Posted on 07/28/2013 7:34:27 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Until three years ago I did not believe in magic. But that was before I began investigating how western brands perform a conjuring routine that makes the great Indian rope trick pale in comparison. Now I'm beginning to believe someone has cast a spell over the world's consumers.
This is how it works. Well Known Company makes shiny, pretty things in India or China. The Observer reports that the people making the shiny, pretty things are being paid buttons and, what's more, have been using children's nimble little fingers to put them together. There is much outrage, WKC professes its horror that it has been let down by its supply chain and promises to make everything better. And then nothing happens. WKC keeps making shiny, pretty things and people keep buying them. Because they love them. Because they are cheap. And because they have let themselves be bewitched.
Last week I revealed how poverty wages in India's tea industry fuel a slave trade in teenage girls whose parents cannot afford to keep them. Tea drinkers were naturally upset. So the ethical bodies that certified Assam tea estates paying a basic 12p an hour were wheeled out to give the impression everything would be made right.
For many consumers, that is enough. They want to feel that they are being ethical. But they don't want to pay more. They are prepared to believe in the brands they love. Companies know this. They know that if they make the right noises about behaving ethically, their customers will turn a blind eye.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
“Where do you find those, anyway? ..”
I purchase most of my casual clothes by ordering them via phone, and they are economical and made in the U.S..
Sometimes it takes a little effort to do the right thing.
So, share the details with us.
The hard truth is that if you do away with child labor in many parts of this world, you replace mass child slavery with mass child starvation. The commies don’t care about the kids (see Cambodia, Russia, China) they are just guilt tripping you. Economic freedom instead of corrupt bureaucracy will eventually help the kids but we can’t have that - India is a government of warm hearted socialists after all.
The media do their jobs reporting horrendous work conditions in Third World countries (well how couldn’t they, when over a thousand people die in a building collapse, or a rash of suicides happens at a Chinese plant?!), but are the Western agitators like the authoress of this article being helpful? I don’t know, I only recall that we are (nearly) all mighty proud of the so-called achievements of the so-called Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, which was organized and staffed by CPUSA agitators from New York and other Northern East Coast states, and funded by the $30 mill or so a year that the Soviets were sending to Gus Hall in Armand Hammer’s suitcases, don’t kid yourselves otherwise.
I tend to buy well-made clothing which costs more, but lasts for years.
I also supplement with things from... GOODWILL (gasp)
Mainly, I look for vintage T Shirts and such, but you'd be shocked at the high quality clothes you can find for a few bucks. Yeah, for the most part it's not new, although sometimes it is with labels still attached.
But in the Obama economy, we do what we must.
exactly how is the money going to help end child slavery?
Every Navy/Westpac veteran knows of what you speak. I found it shocking the number of young girls who were sold by their families. As near as I can tell, that was socially accepted... but who knows? Maybe their families lied and said the girl was working in a tailor shop.
Even if I didn't sample the wares, I generally bought the girls a coke, and maybe slipped them a few pesos.
It's one thing for an adult to choose the lifestyle, and frankly in some of these countries I can see the advantages (and the dangers), but for a young girl to be sold... awful.
The job of making clothes is the best job available to these people. If it wasn’t, they would select another job.
When Babe Ruth was a child, he worked making clothes at the St. Mary’s Industrial School for Boys. The factory he worked at made enough money to support the orphanage. He wasn’t an orphan, but rather an incorrigible child, placed there by his parents.
Certainly it wouldn’t be better if the orphans died, right?
Thanks for sharing the article. The meanness of most answers and the complete lack of charity towards the children slaving away for a pittance saddens me.
It is not Communism to be against child labor (not writing about family businesses that are not hazardous) and to believe people should be paid a wage that means they can afford the necessities of life.
Jesus wept.
Brand name clothing isn’t known for being cheap.
Go ahead and hire them at a good wage. Nobody is stopping you. The rest of will keep trying to survive in the real world.
If you think mass starvation in the third world for the unrealistic dream of turning a dump into a first world economy overnight is a good trade-off, then have at it.
People work those jobs because they are the best ones available in their country. Only someone who has so much compassion and love toward them would wish them all dead.
“”and to believe people should be paid a wage that means they can afford the necessities of life””
Then there is that mean, old, heartless thing called MATH that says if you raised their minimum wage in their country to the point where they can get their Beamers and Air Jordans, those jobs would vanish. Nobody is stopping you from opening your own factories and paying a substantially higher wage.
This is like saying that a burger flipper should be paid $50 an hour. What possible flight of fantasy would make a burger flipping job worth anywhere near $50? If you tried to force companies to pay more than the job is worth they will replace those people with robots.
A machine can easily make french fries and cook a meat patty and assemble a burger made to order. Plus, it won’t spit in your food for being a cracka.
Since when are “Air Jordans” and the rest of the crap you listed necessities of life? I also am sick of the excuse that slave labor and unsafe working conditions are justified because if we don’t tolerate it there will be no work at all.
I’m not writing about a mom and pop business which needs the children to pitch in to make a go of it. I’m not writing about using our cost of living and minimum wage as where the pay scale should be in the developing world.
I’m writing about multinational companies which sell their product in countries where people have been conned by ads into thinking a shirt with a swish logo must be worth $$$$ more than one without.
So just how would the whole economy of India collapse if these companies paid a wage that meant families no longer had to sell their children into slavery in order to provide food and shelter? Especially if adding a few dollars more to their product would cover the increase in wages and still be profitable?
Poverty in the developing world is not like it is over here.
I’m writing about multinational companies which sell their product in countries where people have been conned by ads into thinking a shirt with a swish logo must be worth $$$$ more than one without
Meaningless to the discussion. People like brands. Cola A vs Cola B in white cans would be stupid.
So just how would the whole economy of India collapse if these companies paid a wage that meant families no longer had to sell their children into slavery in order to provide food and shelter?
It probably wouldn't. It would probably mean bringing in machines to replace manual laborers, it would probably mean reducing the number of workers employed. And if then they would have more without jobs while those fewer left with jobs would have a higher wage, this will enrage the jobless ones who will demand that those fewer workers be taxed and their pay reduced for the benefit of the jobless. Then the minimum wage and benefits would have to be increased again- leaving more jobless. Companies move their factories to Bangladesh, Burma or Sri Lanka in response to these newly unfavorable conditions.
If the cycle keeps on long enough, you end up with places like Detroit.
People should be paid based on 3 things. What the market will bear - what people are willing to work for - and what the job is actually worth.
Any artificial tinkering with the process to benefit one group of people over another will create the need for more and more tinkering until everything is a complete mess.
I don’t look at the label or the box or the packaging to see where something was made. I figure that in today’s world a high percentage of items are made in countries whose workers are paid much less than what would be considered a fair wage in the US. But those countries are typically called “developing” countries, and even the low wages are probably better than what they had before.
Question: what is better Children working in a factory or Children starving to death? In some lands this is the question that must be asked.
I’m in licensed sportswear. Made in America does exist. For basic T Shirts and Sweats it’s not a lot more money at the wholesale level. But you have to know your supplier. Some of the best known “Made in America” labels may be sewn here, but it’s done by Illegals.
It’s for women’s clothes, so you might not be interested, but if you are, I’ll give you the link to a mom and pop factory that makes these clothes in NC.
the way our economy is being killed off we won’t have jobs at all.
learning how to put condoms on bananas and feeling good about being stupid, doesn’t make you employable, either.
i mean what’s the future of massive numbers of jeantel’s in this country?
i buy off clearance racks and also have a coupon that takes another percentage off the top of that. i used to buy from the jcpenney outlet store near me until it closed.
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