CSotD: Wearing our consciences on our sleeves, and asses
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The factory disaster in Bangladesh is showing up in political cartoons. I particularly like Matt Davies' piece, tying it into the brutal sweatshops of our own history.
But I sure don't have much of a prescription, beyond the obvious, unlikely and unhelpful.
Yes, don't buy clothes from sweatshops. So … where then? Because affordable clothes come from sweatshops, and "affordable" is a large measure of the corner into which we have painted ourselves.
Part of the water in which we swim is based on convenience. For instance, it's the time of year when the onions in storage are getting a little spongy, loose, moldy, and I found myself the other day trying to cut a slice to put on a burger and having the rings fall apart and saying, "Damn! Can't they bring some fresh onions in from Chile or someplace else in the southern hemisphere?"
At which point I find myself reflecting on what a self-centered whiny little bastard I've become, but it also occurs to me that I'm only thinking that because I remember when it wasn't so easy to demand that level of satisfaction and so we didn't.
If I were very much younger, I'd assume that, when produce from the north becomes sketchy, you bring it in from the south, and not just Florida or Texas but "southern hemisphere."
And if I were 130, I'd remember when this time of year meant sauerkraut or baked beans or whatever else had survived the winter in the root cellar.
I boycotted grapes and lettuce and passed out pamphlets against exploitive meat plants, and I'm not against activism. But the socially-conscious pressure now is to be a localvore, and I can't afford the farmer's market where eggs are $4 a dozen.
It's not just convenience. It's not just a case of being spoiled. That's part of it, yes.
But affordability matters these days. I wish it didn't. But there it is.
I'm living on about half what I made before the crash, and still doing better than my neighbors, since I suspect the apartment next door is all Section 8 housing, and they sure aren't gonna pay four bucks a dozen for eggs. (And don't tell me about how the farmer's market takes EBT, because paying four bucks a dozen just runs the food budget out that much sooner.)
So let's talk clothing and budgets and sweat shops.
A pair of Wranglers are $19 while a pair of Levis are $58. But neither one is being made in a union shop in the United States and I can't see what conditions are like in China or Bangladesh or Mexico or Malaysia or wherever they are being made.
If you can tell me that the person who makes the $19 Wranglers is in a hell-hole while the $58 Levis maker works a nine hour shift and comes home to a moderately nice home to kids who've been in school all day and puts a good, well-balanced meal on the table, we've got something to talk about.
But I want to see it. Show me.
Because I suspect Tjeerd Royaards got it right with this cartoon:
And, if the issue is "How little toxicity can you afford?" then we're not ready to talk yet.
But I can't walk around without pants, and I can't buy $4 a dozen eggs at the farmer's market if buying pants leaves me broke. And this may all be very fascinating for some folks, but it ain't theoretical for all of us.
We could, of course, go back to the days when kids had "school clothes" and "play clothes" and had to change before they could go out and play, and when parents would finally look at a pair of school pants and said, "Well, I guess these are play clothes now," and, once a year, you got new school clothes.
Or when, in a bigger family than anybody has anymore, you had the annual trying-on of the potential hand-me-downs.
And your play clothes had patches on the knees, because, hey, they were play clothes.
We could go back to that.
We could also go back to when early spring meant living on baked beans, sauerkraut and the last of the ham that was hanging in the root cellar until the first crops were ready.
Or at least to the place where you never saw strawberries except in July.
I don't see any of that happening; not beyond a few idealists. Not among a credible market segment, certainly.
Meanwhile, in the real world, there's homework to be done: You can't insist on better pay and conditions in Bangladesh if you can't trace the steps between that factory and the store shelf.
Is Walmart making an obscene profit? Probably. But "probably" is only an answer at the campus snack bar, not in the real world.
There is a cost to transport the jeans, and cost to build the store and heat the store and light the store and, by the way, weren't you also insisting that the workers at the store needed better pay and health coverage?
I agree, dammit. I'm with you.
But you can't just toss out slogans and call them answers. You have to show your work, and the question is "Why are the Chinese-made Levis more than twice as expensive as the Mexican-made Wranglers?"
And, meanwhile, the Levis that are made in the USA are more like seven times as expensive, and if I buy a $130 pair of blue jeans, it's gonna have to come with a full wallet in the pocket.
This blog explains some of that, and even mentions a couple of more affordable made-in-the-USA brands. These Texas Jeans are about $35 and they'll ship free if you order three pairs. These Gussets are more in the $50-60 range.
Both companies are in the Southeast, as are several of the companies on this somewhat out-of-date listing of US-made jeans.
Now, I'm no moon calf. I remember boycotting JP Stevens towels and linens for its labor practices down there. I also remember when other clothing companies moved to the Southeast US shortly before decamping for Southeast Asia, and it wasn't because the warm weather made it more comfy for their valued associates to picket during the union negotiations.
Still, I doubt the factory is going to fall down, and my but isn't that one helluva recommendation for a company?
Which I guess means, as Tjeerd suggests, the question is how many skulls would you like on that shirt?
"How about 'none'? Does 'none' work for you?"
Well, not quite. Not until I get a raise. But the fewest possible, please.
Here's a song not many of us are old enough to remember:
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