The First World Problems
America worries about problems that people in other countries would never get to dream of or even get to talk about in their lifetimes. America’s “first world problems” are things that usually are taken for granted. For example, the next updated electronic coming out or out and pair of tennis shoes put out on display at the stores. As Americans know that those items are all good to them, they don’t understand how a person from the eastern hemisphere struggling in a sweatshop for low pay deals with trying to get through to the day.
In Where Sweatshops Are A Dream by Nickolas Kristof from the New York times, he agrees that sweatshops are bad yet proclaims that they are needed. His argument seems to kind of contradict each other. He emphasizes by exclaiming that poorer countries that do not have sweatshops have it worse because they have no work at all. As if he is trying to prove that some work is better than no work. He supports his argument by talking about how countries without the shops forced to plumage through garbage have it worse because they are more prone to injury and disease.
Yet, he doesn’t inform readers about the situations in the actual sweatshops themselves. He doesn’t note that people in sweatshops are treated horribly every day. Sweatshop workers deal with getting lied to about pays, hours, beaten to severe injuries and even death. Kristof implies that having work is better than none and people in shops are better than in the streets. He may think they have things a little easier but it doesn’t mean that sweatshops are worth the effort and putting up more will change anything. If anything, it would increase the competiveness market, hence losing more jobs and other out in to the streets.