Through out the course of the semester Neoliberalism has been reoccurring multiple times. The two most significant aspects in Neoliberalism is the “Race to the Bottom” and “Global Value Chains”. Both aspects challenge the efforts of working people to improve their living standards. Is one more superior to the other? After doing some research and looking back in the semester both are equally important. The Neoliberal idea was to keep your skills ahead of the economy. This means by renewing skills to advance to other jobs. Not only improving your skills but to also find job security. A race to the bottom is a socio economic theory that occurs between states and overseas nations. When a particular area of production and trade becomes tense …show more content…
Wal-Mart has been one of the top retail store offering products at a very low price. But the low prices have had a huge affect on the companies that the retail store is doing business with. The businesses are forced to send jobs overseas because those businesses cannot be profitable if the labor cost more than they can gain. People today are losing jobs in the United States because of Wal-Mart’s actions to reduce prices as much as possible. “Wal-Mart is not just the world’s largest retailer. It’s the world’s largest company–bigger than ExxonMobil, General Motors, and General Electric” (Fishman). Wal-Mart’s drive to squeeze out costs has helped reduce prices for customers. Wal-Mart has been helping companies to be more efficient, focused, and faster. Both Wal-Mart and the businesses are continuing improvements. Moving manufacturing jobs offshore was very instrumental; they focused on lowering prices by helping suppliers set up operations in China and the surrounding areas of Eastern …show more content…
Global Value Chain is valued greatly specifically to Apple. Apple is a master at using supply chain to its advantage, out of the 600,000 people working for Apple only 50,000 of them actually work for Apple. The small portions of workers are in the United States, developing and modifying Apple products. Also a portion of the 50,000 employees that Apple has in the United States, they hold warehouses and distribution centers. The rest of the 550,000 employees are in China, Asia, and Europe. The reason behind this huge number of outsourced jobs is because of money. It is a lot cheaper to produce the product outside the United States. “It estimates that an iPhone would cost $4 more if it was built in the US, but crucially for Apple it would also mean the company had to pay a lot more tax on its profits” (Barker). With new emerging economies like Brazil, they are starting to assemble iPhones. Today Apple has over 30 countries around the world that supply the enormous