Quote Originally Posted by NorCalPiper View Post
Daredove wrote:"Just for instance, in Pakistan in 2003 the average income was about $2000. If a company were to go in and pay all its workers $4000, that would make the workers very well off, but that's poverty level wages for us in the States"

The I.L.O. wrote this about the child labor conditions in Sialkot:
FYI-Rs 800 =17US$
the children’s average work time is nine hours a day and their monthly income ranges between Rs780 and Rs1,733 (according to age and experience). ILO project manager (Sialkot) Mian Muhammad Binyamin told journalists that a majority (56.7 per cent) of the working children preferred to go to school. Some want full-time schooling, others part-time and some others vocational training.

The alarming aspect of the situation was the physical health of the working children a majority of whom had disturbed sleep. Physical punishment by parents/elders and injuries during work besides poor height, weight and pulmonary functions were part of such children’s lives.
As alarming, heart-wrenching, and morally outrageous as this may be, what would be their condition without the Rs 1200 the average child worker takes home? I doubt, over all, that their lot would be improved one bit. So, should one boycott Pakistani products on moral grounds with the increase in human misery that would create, or should one just accept the fact that we are dealing with a different culture, one that places a lesser value on the welfare of their children? I know this is probably not a popular view out on the west coast of America, but in my book paying a kid Rs 1200 to work 12 hours a day sure beats watching him starve to death on the sidewalk.

I find it interesting that people decry imperialism in all its forms, unless it is a cultural imperialism designed to make the "natives" more like the "enlightened" westerners. Then it seems to be okay.