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  • In 1993, Senator Tom Harkin proposed banning all products that were made with child

  • labor from coming into the United States. The result, according to Oxfam, is that thousands,

  • quote, quote became prostitutes or starved. m Ben Powell, an economist at Suffolk University,

  • and I m going to talk to you about sweatshops. Defending sweatshops is not about defending

  • corporate profits or economic efficiency. It s about the welfare of the third world

  • workers. And I think first we should say what we mean by a sweatshop. It is a place in

  • the third world with very low pay by our Western standards and very poor working conditions,

  • both health, safety, long hours of work, predictability of overtime, maybe lack of breaks or bathroom

  • breaks, vacation time, many days a week, all of those things. With the appalling working

  • conditions that they are, the workers still choose to work there, and that choice is important.

  • Them choosing to work there demonstrates that they think that it s better than the alternatives

  • available to them. And the Oother alternatives are often much worse. It could be scavenging,

  • begging, or even prostitution. Let s take Cambodia for example. There s a trash dump

  • there where workers earn workers is actually an exaggeration where people savagingscavenging

  • earn about 75 cents a day for their efforts in the broiling sun. But yet working in a

  • sweatshop there can earn workers as much as $2 a day. This is a much better alternative

  • to that. Now of course that doesn t mean that this is all we want these workers to aspire

  • to. Of course we should want their lives to be better and for them to be able to earn

  • more. But it does mean that you we have to be very careful what you agitate for, that

  • you don t eliminate the sweatshop job to throw them into some much worse alternative that

  • s out there. We need to give them more opportunities in sweatshops and fewer opportunities back

  • in the informal scavenging subsistence agriculture sector. The good news is the process of development

  • is what cures the sweatshops. That brings increasing capital, labor, and technology

  • into the countries. aAnd this process can happen much quicker than it used to. Sweatshops

  • used to be common in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States. For us, it was about

  • a 150- year or so process of going from pre industrialization to post sweatshop. What

  • s happened is, when the U.S. and Germany and Great Britain were going through this, all

  • the capital had to be created anew, all the technology had to be discovered. Now, it s

  • all out there. sSo the potential for growth is explosive., bBut first, countries have

  • to get their institutions right, things that protect private property, the rule of law,

  • give economic freedom. These things can attract the capital and the technology to the country

  • to make the growth explosive. It s still a process. Sweatshops won t disappear overnight.

  • But that process can go much quicker now than it has in the past. bBut it depends crucially

  • on institutions that promote economic freedom. [End of Transcription 0:02:48] The Unbelievable

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  • Andrew Microsoft Office Word Title Microsoft Word 97-2003 Document MSWordDoc Word.Document.8

In 1993, Senator Tom Harkin proposed banning all products that were made with child

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