Blog Post 5

           Kristof starts off his essay questioning the Obama administration's ideas on labor standards, by offering them a visit to a garage dump where poverty stricken people live. He explains this to show  that poorer countries problems are not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don't exploit enough in some cases. The author assumes that his readers are out of touch to the fact that some people use jobs at sweatshops as a means of survival. His purpose is to detail poverty in other countries in order to bring forth awareness and to question labor standard laws.
            In order to accomplish this purpose, Kristof uses examples of residents in these horrific dumps. He appeals mostly to out of touch people in society, by creating sympathy by telling their sad stories, which include scavenging for plastic thru dumps for a living. He appeals to the audience by using Aristotle's "Pathos", by conveying his argument thru use of solemn testimonies. Kristof addresses the main argument against his thesis that sweatshops are dangerous and goes against labor laws. He refutes these by explaining that sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty and not the cause of it, and that banning them only closes off a route out of poverty. He also refutes the argument that sweatshops can improve their wages and labor standards by explaining that they have a large impact on production cost and can cause some factories hiring to demand bribes from employees. He concludes his article by explaining that even though sweatshops are not necessarily a good thing, it can be used as a better alternative to poverty thru the use of an example.
         Me personally, I think Kristof does make a compelling argument. I do agree with him when he states diplomats calling for labor standards never seen real poverty. This is true in a sense that most who never lived in poverty don't feel the need to become aware of it. I do think that they're faults to his argument since sweatshops are horrible things that take advantage of people, but his argument get across his point well