We pay several times for each badly-run country

We pay several times for each badly-run country.

We benefit once, or I do, because I'm wearing Primark's cheapest jeans.

♦ We pay in having fewer jobs, because there's less rag trade here.

♦ We pay in having fewer taxes for the same reason.

♦ We pay because our politicians send our army to those poor and unstable parts of the world that have no secondary education or welfare state.

♦ We pay in having unstable desperate parts of the world that refugees and economic migrants leave, overcrowding parts of the UK.

♦ We probably pay in the spread of disease - thinking more about African governments which choose not to set-up a health service.

♦ We pay 0.7% of our GDP, out of our taxes, towards the social services bills of badly-run countries like Bangladesh. Pakistani taxpayers pay less than that for their own few state hospitals, and many Pakistani MPs do not even bother to pay Pakistani tax. It's probably the same in Bangladesh or India.

So we have all paid six times for my pair of trousers and politicians' failure to write a proper tariff against goods from badly-run countries. That's before any ultuism towards people in Bangladesh. My jeans are beginning to feel a bit special now!

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop

Bangladesh - the cost of fashion | link to AlJazeera and comment

Interview with Muhammad Yunus

http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/countingthecost/2013/05/2013524164645166872.html - long video interview with Muhammad Yunus. He mainly says diplomatic, upbeat, vague things in order to get decision-makers round a table with him, but comes-up with a few specifics about introducing a welfare state when the governments of Bangladesh and Europe aren't interested.

1. Firstly, some high-profile high-volume buyers could ask for a minimum wage to "set the ball rolling". With luck this could begin to effect colleagues in the same company, subcontractors to the contracting company and so-on if there were a consensus that it was a good thing.
2. Secondly I forget - it was a long interview.
3. Thirdly he came-up with a rarer point. If trade associations and legislators make information more public about factory ownership, names to blame, safety certificates checked, wages paid, then the existing laws become a lot stronger. There could be something like a wages council to investigate payment below the minimum wage or factories with cracks in the walls. What I didn't hear was why textile workers in Europe and Bangladesh deserve less of a predictable career and a welfare state than other less globalised workers, but as soon as international trade is discussed, welfare rights drop off the agenda.

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The former third world

The former third world

Bangladeshi factory workers share a country with wealthy & sophisticated compatriots. They are like the rich and poor of Edwardian Britain, at a time when National Insurance was introduced here, and they deserve universal access to schools, hospitals, pensions, democracy and human rights there as well. These systems tend to reduce poplulation growth because the next generation do not have to rely on family to look after them in old age. But a welfare state also makes manufactured products a little bit more expensive for the same reason: there are less poor. There are also the costs. That is why the elites in former third world countries want to keep their poor poor. Countries with welfare states continue this system, by out-sourcing their production to the cheapest source. it would be good to help intstead of hindering.

How?

Tariffs against countries with the worst human rights records, like Zimbabwe or China, falling for countries that introduce votes, human rights and universal services, like South Africa or Taiwan. A sliding scale.

The EU already has already used sanctions against some of the worst countries, like Burma, and UK politicians are pushing for more free trade with democracies like India and Mexico. All that's needed is a more subtle sliding scale of tariff.

[first written 9.5.13 on a facebook page as a note to self]

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Planb4fashion is a blog by Veganline.com which is a vegan shoe shop