TIL there is no machine that terminates HDMI cables

TIL there is no machine that terminates HDMI cables.
Each and every 19-pin connector is soldered MANUALLY in Chinese sweat shops.

>Each and every
Factories in India too

and they get paid enough to live on to do it.

think on that

Barely, they're basically slaves, just without violwnce.

They earn enough for a small cheeseburger meal a day.

One thing is for sure, they make money that Russians do

and if they didn't have that job they would starve to death which brings up the question:

is it better to let someone starve to death or enslave them?

it's okay, the adults don't live long breathing those nasty lead free flux fumes and child labour is cheaper

...

Enslave them, so they may have a better chance at life. Sure, your life sucks now, but at least you can eat.

And this is why buying the cheapest HDMI cables is a bad idea.

A machine can do a consistent job for cheap, slaves getting paid half of what those are at the HDMI factory down the road won't.

the people making these should commit sudoku

there is no ethical consumption under capitalism

Americans refuse $0.50/hr wages to solder wires to HDMI connectors because they believe they are too good for that. It's no wonder unemployment is so high. Sad.

With Western standard minimum wage, HDMI cables would cost maybe $10 more
Hardly a problem
People maybe would be a little more careful not to break or lose them

>$20
>for a fucking HDMI cable

That's extremely fucking unreasonable. That price is more ridiculous than those shielded RF cables for lab equipment that cost up to $1000. IT'S A FUCKING CABLE IT DOES NOT NEED TO COST THAT MUCH.

Minimum wage was one of the worst ideas the fucking liberals came up with. Now poor people think they are entitled to a good job. Back in the day if you were desperate you'd take a job that paid you $1/hr to make cables and you'd like it.

Your picture is misleading. Only "audiophile grade snake oil" HDMI cables have active microcontrollers in them. Most HDMI cables are passive and just connect each pin to the one on the other connector.
>pic related

That's because the cost of living in the USA is much fucking higher.

You couldn't live on 50c an hour in the USA. At that point you would still be getting government support which they don't get in China yet they still manage to get by.

It's still a shitty living for them, bottom of the barrel, basically homeless tier, but they manage.

Minimum wage is not terrible. Cost of living needs to be taken into account.
Back in the day $1/hr would get you more than you can get now.

>$8 / day for rent, food, utilities, transportation to and from work, medical insurance and retirement
Let me guess, they should just work 16 hours a day and never retire

kys libcucks

>if they didn't have that job they would starve to death

Would they?

I thought the People's Republic provided for its comrades?

Why does anyone in this thread care about Chinese people? If they were American, Canadian, good-tier European, or even Austrailian/New Zealand, we should care, but they're just a couple employees out of 1.6 billion Chinese citizens.

>With Western standard minimum wage, HDMI cables would cost maybe $10 more

Even if minimum wage were $20.
You honestly think you can only manage 2 cables per hour?
If so you deserve to starve.

OPs pic is an active redmere cable which are used for thin HDMI cables or for really long 50Ft+ cables. It has nothing to do with audiophile shit

They are making enough to live in factory dorms and not die of starvation, they do not make a living wage by any stretch of the imagination

I care about all the cute Asian girls who assemble my electronics.

>dont have a particular political standing
>get called a liberal because i support something that makes sense
Fine, I guess.

I think it would be better to let the workers quit their job if it sucks so bad. I understand China is communist so they should be supported by the other workers during their time between jobs.

Ignorant appletoidcuck

Pricing doesn't work like that.

Those cables cost, including labor, 10~20c to make, each, then the manufacturer sells to another company for $3, then that company sells to a supplier for $5, then the supplier stocks for $10.

If the labor cost goes up by an order of magnitude then the resulting cost of the cables could easily do the same.

Chinese workers are doing fairly well.

They have much better lives than their parents.
They also have much better lives than the majority of the world.

Some businesses do still exploit their workers, like Apple-Foxconn.
But people working there will usually leave after a year or two, once they have enough skills to work on less shit quality devices.

it's not just the hourly cost of labour that you have to consider but all the hidden costs like health insurance, cost of hiring, training, cost of actually having the manufacturing plants, etc, etc

it'd still basically be a minimal price increase in the long run but it's a large investment to a saturated market

That is by far the worst scheme (((they)) ever came up with.

Why would things like transportation and retail be more expensive just because the base price is higher?

lmfao i'll have too see some sources on that one because outside of commerce there's still 980 000 000 poor as fuck peasants in china, dude

Fine $40/h to hire someone in the West.

15 minutes to solder up one cable.
You think you can manage that?

DP ftw

you would not say that if you had to make those cables. americans want to get $100k or more for doing nothing.

$40 an hour to solder, millennials are optimistic and delusional as shit

pattern soldering is minimum wage at best, Mexican migrant or free prisoner work more realistically.

reminder the USA has the largest per capita incarceration

I'm not saying I wouldn't pay the price increase but that it's a tough sell to get companies to consider investing huge sums to move manufacturing to the west, especially when incredibly cheap chinese cables are common, even if the price difference only ends up being a few dollars per cable

...

you think people in western nations havent done that for centuries in the past? its an uncomfortable but necesarry stage on the road of industrial development, sooner or later however the inefficiencies and vested interests of autocratic government however have to yield to the pressure of a growing middle class, just as they did in britain, and as the middle class grows wealth distribution becomes an issue people can afford to concern themselves with. like it or not, in much of the world you simply cannot afford not to be working, if you dont work, theres no food, no housing, nothing, just as it has been for all of human history.

ok, so they are better off than africa, not exactly exciting times in china

>worse off than Mexico
wtf china

If the Chinese really still do it by hand.
Then I'll bet it will soon actually be cheaper to do it automated in the West.

There is already a fair bit of electronics assembling going on in advanced Western countries where they use machines in advances assembly lines instead of manual labor.
It's still more expensive, but the quality is higher.
It's not unlikely that it will be both cheaper and higher quality in just a few years time and then China is fucked.

Half the world's population is worse off.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia and all of Africa - all worse off.

Ever notice that whenever min wage goes up, the cost of living goes up to match? It's not just as points out, but you really think anyone with half a brain doesn't see people with more money and decide to adjust their prices accordingly?
For some dumb reason, people are duped into thinking price = quality. Just look at apple.

Americans want to pay their staff less than they need to live and let everyone else make up the difference

Notice where the " are.
Also Notice the word "grade"

Haven't been there myself yet so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

good for them i guess, but not exactly a benchmark for worker's rights

The cost of living would never rise as much as the rise in minimum wage though.

For that to happen everyone would have to be on minimum wage.
Normally only a couple % of the population is.

I completely agree with you, which is why things like aliexpress are so attractive and why countries are hurriedly trying to set up new import taxes to "protect retail companies".

>Ever notice that whenever min wage goes up, the cost of living goes up to match?
Honestly it's more the reverse.
Cost of living goes up and then the min wage goes up, usually lagging behind.

Just do a little research. Look at what the costs of basic grocery items (not fast food) are now compared to a few years ago and the minimum wages and when the values changed.

The second problem is that you are putting technology things in "cost of living" which is pretty much bullshit.

You don't really need any of this shit to live. Cost of living is things like rent/housing, utilities and food. Maybe add transport into that as well.

Things like technology are luxury items and don't come into cost of living.