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At 10/30/04 01:04 PM, CrazytheClown wrote: And 14 cents an hour is a ridiculous paycheck. By the time they saved up to buy an XBox, those kids would have died from starvation, denied breaks, and overtime, combined.

14 cents an hour is a ridiculous wage here, but how much does than convert too in the 3rd world country where the sweatshop is located?

It is still a pitance. WIth globalization, comes the globalization of markets (obviously..). Combine the low wages, with the devalued currency (at the encouragement of the World Bank and WTO), and these countries can't import any goods from any other countries. Thus what you have in effect, is economic colonialism, with the global south sending products to the global north. Of course, there are differences between this and traditional political colonialism - namely, that the 'colonies' are sending finished goods to the colonizers, and the colonies can't afford any goods coming from the colonizers. But fourteen cents an hour isn't enough to provide a basic standard of living anywhere.

Kids in sweatshops should quit bitching. At least they got a job. I don't.

At 11/5/04 01:13 PM, Veggiemeal wrote: Kids in sweatshops should quit bitching. At least they got a job. I don't.

Two things.
The first being: i wouldn't exactly compare a minimum wage job, in america, to a minimum (it's almost a pun, calling 14 cents an hour 'minimum wage'. Ha, ha, get it?) wage job in...i dont know...china.

And this whole thread isn't exactly breaking new ground. Who, exactly, is standing up for sweatshops? Is it a new idea that 'Sweatshop=bad'? Should i make a thread called 'Underagerape=Bad'?

At 11/5/04 12:10 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 10/30/04 01:04 PM, CrazytheClown wrote: And 14 cents an hour is a ridiculous paycheck. By the time they saved up to buy an XBox, those kids would have died from starvation, denied breaks, and overtime, combined.

14 cents an hour is a ridiculous wage here, but how much does than convert too in the 3rd world country where the sweatshop is located?

14 cents is still not enough to really feed your family. You are looking at probally needing atleast 25-50 cents an hour to feed your family(depending on the country). Hell school is $5 a month per kid alone. Plus food, taxes, shelter, clothes. Granted cost of living is much lower in these countries, but 14 cents an hour is still not a living wage. Trust me on this, I study this topic intensly in my courses.

At 11/5/04 03:53 PM, RugbyDAGDaddy wrote: Granted cost of living is much lower in these countries, but 14 cents an hour is still not a living wage. Trust me on this, I study this topic intensly in my courses.

I don't know about everybody else here, but I'd love to see some examples of this.

At 11/5/04 03:43 PM, Damien3003 wrote: And this whole thread isn't exactly breaking new ground. Who, exactly, is standing up for sweatshops? Is it a new idea that 'Sweatshop=bad'? Should i make a thread called 'Underagerape=Bad'?

Robots, read the part where I talk about robots.

And again, I'm still asking, what can be done? No matter what, they're going to be out of jobs.

One quick question: Did you guys enjoy your childhoods, and could part of that have been the complete freedom from responsibility (from like, say, feeding yourself or your younger syblings, not freedom from taking out the garbage)?

For someone to prosper, another must suffer.
Without the low prices caused by the sweatshops, Americans would suffer a severe decrease in our purchasing ability. Sneakers that were $40 might now be $60, and other such price raises (its just an example, I'm not too sure on the exactness of it). But, we should also ask, is this a neccessary evil? Have we as a society come to depend upon the cheap prices and goods made by these 3rd world country workers? We as a people would have to sacrifice some of our comfort in order to accomodate better conditions for others, but I do not believe that we have the ability to do that.

Yeah, man. For most Americans, it all comes down to the bottom line, doesn't it? Money. Who cares how much some material shit costs! Maybe if they though of those Nike sneakers as costing 23 hours of an East Indian child's life in labour, they wouldn't care about 20 extra bucks. And it's not like the West wouldn't have to sacrifice very much to ensure good living conditions in the rest of the world: we already have enough food to feed everyone and enough money to provide medical care and education to every single child on earth. Even if only the very richest people, like the top 3%, gave up half of their wealth to (the capitalist's most dreaded fear) THE COMMON GOOD!, then the gap between rich and poor would greatly diminish. That is not a whole hell of a lot of sacrifice. We have to conquer greed and fear, though, before any of this could happen. It takes so little, so why doesn't it happen?...

It doesn't happen because people don't like to give away what is theirs. Humanity is like that. There was some line in a movie that sums it up well, it goes a little something like....
"It may be a small piece of dirt-filled land, but its MY small piece of dirt-filled land!"

Yeah, I know, but it doesn't have to be that way. We are taugh the concept of ownership; it's not a natural human thought process. There are some cultures who do not have a word for "mine". I konw people don't like to give up what's theirs. Maybe it has to be taken away for them to get the point. Maybe only then will they understand.

At 11/5/04 04:19 PM, Proteas wrote:

At 11/5/04 03:53 PM, RugbyDAGDaddy wrote: Granted cost of living is much lower in these countries, but 14 cents an hour is still not a living wage. Trust me on this, I study this topic intensly in my courses.

I don't know about everybody else here, but I'd love to see some examples of this.

The wage for workers in the foreign export sector is set in dollars, but paid in Vietnamese dong. Minimum wage levels are set for foreign investment joint ventures, according to region. In March 1998, the minimum wage for Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi was $45 (£27.30) a month, $40 (£24.20) in certain other large cities and $35 (£21.20) elsewhere. This policy of establishing the minimum wage in dollars creates an area of controversy which directly affects the wages paid to workers. The management of Sam Yang, a Nike subcontractor factory, reported that at the time of contract signing, the exchange rate was 11,000 dong to the dollar, and consequently, 11,000 was set as the exchange rate for the duration of the contract. In March 1998, however, the exchange rate was actually 13,400 dong to the dollar.

According to Madame Khanh of the Confederation of Labour of the Vietnam Labour Ministry, workers' wages should be adjusted according to the fluctuating exchange rate. Clearly, exchange rate fluctuations - and the extent to which benefits are gained by buyers or passed on to workers - radically affect the workers' purchasing power.

Impact of exchange rate on hourly cost of basic commodities

Item
Price in dong $1 = 11,000 dong $1 = 13,400 dong
1 kg white sugar 7,000 2 hours 50 minutes 2 hours 19 minutes
1 kg rice 2,500 1 hour 50 minutes
6 eggs 6,000 2 hours 30 minutes 2 hours
1 kg chicken 30,000 12 hours 9 hours 57 minutes
1 kg chick peas 5,200 2 hours 6 minutes 1 hour 43 minutes
1 litre of cooking oil 10,000 4 hours 2 minutes 2 hours 19 minutes

Good enough for you?

So that means they have to work like four times as much as Americans just for the basics then. People, stop shopping at Wal-Mart.