I am going to play devils advocate for a moment and pose a question. Can we enjoy life as we know it, with all of our comforts, without the struggles of third world countries and their sweat shops?

I think we could, but everything would be extremely expensive compared to what we are used to. That would make it hard for people to have everything they want but I think we would still have the comforts we do now.

I do not think we could enjoy life as we know it without third world countries and sweatshops. Just look at ALL of the material items that we have made in other countries that use insanely cheap labor. I am sure that 99% of my clothes, my camera, my school supplies, my computer, my shoes and more are made with cheap labor. So, if all of these things were made in the US they would be a lot more expensive. Therefore we would not enjoy life as we know it, because we know it as an inexpensive life......

So, I just had a revelation. I decided to actually look around my room at the things I own. Many of my notebooks were made in the US, my chaco shoes were made here, a few of my board games were made here and the material item worth the most, my car (Saturn) was made in the US. At this point I am very confused, because I am realizing that more things are actually made in the US than I thought however some of these things are more expensive. For example, the chaco shoes.... they run quite high; more than I would pay for every pair of my shoes but not too much to pay for one pair.

I guess what I have figured out is that we could have all the things that we have now without third world countries, we would just have to pay a little more like Zack said.

____________________
Audrey Fowler

Adam...
You have really gotten me to start thinking. After posting my thoughts on "Our World", I read though the thread labeled "Sweatshops". Take a look there for your answer. I think you will find the answer to your question to be "no, we cannot enjoy life as it is with out sweat shops" due to the fact that we value cheap products.

_______________
Audrey Fowler

I agree with Audrey. I do not think we could enjoy the same lives we do without having products manufactured using cheap labor. We value convenience and affordability way to much to ever go back to buying goods only made in the US. I also think that if our society were to be like that the economic structure of our country would be dramatically changed to look more like that of a third world country. There would probably be a small extremely rich upper class who owned all of the factories and goods and then everyone else would be doing to labor. I also thought about whether or not you would have access to certain goods since almost all of certain types of products are now made by cheap labor in foreign countries.

First off- Audrey, although a lot of stuff you own is made in the US, not all of the raw materials are from the US. For instance, your car may have been assembled in the US, but I doubt all other metal and plastic that is involved in it is from the US.
You have to consider, if everything was made in the US, wouldn't our economy benefit to some extent. More jobs would be available because we wouldn't be outsourcing like we are currently. And if you look back to before most of us were born, there was a time when most things had to be made exclusively in the US with US goods because we did not have the technology to connect with as many other countries as we do now. Now, I think it would be impossible to get all of the raw ingredients from the US, and if sweatshops were eliminated the prices of goods would go up, but since more jobs would be created, would that be as big of a deal as it seems.
Also- Candace currently our economic structure looks very similar to the one you described. In 2001, 10% of the population controlled 71% of the wealth, the top 1% alone owns 38% of the wealth in the US. America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, yet 30,000,000 control nearly 3/4 of the wealth while the other 270,000,000 of us get to deal with the leftover quarter. If that isn't ridiculous I don't know what is. The gap in our country between the rich and the poor is huge, so I don't know that stopping our exploitation of overseas workers is going to make it worse.

I just wanted to comment on what Abby said about the raw materials used in american products. Growing up in the Detroit area I knew a lot of people in the automotive industry. I have a american car, but was manufactured in Mexico. Many companies can put a stamp on a product and say it was made in America, but the truth is that to be considered a product made in America only a small percentage actually has to be manufactured in the United States.

In today's life style no we cannot enjoy our comforts without third world countries. However, we can have a great life without all these material things and therefore we would not have to rely on third world countries. I also would like to think that without all these things we might have better priorities as in sharing time with our family truly love each other. this is a dream of mine and would be for this to come true but it will always be a dream of mine.

In response to Abby, (thanks for pointing this out to me) I guess I was trying to refer to the change that would occur among the middle and lower classes. I feel we would be more likely to have a smaller middle class, like many third world countries, that could not longer afford the same comforts of life that many of us enjoy because of the rise in the price of goods if all products were manufactured in the US. This would mean that the gap between the rich and poor that you mentioned would only get larger.

I agree we cannot enjoy life as we know it without third world countries. We live in a world that is based on materialistic stuff. Everyone thinks they have to have the best all the time to be someone. If people would try to not live so highly maybe we would not have to rely on third world countries. I think it would be very hard to do in this day and age cause we are spoiled lets face it.

I would be interested to know how many products, that we take for granted, are made in third world countries. As Shannon said, we are a very materialistic society that judges people by how they look and what they have. I do think life would be considerably less comfortable compaired to now, without the third world workforce, so I guess we would not be able to live life as we now know it.

Adam- good question! Like Audrey, I thought I would take a look around at some of the things I owned to see where they were manufactured. Not one item of clothing that I had on came from the US! I am beginning to think that it might be virtually impossible to get by these days without unknowingly supporting companies that have sweatshops. I read an article the other day that stated that Forever 21, a popular clothing store that I USED to love, got in trouble for having illegal sweatshops in LA. I feel frustrated because I wonder how we can be guaranteed that the items we buy aren't made at the expense of others.