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I drink your milkshake! a metaphor for capitalism
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<blockquote data-quote="rickyb" data-source="post: 5250164" data-attributes="member: 56035"><p>ralph nader: ...And so here's how important the textile clothing industry is. I'm taking this from Dana Thomas's</p><p>book. “It's a three trillion dollar a year industry around the world. It produces about 100 billion</p><p>items of clothing annually. We buy 80 billion of them. The remaining 20 billion are destroyed,</p><p>usually burned or shredded. The average garment is worn seven times before being thrown away,</p><p>according to UK study. Roughly one out of every six people in the world works in this industry.</p><p>Shoppers today buy five times more clothing than they did in 1980. In 2018, that average 68</p><p>garments a year. How did shopping for clothing become such an addiction? Why do we buy so</p><p>many clothes?”...</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Dana Thomas: Well, there's several different reasons. The first is because through marketing</p><p>by fashion brands, fashion has become — shopping has become a pastime. Like we used to go to</p><p>the movies, we go play golf, we went to play tennis, now we go shopping. So, more people go</p><p>shopping all the time. At the same time, clothes have never been cheaper than they are today.</p><p>Now you say, “What do you mean?” When I kept hearing this while I was working on the book,</p><p>I didn't understand what people were saying. And then I read a piece from The New Yorker in</p><p>1940 or so. It was a big profile on Hattie Carnegie, the retailer. And she was talking about her</p><p>clients during the Depression. And she said, you know, “I was importing these clothes from</p><p>Paris, the Paris original luxury clothes from Chanel and Dior, and I was selling them for $1500,</p><p>$2000 apiece.”</p><p>And I said to myself, wait a minute, that's the price that we pay for a Chanel dress today. And</p><p>that was during the Depression, a 100 years ago when the price of eggs was in the cents, not the</p><p>dollars, right? I started calculating like how much a pound of beef costs then versus today, and</p><p>then how much a Chanel dress cost then and today. And the Chanel dress was the same price as</p><p>it was during the Depression. But everything else was a fraction of the price. So clearly, prices of</p><p>clothes had not gone up in that end on the luxury end with inflation.</p><p>But then she wrote that Raymond Chandler called it “the secretary special.” It was a line for</p><p>young women who didn’t make a lot of money and it was a proper suit and a pretty little day</p><p>dress that you can wear to the office if you were a secretary. She was selling those between</p><p>$19.99 and $25 during the Depression. And that's the same price you would pay for clothes at</p><p>Zara or H&M or Uniqlo today.</p><p></p><p>Ralph Nader: That's why I want to tell our listeners that you've traveled to all these places, the</p><p>factories in Bangladesh to sweatshops in Los Angeles, Vietnam, elsewhere, so these lower prices</p><p>made possible by NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]; and the outsourcing–</p><p></p><p>Dana Thomas: Going offshore.</p><p></p><p>Ralph Nader: Yeah, effect of these trade agreements. The price is on the workers. Tell us about</p><p>the conditions in these factories overseas that are producing clothes that used to be produced by</p><p>factories in New England, factories in North and South Carolina, which are now empty.</p><p></p><p>Dana Thomas: Which are now empty. Well, they're slowly filling up. But, yes, what happened</p><p>was with the trade agreements during the Reagan era - NAFTA, which came a bit later, but there</p><p>were others as well, CAFTA [Central American Free Trade Agreement], which is the Caribbean</p><p>version of NAFTA - with these trade agreements, all our manufacturing moved offshore. And</p><p>they didn't just move offshore because they're looking for better prices. They moved offshore</p><p>because they were looking for the cheapest price possible. So, if they were paying a worker $20</p><p>in North Carolina, they were paying a worker 20 cents in Guatemala, or Thailand, or Vietnam, or</p><p>Bangladesh. Before they used to have corporate - what we call corporate paternalism - where</p><p>they would do things like give money to the local Little Keague teams. They put up field lights at</p><p>the local stadium. They gave donations to the local library. Plus, they paid maternity leave,</p><p>vacation leave, 40-hour work weeks, benefits, all of that. When they went offshore, they didn't</p><p>have to pay any of it. No Little League, no benefits, no maternity leaves, nothing.</p><p>So the cost of clothes bottomed out. Nothing. It costs nothing. The factories are a shambles. I</p><p>visited them in Vietnam, I visited them in Bangladesh, I visited them in China. Yes, some of</p><p>them were perfectly fine, and clean and as they should be. But for the most part, most of the</p><p>time, they were shambles, I mean, 120 degrees. Big fans blowing dust around. Guys in the jeans</p><p>factory walking around in waders in six inches of dye water on the floor because the drains are</p><p>chocked. It's just a horror show. And they work nonstop. There were lots of people who argue</p><p>and say well, “We're creating jobs for people in these places who wouldn't have jobs. They are</p><p>terrible jobs. They have what we call “forced overtime,” which basically means you're told to</p><p>stay longer and work weekends and work nights, and you're not getting paid for it. They just</p><p>won't let you leave because you're locked in the factory. You're searched when you come in;</p><p>you're searched when you leave, because they're afraid you're going to steal from them.</p><p>When I went to Bangladesh, they were paying the workers $68 a month – a month! And that was</p><p>less than half of living wage, which is what economists calculate is what people in Bangladesh</p><p>need to house, clothes, and feed their families. So basically you need to work two full time jobs</p><p>just to meet the basic needs. It's basically corporate colonialism where we're going into these</p><p>countries, we're just taking all their resources, we're making their workers work just one step up</p><p>from slavery because we pay them a little bit, but they're working in terrible conditions and</p><p>they're working nonstop to the bone. And if, you know, you're pregnant, you're fired. If you get</p><p>married, you're fired. There's no insurance of any sorts or stability in your job. And why? So we</p><p>can have cheap clothes that we can burn through and wear three or four or five times and then</p><p>throw away.</p><p></p><p>Ralph Nader: And they get sick. Their toxic substances particularly in the workplace</p><p>[overlapping 08:49]</p><p></p><p>Dana Thomas: Toxic substances, the waters, they dump dyes in the rivers. The rivers die.</p><p>They're so opaque from dyes that nothing can live in them because the sun can't even go through</p><p>the water. The destruction to the environment is epic. Epic, epic. I saw a dead river next to an old</p><p>jeans factory outside of Ho Chi Minh. And it just made me want to vomit. It was so nasty. It was</p><p>so, so nasty. And I thought this is just one little factory in one little village outside of Ho Chi</p><p>Minh. There are thousands of these all over the world. We can't solve the climate issue until we</p><p>solve poverty. We can't solve the poverty issue until we deal with the labor issue. Every story</p><p>today is a climate story; every climate story is a labor story.</p><p>Ralph Nader: Listeners, before you hear a series of stories that you cannot fail but remember</p><p>and relate to your friends and fellow workers, name the brands that are profiting from these</p><p>dungeon-like factories in Asia and elsewhere, Ethiopia as well, name the brands and the big</p><p>stores in the U.S. where people go in and buy.</p><p>Dana Thomas: Well, many of them are publicly traded companies, so you can even see it in</p><p>their annual reports. But H&M is one of the largest producers in Bangladesh and in Myanmar,</p><p>former Burma. They're still producing there even though there's been a junta, there's martial law.</p><p>They're still producing clothes there. They managed to be working with the bad guys throughout</p><p>the democratic government. Gap famously has been caught many times producing in pretty</p><p>sketchy situations like they were producing in sweatshops in Saipan, which is an American</p><p>protectorate in the Pacific, and putting “Made in the USA” labels in it, and made everybody</p><p>think that they were made in the USA like in San Francisco, when it was in Saipan where they</p><p>were treating them like — where they were just sweatshops behind chain link fences with razor</p><p>tops, and they were paying people pennies, and it was a horror show so.</p><p></p><p>Ralph Nader: And Walmart and Target --</p><p></p><p>Dana Thomas: Walmart, Walmart. Don’t even get me started on Walmart. And Disney,</p><p>Disney. When the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in Bangladesh, I believe Walmart was one of the</p><p>brands that was found to be producing there and all the brands that were found producing there</p><p>said, “Not our fault. Our agents on the ground subcontracted that factory, we had no idea.”</p><p></p><p>[URL unfurl="true"]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.111/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-424-Transcript.pdf[/URL]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="rickyb, post: 5250164, member: 56035"] ralph nader: ...And so here's how important the textile clothing industry is. I'm taking this from Dana Thomas's book. “It's a three trillion dollar a year industry around the world. It produces about 100 billion items of clothing annually. We buy 80 billion of them. The remaining 20 billion are destroyed, usually burned or shredded. The average garment is worn seven times before being thrown away, according to UK study. Roughly one out of every six people in the world works in this industry. Shoppers today buy five times more clothing than they did in 1980. In 2018, that average 68 garments a year. How did shopping for clothing become such an addiction? Why do we buy so many clothes?”... Dana Thomas: Well, there's several different reasons. The first is because through marketing by fashion brands, fashion has become — shopping has become a pastime. Like we used to go to the movies, we go play golf, we went to play tennis, now we go shopping. So, more people go shopping all the time. At the same time, clothes have never been cheaper than they are today. Now you say, “What do you mean?” When I kept hearing this while I was working on the book, I didn't understand what people were saying. And then I read a piece from The New Yorker in 1940 or so. It was a big profile on Hattie Carnegie, the retailer. And she was talking about her clients during the Depression. And she said, you know, “I was importing these clothes from Paris, the Paris original luxury clothes from Chanel and Dior, and I was selling them for $1500, $2000 apiece.” And I said to myself, wait a minute, that's the price that we pay for a Chanel dress today. And that was during the Depression, a 100 years ago when the price of eggs was in the cents, not the dollars, right? I started calculating like how much a pound of beef costs then versus today, and then how much a Chanel dress cost then and today. And the Chanel dress was the same price as it was during the Depression. But everything else was a fraction of the price. So clearly, prices of clothes had not gone up in that end on the luxury end with inflation. But then she wrote that Raymond Chandler called it “the secretary special.” It was a line for young women who didn’t make a lot of money and it was a proper suit and a pretty little day dress that you can wear to the office if you were a secretary. She was selling those between $19.99 and $25 during the Depression. And that's the same price you would pay for clothes at Zara or H&M or Uniqlo today. Ralph Nader: That's why I want to tell our listeners that you've traveled to all these places, the factories in Bangladesh to sweatshops in Los Angeles, Vietnam, elsewhere, so these lower prices made possible by NAFTA [North American Free Trade Agreement]; and the outsourcing– Dana Thomas: Going offshore. Ralph Nader: Yeah, effect of these trade agreements. The price is on the workers. Tell us about the conditions in these factories overseas that are producing clothes that used to be produced by factories in New England, factories in North and South Carolina, which are now empty. Dana Thomas: Which are now empty. Well, they're slowly filling up. But, yes, what happened was with the trade agreements during the Reagan era - NAFTA, which came a bit later, but there were others as well, CAFTA [Central American Free Trade Agreement], which is the Caribbean version of NAFTA - with these trade agreements, all our manufacturing moved offshore. And they didn't just move offshore because they're looking for better prices. They moved offshore because they were looking for the cheapest price possible. So, if they were paying a worker $20 in North Carolina, they were paying a worker 20 cents in Guatemala, or Thailand, or Vietnam, or Bangladesh. Before they used to have corporate - what we call corporate paternalism - where they would do things like give money to the local Little Keague teams. They put up field lights at the local stadium. They gave donations to the local library. Plus, they paid maternity leave, vacation leave, 40-hour work weeks, benefits, all of that. When they went offshore, they didn't have to pay any of it. No Little League, no benefits, no maternity leaves, nothing. So the cost of clothes bottomed out. Nothing. It costs nothing. The factories are a shambles. I visited them in Vietnam, I visited them in Bangladesh, I visited them in China. Yes, some of them were perfectly fine, and clean and as they should be. But for the most part, most of the time, they were shambles, I mean, 120 degrees. Big fans blowing dust around. Guys in the jeans factory walking around in waders in six inches of dye water on the floor because the drains are chocked. It's just a horror show. And they work nonstop. There were lots of people who argue and say well, “We're creating jobs for people in these places who wouldn't have jobs. They are terrible jobs. They have what we call “forced overtime,” which basically means you're told to stay longer and work weekends and work nights, and you're not getting paid for it. They just won't let you leave because you're locked in the factory. You're searched when you come in; you're searched when you leave, because they're afraid you're going to steal from them. When I went to Bangladesh, they were paying the workers $68 a month – a month! And that was less than half of living wage, which is what economists calculate is what people in Bangladesh need to house, clothes, and feed their families. So basically you need to work two full time jobs just to meet the basic needs. It's basically corporate colonialism where we're going into these countries, we're just taking all their resources, we're making their workers work just one step up from slavery because we pay them a little bit, but they're working in terrible conditions and they're working nonstop to the bone. And if, you know, you're pregnant, you're fired. If you get married, you're fired. There's no insurance of any sorts or stability in your job. And why? So we can have cheap clothes that we can burn through and wear three or four or five times and then throw away. Ralph Nader: And they get sick. Their toxic substances particularly in the workplace [overlapping 08:49] Dana Thomas: Toxic substances, the waters, they dump dyes in the rivers. The rivers die. They're so opaque from dyes that nothing can live in them because the sun can't even go through the water. The destruction to the environment is epic. Epic, epic. I saw a dead river next to an old jeans factory outside of Ho Chi Minh. And it just made me want to vomit. It was so nasty. It was so, so nasty. And I thought this is just one little factory in one little village outside of Ho Chi Minh. There are thousands of these all over the world. We can't solve the climate issue until we solve poverty. We can't solve the poverty issue until we deal with the labor issue. Every story today is a climate story; every climate story is a labor story. Ralph Nader: Listeners, before you hear a series of stories that you cannot fail but remember and relate to your friends and fellow workers, name the brands that are profiting from these dungeon-like factories in Asia and elsewhere, Ethiopia as well, name the brands and the big stores in the U.S. where people go in and buy. Dana Thomas: Well, many of them are publicly traded companies, so you can even see it in their annual reports. But H&M is one of the largest producers in Bangladesh and in Myanmar, former Burma. They're still producing there even though there's been a junta, there's martial law. They're still producing clothes there. They managed to be working with the bad guys throughout the democratic government. Gap famously has been caught many times producing in pretty sketchy situations like they were producing in sweatshops in Saipan, which is an American protectorate in the Pacific, and putting “Made in the USA” labels in it, and made everybody think that they were made in the USA like in San Francisco, when it was in Saipan where they were treating them like — where they were just sweatshops behind chain link fences with razor tops, and they were paying people pennies, and it was a horror show so. Ralph Nader: And Walmart and Target -- Dana Thomas: Walmart, Walmart. Don’t even get me started on Walmart. And Disney, Disney. When the Rana Plaza factory collapsed in Bangladesh, I believe Walmart was one of the brands that was found to be producing there and all the brands that were found producing there said, “Not our fault. Our agents on the ground subcontracted that factory, we had no idea.” [URL unfurl="true"]https://secureservercdn.net/198.71.233.111/c03.434.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ralph-Nader-Radio-Hour-Ep-424-Transcript.pdf[/URL] [/QUOTE]
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