Leave it to Dylan Ratigan, one of the star personalities at MSNBC who seems to be constantly looking for a reason to be angry.
On his July 12 show, Ratigan posed his view on how trade between China and the United States operates. According to Ratigan, importing products where labor costs are significantly lower is akin to slavery. He specifically named Foxconn, a company that manufactures iPhones and iPads for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). (h/t @KenShepherd)
"Do you want to get raw?" Ratigan said. "Let's say that the American people happily, logically apathetic are perfectly happy basically with a slave culture of illegals and outsourced slaves in China making iPhones at Foxconn and that for as much as we talk about the liberation of the slaves and we like to pat ourselves on the back for the Civil War - got a big statue of Abe Lincoln. All we've really done is alter the color of some our slaves and moved them to other countries. Is that too extreme on my part, Matt?"
What Ratigan doesn't realize or isn't willing to concede is that the industrialization of China hasn't just made it possible for Americans to have cheap products or American corporations to make more money, but it has rescued the nation from poverty and propelled to China to a global power and could be a model for other nations.
And as for Ratigan's Foxconn example, the Associated Press reported the technology company is acknowledging its labor issues. But he still referred to their employees as "a slave."
"I think if you ask the kids making iPhones for Americans at Foxconn in China at a nice profit margin for an American corporation, they might think they're more like a slave," Ratigan said.
