Around the world a majority of everday items are produced and manufactured in factories in other countries. These factories are not really factories in some countries, but what some people would call sweatshops. The dilemna that consumers have is that when they try to become involved and be against sweatshop labor, they may end up hurting the workeres who depend on the sweatshops to provide their wages.
Large companies such as Nike, Polo, Sperry, etc. have their products made from other countries. For example, Nike has young children make shoes for them and pays them $2 a day when they can make up to 30 pairs of shoes, then those shoes are sold for $80 in the United States. We may feel like we have responsibilites to stop anything that seems like unfair treatment towards these workers, our wanting to be activists and to shut down foreign factories actually can hurt these people.
A paper written by Nicholas Kristof gives evidence that our meddling in third world sweatshops and trying to have them closed down can cause workers to lose easier jobs and make them work hard labor jobs in the elements. If we were to stop buying clothes that were made outside of the United States and tried boycotting them we would be hurting the workers instead. We also try to justify shutting down these factories because we do not believe what the workers are making to be a substantial wage.
The reality is that we have our own living standards set too high. If we go back almost a century we would be in much the same place. There would be little running water, no widespread electrical use diseases such as polio and smallpox would still be uncured. We have grown accustomed to our way of life and believe that everyone should live the way we do, but that is not going to happen. There will s be someone in povery or not having the same living standards as us. We should help them as much as we can by bringing advancements to them but only when they are ready to accept it. They do not have an unendless supply of immigrants to do the work they do not want like we have, if it provides jobs for them then we should buy their products and stay out of their business.
A paper written by Nicholas Kristof gives evidence that our meddling in third world sweatshops and trying to have them closed down can cause workers to lose easier jobs and make them work hard labor jobs in the elements. If we were to stop buying clothes that were made outside of the United States and tried boycotting them we would be hurting the workers instead. We also try to justify shutting down these factories because we do not believe what the workers are making to be a substantial wage.
The reality is that we have our own living standards set too high. If we go back almost a century we would be in much the same place. There would be little running water, no widespread electrical use diseases such as polio and smallpox would still be uncured. We have grown accustomed to our way of life and believe that everyone should live the way we do, but that is not going to happen. There will s be someone in povery or not having the same living standards as us. We should help them as much as we can by bringing advancements to them but only when they are ready to accept it. They do not have an unendless supply of immigrants to do the work they do not want like we have, if it provides jobs for them then we should buy their products and stay out of their business.
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