Posted on 05/03/2013 1:09:31 PM PDT by Kaslin
"This is called slave labor," said Pope Francis.
The Holy Father was referring to the $40 a month paid to apparel workers at that eight-story garment factory in Bangladesh that collapsed on top of them, killing more than 400.
"Not paying a just wage ... focusing exclusively on the balance books, on financial statements, only looking at personal profit. That goes against God!"
The pope is describing the dark side of globalism.
Why is Bangladesh, after China, the second-largest producer of apparel in the world? Why are there 4,000 garment factories in that impoverished country which, a few decades ago, had almost none?
Because the Asian subcontinent is where Western brands -- from Disney to Gap to Benetton -- can produce cheapest. They can do so because women and children will work for $1.50 a day crammed into factories that are rickety firetraps, where health and safety regulations are nonexistent.
This is what capitalism, devoid of a conscience, will produce.
Rescuers at the factory outside Dhaka have stopped looking for survivors, but expect to find hundreds more bodies in the rubble.
The Walt Disney Co., with sales of $40 billion a year, decided -- after an apparel plant fire in November took the lives of 112 workers -- to stop producing in Bangladesh. "The Disney ban now extends to other countries, including Pakistan," says The New York Times, "where a fire last September killed 262 garment workers."
Not long ago, the shirts, skirts, suits and dresses Americans wore were "Made in the USA" -- in plants in the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana, where the lower wages, lighter regulations and air conditioning that came after World War II had attracted the factories from New England.
The American idea was that the 50 states and their citizens should compete with one another fairly. The feds set the health and safety standards that all factories had to meet, and imposed wage and hour laws. Some states offered lower wages, but there was a federal minimum wage.
How did we prevent companies from shutting down here and going to places like today's Bangladesh to produce as cheaply as they could -- without regard for the health and safety of their workers -- and to send their products back here and kill the American factories?
From James Madison to the mid-20th century, we had a tariff.
This provided revenue for the U.S. government to keep other taxes low and build the nation's infrastructure. Tariffs prevented exploiters of labor from getting rich here on sweatshops abroad.
Tariffs favored U.S. companies by letting them compete for free in the U.S. market, while a cover charge was placed on foreign goods entering the U.S.A. Foreign producers would pay tariffs for the privilege of competing here, while U.S. companies paid income taxes.
Foreigners had to buy a ticket to the game. Americans got in free.
After all, it's our country, isn't it?
But in the late 20th century, America abandoned as "protectionism" what Henry Clay had called The American System. We gave up on economic patriotism. We gave up on the idea that the U.S. economy should be structured for the benefit of America and Americans first.
We embraced globalism.
The ideological basis of globalism was that, just as what was best for America was a free market where U.S. companies produce and sell anywhere freely and equally in the U.S.A., this model can be applied worldwide.
We can create a global economy where companies produce where they wish and sell where they wish.
As one might expect, the big boosters of the concept were the transnational corporations. They could now shift plants and factories out of the high-wage, well-regulated U.S. economy to Mexico, China and India, then to Bangladesh, Haiti and Cambodia, produce for pennies, ship their products back to the U.S.A., sell here at the same old price, and pocket the difference.
As some who were familiar with the decline of Great Britain predicted, this would lead inexorably to the deindustrialization of America, a halt to the steady rise in U.S. workers' wages and standard of living, and the enrichment of a new class of corporatists.
Meanwhile, other nations, believing yet in economic nationalism, would invade and capture huge slices of the U.S. market for their home companies, their "national champions." The losers would be the companies that stayed in the U.S.A. and produced for the U.S.A., with American workers.
And so it came to pass. U.S. real wages have not risen in 40 years.
In the first decade of the century, America lost 5 million to 6 million manufacturing jobs, one in every three we had, as 55,000 factories closed.
Since Bush 41 touted his New Word Order, we have run trade deficits of $10 trillion -- ten thousand billion dollars! Everybody -- the EU, China, Japan, Mexico, Canada -- now runs a trade surplus at the expense of the U.S.A.
We built the global economy -- by gutting our own.
I get the idea you just read the excerpt, and not the whole article.
Do you remember why Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers ?
The Ten Commandments are ‘absolute truth’. Funny that! Centuries old advice is still relevant in today’s hip culture.
I think what LIVIUS is saying is that you shouldn't have to work in a death trap of a building because of the greed of the owner.
GREED is one of the 'sins'... remember? The Pope is against it, and that is what this article was about.
Well they don’t interpret themselves. What authority are you relying on?
Thou shalt not steal.
Furthermore, Saul (By G-D,Himself) was ordered to kill all the inhabitants of the enemy city, including the animals which are property. He killed the people, and kept (stole) the animals. This act of disobedience doomed his kingship, and short-circuited his dynasty. In addition the the Commandments, this implies that life and property are equal.
Note that he was not commanded to destroy the property and capture the people.
I think it was more to demonstrate disinterest in plunder.
Unless the people were forced to work at gunpoint, this is the sad truth.
The working conditions may seem cruel to us, but "good wages" are relative. This is the first (often ugly) step in economic development.
This kind of labor is far more effective in aiding populations than direct financial aid, which is almost always squandered.
It's very close to it, though. It's implied in the Commandment, "Do not steal."
Free trade is a reality --a law of nature. If two parties are not coerced, or engaging in misrepresentation, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with tradiing. (With a few exceptions, like prostitution, etc.)
You think?
If you withhold your private property from the poor, you’re going to hell. THAT’S a moral absolute.
True, but it also forbids the poor, or anyone else from stealing private property.
You must leave part of your field unharvested, and you must permit them to eat of your field at night, but not carry any away from it, and you must leave that part of the harvest that falls to the ground for the benefit of the poor.
But the property is yours and by a commandment equal to the one about murder, they may not steal it from you, nor covet it.
Sorry; was anyone advocating stealing? But since you bring up covetousness and stealing, let’s be quite clear that for the rich to deprive the poor unjustly is also covetousness and stealing. Your neighbor’s basic human dignity and necessities of life are your concern and in neglecting them you imperil your soul.
If private property isn’t important, then there is no such thing as stealing, is there? So you’re right you aren’t advocating stealing, because you don’t agree with private property. Are you an anarchist?
That was lazy and unimaginative of you. Since I’ve already dealt with the importance of private property, it’s clear you are out of gas: either uninterested in a serious dialogue about its moral dimensions, or else out of your depth.
bfl
I thought it was quite imaginative, and I’ll take “lazy” for a compliment. A lot of good ideas came, not from hard working imaginative people, but from lazy, imaginative people looking for a better, easier, way.
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