Recently, I read an article about how soccer balls, most of which are made in a certain town in Pakistan, were no longer sewn by children, thanks to pressure from Adidas and other international firms. The children now work making bricks. There was a quote in the article from a local decrying this as a mistake, saying that the children were learning a trade to support them for life, by making soccer balls.
But, last I checked, China, Pakistan, et. al. have a massive unemployment problem. Now, there's two ways to solve this -- the first is to make more jobs, the approach we see here. The other would be to reduce the size of the labor pool through enforcement of child labor laws, limitations on number of hours worked per week, mandatory and free schooling through age 18, social security programs to encourage the elderly to retire, etc.
These reforms happened in the US and Europe a century ago, when most people were objectively poorer than the people in these articles -- no television, electricity, cell phones, etc. Depressingly, I have to speculate that there is a fundamental break in expectations in the national zeitgeist of these countries that allows things to get this bad.
> The other would be to reduce the size of the labor pool through enforcement of child labor laws, limitations on number of hours worked per week, mandatory and free schooling through age 18, social security programs to encourage the elderly to retire, etc.
But, last I checked, China, Pakistan, et. al. have a massive unemployment problem. Now, there's two ways to solve this -- the first is to make more jobs, the approach we see here. The other would be to reduce the size of the labor pool through enforcement of child labor laws, limitations on number of hours worked per week, mandatory and free schooling through age 18, social security programs to encourage the elderly to retire, etc.
These reforms happened in the US and Europe a century ago, when most people were objectively poorer than the people in these articles -- no television, electricity, cell phones, etc. Depressingly, I have to speculate that there is a fundamental break in expectations in the national zeitgeist of these countries that allows things to get this bad.