Posted on 05/04/2013 4:32:40 PM PDT by rickmichaels
All seriousness aside, sometimes the only thing worse than working in a sweatshop is not having a sweatshop to work in.
Imagine - $.12 for labor. You couldn’t even get a member of the Garment Worker’s Union to put thread on their machine for $.12, let alone sew anything.
People want jobs brought back to the U.S. but how many of these same people would be willing to pay the extra cost for a knit shirt, the staple of many wardrobes, even if it were made in the USA. Some of us can no longer afford it, even if we wanted to.
Used to make tee shirts for the guys in my family but even decent material is getting hard to find.
>> What does that $14 shirt really cost?
$14
Rejoice! Free trade at its finest-how it works on the other side. Remember Free Trade always means cheap and nasty, in more than one sense.
It would be much better if those people had no jobs and just starved.
Women around here buy a lot of them.
But I think the average American Walmart/Target shopper would flee in horror if confronted with that price tag. They've demonstrated over and over that they want the Bangladeshi stuff, regardless of how it was made.
I go to the thrift store and get that $98 dolar shirt for $2.
Who pays $14 for a shirt? Not I.
Retail prices for underwear, tee shirts, knit shirts and the like didn’t drop when trade policy permitted offshoring of production. Retail margins jumped into the sixties and remained there.
And the permanent stains of somebody else’s sweat under the arms make it the perfect modern fashion statement. :)
Of course what these commies never stop to ask is what kind of standard of living would these workers have if they didn’t work in a garment factory? In Bangladesh many people go hungry every day and would give anything to have one of those jobs.
Yes of course they did. How do you think Walmart got so big?
In more prosperous times I’d buy very nice broadcloth Egyptian cotton dress shirts retail at a price nearing that of having them custom tailored. Would have bought tailored if they were available here, but tgat’s a big city amenity. Off the rack or not, they still lasted forever though. The whites would get cycled into casual wear after several years due to yellowing somewhat, they’d no longer get that up-and-coming executive blinding white, lol. Man, the money I’ve wasted. Haven’t been a corporate drone for many years.
Except that thrift stores are now dumping grounds for Nordstrom, Macy’s, etc, when seasons or fashions change, or a button goes missing.
The actual retail margin is, I read today in the WSJ, 1-2%.
Er, no. Free Trade, by definition, means the absence of violence.
What do you mean "now"? I believe Woolworth pioneered that practice back in the 1930's.
I notice a lot of men’s suits are fabrique au Canada.
You want to talk discount mass, compare Sam Walton’s Walmart that prided itself in carrying American made goods. Multipacks and polybag programs existed then too. They were no cheaper after than before. Where cheaper did arise you’ll find lower quality goods. Those Polos you find at TJMaxx aren’t the same as the ones in Macy’s, they were made to spec to be sold at that price with a specific margin requirement at a specific retail preprice.
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