Life In The Third World 'sweatshops'
killswitch
Join Date: 2003-02-05 Member: 13141Members, Constellation
Join Date: 2003-02-05 Member: 13141Members, Constellation
<div class="IPBDescription">Do we need regulation?</div> At my University it is a regular occurance to see posters of 'fair trade' (that is workers paid a certain amount of money per hour) and boycotts against various businesses that pay low wages to third world workers. The argument is the working conditions are deplorable and the goods can be produced cheaper, which drives out domestic producers.
Proponents of third world labor say they are providing badly needed jobs, and that preventing such hiring would only impoverish the people more. They also argue that third world labor is more unproductive, their countries lack decent infrastructure, and the goods must be transported back to the states. All of these increase the cost of the good and justifies the low wages.
My question is: What policies/legislation, if any, should be enacted in the US given the above situation? Please clearly state the policy and why it would work, or why you think policies aren't necessary.
Proponents of third world labor say they are providing badly needed jobs, and that preventing such hiring would only impoverish the people more. They also argue that third world labor is more unproductive, their countries lack decent infrastructure, and the goods must be transported back to the states. All of these increase the cost of the good and justifies the low wages.
My question is: What policies/legislation, if any, should be enacted in the US given the above situation? Please clearly state the policy and why it would work, or why you think policies aren't necessary.
Comments
The main problem is a clear goal among a consensus of people. Sure, conscientious people may understand the problem, but outside an organized effort it would quite literally take an act of Congress which would certainly arise conflicts among groups of people that think that sweatshops are ok.
In any clarity, the best solution would simply to place high tariffs on those types of products produced in sweatshops and provide humanitarian aid to rebuild the infrastructure of any particular nation.
The main problem is a clear goal among a consensus of people. Sure, conscientious people may understand the problem, but outside an organized effort it would quite literally take an act of Congress which would certainly arise conflicts among groups of people that think that sweatshops are ok.
In any clarity, the best solution would simply to place high tariffs on those types of products produced in sweatshops and provide humanitarian aid to rebuild the infrastructure of any particular nation. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
First of all, who the crap LIKES sweatshops. Secondly there wouldn't be all that red tape if the greed monger companies weren't doing it.
I don't think anyone <b>likes</b> sweatshops. That isn't the question at hand. What we should be asking is:
What are the alternatives to sweatshops, and what regulations (if any) can we impose that would cause this?
For example, one could impose tariffs against such countries. As Ryo mentioned, tariffs: a) increase the domestic price of the good, b) cause the overseas producer to be less competetive, and c) increase domestic production of the good.
In such a case, the only real beneficiaries are the domestic producers. Worse, those third world laborers who may have been toiling away in a sweatshop at $0.70/h are now unemployed and toiling away in poverty makig $0.00/h.
One could also mandate that these countries pass minimum wage laws. This also has its share of problems. Say in China for example the going-rate of a sweatshop worker is $0.50/h. If minimum wage laws are imposed, to say $2/h, what happens?
It'd be nice to think these American companies will eat the loss and pay quadruple the salary, but more realistically they will pick up their business and move it to another country where the workers are more productive. The end result is once again unemployment.
You practically answered your own question. Corporate interests who get goods made in sweatshops sure like them. And... define red tape.
These are ideals Communist, but what effect will it have on the US and on the third world workers?
1. Get rid of them.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Get rid of sweatshops? Assuming we can develop some soft or measurable criteria for a sweatshop, let's see what happens if the sweatshops are shutdown.
First and foremost, the workers are now unemployed. Secondly, the GDP of the country decreases. Thirdly, the US must now buy goods from a more expensive competetitor.
Net result: Third world much worse off, US worse off, inefficient competetitor better off.
2. Force them to pay them properly (minimum wage?)
Minimum wage has a history of causing unemployment. Let's look at it:
If you're making $0.70/h, what happens if minimum wage increases to $2/h? It's nice to think that the businesses will just swallow the loss and almost triple their employees wages, but in reality they will either shutdown right away, or shutdown in the near future. In either case the workers become unemployed.
The problem with the third world is productivity. American workers are up to 10 times more productive than third world workers, and therefore make 10 times as much money. When your workers are only producing $1 worth of goods an hour, it doesn't make sense to employ them at $2/h.
Nobody likes sweatshops communist. The question is what can we do about them, if anything? Regulating is a nice sentiment, but is also highly destructive in its good intentions.
Why do people automatically assume that the people working at sweatshops are starving?
If they're working at a job that they're starving at there's two possibilities:
1) They're stupid.
2) There is *no* other work available.
Which of these is the most likely? No corporation holds a gun to a person's
head and forces them to be employed. I'd wager that these people are getting
paid right around the average wage for the country that they're employed in.
Dumping money into this will *not* help anything. Imagine taking a random
selection of Americans and giving them all the equivalent of Bill Gate's fortune.
Can you imagine the massive social problems this would cause?
I don't know my history all that well, but didn't we ( Canada, US, Britain, etc...)
all go through stages like these on our own? i.e. Moving from an agricultural based
economies to a low-end manufacturing based economies and so on up until our technological/information based economies? To me, it appears moreover they're going through the exact stages we had to go through - and I dunno about this, but wouldn't accelerating that lead to problems? Already, South Korea and India, both of whom had sweatshops and such are moving up and are on the horizon of being economic powerhouses (even more so with India's large available workforce.)
Overall what I'm trying to say is that we can't evaluate these other countries economies, societies and governments from *our* perspectives.
-calldown