Afaik, no one's ever done an actual quantitative analysis, but if the US was barred from exploiting the global south tomorrow the standard of living for all US Americans (other than the rich) would plummet. It wouldn't even be a recession, more like all of capitalism just seizing up. iPhones now cost like $5k and no one could afford them anyway. I think it would be orders of magnitude worse than what the Russians had to deal with in the 90s with their "shock therapy". It's truly astounding how dependent we are on exploiting labor and resources in the global south. Like... damn near everything we own was made by people making shit wages and living in conditions that would make US Americans cry after living in them for a few hours.
It pisses me off so much that 99% of US Americans think their lifestyle of cheap, plentiful treats is the ultimate evidence that capitalism works. They say "look how much stuff we have" and compare it to what folks in AES states had. They never think about there are like 100+ countries out there that are every bit as capitalistic as the USA. And yet they are living in crushing poverty. Why is the US a symbol of the success of capitalism but poor countries don't reflect it's weaknesses?
The standard of living that most people in the US enjoy is more thanks to the exploitation of the workers and resources of the global south than it is to some inherent positive quality of capitalism. Take that away and US Americans would have a very different life from what they have come to expect. For the working class in the US, without all that exploitation I don't see how our lives would be materially different from workers in the global south.
And I haven't even gotten into how much of our lifestyle is driven by environmental exploitation! US Americans consume resources at something like 5X what is considered a sustainable rate. Force us to live sustainably and that would be another huge blow to treatflow and the "success" of capitalis.
Thank you for pointing this out. A lot of the western left are pampered as to the conditions of most of the global proletariat.
Consider how upset nerds in America get when their GPUs got a 25% tariff and huge scalping that results in $800 cards now retailing for $2000 or more.
Now consider that kind of unequal exchange is the norm for most of the world, not the exception. The vast majority of the global population cannot afford computer components.
The top 10% of chinese incomes have a vastly smaller footprint than the bottom 10% of American incomes. And that's the carbon floor for the US. Imagine how much the top 10% uses.
Damn. Would love a source if it’s at hand (no worries if not)