Labor shortage or terrible jobs?

That's exactly how it works in many european countries, especially the ones without a legal minimum wage (Austria for example), so people working "slave" gig jobs (cleaners, delivery, construction and hospitality workers, etc.) where if they earn below a certain "livable' threshold, get various tax credits, subsidies and benefits from the government to reach that "livable" threshold, which, while it sounds good, it creates a perverse incentive where employees arrange with the employer to be paid as little on paper as possible to still qualify for the government subsidies and then get paid the rest under the table (tipping is expected here for this reason) which just moves the burden from the employers of paying a livable wage to the customers and to the taxpayers which are basically subsidizing their business.

> That would allow trade to no longer be based such an extreme difference in the price of labour

That doesn't make sense. The entire reason the WTO was interested in China (and any other poor country) was because they had cheap labor. It's not like the WTO is depressing wages.

>By no longer losing value to profits at every step of production and distribution, consumer prices wouldn’t have to increase

Wait, we pay everyone more but we don't have to pay for production and distribution?

>Merely dismantling the US army would vastly reduce global carbon emissions. Building high density housing, public transportation, universal healthcare, public utilities, etc. would further reduce the US’s majority contributions.

I agree but it's completely non-sequitar.

> Countries that were kept poor for centuries could be gifted low-carbon energy sources as part of reparations, so as to not need to emit carbon to develop.

Again, non-sequitar but what are these countries going to do with some solar panels? They're dirt poor. You might as well buy them some air pods.

> A lot can be done once the oppressor countries stop constantly extracting value for a few individuals.

It's not a zero sum game. Richer countries do extract value from poorer countries but the poorer countries also extract value from the richer countries. Just because the majority of the advantage comes from the richer country doesn't mean the poorer country is losing, they just win much less.

In general, you're making a lot of points about globalism that I generally agree are problems but you're offering no solutions past stop doing the bad thing and everything will be good. I don't care about labels of imperialism, oppressors or communist, I care what actually can be done in the real world to make the world work better. Keep in mind that while China is sort if at odds with the WTO, it's not because they don't think it's ethical, they don't like it because it's not them.

I think something is missing from this equation, which is the balancing act. The value of labor is dynamic, it depends what people are willing to pay, and what is the price of other costs.

How I see it, labor cost have been cut, while rent has gone up and prices have gone down.

If you increased minimum wage, it would put pressure on prices to go up and rent to go down, both would increase the value of the labor itself.

I think this whole dynamic is way way harder to model and predict how it'll play out then everyone makes it out to be. None of people's simple projection account for it all. Even economists with fancy models backed by simulations, math, and all that can't figure out the real outcome and often disagree with one another on what would happen.

It's not as easy as saying, half the restaurants are going to shut down, and leave empty all those commercial space. What happens next? Maybe some customers start to be willing to pay even more to get back some of the great restaurants they lost, or their proximity to them. Maybe landlords have to lower their rent for something else to fill in the vacancy, etc. Maybe everyone is happy with only half of the restaurants remaining, and each of those restaurant is making twice as much now allowing them to hire more staff and pay even higher. There's a lot of balancing act that could happen.

> You can pick the one that pays the most.

Oh sweet summer child. When you are in debt and struggle to survive on a day to day basis, time is your enemy You cannot afford not to take a job. And if you are lucky enough to be able afford it today, you might not tomorrow.

Another thing: many people need more than one job as it is now. Guess what: if you pay people a decent living wage more people can actually get jobs, because less people have to do two or more. If your business is so inefficient it can't support minimum wage labor, it was doomed to fail before. Again: even McDonalds manages to pay minimum wages in Europe and their prices are roughly comparable. You are being gaslighted by the people profiting from that modern form of slavery.

you are right in recognizing that living costs are an issue as well, and they are an issue in many big cities. The known solution for this issue is publically owned housing which you shouldn't put into their own districts (thus creating ghettos) but mix them in throughout the city (Vienna's "Gemeindebau" is a good example for this, Vienna repeatedly got the title "City most worth living in" over the past decades). Don't only put poor people into these houses, make them decent and make them something people want to live in. Make them cheaper to rent than other flats (this way the rents in the surrounding areas cannot go up so fast). But most importantly: this must be done from the public side — nobody else in control has the incentive to act in ways that lower rents.

Aside from all this, what the US really needs to do is to look at all the other countries that are comparable to the area you are living in and wonder why they are doing so well without all the doomsday scenarios your politicians make tou believe (both socially and economically). Whenever I talk to US citizens about this they are either completely delusioned ("I live in an oligarchy") or they pretend their problems are so unique the rest of the industrialized world never had to deal with comparable things. "Who knows, maybe it cannot be solved at all", they say, while it was solved literally one country over since half a century ago.

That's like wondering whether man will ever be able to move faster than a horse, while your neighbouring country has airplaines they use on a daily basis.

There is generally not a big coupon culture in Europe. Most people don't bother wasting their time. People with a money problem usually collect bottles for recycling purposes.