Following in our footsteps

Some Americans feel guilty going to Wal-Mart and buying cheap products manufactured by children in Asian sweatshops. An economophobic propaganda machine is relentless in its efforts to mislead us to see international trade as a zero-sum game. With numerous Scriptural exhortations against the oppression of the poor, Christians are especially vulnerable to stories of defenseless workers exploited by greedy factory owners in the Third World. How can we, the most affluent consumers in history, save more money and live even better at the expense of the most abused people on earth?

Just before the presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof enraged the "progressive" readers of The New York Times with a warning that the new government promise to push for "fair" labor practices in our trade agreements would hurt the poor abroad more than a supersized financial-crisis-and-global-warming combo. The fact is that Third World economies are not going through a development phase of poverty or working conditions never seen before. Today's economic leaders have gone through their own "sweatshop" stages not that long ago. There is a lesson to be learned from the more recent success stories of Japan and Hong Kong. When it comes to labor standards, there is nothing unheard of in the underdeveloped economies of the 21st century-they are simply trying to close the income gap with the West by replicating some of the steps we took on our way up during the 19th century.

When we relax on the couch after a good meal in our cozy homes and the giant flat-screen TV brings us news about the miserable lives of workers in Third World sweatshops, an emotional reaction of guilt is quite natural. What we need to appreciate is that such reports open up a window back in time that allows us to observe the same backbreaking toil that our forefathers went through so that we could enjoy the comforts of today. We should keep in mind that to force the developing countries to apply our labor and environmental standards is to deny them the same opportunities that we freely utilized in order to become rich.