Monday, March 31, 2014

Out of Poverty: THROUGH Sweatshops

Ben Powell, Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy:

    The very process of industrialization and development, of which sweatshops are part, is ultimately the cure for sweatshops.  As capital accumulates, technology improves, and as workers build skills productivity rises.  As firms compete with each other for the productive workers, total compensation gets bid up.  This process raises wages and improves working conditions, and it occurred in virtually all of the wealthy countries of the world today.

    I have studied sweatshops for the past ten years.  In that time I have become convinced that many well-meaning people advocate actions that are detrimental to the lives of sweatshop workers because they do not understand the economic forces that govern the creation of sweatshops and their alternatives….

    Rather than hold protests that risk cutting the process of development short by destroying sweatshop jobs, activists should instead buy products made in these factories and embrace the forces of economic development that will improve the lives of sweatshop workers.



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