'I got hired at a Bangladesh sweatshop. Meet my 9-year-old boss'

[bwv812]

@Shash

False dichotomy. With its agricultural output, Bengal (both East and West) should be at least self-sufficient, not begging barely paying jobs. The culture of education there is highly advanced - Shantiniketan, for crying out loud - and the location at the head of the Bay of Bengal is a particularly strong one. Burma to one side is equally productive, and South India on the other is a success story even today.

So the national equivalent of subsistence farming is your preferred alternative? Are you trying to suggest that agricultural self-sufficiency is some sort of barometer for prosperity?

[bwv812]

@Thecorrectline

Mister44 said:
she is, under the circumstances, better off

No. That’s a rich mans argument, and wrong in way too many ways to even enumerate. I feel like I need to shower in bleach after reading that,

How’s that “a rich man’s argument”? If she (or her family) would be better off not working and instead living with her family in even more abject poverty, then that’s what she would probably be doing. You’re right in the sense that she might, on an individual level, be slightly better off in the short term if she were at home and starving, but on the family or community level they are collectively better off with her at work and earning a wage. It’s not like parents do this because they hate their kids or are selfsh: they do it because—whether we like it or not—it’s a rational economic decision undertaken in the best interests of the family.

[riepla]

@Thecorrectline

China, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Korea, etc. Worker rights in those countries? Not even gone - never existed in the first place.

You seem to be pretty eager to paint all the world outside of the US with a simple brush. Do you know anything about the people and/ or workers in those places you so casually list? Japan, Korea, and Brasil certainly all have very strong traditions of worker’s rights.

I think your problem is that you think everyone of these “brown people” countries is all the same.

I would recommend that you spend more of your time learning about the world and less time talking about things you don’t know anything about.

[dacree]

And then these people who depend on these jobs to eat would go hungry. Is that the idea?

[rattypilgrim]

The idea is the CEOs (the highest paid in US history) might consider bettering the working conditions and raising the salaries of their employees while also taking cuts in pay for themselves and forgoing year-end bonuses.

[dacree]

Nice idea but do you really think a boycott is going to hurt those highly paid CEOs? No, I imagine they will be fine. It’s the workers who suffer from a boycott.