July 2011

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Kate Middleton's Famous Reiss Dress: Rethinking Sweatshop Economics

Picture: AN HONORABLE GERMAN Jason Hickel - The news that a Romanian sweatshop manufactured one of Kate Middleton’s most famous dresses has inspired renewed popular interest in the ethics and economics of outsourcing jobs to utilize super-cheap labor. This is only the most recent of a string of cases that exemplify the shocking proliferation of sweatshops — even across Europe — over the past few decades. But the truly troubling part of the story is the logic that Kate’s defenders have invoked to justify this...