Saturday, January 24, 2009

Sweatshops

I have from time to time found myself in conversations with friends who argue that free trade with nations who have no laws protecting laborers, particularly children, actually encourages the exploitation of poor people abroad who find themselves working in sweatshops for pennies a day under awful conditions. My reply has been that the alternative is that without this meager employment these people will simply starve, which is, they would probably judge, a somewhat more awful condition.

When people are living at the subsistence level a few pennies a day is a Godsend, and even though their working conditions are ghastly the poor are certainly better off slaving in these manufaturing shops than not working at all.

Now comes a piece by Nicholas Kristoff in the New York Times which makes essentially the same point:

Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about "labor standards," I'd like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh. This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It's a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don't exploit enough.

Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.

President Obama wants to demand that countries with whom we do business enact child labor laws and other regulations that would in effect eliminate sweatshops, but like so many well-meaning measures it has tragic unintended consequences. Such laws would make many foreign businesses unprofitable and uncompetitive and force them to lay off workers. Where would these workers go? In many places around the world they'd go to the dumps and try their luck at scavenging. This is why Kristoff thinks that so far from trying to eliminate sweatshops we should be encouraging them.

If the Obama administration has its way they will actually increase, not alleviate, poverty and suffering in the poorest nations of the world. The irony is that people here want so much to do something to help the poor that they often don't give much thought to the actual impact their good intentions have on the people they want to help. One might have thought that our experuience over the last forty five years with the "War on Poverty" would have taught us better. Solutions that make us feel good are often the most counterproductive and fraught with unintended consequences.

If you're skeptical you really should read the whole essay and make it a point to watch the accompanying video.

RLC

How to Close Down Gitmo

Steven Hayward at No Left Turns has an idea that would in one stroke solve several problems that vex the left. First, our political port-siders want us to close down Gitmo. Second, they want us to either bring the detainees to trial or let them go. Third, they want us to end the embargo on Cuba. Hayward writes:

It appears already that the Obama Administration is going to have its hands full figuring out how to close down Guantanamo. Since no Congressperson wants a detainee sent to their district, and many countries of origin of these fine world citizens won't take them back, why don't we just cut a hole in the fence and set them loose in Fidel's island paradise? It would be a nice first step in lifting our obsolete embargo.

It would also make Fidel happy to have such rabid America-haters among his citizenry. This really is a grand idea, although it's not true, unfortunately, that no congressperson is willing to have detainees sent to their district. John "bribe me later" Murtha recently allowed as how he'd be happy to have them brought to his district in Pennsylvania. Of course, since he believes his constituents are largely just a bunch of racists, maybe bloodthirsty killers would fit right in.

The state slogan "You've got a friend in Pennsylvania" apparently applies even to terrorists, at least as long as John Murtha's in Congress.

RLC

It's Gillibrand

New York Governor David Paterson, a liberal Democrat, mind you, has picked Representative Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat vacated by Hillary Clinton. Gillibrand is a Democrat also, of course, but she's much more conservative than Clinton and indeed more conservative than most New York Democrats. She supports gun rights (she's endorsed by the NRA), opposes gay marriage, and opposes the TARP bailout. Consequently, many Democrats are quite angry with Paterson's selection.

Oddly, Gillibrand was heavily promoted by the very liberal New York senior senator Charles Schumer, who apparently thought that a conservative Democrat has the best chance of winning reelection in 2010 in New York.

We take our glimmers of hope where we can find them.

RLC