Thursday, January 15, 2009

Three Cheers for Sweatshops

NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof knows a good thing when it is in front of him. After spending years in East Asia, he says:

When I defend sweatshops, people always ask me: But would you want to work in a sweatshop? No, of course not. But I would want even less to pull a rickshaw. In the hierarchy of jobs in poor countries, sweltering at a sewing machine isn’t the bottom.

My views on sweatshops are shaped by years living in East Asia, watching as living standards soared — including those in my wife’s ancestral village in southern China — because of sweatshop jobs.
Read his full remarkable column, here.

(HTWalter Block)

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