Poverty Post II
I am noticing that more and more families in my town are living in poverty. The type of poverty that I am seeing inside the city limits was confined to pockets of dismal wooden shacks out in the country only ten years ago. Now, however, I notice a 12 x 12 outbuilding that a family of five is living in. Across the street from my homebound tutoring job, I notice a similar structure, about 15 x 15, that also houses a family.
I don’t think bringing those folks a turkey for Thanksgiving is going to cut it.
The local churches are overwhelmed, and cannot help most families. We don’t have many other resources here for the poor. Even if every middle class or wealthy family paid a poor family’s electric bill, it wouldn’t help. I’d guess that the ratio of wealthy/middle class to poor is about 1:5. The only jobs here besides education, medicine, law and social services are service, telecommunications or chicken plant positions that pay minimum wage. Basically, everyone here who works in those industries and has a kid qualifies for a form of welfare. Almost all of the kiddos are on free lunch.
I have a vision, but frankly, I don’t have the faintest idea how to implement it. I am an idea person, and I can quickly become overwhelmed with details. I wish there was someone in my life who could help with some of the practical portion of this idea.
What if…someone began a cottage industry making an simple item, such as scarves, that could be sold under a “Free Trade” sort of label, only the label would have nothing to do with foreign trade?
What if I could hire a couple of people at $10 an hour (a fortune here) to make the product?
What if the product became so popular that the business expanded and introduced more Made in America clothing? What if many people were making at least $10 an hour and had insurance? What if the company was so successful that there was demand for a local textile plant?
Any ideas on how to market such a product? Product ideas?
With one factory and a textile plant, the entire town could be pulled out of poverty.
Check out this site to purchase goods made in our country if you’re not interested in supporting the global sweatshop. http://www.shopforamerica.com
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Global sweatshops are getting to be a bigger problem every year. Outsourcing is also a tremendous pain for local economies. Nice article.
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But surely this *alone* would be horrible for poor people outside America?
When it comes to American abuse of third world countries, one big problem is that the US stops other countries from subsidising their industries (in the interests of free trade) and then those industries are (coincidentally) unable to compete with American-made products (which are subsidised). Buying American only helps international poverty if you either only *sell* American as well, or stop subsidising your farmers etc.
Otherwise you’d have a situation in which money flows *into* but not *out of* America, thereby screwing over the rest of the world. Remember that people work in sweatshops because they don’t have a better alternative. Simply getting rid of the sweatshops would leave them with no job at all. The whole point of fair trade is that when money flows out of America, it should at least be in fair quantities – ie. replacing sweatshops with fair jobs.
Then again if people in *every* country were to boycott foreign goods, supporting fair, well-paid, local workers, then that might also work.
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Since this is a mission-driven concept and you mentioned the charity efforts of churches, perhaps you could bring the idea to your community churches via whatever associated ministry our greater church council group is in your area (most areas have some sort of association that is made up of all the churches in the community) … great idea Michelle. JP
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Chris,
Well, NAFTA and CAFTA have really mucked things up for people. In Mexico, our “trade” has led to people losing their livelihoods (such as dairys, farms, etc.) because of our subversion of trade. The same people who used to make a halfway decent living selling milk now are forced to migrate to the cities and work in the maliquadoras for a dollar a day.
In China, the industrialization caused by all of the increased manufacturing has led to the pollution of the land and water of many small villages, which were previously self-substaining. Now those people must work, sometimes as actual slaves (meaning, get paid 20 cents an hour but have to pay $70 a month for lodging and work 16 hour days seven days a week) in these factories instead of having autonomy. What really disturbs me are all of the children being exploited. I also dislike companies like Walmart and Coca Cola and their union busting. In Columbia, it is lethal.
Walmarts “GNP” qualifies it as the 20th largest “country”, economically speaking. That is too much power for an entity that has no constitution and only looks at the bottom line. There are many others…Exxon, etc.
I agree that the sweatshops should be replaced with fair jobs…if the jobs have to leave at all. For example, the standard of living in India is increasing, due to the tech jobs we have sent over there. However, I’m not thrilled about the fact that my kid has a passion for computer programming and he may not be able to find a job here. What sense does it make for any country to export jobs? It doesn’t, unless one is a CEO responsible only for $$$$.
I should take some pics of a neighborhood near where I live. The poverty is approaching third world levels. Falling down houses, no utilities, people shooting possums to eat. There are people here who literally, no joke, eat roadkill. It is bad. It wasn’t this bad before Walmart came. Walmart caused us to lose our tourism base (the quaint downtown is gone) as well as better-paying jobs. I am sickened by what we are doing to ourselves and others by having gone “global”.
Anyway, I guess that is the end of my rant! Thanks for your thoughtful comment!
Great idea, Deborah! I’ll have to find out about the church council. Perhaps they have people who know a bit more about business. We need something bigger than a bandaid.
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This is overwhelming and distressing to me. Our older daughter is much more informed about this than I am. She has talked to me about China at length, after having taken a geography class on the subject. I like any idea that helps people in the neighborhood to live better lives.
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Sometimes the simple ideas can make the biggest difference. But I’m not very practical either. Poverty is a big problem everywhere. If you don’t buy from sweatshops then I guess it’d mean people losing their jobs and their one, albeit horrible, way of making money. Global capitalism cares about money not people. But their are schemes which are about putting power back in the hands of individuals, maybe your idea could be one of them.