Child Labor

Where do you buy your clothes from, Nike, Gap, Walmart, or any other national retailer? Chances are that you have at some point in your life bought clothing from one of these stores. The next question is why. Why did you buy from these stores? Most likely the answer will be because they produce pretty inexpensive clothing. The reason they are able to do that is probably because of low labor costs in foreign countries, using child labor.

America, since the start of the 20th century, has been called the world police. We have kept this nickname because we have interfered in conflicts all over the world; starting with Teddy Roosevelt's presidency and continuing it with Barack Obama's. With that being said, we need to give countries their space. Just like in a relationship, we must give other countries space and freedom to make their own decisions. Child labor is not accepted in America, but in other countries it might be necessary income to the family. Each country is different and until we know exactly what their situation is, we should let them be.

The fact is, we keep these child labor in business because we love spend less money for clothing. However, if we were to try to stop this it would mean we (the consumer) would ultimately have to pay more. Would the protesters of this problem be willing to pay that much more for their clothing? Or would they simply just go to another store who still sells cheap items? It is the 21st century, and it is hard to live with the fact that kids in other countries have to go through such hard times. However, it seems that not much can change the situation in the short term.

I'm also finding it hard to discern the difference between child labor and child slavery. The book discusses them like they are equals on numerous occasions. Child labor and child slavery however, should not be classified as the same thing. The gray area in between these two can be a slippery slope. Lumping child slavery and child labor into the same thing, leads the reader to believe that the author has a bias against child labor.

There are many policy options, offered in the book, on how to combat child labor; one being, to rely on local governments to enforce laws on child labor. Unfortunately, countries with the most child labor tend to be the poorest. The poorest countries also tend to have very corrupt governments, from local to national. Another policy option that I don't believe would work