While feigning outrage at worker abuse in Bangladesh, the U.S. government has been quietly supporting the same sweatshop factories used by Wal-Mart and the Gap.
Tax Dollars for Sweatshops
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While feigning outrage at worker abuse in Bangladesh, the U.S. government has been quietly supporting the same sweatshop factories used by Wal-Mart and the Gap.
The news that a Romanian sweatshop manufactured one of Kate Middleton’s most famous dresses has inspired renewed popular interest in the ethics and economics of outsourcing jobs to utilize super-cheap labor. This is only the most recent of a string of cases that exemplify the shocking proliferation of sweatshops — even across Europe — over the past few decades. But the truly troubling part of the story is the logic that Kate’s defenders have invoked to justify this trend, drawing on arguments made by allegedly “progressive” U.S. economists.