Sweatshops Benefit the Poor

[Toro]

and this validates sweat shops how? Are you going to tell me that slavery BENEFITS slaves because it takes blacks out of the jungle to places that are safe from malaria and jungle cats?


WOW. This thread is nothing short of retarded.

The slavery analogy is a poor one. Those who worked in the sweatshop did so voluntarily because it almost always paid the best wages. The sweatshop was the best alternative for those who worked in it. It provided opportunity to improve their lives.

Why would you be against people improving their lives?

 

[Shogun]

your opinion of what constitutes a poor analogy is about as relevant to me as your excuses to validate sweat shops. By suggesting, and this really IS all your OP boils down to, that paupers would RATHER be toiiing away in a fucking slave shop than starving in the ghetto really isn't impressive, dude. For real. Ever wonder why those sweatshop loving countries that you enjoy so much don't have the kind of stable consumer base that WE do; a product OF strong labor unions and more worth assigned to labor than your standard WSJ capitalista wants to allow? Why the fuck does INDIA and CHINA need to use the US like it's economic tampon with all THEIR people, dude? WHY? Because people like you post shit like this which tries to rationalize paying slave wages because "getting paid slave wages beats eating dirt in a ghetto". SLAVES with noting ELSE to fucking choose DO NOT SIMPLY MAKE THE FUCKING CHOICE TO WORK FOR SLAVE WAGES. Jesus fucking christ. So, if a Southern SLAVE "chooses" to walk out to the field istead of get his ass whupped by his owner does that make him complicit if the fucking ARRANGEMENT? fuck no.


I'm not against people impreoving their lives. What i've against are bullshit arguments used by capitalistas used to rationalize their slave class motivations in maintaining the cheapest pool of labor possible. You people used the SAME argument to defend Nafta.. and, instead of RAISING mexican wages it LOWERED American wages. If the prolatariat wants a fucking living wage you can always find ANOTHER desperate slave to fill his place, eh good plantation master?

 

[RodISHI]

Right to work did the same thing. It lowered wages and anyone that did not like it were told to lump it.

 

[Toro]

your opinion of what constitutes a poor analogy is about as relevant to me as your excuses to validate sweat shops. By suggesting, and this really IS all your OP boils down to, that paupers would RATHER be toiiing away in a fucking slave shop than starving in the ghetto really isn't impressive, dude. For real. Ever wonder why those sweatshop loving countries that you enjoy so much don't have the kind of stable consumer base that WE do; a product OF strong labor unions and more worth assigned to labor than your standard WSJ capitalista wants to allow? Why the fuck does INDIA and CHINA need to use the US like it's economic tampon with all THEIR people, dude? WHY? Because people like you post shit like this which tries to rationalize paying slave wages because "getting paid slave wages beats eating dirt in a ghetto". SLAVES with noting ELSE to fucking choose DO NOT SIMPLY MAKE THE FUCKING CHOICE TO WORK FOR SLAVE WAGES. Jesus fucking christ. So, if a Southern SLAVE "chooses" to walk out to the field istead of get his ass whupped by his owner does that make him complicit if the fucking ARRANGEMENT? fuck no.


I'm not against people impreoving their lives. What i've against are bullshit arguments used by capitalistas used to rationalize their slave class motivations in maintaining the cheapest pool of labor possible. You people used the SAME argument to defend Nafta.. and, instead of RAISING mexican wages it LOWERED American wages. If the prolatariat wants a fucking living wage you can always find ANOTHER desperate slave to fill his place, eh good plantation master?

Oh, please. Self-righteous moral indignation doesn't put food in people's mouths. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone could ride out on their unicorn to their magical money tree on their manicured property and pay for whatever they want? Or, on planet earth, for many millions of people, the option is often one of working in a factory that pays the highest wages in the area or being a prostitute. You condemn them to a life of prostitution because your fantastic view of the world gives them no other choice by taking away the only viable options they may have. Hope you sleep well at night knowing you support policies that put girls into whorehouses.

Oxfam makes a surprising discovery.

Oxfam's Review of Unilever in Indonesia Yields Surprising Findings - Los Angeles Times

 

[RodISHI]

Saying sweatshops help the poor is not solving the problem either when more than likely you benefit from those working in them.

Truth is there is enough wealth and food in this world to sustain everyone on it. But you have people who would rather rule over others that will not allow for that world wealth to be distrubuted so these people can live in decency also.

The programmed would prefer to think that sending over weapons and young adults to keep these people fighting by war rather than by educating people how to be competive so they can live in that capitalistic society y'all want to call civilized.

I cannot agree with this program when it is my grandboys that the major capitalist want to send into that war so they can stay on top and live in luxury.

 

[Agnapostate]

Yeah, Smoot-Hawley worked really well.

Smoot-Hawley? That's another matter altogether. The consequences of trade liberalization are most evident in the consequences inflicted by NAFTA, for instance.

 

[Toro]

Saying sweatshops help the poor is not solving the problem either when more than likely you benefit from those working in them.

First, most of the people who have come in to the sweatshops are from subsistence farms where they shit in ditches that run outside their one-room shacks. In China, the wages on the coast in factories are upwards 400% more than what they made on the subsistence farms. Since I rarely shop at Wal-Mart, it is they, not me, who are benefiting the most.

The people who work in the sweatshops acquire skills and become more productive. As they become more productive, their wages rise as rising productivity encourages more complex investment, which in turn pays higher wages. This is what has happened in China as many of the original factories that set up in coastal China 20 years ago are moving to lower wage countries since they are being priced out of the local economy.

Second, I benefiting from their work is the point. Because I am willing to buy something they made, they benefit as well.

 

[Toro]

Yeah, Smoot-Hawley worked really well.

Smoot-Hawley? That's another matter altogether. The consequences of trade liberalization are most evident in the consequences inflicted by NAFTA, for instance.

No. Smoot-Hawley is exactly the matter.

Generally, nations that have more open trade and investment policies are richer, grow faster and lift standards of living more than those that do not. I have posted several studies with the corroborating data for you before.

 

[RodISHI]

Saying sweatshops help the poor is not solving the problem either when more than likely you benefit from those working in them.

First, most of the people who have come in to the sweatshops are from subsistence farms where they shit in ditches that run outside their one-room shacks. In China, the wages on the coast in factories are upwards 400% more than what they made on the subsistence farms. Since I rarely shop at Wal-Mart, it is they, not me, who are benefiting the most.

The people who work in the sweatshops acquire skills and become more productive. As they become more productive, their wages rise as rising productivity encourages more complex investment, which in turn pays higher wages. This is what has happened in China as many of the original factories that set up in coastal China 20 years ago are moving to lower wage countries since they are being priced out of the local economy.

Second, I benefiting from their work is the point. Because I am willing to buy something they made, they benefit as well.

So you buy the shit made in China from the sweatshops but you do not buy it at Walmart?


The quality of life shit'n in the ditch beats the hell out of being a slave at some factory run by a bunch of greed mongers where your life and quality of life means nothing to the sold out creep running the joint. Unless you have lived both ways do not tell me you know personally which one is the better way to life.

 

[Toro]

So you buy the shit made in China from the sweatshops but you do not buy it at Walmart?

I was speaking figuratively.

The quality of life shit'n in the ditch beats the hell out of being a slave at some factory run by a bunch of greed mongers where your life and quality of life means nothing to the sold out creep running the joint. Unless you have lived both ways do not tell me you know personally which one is the better way to life.

Except that most people who work in sweatshops are not "slaves." Most people who work in a sweatshop make a better living than they did beforehand.

Why don't you read what the people say in the OP?

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous. ...

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports. ...

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

 

[Againsheila]

So you buy the shit made in China from the sweatshops but you do not buy it at Walmart?

I was speaking figuratively.

The quality of life shit'n in the ditch beats the hell out of being a slave at some factory run by a bunch of greed mongers where your life and quality of life means nothing to the sold out creep running the joint. Unless you have lived both ways do not tell me you know personally which one is the better way to life.

Except that most people who work in sweatshops are not "slaves." Most people who work in a sweatshop make a better living than they did beforehand.

Why don't you read what the people say in the OP?

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous. ...

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports. ...

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

I believe the article you quote is slanted. How about the kid that lost his hand in the machine at the factory and then was kicked out on the street? How about the girl that ran her hand through the sewing machine accidentally and lost her job because she couldn't come to work the next day? What about the women that are hired but not the men because they might start a union?

I was in Mexico before our factories, 40 year ago. Believe me, it was a better place than it is now, we ruined it with our factories, our pollution and our sweatshops.

 

[Toro]

I believe the article you quote is slanted. How about the kid that lost his hand in the machine at the factory and then was kicked out on the street? How about the girl that ran her hand through the sewing machine accidentally and lost her job because she couldn't come to work the next day? What about the women that are hired but not the men because they might start a union?

I was in Mexico before our factories, 40 year ago. Believe me, it was a better place than it is now, we ruined it with our factories, our pollution and our sweatshops.

You will always find examples of people being treated poorly. However, wages are usually higher at sweatshops. As I mentioned above, the wages on coastal China are as much as 400% higher than they are were the workers came from. If you offered Americans wages that were 400% higher than what they were making before, most people would take it. And most Americans are not living a subsistence lifestyle. If you wonder if you are going to starve next month because it does not rain, having a regular paycheck that pays you 4x as much as you did tilling your acre of land is a far better option.

Consider this - over the past 20 years, something like 100 million Chinese people have migrated from the interior of China to the coast. Most have done so voluntarily to work in the sweatshops. It is the largest migration in human history. And they are doing so by choice. Do you really think that a hundred million people would voluntarily move to make their lives worse?

 

[Anguille]

Second, I benefiting from their work is the point. Because I am willing to buy something they made, they benefit as well.

But are you both benefiting equally?

I'm sure during the industrial revolution the same sort of rationalizations were used by the robber barons.

 

[Toro]

Second, I benefiting from their work is the point. Because I am willing to buy something they made, they benefit as well.

But are you both benefiting equally?

I'm sure during the industrial revolution the same sort of rationalizations were used by the robber barons.

If you go from making $1 a day to $2 a day, you have doubled your income, and your life has improved more than the double in pay since you worry less about starving.

However, if the cost of a shirt goes from $20 to $15, it doesn't effect me much.

And the industrial revolution and robber barons were two very different things.

It is also important to understand that the Industrial Revolution improved the lives of people enormously. For 1000 years, average wages stayed about the same. From about 1800 on, though, living standards exploded.

http://www1.worldbank.org/prem/lessons1990s/

Now, living standards are exploding upwards in East Asia, and it is in large part due to the industrialization that is occurring, as it did in the West over the past two centuries.

 

[RodISHI]

So you buy the shit made in China from the sweatshops but you do not buy it at Walmart?

I was speaking figuratively.

The quality of life shit'n in the ditch beats the hell out of being a slave at some factory run by a bunch of greed mongers where your life and quality of life means nothing to the sold out creep running the joint. Unless you have lived both ways do not tell me you know personally which one is the better way to life.

Except that most people who work in sweatshops are not "slaves." Most people who work in a sweatshop make a better living than they did beforehand.

Why don't you read what the people say in the OP?

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

“I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous. ...

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.

Manufacturing is one sector that can provide millions of jobs. Yet sweatshops usually go not to the poorest nations but to better-off countries with more reliable electricity and ports. ...

Look, I know that Americans have a hard time accepting that sweatshops can help people. But take it from 13-year-old Neuo Chanthou, who earns a bit less than $1 a day scavenging in the dump. She’s wearing a “Playboy” shirt and hat that she found amid the filth, and she worries about her sister, who lost part of her hand when a garbage truck ran over her.

“It’s dirty, hot and smelly here,” she said wistfully. “A factory is better.”

Figuratively speaking I believe you are trying to pump other people full of shit in order to keep the luxury items the few get to enjoy while others including children worldwide suffer.

Global child labour trends 2000-2004

There are an estimated 218 million child labourers worldwide. 126 million are in hazardous work. While the incidence of childrens work is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, the largest number of child workers are found in the Asian-Pacific region.

 

[Toro]

Figuratively speaking I believe you are trying to pump other people full of shit in order to keep the luxury items the few get to enjoy while others including children worldwide suffer.

Global child labour trends 2000-2004

There are an estimated 218 million child labourers worldwide. 126 million are in hazardous work. While the incidence of childrens work is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, the largest number of child workers are found in the Asian-Pacific region.

Of course child labor is a terrible thing. That's why we want to get as many people out of poverty as possible. Parents do not put their kids to work because they want to. Parents put their kids to work because they have to. According to the World Bank, in 1980, children aged 10 to 14 comprised 23% of the labor force. By 2000, that number had fallen to 12%. For all children under 18, the percentage of children working had fallen from ~35%-40% to ~25%. Improvements have occurred because the percentage of poor has fallen and there is less imperative to put kids to work.

Besides, that obscures the point. Most people who work in sweatshops are not kids. They are adults.

 

[Ravi]

I don't get why this argument exists. Of course in some countries working in a sweatshop beats starving to death. The only reason I ever buy Nikes is because I feel like I'm keeping some poor sap in a third world country from dying or being a prostitute. It's certainly not for the questionable benefit of having a swoosh on my foot.

 

[RodISHI]

Figuratively speaking I believe you are trying to pump other people full of shit in order to keep the luxury items the few get to enjoy while others including children worldwide suffer.

Global child labour trends 2000-2004

There are an estimated 218 million child labourers worldwide. 126 million are in hazardous work. While the incidence of childrens work is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, the largest number of child workers are found in the Asian-Pacific region.

Of course child labor is a terrible thing. That's why we want to get as many people out of poverty as possible. Parents do not put their kids to work because they want to. Parents put their kids to work because they have to. According to the World Bank, in 1980, children aged 10 to 14 comprised 23% of the labor force. By 2000, that number had fallen to 12%. For all children under 18, the percentage of children working had fallen from ~35%-40% to ~25%. Improvements have occurred because the percentage of poor has fallen and there is less imperative to put kids to work.

Besides, that obscures the point. Most people who work in sweatshops are not kids. They are adults.

I see so is that why we also allow companies like Monsanto to put terminator genes into agriculture products so we can promote freedom to work in a factory and depend on the corporates to feed us?

All in the name of good will and stomping out poverty. Sure.

 

[Shogun]

Prime examples of the danger of free market capitalistas who would support slavery because picking cotton on a farm for room and board, apparently, beats the chance of getting eaten by a fucking lion while hunting for food in Africa. We are supposed to rationalize wage slaves just so Toro can feel good about his investment capital. Pathetic. These are reasons why Marx hit the nail on the head and why capitalistas HATE talking about the value of labor from the comfort of their easy chair.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

The simple fact of the matter is that sweatshops are the best opportunity some people have, and they take it. If the alternative was prostitution or death you're going to choose a sweatshop as well.