Reason Magazine
- reason.com
- reason.tv
- reason.org
- Donate
- Site Search:
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSSGet Reason E-mail Updates!
Manage your Reason e-mail list subscriptionsadvertisements
Gettin' Sweaty with Jennifer Love Hewitt
Just months
after exposing her plus-size figure to the lissome tabloid readers
of England (thanks
Daily Mail!), Kids' Choice Award-winning actress
Jennifer Love Hewitt, whose credits include Sister Act 2: Back
in the Habit and Garfield, has outraged a group of
perpetually outraged college students. The anti-trade group United
Students against Sweatshops (USAS) has launched a website called
"Jennifer Loves
Sweatshops" (It's funny because it's her name!),
accusing the actress, who is a spokesperson for Hanes, of shilling
for "sweatshop underwear" and "selling products made in unsafe
factories overseas where women are abused." On the site's homepage,
the group juxtaposed an US magazine cover featuring
Hewitt—headline "Stop Calling Me Fat!"—with a lame magazine mockup
of an overworked, mistreated stock photography model. ABC News
explains:
On its site, USAS paired it with a cover for a fake "Worker" magazine showing a woman with a drawn face and the headline, "Stop Starving Me!" A footnote explains the quote is not attributable to an actual Hanes worker and the photo is not of a Hanes employee.
A Haynes spokesman called the charges that its factory abused workers "incomprehensible." USAS, he said, is "trying to pick fights with celebrities and other people, it just doesn't make any sense." (The group previously attacked Kevin Bacon.)
Now, I know nothing about the factory in question—USAS could be right about conditions there, though I think a healthy skepticism of claims made by the "living wage" student set are in order—but a few points about sweatshops: As economist Benjamin Powell notes here, few of us lazy Americans would last a day in a Third World textile factory. But that's mostly because we have other options; most of us have far better employment alternatives. This, obviously, is not the case in a place like Vietnam, where a Nike factory worker can earn three times the minimum wage of a worker employed by a state-owned company. In Saigon, the dreaded "sweatshop" position has long been a prized job in a slowly liberalizing economy. This was a revelation to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who understood that his readers would think his admiration for the mustache-twisting, whip-cracking factory owners was simply mad:
The Gentle Reader will think I've been smoking Pakistani opium. But the fact is that sweatshops are the only hope of kids like Ahmed Zia, a 14-year-old boy here in Attock, a gritty center for carpet weaving.
[...]
By this point, I've offended every possible reader. But before you spurn a shirt made by someone like 8-year-old Kamis Saboor, an Afghan refugee whose father is dead and who is the sole breadwinner in the family, answer this question: How does shunning sweatshop products help Kamis? All the alternatives for him are worse.
''I dream of a job in a factory,'' said Noroz Khan, who lives on a garbage dump and spends his days searching for metal that he can sell to recyclers. He earns about $1.40 a day, and children earn just 30 cents a day for scrounging barefoot in the filth -- a few feet away from us, birds were pecking at the bloated carcass of a cow, its feet in the air.
Of course, Western anti-sweatshop activists mean well and aim only for improved conditions and a ''living wage.'' But the reality is that the bad publicity becomes one more headache for companies considering operating in international hellholes (where the only lure is wages so low that it would be embarrassing if journalists started asking questions about them), and so manufacturers opt to mechanize their operations and operate in somewhat more developed countries.
Incidentally, if you want to join one of USAS's balkanized subgroups (choose from the Womyn/Genderqueer, People of Color, or Working Class Caucus), click here.
Suetonius|6.25.08 @ 6:11PM|#
well, I suppose it makes sense to go after Kevin Bacon first.
Every actor in Hollywood would then be guilty by association.
Aim high, USAS!
|6.25.08 @ 6:14PM|#
Wait, that skinny chick in the 2-piece is supposed to be fat? I think they must be using the wrong picture.
|6.25.08 @ 6:15PM|#
I'm torn between wanting to fuck Jennifer Love Hewitt or wanting
to stick my (Kevin) bacon in a "living wage" slit.
Hippie chicks fuck like oyster-eating rabbits on Spanish fly, but
most of 'em have tits hanging around their hairy knees.
I think I'll take Hewitt. Those are some sweet-ass
badonka-donks.
|6.25.08 @ 6:15PM|#
I recall almost being kicked out of the second or third meeting
of my Post-Colonial Literary Theory class during a discussion of
factory workers in third world countries. I raised the point that
"less than a dollar (American) per day" (the mantra chanted by my
grad-student cum professor) was likely able to go much farther in
certain countries than we in America were aware, and that factory
work, while not desirable for us, was likely a bright alternative
to living in utter destitution, especially when education and
technology were going to be slow in coming to places where people
still needed to eat and have shelter.
She told me that if I was going to continue on with my capitalist
pig sentiments, I could leave the class and return only when my
sympathies with the poor and blighted peoples of the world were
more aligned with enlightened 21st century wisdom. Literally a DAY
later, the WTC towers were attacked, and she continually used that
as a reason to denounce my (and one or two other students')
sentiments about neo-colonial territories and their helplessness in
the face of big, bad USA.
|6.25.08 @ 6:16PM|#
I remember going to see Heartbreakers when it was released. Miss Love Hewitt induced a kind of personal sweatshop for me-if you know what I mean.
Orange Line Special|6.25.08 @ 6:16PM|#
Thinking, Reason-style: "People you don't like are against it,
so it's OK to support ChildLabor."
P.S. What's the correct libertarian position on this issue? Let's
ask Mary Ruwart!
|6.25.08 @ 6:17PM|#
Here's the best thing you can do to one of those ugly "living
wage" bitches.
Tell 'em you're a social activist, fuck 'em until they get all in
love with you, then tell them they're full of commie shit and break
their hearts. It really fucks them up, and they go off hating
humanity more than they did before.
Just a little hobby of mine.
|6.25.08 @ 6:19PM|#
Glad they changed "People" to "Worker." We wouldn't want to think that the woman in question had an identity beyond that of a cog.
Marcvs|6.25.08 @ 6:20PM|#
Lone Wacko joining us once again so that he can point out that he never actually reads what was written..
|6.25.08 @ 6:30PM|#
Hippie chicks fuck like oyster-eating rabbits on Spanish
fly
Must...stop...trying...to...visualize....
|6.25.08 @ 6:38PM|#
Sweatshop fctory owners do not drive paddy wagons into the
countryside looking for women and children to abduct. The women and
children happily flee the back breaking poorly paying and
speculative nature of agriculture to takre a sure thing that pays
more. It was like that when the US and England
industrialized.
You would think that the university would teach the younguns some
history.
|6.25.08 @ 6:42PM|#
A Haynes spokesman
Damn, fraudulent autopsies must really pay if he can afford a
spokesman...
|6.25.08 @ 6:51PM|#
Sweatshop fctory owners do not drive paddy wagons into the
countryside looking for women and children to abduct. The women and
children happily flee the back breaking poorly paying and
speculative nature of agriculture to takre a sure thing that pays
more. It was like that when the US and England
industrialized.
Well you have to understand that if it were not for the capitalist
owned factory already being there those workers would have
spontaneously made their own communal factory and payed themselves
the "correct" student mandated wage.
|6.25.08 @ 6:55PM|#
When the subject is men's undershorts and tees, dollar for
dollar, Hanes is the best on the market.
Yeah, I'm a selfish bastard who factors in self interest when
shopping.
|6.25.08 @ 6:56PM|#
Warty, you beautiful bastard!
I don't think it's very efficient to goof on JLH for her
larger-than-it-used-to-be ass when the shockingly retarded The
Ghost Whisperer is right there to mock her about.
As for the rest... in Bangladesh $1.40 a day is a living
wage, you dipshits.
|6.25.08 @ 6:57PM|#
Glad they changed "People" to "Worker." We wouldn't want to
think that the woman in question had an identity beyond that of a
cog.
I noticed that too, and had an image in my head of the students
having a five hour debate over the choice, leading to slammed
doors, tears, and punches thrown before they reached the consensus
that they are not a cog for some kind of bizarre post-modern
justification.
|6.25.08 @ 6:58PM|#
Well you have to understand that if it were not for the
capitalist owned factory already being there those workers would
have spontaneously made their own communal factory and payed
themselves the "correct" student mandated wage.
Joshua, been with the Workers World Daily for long? ;-)
|6.25.08 @ 6:59PM|#
No way, Hanes is crap. It's all about Jockey.
You're a bonehead. You probably use a Mac as well.
|6.25.08 @ 7:00PM|#
Hmm, I think I would rather get sweaty with her Party of Five
Co-Star Lacey Chabert, now SHE is a HOTTIE!
http://www.Ultimate-Anonymity.com
Mister DNA|6.25.08 @ 7:00PM|#
The last I heard, the "living wage" was $30,000 a year for
everyone, ditch diggers, sweatshop workers, Reason contributors,
doctors, lawyers... everyone.
Has this been adjusted for inflation?
the innominate one|6.25.08 @ 7:05PM|#
Jim, oh, sure, if it's Lacey v. Jennifer, give me Lacey. but if it's Jennifer v. no one, give me Jennifer or give me death.
Chloe|6.25.08 @ 7:07PM|#
WTF? She is NOT plus sized. It's one thing to really be fat, but when people start calling 130 pounds or so "fat", then no wonder women are getting so screwed up.
Naga Sadow|6.25.08 @ 7:12PM|#
Jesus Christ, Jaime Kelly!!! How do you come up with this shit? It's like you channel dead crazy perverts or something!!!!
Naga Sadow|6.25.08 @ 7:14PM|#
J sub D,
Does your hatred for Mac's extend to iPhones? Cause I'm gettin' one
in about a week and your opinion on apple products is dear to
me.
Z|6.25.08 @ 7:14PM|#
actually a lot of women are screwed up because Jamie Kelley isn't stuck in a sweatshop making a dollar a day with no access to a computer.
stephen the goldberger|6.25.08 @ 7:16PM|#
Standards are different for actresses/singers. You can't have
any flab or cellulite or whatever, and of course wide camera lenses
add a few pounds.
Obviously it also is important to look good for someone like Hewitt
who got where she is almost exclusively on her looks. A lot of
mainstream entertainment is about escapism which means we want to
look at very attractive people who we can either enjoy looking at
or pretend we are instead of dealing with all the homely
individuals in our day to day life.
TallDave|6.25.08 @ 7:18PM|#
Well, I guess Vietnamese peasants can eat, as long as they don't
take our union jobs.
Looking at South Korea, one has to weep for what S Vietnam might
have become by now.
TallDave|6.25.08 @ 7:21PM|#
well, I suppose it makes sense to go after Kevin Bacon
first. Every actor in Hollywood would then be guilty by
association.
lawl
KT|6.25.08 @ 7:22PM|#
*You're a bonehead. You probably use a Mac as well.*
Hey, don't take it out on me if you don't have the support and
comfort you deserve.
Good guesses, though. I am a bonehead and I do use a Mac.
|6.25.08 @ 7:25PM|#
You're a bonehead. You probably use a Mac as
well.
I knew I liked J sub for a reason.
|6.25.08 @ 7:27PM|#
Naga Shadow. I don't hate macs anymore than I have passionate
preferences in drawers. But I would wait a few more months on the
iPhone. It's still too new. The price will fall further and a
superior value may emerge from a competitor soon.
But what do I know? I once paid $700 for a VCR with mechanical
tuners and a one event timer.
|6.25.08 @ 7:32PM|#
KT, the proper response was "I guess you just don't need the same support I do."
Naga Sadow|6.25.08 @ 7:33PM|#
J sub D,
I'm paying $200 for mine. I got a friend at AT&T who will
unlock it for my T-mobile account. I sold my 80gb ipod for $250(it
was a gift) so I'm basically being paid $50 bucks for getting an
iPhone. Rockefeller would be proud of me.
|6.25.08 @ 7:34PM|#
Beta rocked. I bought a top-of-the-line SVHS after my Beta died
and was appalled by the picture compared to my Beta.
Sony was just run by idiots. :::sob:::
|6.25.08 @ 7:57PM|#
Beta rocked. I bought a top-of-the-line SVHS after my Beta
died and was appalled by the picture compared to my Beta.
Sony was just run by idiots. :::sob:::
Some folks bought RCA videodisc players. They had phenomenol
picture quality. Alas ...
jtuf|6.25.08 @ 8:44PM|#
If the factory workers want to negotiate for a better contract, I say more power to them. If activitst are trying to impose their views on the workers, I say back off. There is a reason the US is most popular in the countries we meddle the least.
dpsc|6.25.08 @ 8:55PM|#
OLS: Thinking, Reason-style: "People you don't like are
against it, so it's OK to support ChildLabor."
P.S. What's the correct libertarian position on this issue? Let's
ask Mary Ruwart!
Actually, you are confused. Let me break it down for you:
I hold conservative positions because they piss off the right
people.
I hold libertarian positions because they confuse the right
people.
I hold pragmatic positions because I would rather that other people
be poor and downtrodden than that I be poor and downtrodden, and
I'm pretty certain that the right people will arrange for one or
the other. Which is odd, given that they are always "visualizing
abundance" or some such nonsense.
|6.25.08 @ 8:58PM|#
Anybody click on the link to the "workers?" They looked pretty
damn healthy to me. Heck some were even a bit on the plump side,
downright fat if you JLH in the swimsuit is fat.
Gee they all appear to be wearing clean clothes, and the pics are
taken inside what appears to be nice homes, finally they appear
contrary to the testimonials appear to be pretty healthy.
PS
In college I worked in a sweat shop, and all I can say is that I'm
glad I don't anymore, what was sad is that most of the people who
worked there didn't know how much it sucked and lacked any
motivation to do anything else.
Regards
Joe Dokes
LT Nixon|6.25.08 @ 8:59PM|#
It's an outrage that this group would attack Kevin Bacon! Haven't they seen Footloose, man that dude has got some moves.
|6.25.08 @ 9:10PM|#
I thought Kevin Bacon was only a supporting player in the Michael Jordan films? Why didn't they go after Michael Jordan, Chandler, or Cuba Gooding Jr ( Perhaps an Academy Award winner being reduced to saying "Michael, I'm wearing your underwear" to make a living is punishment enough?) ?
|6.25.08 @ 9:14PM|#
This Canadian Boy would happily drop his Stanfield's for Ms. Hewitt. Hell, in order to facillitate things, I would even go commando for the occasion.
Jennifer Love Hewitt Double He|6.25.08 @ 9:15PM|#
Jennifer love Hewitt's entire career was built on being a skinny "girl next door" who happened to have big tits. It was not as a bangbros model.
|6.25.08 @ 9:22PM|#
It's probably true that the workers in the sweatshops are
getting one of the better deals available to them.
I think the opposition to the sweatshops is that the owners know
completely well about how pitiful the opportunities in these
nations are, and they take advantage of an incredible difference in
bargaining position to get these people to enter into deals that
bring great benefits to the owners in return for admittedly better
than usual but still crazy low benefits to the workers. The owner
makes tons, the worker makes pennies (though a few more pennies
than he may have made elsewhere) largely because the workers
alternatives (often due to the state he lives under btw) are
terrible. We call that taking advantage of folks. Whatever else it
is, it's not something to celebrate...
A rich guy who finds a starving single mom and offers to give her a
bit more money than she currently makes if she acts as his
"escort." He treats her like a cad but he does buy her a new dress
every now and then. According to MM's line of thinking he's a great
guy and should be lauded as a savior of troubled women...
dpsc|6.25.08 @ 10:30PM|#
Joe Dokes says:In college I worked in a sweat
shop
I'm going to have to question you on this, unless it's a stripper
joke (in which case, good show). Though the definition of sweatshop
is a bit slippery. it is not generally compatible with college
(though I certainly used the term metaphorically to refer to my
department in Uni, which employed me at about 10% of market rate
for a couple years).
When I was the right age to go to college I worked for an oven
company for a bit. They make most of the pizza ovens sold in the
US- the next time you're in a pizza shop take a look- probly a
Blodgett.
The employees of Blodgett are generally pretty happy. There is no
move to unionize that shop. I was hired from a temp agency though,
so I got only $5.00/hr to do the worst job in the factory.
I cut fiberglass (it goes in the panels of the ovens to keep them
cool enough that you don't get third degree burns if you brush
against them) with a machine made in the 1920s in a loft above the
factory floor where it was generally 110 degrees.
It took me weeks to figure out how to tape my uniform so that the
fiberglass didn't get all over me. Even after I figured that out it
still got all over my face, so I looked like I had a sunburn even
though I was inside all day.
I would not call that a sweatshop for a number of reasons. I'm
curious about where you worked.
|6.26.08 @ 12:13AM|#
Middle class people who work for a living understand what it's like to face the choice of Crappy Job vs. Starvation. Upper class academes probably figure that if we closed the sweatshops, all the Third Worlders could just eat cake.
|6.26.08 @ 12:29AM|#
What's bangbros
I'd help you out, but if I put any more pr0n on here, it'd probably
cause the space-time contiuum to collapse.
I heard of this great program called "Google"...you should check it
out. ;-D
|6.26.08 @ 1:05AM|#
by bangbros that dude was just referring to one of the more popular prons that focus on big butts. That was his point. Some of the bigger butt sites/companies will take the big ass even if its a little sloppy.
Kevin Carson|6.26.08 @ 2:05AM|#
Ah, the
"best available alternative" defense. How original.
James sub D,
Actually, it's a lot more likely that, rather than fleeing farm
work, they were forcibly *deprived* of the alternative of working
on their own land. The U.S. government, in collusion with feudal
landed oligarchies and dictatorial regimes, has been in the
business of limiting "available alternatives" for the past several
decades. It's essentially a reenactment of the Enclosures.
Incidentally, apologists for the "Dark Satanic Mills" use the same
"best available alternative" argument about the industrial
revolution in Britain. But in fact the wage labor pool was created
by driving people off the land against their will. They didn't
"flee" agricultural labor. They overwhelmingly chose to continue it
when they had a choice. The press of the late 18th and early 19th
century is full of demands for Enclosure by the British propertied
classes, based on their complaint that it was impossible to get
people to work hard enough or for low enough wages so long as they
had independent access to the land.
Mike Laursen|6.26.08 @ 2:49AM|#
Wait, that skinny chick in the 2-piece is supposed to be
fat? I think they must be using the wrong picture.
She's Hollywood fat, which isn't the same thing as real-life fat.
Sort of like Renée Zellweger in Jerry Macguire or Anne
Hathaway in The Devil Wears Prada were Hollywood
plain.
guess who|6.26.08 @ 2:54AM|#
Guess who wrote the following:
And yet, wherever the new export industries have grown, there has been measurable improvement in the lives of ordinary people. Partly this is because a growing industry must offer a somewhat higher wage than workers could get elsewhere in order to get them to move. More importantly, however, the growth of manufacturing--and of the penumbra of other jobs that the new export sector creates--has a ripple effect throughout the economy. The pressure on the land becomes less intense, so rural wages rise; the pool of unemployed urban dwellers always anxious for work shrinks, so factories start to compete with each other for workers, and urban wages also begin to rise. Where the process has gone on long enough--say, in South Korea or Taiwan--average wages start to approach what an American teen-ager can earn at McDonald's. And eventually people are no longer eager to live on garbage dumps. (Smokey Mountain persisted because the Philippines, until recently, did not share in the export-led growth of its neighbors. Jobs that pay better than scavenging are still few and far between.)
The benefits of export-led economic growth to the mass of people in the newly industrializing economies are not a matter of conjecture. A country like Indonesia is still so poor that progress can be measured in terms of how much the average person gets to eat; since 1970, per capita intake has risen from less than 2,100 to more than 2,800 calories a day. A shocking one-third of young children are still malnourished--but in 1975, the fraction was more than half. Similar improvements can be seen throughout the Pacific Rim, and even in places like Bangladesh. These improvements have not taken place because well-meaning people in the West have done anything to help--foreign aid, never large, has lately shrunk to virtually nothing. Nor is it the result of the benign policies of national governments, which are as callous and corrupt as ever. It is the indirect and unintended result of the actions of soulless multinationals and rapacious local entrepreneurs, whose only concern was to take advantage of the profit opportunities offered by cheap labor. It is not an edifying spectacle; but no matter how base the motives of those involved, the result has been to move hundreds of millions of people from abject poverty to something still awful but nonetheless significantly better.
Why, then, the outrage of my correspondents? Why does the image of an Indonesian sewing sneakers for 60 cents an hour evoke so much more feeling than the image of another Indonesian earning the equivalent of 30 cents an hour trying to feed his family on a tiny plot of land--or of a Filipino scavenging on a garbage heap?
The main answer, I think, is a sort of fastidiousness. Unlike the starving subsistence farmer, the women and children in the sneaker factory are working at slave wages for our benefit--and this makes us feel unclean. And so there are self-righteous demands for international labor standards: We should not, the opponents of globalization insist, be willing to buy those sneakers and shirts unless the people who make them receive decent wages and work under decent conditions.
This sounds only fair--but is it? Let's think through the consequences.
First of all, even if we could assure the workers in Third World export industries of higher wages and better working conditions, this would do nothing for the peasants, day laborers, scavengers, and so on who make up the bulk of these countries' populations. At best, forcing developing countries to adhere to our labor standards would create a privileged labor aristocracy, leaving the poor majority no better off.
And it might not even do that. The advantages of established First World industries are still formidable. The only reason developing countries have been able to compete with those industries is their ability to offer employers cheap labor. Deny them that ability, and you might well deny them the prospect of continuing industrial growth, even reverse the growth that has been achieved. And since export-oriented growth, for all its injustice, has been a huge boon for the workers in those nations, anything that curtails that growth is very much against their interests. A policy of good jobs in principle, but no jobs in practice, might assuage our consciences, but it is no favor to its alleged beneficiaries.
You may say that the wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent. But what is the alternative? Should they be helped with foreign aid? Maybe--although the historical record of regions like southern Italy suggests that such aid has a tendency to promote perpetual dependence. Anyway, there isn't the slightest prospect of significant aid materializing. Should their own governments provide more social justice? Of course--but they won't, or at least not because we tell them to. And as long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages, to oppose it means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.
In short, my correspondents are not entitled to their self-righteousness. They have not thought the matter through. And when the hopes of hundreds of millions are at stake, thinking things through is not just good intellectual practice. It is a moral duty.
|6.26.08 @ 3:12AM|#
Actually, it's a lot more likely that, rather than fleeing
farm work, they were forcibly *deprived* of the alternative of
working on their own land. The U.S. government, in collusion with
feudal landed oligarchies and dictatorial regimes, has been in the
business of limiting "available alternatives" for the past several
decades. It's essentially a reenactment of the
Enclosures.
Um, yeah. How's the weather up there on the Grassy Knoll?
dpsc|6.26.08 @ 3:37AM|#
I didn't have to guess. I knew, immediately, who had written
that. Too bad he became so partisan- he would repudiate that now, I
think.
Still, it raises an issue. If aid is effective, why don't the
people favoring aid each chip in 10 bucks? That would raise 100
million dollars. I've been told, over and over, that 100 million
dollars would be enough to end poverty, globally. So I wonder why
the people who keep saying that don't just go ahead and do it,
instead of trying to get 10 bucks from other people.
|6.26.08 @ 7:53AM|#
dpsc
I don't know what foriegn aid supporters you talked to, but the
ones I know have happily chipped in more than 10 bucks but think
100 million is not going to do much. Many of them would be happy if
our foriegn aid budget were HALF what our blow up foriegners budget
is.
|6.26.08 @ 7:59AM|#
I think our foriegn aid budget (counting military aid) is around 15 billion a year while our defense budget is around 350 billion...Like I said most aid supporters would like to see the first figure go up and the second down (if the boost in the first came from the second that would be nice)
|6.26.08 @ 8:07AM|#
"Guess who wrote the following: ...You may say that the
wretched of the earth should not be forced to serve as hewers of
wood, drawers of water, and sewers of sneakers for the affluent.
But what is the alternative? ... -Paul Krugman"
Yeah, but he's a quasi-socialist.
|6.26.08 @ 8:10AM|#
Get those kids OUT of the factory and back onto the streets prostituting themselves! Wouldn't want those USAS members to have to go without next trip to Vietnam.
|6.26.08 @ 8:30AM|#
You just don't understand, Michael C. Moynihan, because you are not as enlightened as the people of USAS. Either that or you're an evil corporatist, which they probably think is more likely in your case.
charlie|6.26.08 @ 8:41AM|#
Um, yeah. How's the weather up there on the Grassy
Knoll?
Yeah, because the idea that multi-national corporations might
collude with corrupt governments to illegitimately appropriate land
and suppress wages is just so out there, man.
|6.26.08 @ 9:17AM|#
"The owner makes tons, the worker makes pennies (though a few
more pennies than he may have made elsewhere) largely because the
workers alternatives (often due to the state he lives under btw)
are terrible. We call that taking advantage of folks. Whatever else
it is, it's not something to celebrate..."
Data. Specificity. Otherwise people point and laugh here in the
adult world. That sort of self-righteous sermonizing only works
well when the audience is the (poorly educated) choir.
|6.26.08 @ 9:31AM|#
When I was sixteen I got "protected" from factory work that paid a living wage. I got beat out kitchen work by illegal immigrants. F*** a bunch of college pricks. The alternative in the third world is often selling your anus to chickenhawks to eat. Oh, I forgot, that happens in the US also.
thuyen nguyen|6.26.08 @ 10:15AM|#
We have been monitoring Nike factories in Vietnam for 10 years
now and none of them pay 3 times the minimum wage. They all paid
the minimum wage which is quite low, $45 per month and some Nike
factories paid a lower wage of $30 per month. Such low minimum
wages were set before Vietnam experienced 25% inflation in the last
two years. Workers in Vietnam have staged over 750 strikes in the
last 6 months asking for higher wages.
Mr. Moynihan should do some research before making uninformed
statement such as, the dreaded "sweatshop" position has long been a
prized job in Saigon. These jobs are not prized. They are just a
notch above prostitution and slavery.
Rgds, Thuyen Nguyen
for Vietnam Labor Watch
David Gillies|6.26.08 @ 10:31AM|#
Quoth J sub D: "You would think that the university would teach
the younguns some history."
Ha! That's the funniest thing I've read all week. Well done,
Sir!
As for Kevin Carson, Blake's 'dark satanic mills' were the
universities, as any fule kno.
|6.26.08 @ 11:47AM|#
Mr. Nguyen,
With all due sympathy to the plight of third-world labor:
They all paid the minimum wage which is quite low, $45 per
month and some Nike factories paid a lower wage of $30 per
month.
OK, your statement seems to contradict itself. "They all paid the
minimum wage," is followed by "some...paid a lower wage." Please
clarify.
If they are not paying the local minimum wage, why is the
government not enforcing its own minimum-wage laws? If Nike is
indeed in violation, then they bear some responsibility for the
situation, but that doesn't excuse the government's inaction.
These jobs are not prized. They are just a notch above
prostitution and slavery.
It would seem that if the jobs were so unpopular, that Nike would
have trouble filling them. Sorry that the economy of Vietnam isn't
all you'd like it to be, but that's not Nike's fault.
Slavery is not a "job." Is slavery actually a reality in Vietnam? I
suspect not. Overly-emotional, false statement such as this do
nothing to inspire confidence in you or VLW.
|6.26.08 @ 12:29PM|#
While many market economy reforms were implemented in the 80s,
Vietnam is still a "Socialist Republic".
In other words, I imagine there is a definite relationship between
the state and the corporations to keep the mobility of workers in
check. I'm just guessing here, but you don't need to be a PHD
economist to see how a totalitarian state might have a vested
interest in keeping their country viable to corporate
interests.
|6.26.08 @ 12:32PM|#
In other words, Krugman (who has always begrudgingly admitted that the free market is best for increasing wealth) seems to be presupposing that the workers in these sweatshop countries are being allowed to benefit from the growing economy by the state. I could see how that might not be the case.
dpsc|6.26.08 @ 2:50PM|#
These jobs are not prized. They are just a notch above
prostitution and slavery.
These two statements are a bit contradictory. There might not be
actual slavery in Vietnam but there certainly is prostitution. If
these jobs are actually a notch above prostitution, and there are
still prostitutes, it follows that these jobs are in fact prized by
prostitutes.
Frankly, I think y'all would have been a lot better off if the US
had won the war over there. We didn't though, so I'm not sure why
you're complaining about current conditions to us, or to our
large-breasted proxies/doxies (who we prize, by the way). Leave JLH
alone!
dpsc|6.26.08 @ 3:15PM|#
Mr Nice guy: I think our foriegn aid budget (counting
military aid) is around 15 billion a year while our defense budget
is around 350 billion...Like I said most aid supporters would like
to see the first figure go up and the second down (if the boost in
the first came from the second that would be nice)
Interesting. Let's take a look at a reasonably close neighbor of
Vietnam (from the US perspective), Japan. If I recall correctly
Japan's GDP more than doubled over the course of the Korean war. A
lot of the credit for the post-war "miracle" should be given to our
bomb-foreigners initiative.
Now, I'd agree that the Korean war was a strangely targeted (no pun
intended) aid package, but it was much more effective than most of
our more precisely targeted aid packages.
I'd gladly pay some thousands of dollars into a fund that actually
ended global immiseration, or even significantly ameliorated it.
Not only would that be the correct moral choice (about which I give
not a fig), but by the end of my life the increased economic
activity in currently non-productive nations would likely pay me
back, indirectly, ten-fold.
The problem is that aid does not usually help much. And I don't
want to give even a thin dime to the despots that enforce the
immiseration of their nations.
The one-hundred million figure comes from a Nation article
published in the late eighties or early nineties. I should note
that I am far too young to have ever read that article, but I buy
its premise. That is all the money that would be needed to
kick-start the economic development of the third world if the
correct cionditions were in place.
Those conditions are not in place, so all the money we send goes
down a shithole at the moment. I refuse to feel bad about not
wanting to throw even more money down a shithole, and I think the
people who profit from shoveling said money into said shithole
ought to feel bad about it because they are really standing in the
way of improving things, and they are profiting from it,
handsomely.
|6.27.08 @ 9:01AM|#
That "Garfield" movie she was in sucked. I have never seen a more obviously-bored actress in a role.
Slick|7.6.08 @ 9:03AM|#
Liberal college students....half the time they don't know what they are protesting much less have any insight to it. Once they have to experience "life", they may acquire some common sense.
Site comments/questions:
Media Inquiries and Reprint Permissions:
(310) 367-6109
Editorial & Production Offices:
3415 S. Sepulveda Blvd.
Suite 400
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 391-2245