A video in defense of Sweatshops

[JDPriestly]

11. Serfs who worked on feudal estates were better off than vagrants who died at the

hands of outlaws and robbers in the woods.

Indentured servants in the US were better off than slaves.

But neither serfs nor indentured servants had enough income to support a capitalist economy. Because for capitalism to exist, you need consumers with money.

The video presents an obvious economic truth -- that people will pick the highest paying job they can get. Then, with a slick, logical high jump and turn-about it contorts the argument that the employer who pays poverty wages to people who work very hard is perfectly in his rights to sell the products produced at those poverty wages for high prices in other countries and pocket the difference and smart to do so.

The problem with this video is that it forgets the fact that if manufacturing jobs that pay enough for the workers to purchase the products they make are moved to factories in which workers do not earn enough to purchase the products they make, eventually, there will not be enough people with sufficient money to purchase the products -- and then the factories, sweatshops or not, will be closed and the jobs permanently lost.

In fact, that is what is gradually happening all over the world. The Irish, Greek, Spanish and Italian people bought products from Germany and elsewhere. But since the workers in Ireland, Greece, Spain and Italy did not earn enough money in their countries to pay for the products and the money borrowed to permit them to buy the products, the Irish, Greek, Spanish and Italian people are facing austerity measures. They are accused of spending and borrowing more than they were earning. Now they will stop buying the German products, and eventually the hard times that have hit elsewhere will hit Germany and other supposedly prosperous countries.

In time, if this trend continues unabated, the demand for manufactured goods will decline to the point that the world is in an even more serious depression than it is today and even the mining and production of raw materials will be unprofitable.

The makers of this video think in simplistic terms that are beyond belief. Do they think that we are as stupid as they are and cannot see the ultimate result of their economic, hogwash theories?

Yes, workers will seek the highest paying jobs. But unless those jobs pay enough to create a market for the goods they produce, the jobs will not last.

A few sweat shops in a world in which sweat shops are rare will be profitable. But when, as we now see happening around the world, sweat shops become the norm and the employees of those sweat shops are so poorly paid that there is no market for the goods they produce, the economies of the world will gradually shut down. When all manufacturing and most work is paid at sweat-shop rates, we will have a worldwide depression and who knows what that will mean for the political and social future of the world.

Typical right-wing propaganda. I'd like to know how well these people do on tests of reasoning. Not very well, I suspect.