and certification and should command more pay, etc.
The scenario I was assuming was more simplistic in that this was his only job, if it was assumed to actually be his job. Of course it isn’t safe to have a kid doing that job and that’s probably what freaked some people out. But the question still stands on why Chinese goods cost less, if they can get away with having a kid do the work, whether safely or not, they can pay him less so why not? If you can get away with substituting materials, specifications, saftey, etc., then why not? I do think the Chinese are more pragmatic about how they approach work, but I don’t think that child labor is even close to why the goods cost less (i know you said this jokingly).
I apologize if I offended you, I was trying to correlate what I assumed was a low skill job with why the Chinese can produce goods cheaper than in the U.S., outside of the child labor issue. I still do think there is a valid argument there in that there are a lot of low skill/high pay union jobs in the U.S. that the Chinese beat the pants off of us on because they don’t seem to approach work, pay, and standards of living as entitlements.
I worked in a large union for a time where people pushed a cart and picked parts 8 hours a day for $35/hr, it was incredulous.