Mood:
chillin'Topic: informative
I categorized this under "informative" instead of just "rambling." I hope you agree :)
I was reading another blog (http://trueliberal0.tripod.com/) and the author mentioned sweat shops. (He also happened to be mentioning how the far left can go too far left sometimes).
Case in point: sweat shops.
Now how many of us think that manufacturing companies here should go from paying workers $7/hr + benefits, 40 hr work weeks, paid time off, sick leave, etc to moving their factories overseas, pay $1/day to the workers and give them little to no benefits? Well unless you happen to own the business (or are a hired financial advisor for them) you probably won't support that. "It's ridiculous" you probably say. "They shouldn't be allowed to get away with that!"
Well, the story, as they say, always has two sides. The "other side" was introduced to me by a man named Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times. In my humble opinion, I think he is an outstanding author. That's my opinion though, you're free to think whatever you want of him.
See, Nicholas and his wife travel abroad a lot. In one article, entitled Two Cheers for Sweatshops, Nicholas actually argues for sweatshops. "How can someone in their right mind do this?" you ask? Well, simple: he's been to those third world countries where these sweat shops are. He knows the conditions of these shops (not as bad as you can imagine, but not the best working environments either). He also knows the conditions of the children who are not able to get jobs at these sweatshops...of the sad truth behind child prostitution, drugs, and crime. Many families (as the article and others like it show) actually encourage their children to work in these shops. The families need money, and the parents don't want their kids turning to drugs or prostitution to get it.
"Fourteen years ago, we [Nicholas and his wife] moved to Asia and began reporting there. Like most Westerners, we arrived in the region outraged at sweatshops. In time, though, we came to accept the view supported by most Asians: that the campaign against sweatshops risks harming the very people it is intended to help." He goes on to explain situations that are reported in America, Michael Moore-style. For those who don't know, "Michael Moore-style" is when you take the truth and twist it and turn it a little bit and omit a few things so that it looks worse than it is.
Rather than sweat shop owners forcing the workers to work long hours, many sweat shop workers request it so as to make more money.
"It's actually pretty annoying how hard they want to work," said the factory manager, a Hong Kong man. "It means we have to worry about security and have a supervisor around almost constantly."
"$2/day for a nine hour shift, six days a week," definitely doesn't sound like a good deal for us, but to someone in a foreign land that is decent money. Comparing what they make to what we make is comparing apples to oranges: Nicholas went to a food stand in a nearby village there and paid the equivalent of 5 cents for a meal of leaves, rice, fish paste and fried beetles. Now where in American can you get a meal for 5 cents?
And then, there's the third side of this story: what paying $2/day to people in Thailand means for us Americans. It means, quite plainly, that we can go to a store and purchase something today for half the price we paid for it a few years ago.
As any intro econ teacher would tell you, it doesn't matter so much how much you make (nominal wage), but what you can buy with it (real wage). Who cares if you make $100/hr if the cheapest hamburger you can find is $300? Life would be much better for you if you made only $5/hr and paid $1 for a hamburger. (We are assuming, of course, that all other goods and services are on comparable terms to the hamburger.) In three hours of working in situation one, you could just barely afford to buy your hamburger; in situation two you could afford 15 hamburgers.
"What does this have to do with it?" you ask? Well, when people overseas produce our products cheaper than we can and in turn the companies that make them sell them to us at a reasonable mark-up, we are better off. Our "hamburgers" become cheaper.
Let's use clothing as an example. Today, let's say, you can find a sweater you like for $20 (regular price). Three years from now, you might find the exact same sweater and it will be $15 (regular price, not sales price). Did cotton fall upon the earth in great quantities and the over-abundance cause a lower price for sweaters? Or was it that the sweaters were made with less labor and capital? Most likely, #2. Now during those three years your wage probably didn't change all that much. Let's say, for the sake of making things easy, that today you make $10/hr, and in 3 years from now you just happen to make $15/hr. That's a good raise in just 3 years, but not completely out of line. Well, today you'd spend 2 hrs working in order to purchase the sweater ($20); in 3 years it will only take you one hours worth of work to purchase the sweater ($15).
What always has bothered me was Nike: they pay someone 15 cents a day to make shoes overseas, and then turn around and sell the shoes in America for over $100. From a business point of view it's brilliant (since they can get away with it). But morally I think it is reprehensible...and that is why I boycott Nike :)
It is hard to be in "support" of sweat shops, but most of them aren't as bad as the press and some activists here would have you believe. But sweat shops aren't all bad, like they'd have you believe. Certainly we don't want anyone suffering at work or being forced to work hours without rest or pay. But for those sweat shops that treat the workers humanely and keep children (and some adults for that matter) out of trouble, I say we should support them. That is why I stand behind Kristof and say "Two Cheers for Sweat Shops!"
