Claims, Reasons, and Assumptions..

“Put your money where their mouths are” by Nicholas D Kristof

I felt that this article was interesting but lacking in depth and clarity.  His first claim is that international labor laws, contrary to having positive effects, would put families in third-world countries in a worse situation that before.  We can note that he is not in favor of international child labor laws by the way he presents his case. He follows up with the claim that many third world countries don’t have opportunities to further education and thus child labor is a means of income to support his family.  By enacting child labor laws, it thus leaves the children with nowhere to go and many fall into worse situations, even resorting to prostitution.  He furthers this claim by saying that it affects the whole family in negative way.  He presents his reason to us with evidence of two cases: the garment making industry in Bangladesh and the production of soccer balls in Pakistan.  In both cases affecting women and children alike, leaving them jobless and worse off.  Furthermore, he shows evidence from an eminent trade economist, Jagdish Bhagwati, in quoting from his book supporting his point of view concerning child labor.  In this article there are many assumptions about the reader.  First he assumes that the audience cares about child labor laws, but that the majority of Americans are ill-informed about the issue.  He also assumes that the readers know about the controversy and laws concerning child labor.  Lastly, that we, university students, are “self-righteous” people who waste time in trivial things such as boycotting Nike or pushing for child labor laws.  Reviewing this article I felt that the argument was somewhat biased with the assumptions, almost offended as some of them concerning university students.  I was also left with questions about his solution, whether there is a way to help the children advance their education past 4^th grade?  By helping feed the children, aren’t we just supporting “bad habits” of forcing children to work at an early age?  The solution doesn’t present a way for progress, just a negative exploit of globalization.