A Journalist Actually Addresses "Compared to What" When Discussing Child Labor in the 3rd World
, no less, a site I frequently mock for its economic ignorance. This is from an article about Adidas totally automating the shoe-making process with robots:
But there's a dark side to all of this, which is what's going to happen to those communities when the sweatshops eventually close. In 1992, US Senator Tom Harkin proposed legislation that would block imports of goods produced by children under the age of 15. A year later, the Bangladesh garment industry dismissed 50,000 children in anticipation of the bill, which was never passed. A 1997 report by UNICEF tracked those children, and found that their situation had gotten worse, not better. As the report explains, the children wound up in "hazardous situations" where they were "paid less, or in prostitution."
