Economic Nonsense: 44. Big business thrives on poor country sweatshops and child labour

In undeveloped countries people struggle to survive in agricultural economies.  Life is characterized by dawn to dusk heavy labour, even for children, and the rewards are meagre.  Diet is poor and the risk of starvation or at least malnourishment is prevalent.  

In the early years of Britain's industrial revolution, conditions were poor.  Workers toiled for long hours amid safety standards that were often low.  There were sweatshops, and children worked in factories and mines.  This represented an early stage in economic development.  It was a considerable step up from life on farms, where conditions had been worse.  As capital grew, so did the machines that increased productivity and enabled labour conditions to be improved, and for women to leave sweatshops and children to leave the labour force.  It was wealth that made this possible.

Today in developing economies things are made cheaply in crowded working conditions with safety standards considerably below those in the developed world.  Although most countries have rules against it, there are undoubtedly children at work in several of them.  This, too, represents an improvement on the conditions found in the countryside.  The wages paid in sweatshops, well below those in the West, are far above those afforded by the agrarian economy.  Sweatshop workers enjoy higher living standards than their counterparts outside, and put their families' and relatives' names on the waiting list for any vacancies that occur.

This is not "big business" grinding the poor.  It represents a country's labour force reaching up to improve its lot by earning wages not possible elsewhere.  Globalization has made this possible, bringing many of the world's poorest people into the world market.  The goods made cheaply in poorer countries sell to richer ones, providing an inflow of cash to boost the poor country's economy.  This is how China and India have achieved growth rates that have lifted over a billion people out of dire poverty.

As the UK became richer, it was able to improve working conditions and pay, and to eliminate sweatshops and child labour.  The same will be true of today's developing countries.  Many of them are already doing so.  The faster they become wealthy, the sooner this will happen.  The way to speed it up is for rich countries to open their markets and buy as much as they can from poorer ones.