Basically, if you are simply acting in accordance to already existing unequal systems, then it is exploitative, even if people don't feel exploited. It takes a proactive stance, not a neutral stance, to combat exploitation. It's understandable that people from poorer countries will gladly accept lower wages and will be thankful for opportunities granted by a multinational corporation. Probably they are better off for it. Nevertheless, the corporation is still exploiting them. They are arbitraging in labor in an unfair labor market in which people are not free to change national allegiances. Corporations should pay a wage commensurate with people's skills and not based on where they happen to come from, not because it makes business sense, but because it is more fair. Yes, call me crazy, but I do expect people to act outside their own self interest.

That is a totally reasonable point of view, but it's important for USA to put its foot down to prevent this from being used as a loophole to pretty much all labor laws. Pretty soon US companies would only hire foreign nationals to do their work.

read up on mens rea

You mean, rich people have more to spend. You are perhaps morally opposed to redistributive effects of taxation, but you'll have a hard time arguing that it doesn't improve the spending power of the poor.

You got things confused. Government is supposed to act in the interest of all citizens. Businesses act in the interest of their shareholders, not the typical consumer. Sometimes these interests align, and sometimes they don't.

You don't personally know a good representative sample of people.

Exactly. To generalize an attribute to sex is sexism, because people aren't average. If we need strong people to be firefighters, then should we require that firefighters be men? No, because we can simply require people to pass a strength test.

And how does the most metabolically active female compare to the least metabolically active male?

That's actually what they do with the jails in many places.

Is crime dropping because of "tough on crime" or is it dropping because we phased out leaded gasoline?

There's no point in arguing with people like you, who think of poor people as poo. The only way your worldview could be redeemed is by experiencing poverty yourself.

Perhaps I should have emphasized progressive. It is very simple to collect a flat (regressive) tax at the point of sale. The store doesn't have the information to collect a progressive tax.

Never is too strong a word. Taxation does of course reduce people's buying power, but the numbers can be tweaked so that people can still buy houses and stuff while still funding government. There can be a progressive scheme if necessary, but the nature of wealth tax makes it already pretty progressive.