An Ignorance Problem--My Own.

Here we go.  Economics.  I have always struggled to grasp their slippery seal concepts (however cute).  There's a lot to grasp, and my brain is limited. 

However, here's one problem I've been exposed to recently: the low cost of labor.

If I'm an economist, I can think this is good, because, in short, the cost of goods will be cheaper, and our net collective savings will come in the form of our dollars going a longer way in our respective baskets.

Still, when we consider poverty, we basically come up with a set of standards that we find unacceptable. And when we chose low-cost labor (such labor that, annualized, returns less in income to participants than poverty rates dictate), we have a subset of the population living in standards that we have collectively deemed unacceptable through a poverty rate.

Now, how to solve poverty?

One way would have to be an attempt to universalize labor standards across the world.

Another idea seems to me to be to raise the price of goods to internalize all externalities.  To the extent that goods can be made cheaply because of other costs (deferred) we can chose to (i.e. regulate, I think is the only way) some of the costs of doing business.

Obviously, we can prop up those in poverty until they are in an acceptably un-impovereshed state through direct welfare type benefits as well.  However unpalatable to the political right, we actually spend more in welfare-type benefits than before welfare reform, if we include food stamp expenditures in the analysis.  The trick is that there are work incentives attached, so it doesn't seem unfair to the outside observer (forget about the daily experience of what this means).

Anyway, assuming we view jobs as a fundamental way to better our living standards, out of poverty, as a society, we would have to wrestle with the extremely low-pay, low-status jobs, jobs that exist, after all, because there is demand for them (there's just a LOT of unskilled supply too)--and somehow internationalize pay scales across currencies.  This is partially covered by the market in the form of returning cheap goods, but I don't think it is fully covered.  I don't have the numbers to back this up, though.  I don't have the time to find them right now because I have to go to work!