Gene Coyle
Peter Dorman wrote:
Here is a letter I dashed off to the Chronicle of Higher Ed:To the editor:
The news that a group of economists has urged college and university administrators to look more favorably on sweatshops (Economists Take College Presidents to Task for Joining Anti-Sweatshop Groups, Julianne Basinger, September 29, A39) is
non-news: this is the advice economists of this bent have always offered about
sweatshops.A careful look at the published writings of those who penned the anti-anti-sweatshop
letter shows how little their thinking has changed since the days of The Jungle and
the Triangle fire. Working conditions cannot be systematically too dangerous in a
market economy, they say, because workers voluntarily take such jobs, risks and
all. Regulations can only make matters worse. (The economist quoted in your story has based his analysis of trade and labor standards on a model in which regulations
are proposed because working conditions are too average: half the jobs are too
dangerous and need to be made safer -- and the other half are too safe and need to
be made more dangerous. Im not making this up.)But thats not all. Without exception, the trade economists connected to this letter
begin their analysis by assuming that the level of labor standards cant affect the
balance of trade, most often by assuming that trade is always in balance. They then announce they have proved that the fears of trade activists are erroneous, and that a race to the bottom is a logical impossibility. What you will not find in any of their
models is the desperation of poor economies struggling to meet their next debt
payment and avoid a foreign exchange crisis -- exactly the condition that leads so
many to outbid each other in promoting sweatshops, clearcutting their forests and
similar destruction of natural and human resources.My advice to administrators would be to pass on these economists; let the
well-informed student activists be your teachers on this issue.Peter Dorman
Brad DeLong wrote:
And Jagdish would say the reverse--that you are morally bankrupt for
not realizing that "opposition to sweatshops" in the world today
means taking people working in factories in Hermosillos and sending
them back to the farm...Brad DeLong
