Assorted Afflatuses

For the last year or so, I have made a concerted effort to buy goods produced in the "industrialized world" whenever possible. My logic being that a scarf woven in Scotland of Scottish wool, while warm, soft and generally wonderful, also reduces my impact on the lives of others. Scotland, after all, has a well-developed, regulated economy that tries its best to ensure workers receive adequate wages, people have access to medical care and the environment does not suffer too greatly at the hands of industry.

Bangledesh, on the other hand, where other wool becomes scarves, does not offer these benefits. Workers toil day in and day out for small sums of money, citizens have little or no access to high-quality medical care and industry has far more scope to exact whatever cruelty it wishes on the environment.

Of course, the reduced environmental and social impact of the Scottish scarf comes at a relatively huge cost to me, the consumer. While someone could buy a warm, soft, well-designed scarf for, say, $20 at Macy's, or some such establishment, that same person could also spend, say, $100 for a Scottish number, in the hope of reducing the social and environmental impact of the purchase.

So I thought.

I just finished reading Jeff Scahs' excellent book, The End of Povery. While Sachs may be one of the world's foremost economists, as the title of his book suggests, he wants everyone — not just people in the developed world — to be happy, healthy and wealthy.

Yet, according to Sachs, those huge textile manufacturing operations in Bangledesh where workers earn next to nothing are the key to Bangladeshis escaping poverty. He notes that every nation — with the possible exception of India — who has already eliminated extreme poverty, or is currently making good headway toward that goal, has begun with cheap textile production. With relatively higher wages, workers can save more. With the skills learned in the factories, workers enter the modern world with usable skills. Eventually, as we see today in China, people begin to move up the economic ladder.

So we arrive at American Apparel. I have never really liked the company, though for all the wrong reasons. Their CEO is just too weird. Brilliant at doing business — the American Apparel concept is golden — but he is really weird.

Now, however, I have a firm basis for my opposition to the company. In some sense, American Apparel is to the United States' poor as the giant, nameless textile plant is to the Bangladeshis. The American Apparel employees earn relatively meager wages, though higher wages than they might earn elsewhere, and the company provides educational programs for employees.

But the United States is not Bangledesh. As Sachs notes in his book, the increase in the Bangladeshi savings rate has a huge impact, not because, with more money in the bank people in Bangladesh can suddenly afford computes, but rather because it enables the children of those textile workers to go to school. American children receive that benefit free of charge.

No, the kinds of inner-city schools where many of those American children will learn are not the world's foremost centers of primary and secondary education. Nevertheless, I would venture a guess that those schools are a lot better than the average school in Bangladesh.

I have no doubt American Apparel has improved the lives of some needy people. Yet I see a greater need in places like Indonesia, where poverty means a lack of potable water, not a government subsidized apartment and cable television. I will probably continue to buy scarves made in Scotland, not least because Scottish scarves is a marvelous alliteration. I will not, however, feel quite as guilty about the iPhone manufactured in China.