Who cares, right, so long as we get our keyboards, TVs, clothes and toys nice and cheap? Isn't that the goal of the American consumer, to save money? After all, having lost our manufacturing jobs to China, we can hardly afford to buy goods made in humane working conditions ...

The thing is, we as Americans really don't care. People already (unjustifiably) complain about Macs being too expensive. Just imagine how much more it would cost if the same machines were made using labor that cost 10-20 times more.

Ultimately, you really can't blame it on the companies that employ these workforces. You get the product made where you can get it made cheapest because that's what your customers care about. If customers asked for products that were made by someone earning $20.00/hr. then you can bet that companies would offer those products just as quickly as they offer products made in China now.

"Ultimately, you really can't blame it on the companies that employ these workforces."

That's bull. Of course the companies that implement those practices are responsible, or more importantly the people who put those practices in place and enforce it are responsible for their actions.

If you told me that you'd be willing to pay me $1 to mow your lawn, does that mean I should do whatever it takes to do that? Maybe I could kidnap some kids to work as my lawn-mowing slaves. I wouldn't be "blamed," right, because the problem is that you wanted your lawn mowed for a buck.

I imagine your point was that it's also the responsibility of companies to oversee their subcontractors and of consumers to only do business with companies that act ethnically. I can certainly agree with that. I suspect HP and Microsoft will at least threaten to pull their business from this particular sweatshop.

But my point is that everyone is responsible for their actions no matter what the economic climate. If you can only win the contract for making the next HP printer by cheating your employees and treating them like slaves, then don't bid on that contract.

No, I meant what I wrote. You can't blame it on the companies. The sole responsibility of a company is to act in the best interests of it's shareholders. In this (or any other) economic climate, it would be a death sentence for a company to chose not to use the lowest cost source of labor that it can find. As I said before, very few people would be willing to shell out $10,000 for a laptop made in the U.S. when another company sells the same product for $2,500—despite what those people think about the conditions under which it was produced. You may not like to think that people think this way, but you are simply wrong...

Also, this isn't an issue with one particular swetshop, it's a whole country (and they're not the only one by a long shot). Nevertheless, let me know when you stop buying products that are made in China and then maybe I'll consider your argument a little more plausible...

My goal is to spend as much as humanly possible on every little thing that I buy, so that I can feel superior to all you inconsiderate cheap b*stards who have to live on a budget in order to get by.

Right. Nice broad brush you've got there.

If you told me that you'd be willing to mow my lawn for $1, I might think that was odd if everyone else wanted $30. Given your scenario, the rest of the market would be willing to do it for under $2 ('cause everything's cheaper over there, get it?).

Now, I'm not saying I'm for abuse (far from it), but seriously, if you've got the extra scratch to pay double or triple for similar goods from first-world countries, good for you. Me, I don't have that luxury.

people wanting things they can't afford.

For a long time, the US economy 'bought American', so the economy was kept in check.

Now, we MUST buy things cheaply from foreign markets just to stay even, because everybody wants things that they couldn't afford if other American's made them.