How U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work
It's a complicated problem.<p>Essentially, employee wages and production control (by compelling arduous hours upon workers) wins out en masse.  The free market system is what it is, and this is what it leads to. Jobs will go to whoever can do them cheaper, better, faster. I don't know much about "better", but cheaper and faster is definitely an advantage to the Chinese people.<p>To be fair though, if we honestly believe that everyone's life is of equal value, then should the work not go to those who need it most? Those who live in countries where a factory job is the height of what they can hope to achieve? It's our obligation, as those who have the opportunity, to pursue the jobs that aren't available to the world's starving people.<p>Off the top of my head, around 500k-1M people are now involved in developing phone applications.  This is a whole industry that did not exist 5 years ago.  American economists would rejoice that as a nation, the US is getting involved in higher value proposition jobs at the expense of losing commoditized, low-barrier-of-entry work.  Of course, the measurement of human suffering to by those who cannot or will not transition gets lost in the shuffle.