Offshore Sweatshops.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiEeeQNHkrOY

Not only do American corporations offshore jobs, they operate sweatshops and use kiddies. They can explain it however they want but its why they offshore the jobs. They arent nice people.

 

[Handley_Page]

Clothing makers are even worse. . . .

 

[Stella_Omega]

Indeed, jimmy. And handley, clothing makers are "worse" like saying one poison is more poisonous than some other poison.

 

[jomar]

Hopefully, Apple really is policing and Nike pays attention. But that article also made me think, hell, if I can pass for a year older and make money and help the family put food on the table, I'm in. Lying about your age to get ahead or get somewhere is nothing new.

(Please note that I'm not defending other bad practices or companies off-shoring or companies exploiting workers or deliberately hiring underage workers.)

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JOMAR

When you go out to catch a whale you gotta go where the whales are. Apple pretty much knows what theyre likely to find in 3rd world places; otherwise they'd make their stuff in America.

 

[Handley_Page]

Indeed, jimmy. And handley, clothing makers are "worse" like saying one poison is more poisonous than some other poison.

Well, Not quite, I think.
I had in mind a firm called Primark who did a lot of business in th
is country and then was 'discovered' to have child-labour and all manner of ill treatment and 'wages' (?) going on. There are more garment and cloth producers than i-phone makers, I suspect.

A lot will depend upon just how Apple (and anyone else for that matter ), organise their parts bin. Directly or via an agent ?

 

[Dragonlipz]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aiEeeQNHkrOY

Not only do American corporations offshore jobs, they operate sweatshops and use kiddies. They can explain it however they want but its why they offshore the jobs. They arent nice people.

JimBobJohnson, you've flipped one of my hot switches. I've worked overseas and seen firsthand this repulsive practice in more than one country. This is what globalization and transnational corporations who answer to no one have brought us. The only thing we can do, if we are persons of conscience, is to not knowingly reward these corporations.

 

[xssve]

I don't know why anybody is surprised at this, see the Industrial Revolution.

Why do you think they move offshore? Why so they don't have to deal with spoiled American workers demanding a living wage, humane working conditions and benefits, all of the things that real Capitalists© (republicans) abhor.

 

[jomar]

JOMAR

When you go out to catch a whale you gotta go where the whales are. Apple pretty much knows what theyre likely to find in 3rd world places; otherwise they'd make their stuff in America.

And we'd bitch about iPods costing $1500.00

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JOMAR

Yes, iPods likely would cost $1500 if made in America. But here's the problem:

America and 3rd world nations have different standards of living and different laws. Our standard of living is expensive; other places its okay to sleep in a hut, crap in the street, and work children. No retirement, no disability checks, few schools, no potable water or sanitary sewers. All this costs money.

Offshoring lets American companies hide their real earnings and cheat Uncle Sam. See above.

Offshoring creates unemployment here. Unemployment cuts tax revenues and consumer spending, and adds to government deficits.

The only Americans who profit from any of this are the American companies and the American elites; that is, the people with extraordinary incomes who could afford an iPod if it cost $10,000.

 

[xssve]

Not really: in the mass production model, the elites are essentially what are called first consumers in marketing terms - the mass production model is largely based on a concept we know today as Moore's law - the first generation of a product is scarce, due to limited production, thus it's demand value is high - tantamount to hand crafted merchandise - a Breguet has a far greater demand value than a Timex from Wal-Mart - still, a hundred years ago, few people even owned a Timex, all watches were handcrafted - nowadays, the battery costs more than the watch, but if you have the means, you can still get the Breguet.

It's called commodification, and if the i-Phone costs $1500 now, it won't be long until a rival offers the same thing for $150, at the same time, the profits from that first offering of expensive phones pays the overhead for capital improvements in the manufacturing process that drive manufacturing costs down, and so as the first consumer market becomes saturated, they can offer the same thing at a lower price point to the next tier of consumers.

Apple's particular marketing strategy, much like IBM's, relies on tight quality and supply controls of course, which is why Bill Gates was able to run away with the PC market.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

XSSVE

Always a day late and a dollar short. My point wasnt about how elites help develope markets paying high prices; my point is THEY DONT PAY FUCKING TAXES AND THEY CAN AFFORD ANY PRICE.

 

[xssve]

And that's called "gentrification".

 

[al_Ussa]

You should read this - Paradise Lost: Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists. Pretty much shows the true colors of the religious right and the Euro-American elites.

"In a situation akin to indentured servitude, workers cannot earn back their recruitment fee and pay annual company supplied housing and food expenses of about $2,100 without working tremendous hours of overtime. Before being able to save her first dollar, a worker who owes, say, $5,000 to her recruiter has to work nearly 2,500 hours at Saipan’s current minimum wage—which equals six more 40-hour workweeks than exist in a year."

and

"Abramoff also cultivated powerful allies in the House leadership, notably Tom DeLay, who, as majority whip at the time, could keep a bill off the House floor even if the Resources Committee voted in its favor. According to the Associated Press, which, through an open records request, obtained the billing and correspondence records sent by Preston Gates to the Marianas government, Abramoff was in almost daily contact with DeLay’s top aides concerning Marianas-related matters. DeLay himself, the billing records showed, met or talked with Abramoff about the Marianas at least two dozen times in 1996 and 1997 alone."

and

"To find the dark underbelly of Delay's "Shining light," simply cross a busy Saipan street and walk a few yards down a dirt road. At 10:30 p.m., knots of Chinese women are just getting off work at a nearby garment factory and making their way through the steady rain that slices the black night. These women eschew the more expensive, factory-owned barracks in favor of tiny homes constructed of corrugated tin, with thin wooden doors. In one tin dwelling, three women share a queen-sized bed that rests on a slab of concrete. The smell of frying vegetables wafts from the “kitchen”—a few hot plates and water-filled plastic buckets set outside on a concrete counter. Nine people share one toilet.

As they cluster outside, near a thin clothesline that doubles as a closet, one woman says that she’s worked here for two years and is nowhere close to paying the money back to her recruiter; the others shake their heads in agreement. Their fear is palpable: They’re afraid to use their names or to be photographed, even from the back.

“I heard that the lender might break my family’s legs if I don’t pay the money soon. I worry about it a lot,” one 35-year-old Chinese woman told Ms. a few days earlier, speaking through a translator. “I can’t imagine how long it will take to pay the money back. It’s very hard to be here. The only foods I can afford to buy are rice and some very cheap precooked vegetables. My teeth are always bleeding,” she says, her eyes like wet stone."

and of coruse

"Despite the squalid living conditions, the young guest workers want to stay at their jobs long enough to make their sacrifices worthwhile. But if they happen to get pregnant while working in Saipan, they’re faced with a new nightmare. According to a 1998 investigation by the Department of Interior Office of Insular Affairs, a number of Chinese garment workers reported that if they became pregnant, they were “forced to return to China to have an abortion or forced to have an illegal abortion” in the Marianas.

These days, pregnancy is still highly problematic for guest workers. Many believe that if they get pregnant their employers will not renew their contracts for another year. That’s essentially what happened to Chen Xiaoyan, the former RIFU worker. Two years ago, she became pregnant while visiting her boyfriend back in China. RIFU, although ostensibly responsible for workers’ medical care, told her they would not renew her contract unless she provided them an affidavit saying she would pay for all pregnancy-related medical expenses. When she refused, Chen was fired.

Outside one of the barracks guest workers live in, located just yards from the factories where they work “It’s not fair and it’s not right,” she says. “I read from a book that the U.S. has the best law and protections for workers and I thought here it would be better than in China, but it isn’t.”

With few economic options, pregnant workers often feel they have no choice but to visit one of Saipan’s underground abortion providers. At least four acupuncture clinics offer pills to induce abortions, according to a local translator and former garment worker."

So much for the moral majority eh? Delay and Abrahamoff are monsters the fucking scum of the earth and yet they will never be punished. Tehy are going to laugh all the way to the bank and people like you will simply continue to feed them. That is why I will laugh when the American empire you morons have built up on everyone elses back comes crumbling down. Enjoy the fall. Your going to deserve it.

 

[JackLuis]

You should read this - Paradise Lost: Greed, Sex Slavery, Forced Abortions and Right-Wing Moralists. Pretty much shows the true colors of the religious right and the Euro-American elites.

.

There is a long tradition of Yankee double shuffling. Consider that much of the fortunes of the New England Shipping trade was in the China-India-opium trade.

I think the Brits commoditized the opium trade and built the framework for all later drug cartels, but the Americans helped a good deal.

 

[Dragonlipz]

And we'd bitch about iPods costing $1500.00

You might bitch, but I'm sure that JBJ and myself don't own one....I don't because I won't subsidize Apple's exploitation of third world labor, JBJ doesn't because he's too cheap.....
BTW - my woman crushed her's under her heel and tossed it when she learned that child labor probably went into the construction of her favorite music machine.....
The girl makes me proud!!!
Now if I could just get her to quit buying gasoline at Shell.............

 

[DeeZire]

You might bitch, but I'm sure that JBJ and myself don't own one....I don't because I won't subsidize Apple's exploitation of third world labor, JBJ doesn't because he's too cheap.....
BTW - my woman crushed her's under her heel and tossed it when she learned that child labor probably went into the construction of her favorite music machine.....
The girl makes me proud!!!
Now if I could just get her to quit buying gasoline at Shell.............

Assuming you're accessing this forum from a computer, how do you know it wasn't also built with child labor? Almost any electronic device you purchase today was built with child labor - especially the cheap devices like the mp3 player your GF will replace her iPod with. While singling out Apple might make her feel good, she's going to be stomping on a lot of MP3 players before she finds one (or can afford one) that was built in the USA, with components manufactured in the USA.

HP, IBM and Dell all have been singled out for criticism by CAFOD. The agency examined their codes of conduct for labor standards and found that all three fell below standards set by the United Nations.

I would love to see a resurgence of made in the USA goods, but the American public seem to be unable to acknowledge the relationship between buying foreign-made products and our 20% unemployment rate.

 

[Dragonlipz]

Assuming you're accessing this forum from a computer, how do you know it wasn't also built with child labor? Almost any electronic device you purchase today was built with child labor - especially the cheap devices like the mp3 player your GF will replace her iPod with. While singling out Apple might make her feel good, she's going to be stomping on a lot of MP3 players before she finds one (or can afford one) that was built in the USA, with components manufactured in the USA.



I would love to see a resurgence of made in the USA goods, but the American public seem to be unable to acknowledge the relationship between buying foreign-made products and our 20% unemployment rate.

My computer was manufactured in Japan. My woman has not replaced her music device for the same reasons you cite....you make a great point about the need for this country to rebuild its manufacturing base if for no other reason than to replenish the middle class...thirty years of 'Reaganomics' has wreaked havoc on the best and most compelling aspect of these United States: the existence of a large, viable middle class - that's been decimated by adoption of the 'reforms' instituted by Regan and Reagan and Bush and Clinton.......

 

[LaRocha]

Sweatshops benefit everyone, sad but true. Have nothing to do with our unemployment rate, or middle class. We don't want children working in sweatshops, but you know, their parents have them working just as hard in the field or marketplace. Sure we can say, "Don't buy Nike sweatshop shoes." and Nike can make its working conditions better, but we can't say, "Don't have your seven year old daughter carrying her weight in water on her back to and from the well a quarter a mile away, all day every day.

Now sweatshops with adults working in them are really a great situation for everyone. There's the no pee breaks and real criminal enforcement that should end, but overall the working conditions in any manufacturing plant are the same whether you're in Texas or Guam. No one in America wants to stand at one station and flip their wrist all day, six days a week. Monetarily, even the shittiest payers are essentially paying living wages in these shithole countries.

If the fields were so fantastic and you could support your family why would you leave the field? It's only our once in a blue moon, self-hating, pseudo-progressive Enlightenment Era feelings that start conversations like these and then go out to wal-mart or Macy's and purchase that 15 dollar fleece for our daughters. Obviously, this is off topic, just like everything I post, no need for Stella to chime in with her normal Mozilla salesmanship.

 

[Dragonlipz]

Sweatshops benefit everyone, sad but true. Have nothing to do with our unemployment rate, or middle class. We don't want children working in sweatshops, but you know, their parents have them working just as hard in the field or marketplace. Sure we can say, "Don't buy Nike sweatshop shoes." and Nike can make its working conditions better, but we can't say, "Don't have your seven year old daughter carrying her weight in water on her back to and from the well a quarter a mile away, all day every day.

Now sweatshops with adults working in them are really a great situation for everyone. There's the no pee breaks and real criminal enforcement that should end, but overall the working conditions in any manufacturing plant are the same whether you're in Texas or Guam. No one in America wants to stand at one station and flip their wrist all day, six days a week. Monetarily, even the shittiest payers are essentially paying living wages in these shithole countries.

If the fields were so fantastic and you could support your family why would you leave the field? It's only our once in a blue moon, self-hating, pseudo-progressive Enlightenment Era feelings that start conversations like these and then go out to wal-mart or Macy's and purchase that 15 dollar fleece for our daughters. Obviously, this is off topic, just like everything I post, no need for Stella to chime in with her normal Mozilla salesmanship.

Stella, where are you? This guy needs some of your normal Mozilla salesmanship....badly...

 

[LaRocha]

Stella, where are you? This guy needs some of your normal Mozilla salesmanship....badly...

Jesus, companies like Berkshire Hathaway, actual textiles, clothing and fabric makers haven't been viable in America since the 60s. The same can be said of car manufacturers, Michael Moore was about a decade too late making Roger and Me. Families have two cars now, even though real wages have decreased in the last thirty years, cars are cheaper for the middle class. And no one was bitching about the cheap ass clothing everyone was getting in the 80s from overseas. People have too much time on their hands to be comparing the wages of someone in Thailand to someone in Germany. It's not comparable. Sweatshops benefit everyone involved, except when children are working instead of going to school.
--------------------------------
Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to a textile manufacturing company established by Oliver Chace in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the founder of the first successful textile mill in America. Chace founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929 the Valley Falls Company merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company established in 1889, in Adams, Massachusetts. The combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates.[2]

In 1955 Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates merged with the Hathaway Manufacturing Company which was founded in 1888 in New Bedford, Massachusetts by Horatio Hathaway. Hathaway was successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a general decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression. After the merger Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford, Massachusetts. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, accompanied by large layoffs.

In 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway. After some clashes with the Stanton family, he bought up enough shares to change the management and soon controlled the company.

Buffett initially maintained Berkshire's core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry and other investments. Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company (GEICO), which forms the core of its insurance operations today (and is a major source of capital for Berkshire Hathaway's other investments). In 1985, the last textile operations (Hathaway's historic core) were shut down.

 

[DeeZire]

LaRocha - life is more than a cost-benefit analysis. Of course, if I have to explain that to you, the whole concept is way beyond your comprehension.

One thing to consider is the person on their deathbed, reflecting on their life. It is then that they realize what they should have done. Invariably, they realize what they shouldn't have done was spend their every waking moment at work - which is how sweatshops function. I'm not knocking workaholics, since I am one myself, I'm just questioning your values system, which is considered oppression by those who don't worship at the alter of the bottom line.

 

[xssve]

In the 80's, a paradigm shift in manufacturing occurred, the lean production model, utilizing vastly improved technology, including CAD-CAM, which not only greatly lowered production costs, but reduced the time needed to retool a production line to produce different goods from week, months, sometimes even years, to days, even hours.

This new model is responsible for the sudden drop in the cost of manufactured good, particularly electronics, large "rack" audio systems were replaced by inexpensive "boom boxes", etc..

In the US, financial deregulation and supply side economics were applied in an effort to re-organize American industry along the line of then emerging Japanese lean production model.

Much of this legislation was drafted during the Carter administration, who nevertheless intended to maintain firm regulatory control - it's purpose was to try and resolve the stagflation issue that originated not with Carter, but ironically with the Kennedy tax cuts, pushed through by Johnson after Kennedy's assassination: at that time, the deficits from inflationary spending from WWII were finally being paid down, and the tax cuts were across the board, representing almost 2% of national income.

The result, however, was simply that demand for almost everything skyrocketed, from cars to consumer goods to housing.

The problem was, that while demand increased, productivity did not - production failed to rise to meet demand, and in economics, this called inflation: prices rise as demand exceeds supply.

As prices rose, consumer/workers demanded raises to keep up with inflation, businesses had to comply to attract workers, and this itself contributed to inflationary pricing, people kept buying things, prices kept rising, and people kept demanding higher wages to keep up with them - the inflationary spiral, which, combined with stagnant productivity, came to be called stagflation.

In spite of this, the US economy continued to grow at a rapid pace, driven by technological spillover: the combination of research institutions established during the war, and combined with captured German technology from their similar research push led to a technological revolution, particularly in materiels: plastics, metallurgy, etc., but also included electronics, Integrated Circuits, (IC's), replaced tubes, and this research eventually led to microprocessors, while the theories that computer science is based in was again, in large part the product of government research grants to universities, etc. who provided much of the basic research.

Plastics drove down the price of consumer goods as they replaced metal and wood, IC's replaced bulky, delicate and expensive tubes, an new system of interstate highways, subsidized by the government to allow rapid transport of men and material in the even to of invasion connected the country, factories that had been at full steam producing materiel for the war effort shifted to producing consumer goods for an entire world where almost every country had had it's manufacturing capacity bombed into rubble, stable supply chains for raw materials were in place, oil, Rubber, Bauxite, etc. and we had the transportation technologies to import them, the merchant marine, and a global air transport industry.

Here, that meant cars, which could take advantage of the new superstructure - the war in the Pacific had largely been fought on behalf of Goodyear, as the Indonesian Rubber plantations had become critical in the emerging technologies of internal combustion that had likewise been perfected during the war, and even rubber itself was gradually being replaced and supplemented by artificial rubbers and plastics derived from oil, much of which was developed in Germany who had no direct access to rubber during the war.

Similarly, the extending the air transport grid, and updating the electrical and communications grid at the same time, by requiring extending service to otherwise rural areas serviced mostly by rail opened and developed new markets - in 1950, only half the households in the country had running water or indoor plumbing, and not many more had electricity.

The confluence of these factors triggered an economic boom that transformed American society, and in fact, much of the world - the US economy Tripled in the Seventies, in spite of the fact that inflation, which accelerated after the end of the Vietnam war which had been masking the worst of it, came to a head during the Carter administration, and there were a couple of years of negative growth when the Fed finally put the brakes on and cut back on M1.

It was also during the Carter administration that global economies finally began re-emerging from the destruction of WWII and competing against us in global markets - in rebuilding, they had also modernized, and they were hungry, and we went form a trade surplus to a trade deficit in this period, as consumers displayed a bottomless appetite for Japanese and German consumer electronics and automobiles.

Our major export at the time had been narrowed down to grain, we were still the worlds breadbasket in most respects, and these exports even became a significant foreign policy tool.

This was about to end though. Reagan, elected on a supply side platform and the promise of tax cuts, serendipitously benefited from the Feds shift to monetarist policy during the Carter administration, cutting back on the money supply, throwing the country into recession but finally slowing down inflation.

Most of this was blamed on Carter, although he had in fact appointed Paul Volker for this reason (but begged him to wait till after the election to do it), and Reagan basically took credit for a policies whose foundations were laid by Carter for a reorganization and modernization of the American economy.

Instead of modernization however, the result was a complete stripdown and selloff of the American economy - the Reagan administrations emphasis on deregulation and supply side economics created and opportunity for financiers to buy up struggling industries, and rather than reorganizing them, it turned out to be more profitable to cannibalize them and sell of their assets separately to developing countries like China and Indonesia, who had a surplus of cheap labor but little in the way of manufacturing capacity.

The profits from this initial round of buyouts in steel and manufacturing industries - unionization and top heavy middle management were blamed for the "unprofitability" of these companies, although in fact most of them were profitable, but their stock prices were relatively static - enabled the buyout financiers to go after still more industries - since firms were required to create pension plans, nearly all US companies at that time had them, and whils they might actually be holding huge amounts of cash, most of it was tied up in pension funds, and with their stock prices somewhat non-volitile, but depressed and undervalued, they were easy pickings for leveraged buyouts, and as manufacturing firms become scarce, retail outlets quickly followed.

At the same time, the continued emphasis on monetary policy by the Fed kept inflation under control, but depressed commodity prices as the US dollar rose against other global currencies - this brought agricultural exports to a screeching halt, and farmers, who a few year before had been at the top of the export industry, were now struggling just to make ends meet, and much like the manufacturing and retail industries, family farms were foreclosed on and sold off to agribusiness interests who instituted the industrial farming methods that current;y threaten even the food supply through soil depletion, whcih requires huge quantities of chemical fertilizers to offset, the runnoff from which destroys the rivers and and is gradually sterilizing the Gulf of Mexico, as algae proliferate in the nitrogen rich runoff, and deplete all the oxygen.

The remaining industries were surviving by selling tools and dies for the equipment that had been shipped overseas, including machine tools, the machine used to make these tools and dies, meaning of course, that export market these thing also eventually evaporated.

The net result, is, that without the emergence in the Nineties of another of the fruits of government sponsored basic research, the internet and Information Technology (IT), we'd have hit the wall in the Nineties - in spite of supply side economics and tax cuts productivity you see, had remained stagnant throughout the Eighties - inflation had been brought under control by cutting back on the money supply, ending the inflationary spiral, but we were no more productive in 1990 than we had been in 1970 - it was IT, in fact a significant component in the adoption of lean manufacturing techniques that sparked the whole business to begin with, that finally broke the technological limits of productivity, and led to the first productivity increases in Thirty years.

It also offered significant advantages to early adopters who had the capital to invest in these new technologies to streamline their supply chains and inventory management - the "big box" stores, like Wal Mart, who in turn put further pressure on small businesses, who were still out of the loop, and putting their faith in "hard work", rather than financial capitalization, re-organization, and modernization, and simply couldn't compete against firms armed with armies of MBA's, MIT trained engineers, and top tier marketing firms.

So, there is no reason we cannot rebuild our manufacturing base with thoroughly modern, efficient, and competitive technology - a hot dog vendor largely has access to the same technology that Wal Mart has, and could use it to streamline his supply chain and expand his markets - except that labor is still cheaper when you can chain your workers to their machines, and quickly and easily replace them when they die.

So, guess where all that investment capital liquidity freed up by supply side tax cuts goes?

 

[LaRocha]

...
So, there is no reason we cannot rebuild our manufacturing base with thoroughly modern, efficient, and competitive technology - a hot dog vendor largely has access to the same technology that Wal Mart has, and could use it to streamline his supply chain and expand his markets - except that labor is still cheaper when you can chain your workers to their machines, and quickly and easily replace them when they die.

So, guess where all that investment capital liquidity freed up by supply side tax cuts goes?

It's not about technology, it's about labour. You have to analyze why cheap labour beats innovation in manufacturing. That's the reason why the US can't rebuild its textiles industry, pretty much any lightweight industry you can think of. The Chinese have to compete with the Vietnamese now, the same as the US had to compete with the Chinese in the 80s and 90s. The Chinese are losing manufacturing jobs precisely because their standard of living is increasing, they know their workers have to be paid better to afford washing machines and autos.

So companies are pulling out of China to go to Vietnam and Southeast Asia where the standard of living is still rice-paddy pay. When the standard of living hits a similar point in Vietnam the manufacturers will go to Africa or some really dirt poor place like French Guyana.

There's a reason why kids leave their rural homes in Western China and Cambodia and enter factories. They can't be supported by the land like their parents. The pay is tremendously better in the average sweat shop. Who goes to work the day after they've been denied a pee break? Someone who knows they're making quadruple the pay of their parents. The sweatshop class of workers become the emergent working class, the standard of living increases for the country and pushes more people out of the fields. Sweatshops were as important in building China's middle-class as their skilled exploitation of their natural resources. Without sweatshops there would be no emergent service sector in China, no reason for Wal-Mart and fast food to build stores there.

 

[LaRocha]

The word "sweatshop" makes me laugh. If you've ever worked twelve hours at any machine, just standing all day with the heat of the machines around you, a couple fifteen minute breaks, you'll laugh at the word "sweatshop". There's no such thing as "sweatshop" it's called "working". Flip your wrist, change a spool, scour peanuts, solder the same part all fucking day for a few years. I'm sure there's a ton of people here who'd die to get that kind of job. Carpet bagger munchers.