Chinese textile firms are now opening new factories, not in China but in the American South. With the steep rise in the wages of Chinese workers and the stagnation (at best) of the wages of American workers—Southern workers most particularly—and with the higher levels of productivity and lower energy costs in the South,  it  is now cheaper to manufacture in Dixie than it is in Guandong.

Low Southern wages have had the effect of bringing down wage levels across the nation, both in manufacturing and in retail (for which Walmart’s move north, while maintaining Southern wage levels, is largely responsible).  Low Southern manufacturing wages are one of a number of factors that have contributed to the 4.4 percent decline in the median U.S. manufacturing wage between 2003 and 2013, and a leading factor in the decline of the hourly wage differential between all Midwestern and Southern workers (not just those in manufacturing) from $7 to $3.34 between 2008 and 2011, according to Moody’s Analytics.

Commentators cite the national average for manufacturing wages, but that’s an average that runs from, say, skilled operators of sophisticated machinery at Boeing’s plant in Seattle to workers like the employees at a South Carolina textile factory, and doesn’t illustrate how depressed South Carolinian wages are.

In short, the South Carolina Establishment, bosses and politicians, have been introducing subsistence wages reminiscent of the the Reconstruction after the Civil War , and, in the process, have brought down income everywhere.  So much for the minimum wage.  Then they blather on about bringing jobs back to America, about making America great again, about the “exceptional nation”.  It’s exceptional alright!

Epicureans believe in a fair and decent income for everyone.  A living wage implies a tolerable level of happiness and political stability.  If you depress income enough you end up with revolution. Trump and Sanders are the first and visible signs of pending trouble.