The+Race+to+the+Bottom

Race to the Bottom, is when counties will offer (or companies will demand) lower and lower standards in order to compete on an international level. These include:
 * low wages
 * no job security
 * no benefits
 * long hours
 * poor safety standards

The term 'race to the bottom' was originally named by the US Supreme Court Justice //Louis Brandeis//, while judging upon a case in Europe during 1933. It is a consistent search for cheaper wages and passive regulations in regards to trade and production which allow corporations and nations to gain the highest surplus possible. It does so by cutting out beneficial legislation such as; workers rights and safety. The extermination of these legislations happens easily because its biggest effects are happening in third world countries, whose general population are living below countries such as Canada's standards of living. The World Trade Organisation and its policies have a direct relationship with the term. By eliminating trade barriers it has created an open door for rich countries to set up shop in other countries and use their citizens as sweat shop workers; with such a distance between the two countries it is harder for workers rights groups from the richer nations to have an eye on what's going on; sovereignty also has to be respected. Another example of this is with the North American Free Trade Agreement. Mexican farmers lose money by lowering prices of products to compete with bigger corporations that send goods to Canada and the U.S. Although some people working under these conditions are thankful to have any income what so ever; the race to the bottom has not recognised the poor as equals as it should. While some are suffering from this phenomenon there are three hundred companies that own one quarter of the worlds productive assets. Of those three hundred companies the top one hundred of them are corporations with more wealth then one hundred and thirty countries. Countries and companies have created an exchange market which processes about one trillion dollars a day, which has only been made possible since the nineteenth century when “the race to the bottom” came to be a large part of a country's or a company's production. Nike, an American company is a perfect example of a nation which strongly relies on “the race”. It has most of its sweat shops set up in Indonesia, a country with eighty-eight percent of its people earning minimum wage severely malnourished. These sweat shops which have a direct link to “the race” have been linked to sexually, mentally, and physically abusing their workers in Indonesia. Poor people suffering and continuing to become poorer while the rich get richer has an unbreakable link to “the race to the bottom”, a very dangerous fact in the sense that Indonesia is not the only country having worker's rights problems, which are only done justice when refereed to as human's rights problems. “The race” is undoubtedly a World Issue and is clearly linked to numerous other issues going on in the world. Its effects can only be understood by learning about all of them. Although “the race to the bottom” does have its upside, the positive effects of it can not be held above nor even thought of globally until its serious human's rights problems are dealt with.