Prohibiting Child Labor Means Increasing Poverty
February 16th 2010 15:00
There is a very important post over at economist Steven Landsburg's blog. The intro:
I very much wish people would stop trying to help the poor without first doing some research or checking with their common sense. People are far too willing to listen to politicians with interests that are contrary to the poor and expect them to be representing the poor. When your Congressman tells you that boycotting goods that were made in a sweatshop will help out the poor kids in Bangladesh (or any other poor country), ask yourself a few questions:
1. Who votes for my Congressman? Poor Bangladeshis or labor unions that compete with cheap labor?
2. If the poor Bangladeshi cannot work in a sweatshop, what will his or her life look like instead? Will they make more money? Will they go into prostitution instead?
3. Why was this child working in a sweatshop anyways? Did they choose this line of work because they did not feel like playing all day? Did they just not know they could go to school instead?
4. How come it was okay for the United States to get rich during a time period when child labor was prevalent, but Bangladeshis should stay poor rather than allow their children to work?
Hopefully these, and other similar questions, will get you to thinking about the consequences of destroying these exporting jobs, that pay more than any other job in a third-world country, The short-run decision is not between poor children having a "normal childhood" and working in a sweatshop. The decision we are faced with in reality is between a poor child working in a sweatshop and surviving or that child prostituting themselves and dying of disease or starvation. When politicians and labor unions speak out against sweatshops in third-world countries, they are sending these children to their graves, all in the name of fighting poverty.
Follow me on Twitter: @AGoldenDoor
Back in 1992, a ten year old Bangladeshi girl named Moyna was one of 50,000 children who lost their jobs in the wake of protectionist legislation sponsored by the execrable union-backed Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. How does Moyna feel about Americans now? “They loathe us, don’t they?”, she says. “We are poor and not well educated, so they simply despise us. That is why they shut the factories down.”
I very much wish people would stop trying to help the poor without first doing some research or checking with their common sense. People are far too willing to listen to politicians with interests that are contrary to the poor and expect them to be representing the poor. When your Congressman tells you that boycotting goods that were made in a sweatshop will help out the poor kids in Bangladesh (or any other poor country), ask yourself a few questions:
1. Who votes for my Congressman? Poor Bangladeshis or labor unions that compete with cheap labor?
2. If the poor Bangladeshi cannot work in a sweatshop, what will his or her life look like instead? Will they make more money? Will they go into prostitution instead?
3. Why was this child working in a sweatshop anyways? Did they choose this line of work because they did not feel like playing all day? Did they just not know they could go to school instead?
4. How come it was okay for the United States to get rich during a time period when child labor was prevalent, but Bangladeshis should stay poor rather than allow their children to work?
Hopefully these, and other similar questions, will get you to thinking about the consequences of destroying these exporting jobs, that pay more than any other job in a third-world country, The short-run decision is not between poor children having a "normal childhood" and working in a sweatshop. The decision we are faced with in reality is between a poor child working in a sweatshop and surviving or that child prostituting themselves and dying of disease or starvation. When politicians and labor unions speak out against sweatshops in third-world countries, they are sending these children to their graves, all in the name of fighting poverty.
Follow me on Twitter: @AGoldenDoor
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