It's Friday Night! Party Time! Time to relax, put your feet up on the couch, lay back, and watch some detailed videos on economic policy!
First up is the short film, The Cost of a Coke, which shows murders and mayhem to union bust abroad.
The Cost of a Coke
Next is the CBC documentary, Big Sugar.
Big Sugar explores the dark history and modern power of the world's reigning sugar cartels. Using dramatic reenactments, it reveals how sugar was at the heart of slavery in the West Indies in the 18th century, while showing how present-day consumers are slaves to a sugar-based diet. Going undercover, Big Sugar witnesses the appalling working conditions on plantations in the Dominican Republic, where Haitian cane cutters live like slaves. Workers who live on Central Romano, a Fanjul-owned plantation, go hungry while working 12-hour days to earn $2
Big Sugar, Part I
Big Sugar, Part II
Comments
Many thanks for posting this Video Links
First I want to say Thank You for this service to provide every Friday these links. The blog post almost always arrives timely MET in my reader so I've no worry what to do on a European Friday evening. Second in regard to big sugar and the Fanjul Brothers there's only one word appropriate: Disgusting. But most probable most viewers are speechless after this display of pure exploitation.
That said to comfort US viewers: basically our EU common agriculture policy works in the same way. Corporate welfare for the already well-doing agricultural firms. And I'm pretty sure the African illegal immigrants picking citrus fruits in Italy are not better off than their compatriots in the sugar cane fields.
illegal labor
Over in the reads page (top link)< is a book, Nobodies, which describes the slavery going on in the U.S. with guest worker Visas (legal) as well as illegal labor.
Unfortunately the answer given, often by those who care, usually will make the problem much, much worse (unlimited migration and so on), instead we need universal wage labor laws, rights, enforceable, as well as a global wage adjustment leveler to deal with PPP differences and finally development within local, regional and national economies.
Unlimited migration is actually a corporate agenda, all to further abuse labor, erode wages by controlling the global labor supply, forcing people to migrate for economic reasons and also flooding the labor market with oversupply.
I consider that agenda one of the biggest attacks on middle classes around the globe.
But the spirit of the thing, workers are being abused, exploited and these agendas are another term for slavery, the evidence on what's going on around the world is pretty clear.
Nice to know people are out there watching these, but we're just the watchers and I'm just the documentary hunter, it's the ones making these films where I wish there was a way to give them some revenues for their work.