[jaguar]

ohh i love setting definitions for debates.

Lifestyle:Without being too vauge the quality of life you cna sustain on your currant income - how often you go out to eat, how much you can afford to buy that kind of thing.

Third world: As officially defined by (shit forgoten name of organisation - ill edit this in later) THis once again is lsightly relative, most hthe work i'm talking about is in asia and south american countries.

Poverty: Relative living conditions compared to the first world.

The argument that "there's stuff in your house that's made in the third world" is correct, but that -certainly- doesn't prove that anything insidious went on to beat the goods out of the hides of the workers or deprive them of an improved life. Further, the fact that e.g. rubber slippers -can- be made in the Philippines is not conclusive evidence that if the Philippines disappeared, I wouldn't have rubber slippers.

I never stated it was depriving them of a better quality of life - quite the opposite, the oppotunities that forgin inventment bring to third wolrd counties eventiully flow back to an imporived quality of life for the local populace.
I never said if the places dissipeared so would hte good, but they'd have to be made in the first world at a higher cost.

You can't really assert that I have a lot of third-world made things. To be honest, I really probably don't - I have lots of computer shit, and, uh... American made clothes. Shoes/boots from England. That's really about it. I'm going to buy a Volvo car, which made all in Sweden.

First thigns first - made in america on the label can often men that it was merely packaged in america or one part of it comes from america - its a very often abused term. These goods aren't often obvious and most are parts of other products that may easily be lsited as made in america.

To give an idea of the scale of the sheer volume of goods that the first world imports i had a look at the offical China goverment foriegn trade pagestatisics .

US$22.1BILLION dollars woth of exports in June 2000 alone - pretty impressive volume. Allot of that comes from the over 1000 wholely forign owned enterpirses that have invested heavily in China over thelast few years. Why? To exploit cheap labour. To to play mathamatics with thsoe figures towork out some kind of estimated increased cost of those good if manufactured in the first would woudl of course be absolutely foolish but ot argue that these goods have little impact on our lives is clearly not the case. Remember this is for China alone, one of many.