The Minimum Wage And Climate Change

If the economic reasons for not implementing a minimum wage were not enough already, here’s another one: Climate Change.

Since the introduction of the World Trade Organization in 1995 U.S. companies have been let free to manufacture their products wherever they found the best economic conditions, that is cheap labour, and for the most part that meant China and Vietnam.

With more than 1 billion units sold in less than 10 years, the iPhone is probably one of the most sold item in the history of mankind.

Apple, a company who sprung out of a garage in Northern California, have always outsourced the production of every unit to the infamous Chinese company Foxconn, whose labour conditions are so harsh that there’s an entire Wikipedia page dedicated to the long string of its employees suicide.

If that was not enough to give you pause every time you pick up your iPhone consider the following: the distance between Foxconn iPhone plant (Huizhou) and Apple headquarters (Cupertino) is 6,742 miles.

In other words all of the hundreds of millions iPhones that have been sold in US or Canada (iPhone biggest markets until recently) have to travel thousand and thousand of miles contributing in God knows how much pollution.