alt Hacker NewsLabor costs are orders of magnitude more than costs added by environmental or labor standards.
The average hourly rate in the US is $42.50. In Vietnam is is $6.30, in the Philippines it is $5.40[1]
These aren't people living in poverty - they live well.
OTOH environmental legislation costs are harder to come by, but [2] estimates around 10% in a number of case studies. To be specific, that would mean US cost would be $4 less - that's still around 6 times the cost of Vietnam
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-hourly-earnings
[2] https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/report...
That paper discusses only the effect of increasing energy costs, and seems highly dubious as well. Their conclusion is that increases in energy prices would have a small effect that could even be positive. We got to see what happens after increasing energy prices since 2022. The effects have been neither modest nor positive. They studied only modest changes from the past, but they were speaking of energy costs shifts on a scale aiming to shift Earth's climate, which is not modest. The cost is going to be much more than 10%.
Also the US economy is increasingly polarized so averages mislead. The median hourly is a bit under $21. [1] You also need to account for what happened to the economy after we start shipping these affected jobs overseas. That's an entire segment of the economy which is going to influence wages, consumption, and other distributions. I agree wages are always going to be a major factor, but we can also afford a premium because shipping stuff half way around the world isn't free, the broader economic impact of having less control over your supply line is itself also a significant cost, and so on.
[1] - https://data.bls.gov/PDQWeb/le