jkenno, I know that your heart is in the right place, but I find it troubling that you employ such emotive phrases as "virtual slave labour".

Even the shining example you provide in the form of "Certified sweatshop-free!" (their exclamation point) gives the lie to this description. "The wage figure for the lowest-paid worker at the union shop that produces No Sweat sneakers is 20% higher than the regional minimum wage, even before the considerable rice allowance is added"

20% above slave-labour levels? Is this statistically significant? I have no doubt it is an improvement, but it incremental at best, and certainly cannot be realistically trumpeted as fundamentally different from "slave labour".

There are a few further dimensions, one of them is volume. The puff piece on the sweat-free sneakers does not give any indication how many are employed. Nike employ 200,000 in China alone, 84,000 in Vietnam etc. Is it worse to pay a handful of people 20% over the odds, or employ vast numbers, at better rates than they can get by not working for Nike?

Ultimately, whether we like it or not, the market will be the mechanism whereby these people are lifted from their present economic state. This is true for Africa as well - which is where this discussion began - and no amount of do-gooding around the edges can possibly change this.

'The market, oh the glorious free market; it will save us all'. What crap. The only thing that is certain about the market is that the rich benefit at the expense of the poor. It has been like that for the last hundred years and it will be like it for the next hundred if we sit idly by and think things will magically improve.

If you are going to quote my source, at least do so in mild completeness: "All workers receive extra money to purchase rice, which is based upon family size. All employees also receive 100% health insurance (and 80% for family members), travel allowances, maternity and other benefits not calculated into the wage figure. In addition to these benefits, after 25 years, workers receive a pension worth 10% of their lifetime earnings". This is not immaterial to me, and it certainly would not be immaterial to the workers themselves. So yes, it is “statistically significant”.

I guess you missed the point. I provided a clear example of how wage rates and conditions of workers can be drastically improved without it affecting the price of the product, which countered your claim in a previous post. That aside, I guess we have different opinions fundamentally because I believe, what you call ‘do-gooding around the edges’ has the inherent potential solve any situation. People working together to make a difference is responsible for the vast majority of anything the human race has achieved, not the ‘market’. To say that nothing can be done is, in my opinion, untrue. When you expose under-developed economies to the rigours of the international market it is hardly surprising that their weaknesses are exploited by the strong. But to think that this exploitation and inequality that the 3rd world has suffered under capitalism will suddenly dissolve via the market is utopian and impossible to justify. Your defeatist attitude, unfortunately one held by a majority of those in the 1st world, that basically we can’t do anything to help is thoroughly disheartening

If you get the time watch Race: The Power Of An Illusion
The Difference Between Us tonite at 8:35pm Monday, January 23, 2006.

http://www.abc.net.au/

Shonga “Economics is a reletively easy science.”

Actually, “economics” is a relatively “complex” “art”.

Whilst “economics” might be described as one of the branches of “social science”, the simple observation that if you want two conflicting opinions, ask two economists or the same economist on different days, suggests “art” is the appropriate classification.

John Maynard Keynes almost needed a licensed plumber to put together the water flow models he used to demonstrate his theory of the “Paradox of Thrift”.
Unfortunately he also espoused the facile idea that encouraged government to be more active in “the economy”, instead of limiting itself to performing what it should do as “moderator”, leading to the institutionalisation of national industries and the moribund influence that strategy had over time.

Whilst understanding simple principles of supply and demand or how balanced government budgets alleviating inflation whilst increasing public debt induces inflation; the full and subtle consequences of say, forgiving international debt or export subsidies are far less understood even by the “experts”.

From your comment regarding “economic as a “reletively easy science”, it is a certainty to conclude, your comprehension to what economics really is, leaves you unsuitably qualified to comment on its significance, complexity or influence.

Pericles – agree with your observations regarding China.
It is duplicitous, ignorant and patronising for anyone in Australia to assume the TCF sweat shops of Shanghai are a worse “career” option to the grinding poverty and zero opportunity presented by Chinese peasant farming.

“the market will be the mechanism whereby these people are lifted from their present economic state.”

Agree absolutely and for proof, just as anyone from the People Paradises of the previous Warsaw pact countries.

And agree , the "model for success" (market capitalism) is transferable to every continent and nation and whilst some Latin American countries seem to currently think otherwise, ultimately their gullibility will cost them in both the medium and long term.
What is most lacking in Africa remains, I suspect, "attitude".

And not even Shonga could define the economic values of "Attitude"

hey jkenno - keep your hair on mate, you may remember you were hassling me about a statement relating to heritage, identity and revenge.

As lame as it may sound now, I only wrote that in jest and was actually harking back to an aussie film whose name i have been trying to recall or find on the Internet over the past few days (perhaps 'wogboy' or 'he died with a falafel in his hand' but I cant find the reference).

So yes, lame because I can't remember the title of the film and lame because it obviously wasn't funny to you. Sometimes I wonder whether I really am talking to Australians on this site because so many seem to have lost any sense of humour even when the joke is crap. Normally in this country I thought, we use humour only when things are really serious. (Perhaps each of us here needs to get out a bit into the bush so we lighten up and avoid coming down all grim like other countries:)

Anyway, by means of belated explanation - there is a guy in the film who wanders around violently most of the time (he's a personality not unlike the character Bobo in Fat Pizza) and at one point he says:

"My mother was Croation and my father was Serbian so every morning I wake up and I want to kill myself"

I was simply referring to the pursuit of retribution for historical reasons - how endless and futile it is and how sometimes those who so desperately want it are not sure who they are because of it.

Personally however, i think England went decidedly downhill after 1066 and the last millennium deserves an outright apology from the French. My father is very keen to demand reparations for the massacre of the Albigensians in the fourteenth century but that's just him.

JKENNO
that link about no sweat shoes is a very good one. Though my leather runners last HEAPS longer than canvas.

My point all along in regard to China and other low labor cost places has been this-

WE MUST PUT PRESSURE on them to RAISE the living standard and wages and benefits to reduce the wage disparity between cost of goods here and there. Such higher wages will also enable them more purchasing power for OUR goods or commodities.

CLEARLY the pressure and publicity has had an impact in this case.

While I do agree with Pericles and Cols analysis, I find they do not give enough weight to the fact that competing labor rates and market forces are all very true and valid factors in a closed system. But I suggest that they apply less in open systems. i.e. where the economic factors are not prone to external forces which are totally unpredictable and uncontrollable.

"Market forces" are very much like the date from hell.. she is hot.. desirable, sexy, and seductive..but she DUMPS you as soon as a 'hotter' prospect comes along. Yes.. that is economic reality, though in my experience, relationships do count more sometimes. So, i add that to the discussion.

Your post in my view supports what I've been saying.

Cols explaination of the demise of English Ship yards is helpful.. it showed exactly what I have said.. "Don't protect lazy or inneficient' industries, but DO protect efficient and innovative from unfair practices which are uncontrollable. i.e. exist in an open system with no feedback. The shipyards all failed because a government made the wrong decision, quite possibly as a result of UNION pressure to protect employment.

Col showed clearly the mistakes made at Goverment level on the Shipyards and Pericles showed clearly the 'non-mistakes' made by Korea etc.. so putting those things together, maybe we can see some light ?