Labor Standards or Liberty? - Art Carden - Mises Daily

Labor Standards or Liberty? - Art Carden - Mises Daily: "Sweatshop opponents criticize the use of child labor in developing countries and argue that these children should be in school rather than the labor market. At current income levels, this simply is not feasible for many people. In subsistence economies, many people do not have the luxury of diverting their attention away from manual agricultural labor and toward education. The best way to fix this is not to mandate more stringent labor standards but to encourage economic growth."

"Western working conditions are not the relevant benchmark when we are talking about the quality of working conditions in the developed world. The relevant comparison is the worker's next best opportunity, which is always worse. As economist David Henderson has argued, we do a worker no favors when we remove the best of a lot of very bad possible choices."

"the increase in earnings associated with a lifetime of access to microfinance programs is roughly equal to the increase in income associated with working in the United States for eight weeks. This suggests that the appropriate policy is not to strengthen labor standards but to open borders and allow people to cross them freely."