Where has all the labor gone?

How many times have you ever looked at a clothing tag or turned over a product and seen "MADE IN CHINA" stamped onto it?  Thirty-six percent of Chinese exports are imported into the United States.  That added up to 337,789.8 million dollars of goods imported into the US from China in 2008 alone (source).  In this article, a family tries to go a week without using a single product that was made in China.  In the end they are very unsuccessful, because they didn't even realize so many kitchen items they use on a regular basis were made in China, such as Ziplock bags and Kleenex.  When we studied The Jungle, we learned that labor regulations were created to control the terrible working conditions in Packing town.  Because of laws such as minimum wage, labor in the United States has become much more costly, causing industrial labor to move overseas.  China is the most prominent example of this.  Products can be made there for significantly less than they can be made in the United States.  However, this labor is cheaper because American companies such as Nike and Walmart "systematically violate the most fundamental human and worker rights, while paying below subsistence wages" (source).  The factories moved overseas, and so have the poor labor conditions and sub-par wages.  in a Walmart factory that makes handbags in China, "1,000 workers were being held under conditions of indentured servitude, forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day, seven days a week, with only one day off a month, while earning an average of 3 cents an hour" (source).  Is it worth causing lives of poverty for Chinese laborers so that we may live a life of affluence in the US, filled with Chinese made material goods?

Poverty in the US

When I think of poverty, I think of the commercials for world hunger (such as this one) where there are starving children stumbling through the dusty savannah, looking like skeletons because they are so skinny. Throughout these commercials, statistics flash across the screen, stating fact such as "one-third of the world is well-fed, another third is hungry, and the remainder is starving" and "Every year 15 million children die of hunger". However, our discussion in class today of "Susie American" and her "Mortgage Scenario" made me realize that with our current economic crisis, a significant number of Americans in the same situation as "Susie" will be falling below the U.S. poverty line. I was surprised to find that currently one in six children in the U.S. lives below the poverty line. The Stimulus Bill just signed by President Obama has given hope to many American citizens facing financial challenges and the possibility of falling below the poverty line. In a transcript of his remarks after signing the Stimulus Bill in Denver, Colorado, President Obama stated: "it's a plan that rewards responsibility, lifting 2 million Americans from poverty by ensuring that anyone who works hard does not have to raise a child below the poverty line. As a whole, this plan will help poor and working Americans pull themselves into the middle class in a way we haven't seen in nearly 50 years." This bill will hopefully help all those who need financial support.

Agency and Oppression in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka, an island country about twenty miles off the southern India, has been stricken for the last twenty six with off-and-on civil war between the government and separatist militant organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The LTTE is now forcibly recruiting children as young as fourteen years old to join their forces. They are shooting and killing those trying to flee Sri Lanka's war, which is now one of the longest-running wars in Asia. According to the United Nations, "there were also reports civilians had been killed in fighting inside a newly demarcated no-fire zone on the Indian Ocean island's northeastern coast" (Article). Peace is actively trying to be established in Sri Lanka by the UN, but the LTTE is not responding, continuing to violate the UN's cease fire declerations. The number of civilian deaths since this civil war started in 1983 is mounting. Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, said, “We are outraged by the unnecessary loss of hundreds of lives and the continued suffering of innocent people inside the LTTE-controlled areas" (Article 2).
The conflict in Sri Lanka is a classic example of angency and oppression. The Agency that the LTTE pocesses is being used to oppress the civilians of Sri Lanka. The civilians are being oppressed by having their homes destroyed and their friends and relatives innocently killed because of this destructive, drawn-out war. What will it take to stop this case of agency and oppression?

Baby Bonanza!

An article from the New York Times that questions the high rate of multiple birth resulting from the lacking laws surrounding fertility clinics reminded me of my Junior Theme topic. I read Sinclair's The Jungle and Harr's A Civil Action, and my topic relates to the laws that were created to regulate their respective industries' lacking standards that were exposed in the books by each author. This article describes that "the United States has no laws to enforce those guidelines" that the American Society for Reproductive for Medicine for the in vitro fertility procedure. The invitro "treatment involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries, combining them with sperm in a laboratory, and implanting the resulting embryos in the woman’s uterus. (In some cases the eggs come from a donor.) The number of embryos implanted is often a judgment call and can make a big difference in a pregnancy’s outcome". Recently, some fertility clincs have been implanting up to six embryos in a single birth mother. Although this may increase the chances of a birth, it also inceases the chances of multiple births, especially when the the embryos split, or multiple embyros go through. Recently, a woman who already had six children had an invitro implant of six embryos. All six went through, and two split, resulting in the 33 year old woman having octuplets. Now she has fourteen children, all born through in vitro. As stated in the article, "the United States had retained a laissez-faire stance toward in vitro procedures, instead of regulating the process like some other countries do." Almost one-third of invitro births result in twins or more, and the numberof procedures being done has doubled in the last ten years. With these statisics and the health hazards that multiple births bear for the babies and the mother, maybe the U.S. goverment will have to step up and create regulating laws.

Romanticizing the Lives of Celebrities

When I was hanging out with my cousin the other day, she was reading the latest issue of Us Weekly. She was enthralled with the magazine, and kept commenting on the latest celebrity gossip, saying things like: "Can you believe he did that?" and "Did you know that he was with her?" When I asked her how she was able to keep up with the lives of celebrities so well, she told me about a website she often reads, perezhilton.com. The byline for the website is "Celebrity blog site covering news and rumors of Hollywood stars" and it is updated very frequently with the latest gossip. I found this to be a good example of something that Americans romanticize: the lives of celebrities and the gossip and rumors that surround them. Television shows such Cribs on MTV make celebrity life look like one of endless luxury, showing tours of the stars’ homes and highlighting their most lavish processions such as several very expensive cars. Shows such as this leave many Americans wishing they could become rich and famous and live in a big, beautiful house. Stations such as MTV, VH1, and E! are devoted to exposing the lives of Hollywood stars. Americans romanticize the celebrity lifestyle, making it seem much better than it actually is. Magazines such as Us Weekly, People, and Star focus on what each celebrity is dong with their lives, who they are dating, where their last vacation was, and what they last wore on the red carpet. They make it seem that the lives of celebrities are much more important than the lives of the average American, thus again romanticizing the celebrities lives to be better than their own. They also cause an obsession for some people that has resulted in an industry devoted to just following the celebrities lives and publishing them in the forms of magazines and television programs. Instead of worrying about their own lives and the problems they face, many American indulge in following the lives of overly romanticized stars. In reality, we are all human and therefore why is it so important to follow the lives of people we do not know and most likely will never meet?

Chicago defies forgotten 2nd Amendment

I found an interesting article from the Chicago Tribune online entitled, Chicago defies forgotten 2nd Amendment. The second amendment, which gives citizens the right to bear arms, has caused some dispute lately over whether individual cities and towns should be able to outlaw handguns. Recently, Morton Grove, Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka have all repealed their laws banning handguns, but Mayor Daley refuses to do so for the city of Chicago. He is quoted in the article: "Does this lead to everyone having a gun in our society?" he asked after the ruling came down. "Then why don't we do away with the court system and go back to the Old West, where you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets?" Although he may be using hyperbole here for emphasis, he brings up a valid point: Is the second amendment posing a threat to our safety? Can people really be safe in a city where citizens on the streets are all carrying guns around? Even with the current law in place banning hand guns there were 443 homicides last year in the city of Chicago. The current policy was instated in 1983, and had not been challenged until last summer “when the Supreme Court ruled that Washington's ban on handguns violated the individual right to use arms for self-defense in the home.” Now there has been a lawsuit filed against the city of Chicago by the National Rifle Association. Mayor Daley has refused to make even the slightest change to the handgun ordinance, and therefore has decided to fight the lawsuit. Is this a matter of safety or of individuals’ rights? How should this lawsuit be ruled?

Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity!

I was going through our mail the other day, and I came across a magazine that my mom subscribes to entitled "Real Simple". The tagline for the magazine is "Life Made Easier. Magazine and TV show about simplifying your life. Includes home solutions, meals , special features". I found it funny that in today's world we need a magazine to tell us how to simply our lives. It seemed almost ironic to me that in order to start simplifying, you must add reading the magazine to your routine first to tell you haw to go about doing it. I thought of the quote I had just read in Thoreau: "Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, Simplicity, Simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand" (Thoreau 73). Our lifestyles have become so complex, and we are often lead to feel that every tiny detail is of utmost importance. Thoreau would be disappointed that we have to have magazines telling us how to simplify our lives because we cannot do it on our own. The whole point of simplifying your life is supposed to be thinking through your own thoughts, not conforming to what others say to do with your life. However, Thoreau would definitely agree with the morals behind the magazine, that peoples' lives today are far to complex and busy, that they need to real focus on what is important. I tried to take this ideal and apply it to my own busy life, but it is quite difficult. I do not want to cut out anything that I enjoy doing, instead I would rather make more time to do those things, but that involve giving up time that is spent to homework and chores, things that are necessary that I do. In what ways can we follow Thoreau's advice in our own lives?

Health Care Reform

Since several people put down "health care" as an area of our society today that needs to be reformed the most, I decided to do a little research to find out what people are doing to change this area of our society. I found that Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar "is hosting a national summit on health care reform at the University of Minnesota" tomorrow (Article). They are calling the summit "Prescription for Reform," and its main goal is to find ways to improve and strengthen the health care system in the United States. The health care system is under review because with our current economic situation, many people cannot afford health care, especially those who have lost their jobs. What solution will they come up with at this conference? Will it actually be implement into our government? What effect would a change in the health care system have on our society?

The Self-Made Man a Myth?

I just opened my internet browser, and on my Google News homepage, one of the articles caught my eye because of its direct correlation to our discussion today about how Americans idolize those who "pull themselves up by their bootstraps". The article, entitled The Self-Made Man a Myth?, describes the best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell's new book, where he explores the idea of the self-made man through methods of out-of the-box thinking. He come to a conclusion that such a man does not exist. After we described all the characteristics of self-made men in class today and even came up with a large list of specific people, I found Gladwell's argument difficult to believe. Although he give legitimate examples and supports them, I do not think his warrents as described in the article are strong enough to disprove the common-belief in the self-made man. To me, it almost sounds like he is supporting the characteristics we listed on the board today.

His claim for why certain people were able to achieve great things is because there are things "you simply can't control" such as "luck"that are major factors in determining if one is successful. He gives the example of Bill Gates, somebody who as a class we listed on the board as being a self-made man, among other CEOs of major companiesto be sucessful men he was born in 1955. According to Gladwell, this was the optimum year to be born. The reason these men are sucessful "is not a coincidence. It has to do with the fact that the personal computer revolution happens in 1975 when they were 20 years old and that is the perfect age to be confronted with a revolution. Right? You don't have a family or kids or a mortgage. Your mind is wide open. You've got nothing at stake in the existing order of things and you can embrace some new paradigm."

I agree with Gladwell that these men did have good circumstances for sucess, but I disagree that these are not self-made men. They still were hard working, determined, came from humble beginings, and were risk-takers, all characterics that they instilled in themselves that allowed them to achieve great things.

What is the true definition of the self-made man? Does the self-made exist? Do Gladwell's warrants validate his arguement?

Progress in the World of Video Games?

Although I almost never play video games myself, I see my brothers and their friends frequently head down to our basement and turn on the Xbox. Yesterday, my mom and I were in the kitchen and she started complaining that all the boys ever do is play "Halo", and I began to wonder if video games really were a positive technological advancement, or if they are having a negative effect on people. This article describes some of the negative effects of gaming: the "central physiological systems in the body can be affected when you play violent games without your being aware of it." Video games can be almost anti-social and involve just sitting inactively in front of the television for hours on end. Wouldn't it be better just to play an "old-fashioned"board game or go out side and toss a ball around? Or perhaps have a family-bonding game night or touch football with the neighbors?
The average video-gamer would argue no, that these are things of the past. However, new advances in video game technology has allowed for video games that focus on personal fitness. "Exercise gaming" was introduced to the market through Wii Fit, a popular game that leads you in exercises while you stand on a weight sensitive mat, and then gives you feed back on your level of fitness. This is taking video-gaming in a new direction along with our health-conscious society. Recently EA Games announced that they will be introducing a rival game to Wii Fit in 2009. The EA sports president said of the game, "we have a real opportunity to redefine the home fitness experience with a more Western cardiovascular approach and exercises that will appeal to a diverse audience, getting people off the couch and into shape while interacting with our products in a way never before possible."
Exercise gaming is a very interesting advancement in the world of video games in an effort to incorporate more physical activity into people's lives. Is this progress??? How will the typical "gamer" receive this? Will this movement be successful?