Yale - There are approximately 250 million workers in the United States and the European Union currently earning about $85 a day, most of whom also benefited from a post-1945 social contract specifically designed to avoid the class tensions and political extremism of the 1930s. But the standard of living of these workers in the North or West has been challenged already for decades now by the 90 million workers in Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. There workers have increasingly been able to produce automobiles, electrical goods, computers, textiles and other wares of equal quality, though at lower prices, than could European and American workers.

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