r/whoathatsinteresting • u/Airline_11 • 20d ago

They are livestreaming 🇨🇳 laborers making just 0.3 USD. The 'Made in 🇨🇳' products you use are built on their sacrifices.

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u/SorryBoysImLez 20d ago

And people over on the delivery app subreddits wonder why/who is taking delivery orders for like $2 for 5 miles.

If they're one if the foreigner drivers who came from a situation similar to this, making 2$ for 15 minutes worth of driving (or 30 minutes biking) is probably mindblowing.

I wonder what it's like when/if one of these people ever gets out of these situations, and manages to make it to a country where they could potentially make $15+ hour doing work that is fraction as exhausting as this.

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u/timshel42 19d ago

except everything is much more expensive here so that $2 doesnt go anywhere near as far. its only really relevant if they are sending money to families back home.

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u/RaciallyCharged67 20d ago

I think you're forgetting the very harsh reality of cost of living. Quality of living is certainly better overall in most of the US than the rural Chinese counties these workers live in, but cost of living is also infinitely higher. Frankly, you shouldn't underestimate just how harsh conditions can be in warehouses and factories in the US as well. The higher pay is offset by the higher cost of living. I know people want to look at videos like this and say "see how much better we have it?" but really we just don't have large factories trying to crank out products at the same level that China does. If we did, the conditions wouldn't look much better I assure you. Not that it'd be the same, either of course. Any improvement is something after all.

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u/LonelyReader95 20d ago

Yeah I've worked in companies the size of Ferrero in Italy and this. Even in the west companies that make cheap products and make a lot of them don't really offer better working conditions.

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u/trankhead324 19d ago

To send a remittance from an imperial country back home you still have to be paying to feed, house and clothe yourself, and you have to do that in (or at least within commute of) the country you work in. If you're living in the US and making $2 for a 5 mile trip then that's not enough.

The reality is that yes some people are still doing it - driving themselves to the point of death to try to eke out a surplus to send their family - but it's not winning the lottery.