Poverty, Development and the Future - Garment Industry

Planet Money on Cotton and T-Shirts

OK, I give up. I know that what I write here will have minimal effect on poverty and development opportunities around the world. But sometimes, I come across things that I simply MUST share. This is one. NPR's Planet Money just published a series of videos and articles on how T-shirts are made. It is simply amazing.  You HAVE to watch it, and read the notes.

13 workers in a single cotton farm in the US, generate enough cotton to make 9.4 million T-shirts. That is an amazing story of US productivity. But it is much more than that as we learn where that cotton goes. Watch the videos, but also read the details, please.  Follow the 5 links to see the whole Planet Money story.
 http://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title

Planet Money funded this research by selling the T-Shirts! Push the "Begin" button and watch the video. Then read the bit below the video - it has some amazing information. Then - go to the next one. The series follows the cotton from the farm, through all the steps making it into yarn and then t-shirts. There is good and bad - but all thought provoking.

Watch it, read it, and then come back here, please.  Or read this and then go watch it - whatever works.

My thoughts:

The People Part of This is the Best
I hope you watched that part. If not, go back and check it out. You will recall that thousands of workers were killed not long ago when a garment factory in Bangladesh collapsed. And thousands of workers in Nicaragua travel many miles a day for this same kind of opportunity.

US Farming Productivity is Amazing
Not just cotton, but virtually everything. And much of it comes from mechanization and from genetically modified seeds. Virtually all cotton is GMO. And the quality is very high and very consistent.

US Manufacturing Needs Help
You may have noticed that all of the big cotton machines have either German or Japanese names. The tractors on the farm might have been US made - not sure. But not much else was.

Government Agricultural Subsidies Seem Crazy
And you will also note that the cotton industry is subsidized, just as is most of US agriculture. I have a very good friend who is a farmer. He is also amazingly productive. But I really doubt that this amazingly productive part of our economy needs government support to compete with the rest of the world. The rest of the world does it too - but that is no excuse. But  . . . that's another whole story. I would spend the money on research for new industries, new ideas, which see below.

It could be worse.
As noted in the piece, the US was about here in the early 1900s. The minimum wage helped solve some of the problems. We had lots of women working in terrible conditions for a meager living. Bangladesh factories are terrible - but they are better than no work, no added income. Columbia's are a clear step up. All of that used to be done here - until the cost of labor went up.

Race to the Bottom
I thought it was interesting that Jockey does not think that there is another part of the world that can make the garments any cheaper! And the current cost of the labor in a $12 shirt is only about $1. So they may be able to raise their wages and not lose the business. But . . . I would bet a dollar that parts of Africa will eventually get some of this. All they need is a bit more education, and a more stable political world. We can bemoan the low wages, but that is not likely to change until the poorest of the poor are making a living wage. That will change everything. We really are ALL in this together. Our consumer economy is constrained and helped by the poorest of the poor.

There is Hope
Watch the last segment. Look at the people who work in this world. We were there too - we can all do better.

Ultimately - NO labor, NO Wages.
As the cost of producing T-shirts does eventually go up - what is the next logical step? That garment factory is not the major cost of the T-shirt. But even so, the wage will eventually rise. The other parts are already highly automated: the cotton, the shipping, the cloth making. Those things are about as automated as they can get - albeit I am sure there will be more improvements. What would it take to build an intelligent gadget that could cut and sew and assemble T-shirts without a single human hand involved? I am quite sure that the technology is very doable at this very moment. It is just waiting for the cost of production to rise to the point that the shirts can be made completely by machines. Lots of T-shirts - but very few people able to buy them!

The Solution?
I don't have one.  But I do have some thoughts.

I think we have to get past the idea that the wealth which we generate can only be shared by those who invest their capital or labor to produce it. Eventually, our automation, our ingenuity, our productivity will reach the point where there will not be enough jobs to go around. We will still create the wealth, the products - but very few people will be able to buy them. We have to let go of the idea that participation in our wealth generating engine has to be based on employment. The wealth that our world creates really does belong to ALL of us - not just those fortunate enough to get the education, the job, or to live in a stable society where things actually work.

But we still want a competitive, capitalistic based economy. We still want the best and the brightest to to generate wealth, to solve the problems of health and disease, and to create new engineering, etc. As they continue to do this, we are all enriched - so let's keep motivating them.

BUT . . . let us also create the mechanisms needed to really SHARE that wealth. We need better education, we need arts, we need scientific research, we need people to be able to buy food and clothing and gadgets! A guaranteed minimum income seems to me to be the natural outcome. This year, Switzerland is voting on a measure to guarantee $2,800 / month to every citizen. They plan to pay for it by reducing government programs for the poor. Both progressive and conservative politicians support it, but for different reasons. Imagine that!
 http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/11/27/swiss-guaranteed-income

A minimum basic income has been supported over the years by both the left and the right. See here for a bit more history of the idea and current programs. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/index.html.

This is not a pipe dream - we will eventually realize it.

What do you think?