Travel the world in your closet

Recently, a local writer claimed that a business in the area was notorious for selling cheap clothing made in India by 10-year-olds. It made me wonder what countries‘ labels were on the writer‘s own clothing.
I have no way of knowing, but I suspect that a lot of us who point the finger on issues such as globalization and child labor are probably ourselves wearing duds from some third-world country like Honduras, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh. Or eating shrimp that‘s shelled by hand by some poor kid in Thailand, or strawberries picked by a wage slave peasant in Mexico...
I used to get on a high horse in this column about shoes and clothing made in third world countries by people who make a fraction of what garment workers earn in the U.S. But that horse is long out of the barn and galloping over the hills, since it seems like almost all clothing is now made overseas.
It‘s still possible to “buy American“ from unionized workers making good pay right here in the U.S.A. I noticed, for instance, that Michael Moore was wearing New Balance running shoes at the recent film fest. New Balance is reportedly the only major shoemaker which still makes shoes in the U.S. at its plant in Massachussetts.
Then too, the Union Jean Company proudly offers American-made clothing that‘s stitched by UAW workers right here in the Midwest.So it’s possible to “buy American,” but you have to do some research, and maybe pay extra for your patriotism.
It got me to wondering where my own duds were from. Thanks to the online CIA World Factbook, I was able to take a trip around the world without ever leaving my closet. Here’s my fashion profile:

• Pants -- made in Lesotho.
I had no idea where Lethoso was, but it sounded African. Sure enough, Lethoso is a small, mountainous country that‘s landlocked within the borders of South Africa. It used to make most of its revenues from miners working in South Africa, but ever since the mines started drying up, folks in Lesotho have been depending more on their booming clothing assembly industry.
Even so, it’s no paradise in Lesotho which has a 45% unemployment rate and 86% of its population engaged in subsistence farming. The per capita income is $3,200 per year, with half the folks in the country living under the poverty level -- that’s the African poverty level, mind you -- not ours.
I hope the folks who made my pants are doing well -- the pants are very nice.

• Shirt -- made in Guatemala.
The people who live in the country where my shirt was made have more money to spend than those in Lesotho: $4,200 per year, according to the CIA, but 75% of the country lives below the poverty level. Go figure.
Whatever, the Guatemalans do make nice shirts. It makes me wonder if they‘re happier working for low wages in the shirt factory or if they‘d rather be tilling the soil by hand under the blazing Central American sun.

• Socks -- made in Honduras.
“Honduras, one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere with an extraordinarily unequal distribution of income and massive unemployment, is banking on expanded trade under the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and on debt relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative,” the CIA Worldbook notes.
Funny, but well-meaning activists have labored to destroy that CAFTA dream, claiming that it actually means virtual slavery for folks in places like Honduras.
It goes to show that it’s hard to know which side to take on an issue.
Would the average Honduran living on just $2,800 per year be better off if he was denied the chance to work in a CAFTA-supported clothing factory? Would he be better off unemployed?
Or should we raise the price of cotton socks to $15 a pair to give these folks better wages and more jobs for ourselves? And would we buy them if we did? These little details in my sock drawer sure add up...

• Underwear -- made in Bangladesh.
Consider your clothing long enough and you’ll see that it’s a desperate world out there for most folks.
The people in Bangladesh who made my underwear made the Lesothans look rich . By comparison, they have only $2,000 to spend per year, per capita. Most of us spend that much on gas.

• Shoes -- made in China.
China looks good on paper with a 10% unemployment rate and a purchasing power of $5,600 per capita. But as the CIA notes, those figures are way out of whack, with most of the one billion rural Chinese being poor as the porridge they eat.
Supposedly, the Chinese are going to take over the world by the end of this century and we’ll be the ones who are broke. At least we’ll have nice Chinese footwear here in the U.S. when the shoe is on the other foot.

Well, that’s what I’m wearing today, and where it‘s from. None of my duds are politically correct except for an old St. Christopher medal I found in a rainy gutter in Detroit 30 years ago. I’m pretty sure it was minted right here in the good old U.S.A. because it has an old airplane and a car stamped on the back that look like they were from the hey-day of the Great Depression.
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