What would be a good way to respond to this?

[The Red Next Door]

Well if that was the case then the unemployment figures in the US would be astronomical. There are certain, actually, there are Many MANY jobs that people in other countries just cannot do. However, labor-intensive jobs, or putting things together, which do not require high level of skill or education, can be done overseas, and in my opinion, should be done overseas. It's business smarts. You go into business to make profit, not to be a philanthropist. Philanthropy stems from those people that run their businesses so well and are so profitable they want to give back to the community.

And you'd be surprised how many big corporations take the time to invest heavily into improving conditions even to their employees in third world nations.

PepsiCo for example is spending a ton of it's money helping and creating systems in poorer countries where they have factories, find better, more efficient ways of conserving water, or cleaning water.

[zimmerwald1915]

Well if that was the case then the unemployment figures in the US would be astronomical. There are certain, actually, there are Many MANY jobs that people in other countries just cannot do. However, labor-intensive jobs, or putting things together, which do not require high level of skill or education, can be done overseas, and in my opinion, should be done overseas. It's business smarts. You go into business to make profit, not to be a philanthropist. Philanthropy stems from those people that run their businesses so well and are so profitable they want to give back to the community.

And you'd be surprised how many big corporations take the time to invest heavily into improving conditions even to their employees in third world nations.

PepsiCo for example is spending a ton of it's money helping and creating systems in poorer countries where they have factories, find better, more efficient ways of conserving water, or cleaning water.
Obviously this is some cappie you're debating, but it'd be nice to know the context in which he posted it.

Not knowing the context, it's difficult to advise. However, a fair counter-argument might be that wages are kept low by the interplay between international capitalism and national states. The working class is divided by borders, which make it difficult for it to struggle in multiple countries for higher wages. The system we've got gives much more power to the capitalists than to workers, and the capitalists will use that power to retain and expand that power at the expense of workers' livelihoods. This is poorly formulated, so context, again, is appreciated, so that it may be better formulated.

[SocialismOrBarbarism]

As he said, " You go into business to make profit, not to be a philanthropist." If Walmart is giving money to a school, it's not out of the goodness of their hearts but to improve their image and increase the amount of people that shop there.

[The Red Next Door]

Obviously this is some cappie you're debating, but it'd be nice to know the context in which he posted it.

Not knowing the context, it's difficult to advise. However, a fair counter-argument might be that wages are kept low by the interplay between international capitalism and national states. The working class is divided by borders, which make it difficult for it to struggle in multiple countries for higher wages. The system we've got gives much more power to the capitalists than to workers, and the capitalists will use that power to retain and expand that power at the expense of workers' livelihoods. This is poorly formulated, so context, again, is appreciated, so that it may be better formulated.
it was a respond to this
"the evidence is when the facts that it cost a lot to take care of people, so why not go somewhere, where you can pay someone 2 dollars. for 20 hours."

i am debating why companies ship jobs overseas and he is saying that it is because of union, why people ship jobs overseas.

[zimmerwald1915]

it was a respond to this
"the evidence is when the facts that it cost a lot to take care of people, so why not go somewhere, where you can pay someone 2 dollars. for 20 hours."

i am debating why companies ship jobs overseas and he is saying that it is because of union, why people ship jobs overseas.
If by "because of unions" he means "because of higher labor costs" he's right. I don't think anybody disputes the fact that capitalists ship jobs from one country to another based on the comparative labor costs. The issue in dispute, it seems to me, is whether such a race to the bottom is the only way to organize an economy. It is, of course, endemic to capitalism, but then again capitalism isn't the only possible economy, is it?

[Raightning]

You could point out that the gains given back to the community by such corporations are far less than the value of the labour exploited for them. You could also note that given that international laws are inconsistent, by encouraging such measures you're encouraging companies to go where they can exploit the laws (i.e. where they can commit human rights violations).

Basically, the best argument is that the race to the bottom that he's describing isn't good for these countries, because it represents a drain on their resources to richer countries (labour being used to produce far more than the wages paid should bring about), and encourages a race to the bottom in basic ethics too.

[ZombieGrits]

Maybe besides some better more concrete reason that I can't think of right now ;) you could point out that by providing electricity and clean water the Pepsi corp. now has a fantastic amount of leverage to put on their workers if the need be. If the workers don't like something the corp. is doing, they can't strike because then the corp. could just cease to provide utilities

EDIT: the situation may be such as to prevent this from happening, but i'm just assuming that pepsi corp. is using the tried-and-true "company town" model