[expat_panama]

In a wealthy country, human labor is usually one of the most expensive resources you can possibly use. That’s why wealthy people, companies, and countries always replace their most labor-intensive activities ...

Lots of folks see it that way but they're missing the fact that there's a reason the market sets prices as it does.  American workers cost ten times as much per hour as does a worker in Togo, and the reason is that it takes ten hours for the Togon to do what an American can do in one. 

Don't believe the Marxists who try to say wages are set by privilege, by law, by custom, or anything other than the free market.  Marxists lie.

[central_va]

Marx was a “free Trade” devotee.

[Alberta's Child]

American workers cost ten times as much per hour as does a worker in Togo, and the reason is that it takes ten hours for the Togon to do what an American can do in one.

Maybe for Togo this is true, but that is not true across the board. If it was, then nobody would ever manufacture something overseas because the productivity differential is proportional but the transportation costs weigh heavily in favor of domestic manufacturing.

More likely, what you have with advanced Asian nations is a scenario where the U.S. worker is 3x more expensive but is only 1.5x more productive. In some cases (and this is getting more common almost by the day), the foreign worker is even MORE productive than the U.S. worker.