The REAL Problem With Chinese Goods

Seeing this after all the other stories about death by pet food, contaminated toothpaste and lead paint in toys made me wonder. Why shouldn't we care more about sweatshops than recalled toys? Are we so selfish as a culture that we worry more over a dangerous toy our kid might have played with than the dangerous conditions Chinese workers face every day to produce the goods we buy?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/08/2...reut/index.html

 

In reality, the problem is even bigger than what any short article can describe. For instance, China is using their newfound revenue to increase military spending at the rate of 10%+ a year and the ballooning oil demand in China is arguably one of the reasons we're in the Middle East.

I guess my point is that the majority of the headlines are something along the lines of "Some Lady's Cat Dies After Eating Chinese Pet Food". Who really cares, though? I'm much more concerned that Chinese workers are making less than a dollar for a 12 hour day of work in unsafe conditions. There are so many more important aspects to the problem of Chinese goods than American consumers read about.

 

I wouldn't say I'm "missing" the fact that Americans are a bit selfish, rather I'm lamenting it.

Many Americans are the same way about issues like global warming. Since we may not experience the full effect of our wastefulness and pollution for generations, centuries or longer, a lot of people simply do not care.

This, I think, characterizes one of the biggest flaws in our society which is an almost complete lack of foresight and concern for others. As this relates to Chinese goods, increased demand for unregulated Chinese imports has the potential to cause pollution, reduce product quality, lower global labor standards, broaden the global wealth gap and even cause military tensions as China competes for resources.

All we see, however, is that sweatshop labor boosts corporate profits in the short term (while increasing the national trade deficit) and gives us cheaper toys. Who cares if we're ignoring the social problems and shooting ourselves in the foot in the long run?

I could go deeper into what I believe on the issue, but suffice it to say I think that too much selfishness at the sacrifice of the greater good may ultimately be the downfall of our society.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tripp @ Aug 23 2007, 02:53 PM) [snapback]501202[/snapback]</div>

I think you have a point to a degree but Americans are some of the worst. We're the only western country in the world without free universal healthcare, for example, and if you look at places like France, public awareness of social issues is a lot better and the social safety nets and working standards are a bit better (though the current president wants to change some of that). In fact, France has a 35 hour workweek, free healthcare, and laws that prevent coroporations from laying off workers to boost profits.

Nevertheless, even in America, I think there are eras where public opinion and society in general are better about dealing with the problems. For example, in our own industrial age, you saw a lot of labor abuses in terms of working conditions and wages (though immigrants flocked here from around the world to work in our sweatshops and mines). You even had the government actively supporting the abuses by doing things like bringing in the National Guard to gun down striking workers.

Slowly, however, the the public became more aware of the problems and started to care about what was happening. Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle" for example, made people aware of the fact that men would fall into meat grinders in processing plants where they were ground up with the rest of the meat and sold to consumers. The resulting public outcry led to the establishment of the FDA and stricter inspections.

Similar events and "muckraking" stories caused Americans to demand laws calling for things like safe working conditions, an end to child labor, social security and the establishment of minimum wage during our "progressive era".

In recent decades, however, the self-indulgement of the 60's grew into the self-serving greed of the 80's (where offshoring started picking up steam) which led us to the point we're at now. Essentially, we're now committing the same sins of the industrial age with the labor abuses, pollution, product quality and working conditions, it's just that we're doing it in other countries. We're also doing things like cutting taxes on the rich while threatening to cut social security benefits and other social programs.

It still surprises me at times that American society made such great strides in guarding against the immorality of the industrial age just to turn around a hundred years later and forget what we learned.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(oxnardprof @ Aug 23 2007, 05:28 PM) [snapback]501259[/snapback]</div>

I'm with you there. One of the good thing about Democrats (who I dislike almost as much as Republicans) is that they tended to fight more for labor provisions in deals like CAFTA.


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Sonny Jim @ Aug 23 2007, 05:42 PM) [snapback]501264[/snapback]</div>

Actually I never called France's benefits "free", I just said that the social safety net was better. You're right, though: in order to have better global labor standards and things like universal health care, products may cost more and taxes will be higher.

The thing of it is, I don't want to do what's cheap, I want to do what's right. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices in order to make a morally sound decision. In fact, that's why I drive a Prius! It wasn't the most cost effective car I could buy, but it was the one that would best reduce my demand for oil and thus reduce my contribution to related problems.

On a side note, I thought this was interesting:

http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/22/news/econo...sion=2007082306

According to one study Americans work fewer 48 hour workweeks than "developing" countries like Thailand and Mexico. The Fortune author's conclusion (which is little surprise given Fortune's gung-ho capitalist leanings) is that Americans should work more hours to "compete in the global market".

Another way of looking at this, however, is that our acceptance of sweatshop conditions in other countries adds pressure to worsen our own labor standards. Many workers died to bring us things like minimum wage and the 40 hour workweek. It would be a shame to reverse the progress we've made in the last century.