The Chris Moeller Archives

Today's slavery

Honest question: Is it possible there is as much slave labor today as there was a century ago? Working conditions have greatly improved in many corners of the world. But because they have, those areas simply don't manufacture much anymore. Almost all of our shoes and clothes are sewn together in sweatshops, and mostly by children. Our food is harvested and processed by workers that are denied health care and enslaved by massive debt, wage theft, threats of deportation, and in many cases, sexual assault. Our vacations are made possible by slaves toiling at hotels, restaurants, and amusement parks. Your iPad was produced in a slave labor camp in China. In fact, if you inventoried the items in your house, I venture to guess that the number of slave-produced products would far outnumber the ones produced at a living wage.

In the U.S., labor laws exist but have no teeth. Our "job creators" withhold passports and Social Security cards, and threaten families with devastation if wage crimes are reported. There are parasites in this economy, as Mitt Romney tells private audiences, but they're the bottom feeders that do much of the employing, and cheat on their taxes besides. Verizon, General Electric, Boeing, and most of our major energy companies, such as Apache, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Consolidated Edison, are among those corporations that effectively don't pay taxes. Apple and Google are both lobbying Congress for an additional repatriation tax holiday that would save corporations more than a $1 trillion in taxes from offshore profits. Yet these are the great American companies in the 21st century? My ass. They are bloodsuckers.

This is a Constitutional crisis. The Thirteenth Amendment strictly forbids slavery and indentured servitude. Pity this 1865 modification of our founding document doesn't get as interpreted as formally as the Second Amendment by the capitalist class. It's the slavery we've always known-- with only a more sophisticated P.R. machine.

posted by CM @ 7:00 PM