Would you vote for a Democrat who supports TPP?

[Hoyt]

20. Obviously, you know little of the background of the State Dept backing an increase but not

one that would hurt Haiti worse than they already were. Would Haitians be better off making $10 an hour, you darn right. But who is going to help then get that. Certainly not Sanders and his supporters who believe America First and screw the rest of the world.



". . . . . . .Now, of course, it would be wonderful if Haitians could make far more than $3 a day on average for working in an apparel mill. But — as history shows — that requires that Haitian workers and Haitian factory managers develop the skills to do more complex things than just make a T-shirt. T-shirts are so cheap, there just isn't much profit in there to pay anybody well. Some Haitian factories do make polo shirts and other higher skill products, and they pay better. If Haiti can move up to much higher-end production — like luxury items, say, for chic New York stores — then Haitians' will make even more money.

"This has been the story of industrial development throughout the world. In England, in the early days of the industrial revolution, workers began making simple, coarse cloth and then learned and developed skills and inventions and eventually made far more complex and valuable goods. Their wages rose along with their skill. Then, New England stole some Brit technology, developed its own coarse cloth business and then learned to make higher value goods. This story, of course, has been repeated in the American South, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China. A surprisingly large number of countries that are middle- or high-income today were able to move out of pre-industrial subsistence agriculture by first adopting low-end textile and apparel manufacturing and then developing greater and greater skills.

"Part of Haiti's tragedy is that it was, once, farther down the road of industrial development than it is today. From the 1970s through the early 1990s, Haiti developed some decent, higher-skill apparel factories and even some electronics assembly factories.

"But years of political instability, misrule, and a U.S.-led embargo during Haiti's post-Aristide dictatorship all but destroyed the local industry. By the time Haiti was ready to develop its industry again in the past five years, global manufacturing technology and trade had been so thoroughly transformed that Haiti had to, basically, start all over. . . . . . ."

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2011/06/10/137064161/would-a-5-a-day-minimum-wage-make-life-better-in-haiti