How’s it been goin?

I am not sure how a call for just wages for all workers, if implemented, would result the poor staying poorer longer.

Has he ever proposed any solutions? Actual solutions, that is.

I didn’t say he was evil or ignorant. He’s obviously not ignorant. He’s got to be pretty smart to be able to help convince so many people that the current global economic policies are actually benefiting the majority of people when they clearly are not.

It’s hard for me to square the first sentence here with the second. If it really is as clear as Michael thinks that free trade and globalization are causing horrible consequences in the developing world, then one would have to be fairly ignorant not to realize this. And indeed, Michael’s wording suggests that Krugman does realize this, but uses his vast intellectual abilities to fool other people into thinking it is actually a good thing. Which, if true, would seem pretty evil.

From my perspective, it seems more likely that Krugman, being an Ivy League economics professor who just won a Nobel based on his work in international trade, probably knows the facts relating to globalization and trade at least as well as your average theology grad student. And if he says that free trade is a great boon to the developing world, that attempts to shut down sweatshops would harm the very people such efforts are meant to help, etc., then chances are this is because the facts are behind him on the point, not because he has some wicked desire to see poor people starve.

Actually, I might argue there’s a certain similarity to a physical laws with the law of supply and demand in that it’s not a way that things “have” to behave but rather a description of how things invariably happen unless some other force intervenes. Also making it a “law” would be that there’s no real explanation provided for _why_ thing behave that way, just a description of how they generally behave.

Michael,

Come to that, the real costs of something worth drinking are not factored into the costs of most coffee. For what it’s worth, I actually spend extra in order to buy products that are higher quality and artisan produced (including coffee — the better kinds from single estates actually end up making the growers more than “fair trade” coffee.) Partly for moral reasons, and partly because I think it’s better to have a few high quality things than many low quality ones. However, I also recognize that for people who make a quarter what I do, the Wal Mart option is the line between being able to have something essential and going without.

I think you’re wrong to think that it wouldn’t require significant increases in the cost of consumer goods to pay what you consider a just wage. I also think I’m in a moderately good capacity to know this since my entire job centers around setting prices for consumer products — and I thus have a pretty good idea of profits. But I don’t necessarily expect you to believe me on that.

One last item for clarity: I agree with you that it is a sin (and a serious one because it causes so much harm to the victem while enriching the perpetrator) to pay a worker less than a just wage. Nor do I think “He said he was willing to work for this much” necessarily constitutes a just wage. (It seems to me that a just wage would be based on some percentage of the value created by the worker through his labor. And if the employer is paying the worker less than that value — he’s cheating him.)

So I don’t dispute that some employers with third world factories are sinning in how they treat their workers. But I fear that the kind of solutions you seem to propose to that problem would keep the third world poorer longer. Which is the other point on which I appear to disagree with you.

Hey, no problems. Darwin, I am glad you and S.B. are here, because I’ve followed your blogs for a while and have learned from them.

Second, yes I am willing to pay more money for products that come from just conditions. I pay more for coffee for example, because the real costs of coffee are not factored into the price you pay for regular coffee.

But costs of things like garments need not skyrocket because, for example, shoes actually cost about $5 to make. Most of the price is mark-up. Fairly traded garments do not cost significantly more than sweatshop-produced garments. This is a scare tactic you are parroting, nothing more. It’s classic slight of hand. Nike charges you, what, $150 for a pair of shoes and says it can’t pay the factory workers more because then they’d have to “raise prices” on shoes? As if they haven’t raised prices already? Please.

Out of curiousity — if you think that law should not affect labor I take it you would make a personal commitment to buy the same number of units of any given good each year if the cost skyrocketed as a result of higher wages? So for example, if you currently buy three pairs of shoes a year for $50 each, you would still buy three pairs a year if the cost was $250 and you were guaranteed that all the incremental cost was going to paying living wages to all shoe workers?