Topic: informative
A World Connected
The website linked above is an awesome website to go to in order to read about world issues. It's a nice point of view on a lot of the big issues affecting the world and its dealings.
One of my favorite issues as of lately would be sweatshops. Not that I'm a big fan of sweatshops or anything, but this site (out of many others) helps to dissolve the myth that all sweatshops are bad simply by not paying their workers "enough" (or a "living wage" as many say). What most don't consider is the difference between the "real wage" and the "nominal wage." A nominal wage is a literal dollar amount you receive. For example, $10/hr. The real wage is what the money buys for you. Here in America, an 8 hr day at $10/hr will earn you enough to pay for most necessities (food, clothing and shelter). The $80 earned in that one day will easily sustain you for a day, hopefully even 3 or 4.
An 8 hr work day at $10/hr in a Third World Country, however, will allow you the opportunity to purchase much more than you could in America. The $80 that would be earned that day could most likely sustain their life for a whole month.
This is why a corporation with a manufacturing plant in a Third World Country does not pay the same as it would in America. The worker in the other country is more likely to get $2 - $3 per day (depending on the country of course, it could be much wider than that still). Unfair you say? Not really, considering a meal in this same country can be purchased for 10 to 20 cents.
The ethical corporation would then, of course, pass on the savings from paying less in wages (in the Third World Country as compared to the US) by selling the products produced for less. This of course is very ideal, and some (or perhaps "many"?) companies do not do so *cough cough* Nike *cough cough*
But, the nominal wage in this Third World (low by our standards, decent or "good" to their standards) then leads to a higher real wage (i.e. higher spending power) in the US. Children in poorer countries stay off the street and earn money, people in America get to buy things cheaper. Certainly it would be best if children were in school and they had at least one parent working in order to raise them, but that is not always possible (in any nation). So this is about as close to a win-win situation as we can get.
One article in particular emphasizes not only the danger in closing legitimate sweatshops but the benefit to the country to have them. The argument being that sweatshops actually give jobs to many who would have much worse options for employment otherwise (prositution, drugs, crime, etc). Boycotting such products and forcing the shop's closure, studies have shown, leads those shop employees to tend towards said negative results.
Furthermore, the article mentions, every prosperous nation today (USA, Britain, France, Sweden, Germany etc) has had its own "sweatshop days."
"Only with the prosperity brought by international trade, globalization?s adherents say, can a country then afford to demand better working conditions for its workers."
Bottom line, it boils down to this:
"Most free trade advocates agree, for example, that benefiting from slave labor is no better than theft. Sweatshop workers are often the envy of their communities -- they make more money than the farmhands or beggars, for example. But it?s important that they?re working in factories of their own free will. The key to building prosperity is choice, and if workers don?t have the option to quit, or to take a job with a factory across town offering better wages, the "free" in "free trade" is a misnomer, and the benefits of globalization are tainted."
So much for me posting what I had first planned: a website with a quick suggestion or stamp of approval to have you visit it. My "two cents" usually end up being 10 to 20...dollars...
