Yes it is tongue-in-cheek. I know it's a good proposition for the poor people of that country. But it is pretty widely viewed as exploitative through a wider world lens.
> But it is pretty widely viewed as exploitative through a wider world lens.
If so, I hope we get exploited even more :)
I remember Planet Money doing a pretty good story on this where they spoke with sweatshop workers in Bangladesh.
Relative to the labor wage of employees in the US, they were earning absolute pennies.
Relative to the places they came from? They doubled their income and were functionally free from concerns about things like famine and infected drinkable water.
Exploitation of labor is a complicated topic (and really, the meta-fight is, as is so often the case, not between nations; it's between labor and capital. Offshoring is just another form of scabbing, but the world is not yet small enough that one should expect a fresh-off-the-farm factory worker who just had their prospects opened up to join a global strike because people in the US want to make $15/hr).
(Related: As is so often the case, if you want things better for your folks back home, lift everyone out of poverty and make everyone safe. People are less likley to take "slave-wage" jobs if the alternative is not subsistence and high risk of unpredictable outcome due to localized supply disruption, disease outbreak, or war).