We cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis. Since 2000, oil companies working in the U.S. have doubled the number of wells drilled per year.
Although increased drilling has added new oil to the nation's supply, it has not done so fast enough to offset the terminal decline of existing fields.
We are going to have to import more of our oil. Period.
The "Made in Italy" label conjures images of little old men and women in aprons and spectacles, stooped over wooden tables, cutting leather and sewing by hand in workshops that dot the hills of Tuscany.
It certainly doesn't make you picture Chinese immigrants toiling long hours in ramshackle, poorly illuminated sheds, and then sleeping in small rooms behind thin plywood right there in the factories.
These days, the coveted "Made in Italy" label on those Prada bags and Gucci shoes, which can quadruple a price, may not mean what it used to.
Thousands of Tuscan factories that produce the region's fabled leather goods are now operated and staffed by Chinese. Though located in one of Italy's most picturesque and tourist-frequented regions, many of the factories are nothing more than sweatshops with deplorable conditions and virtually indentured workers.
Chinese laborers have become such an integral cog in the high-fashion wheel that large Chinatowns have sprung up here and in Florence. Signs in Chinese, Italian and sometimes English advertise prontomoda (ready-to-wear). At the main public hospital in Prato, the maternity ward on a recent morning was a cacophony of 40 squalling babies, 15 of them Chinese. "Mi chiamo Zhong Ti," one of the crib tags said -- "My name is Zhong Ti."
In Prato, Tuscany's historic and industrious textile center 10 miles northwest of Florence, Chinese who are legal residents make up about 12% of the population (and probably close to 25% when illegal Chinese are counted, police say).
For the big-name clothing labels, Chinese-staffed workshops provide an important way of keeping costs down by supplying cheaply and quickly made purses, shoes and other products. It helps the fashion houses compete and, many argue, it's better than the alternative: moving all production offshore.
But for legions of Italian craftsmen and -women who try to maintain painstaking but costly old-style practices, the cheaper Chinese labor is deadly.
If people are exploitable, they will be exploited by somebody, somewhere. Think of China as a cheap labor supply source for the entire world. What the hell, we get everything else from China, why not people, too? _________________ "Thank you for attending the oil age. We're going to scrape what we can out of these tar pits in Alberta and then shut down the machines and turn out the lights. Goodnight." - seldom_seen
Posted: Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:56 am Post subject: Re: Chinese immigrants: Cheap labor for Italian sweatshops
Free markets dictate that the flow of labor be free as well.
(or at least that's how I've heard it) _________________ “I'm completely in favor of the separation of Church and State. My idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.” George Carlin
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