Sweatshops Persuasive Essay

Nike shoes are endorsed by numerous professional athletes and are quite famous for their aerodynamic designs and the great comfort they provide. From famous tennis players like Serena Williams to NBA all-stars like Michael Jordan, many professional athletes, who have quite a significant influence on the public, can be seen on television advertisements endorsing Nike. Persuaded through these advertisements on television and social media, consumers line up daily in front of Nike stores worldwide, but most consumers do not even know how the shoes they buy are made. As of recently, Nike has been under the public’s speculation for “child labor at a Cambodian sweatshop” and has been criticized heavily by countless humanitarian activists because of their use of sweatshops (Mason). Generally, in these sweatshops, workers and machines are crammed into tight spaces with dust and almost no light (Powell). However, some may argue that sweatshops are advantageous because only a small group of people suffer for the benefit of others, which is an ideology
He states that sweatshops are not only beneficial, but also recommended for a country trying to escape “extreme poverty” (Powell). Benjamin Powell even draws attention to the old sweatshops in the United States and Great Britain, which were equipped with “poorly ventilated rooms” and utilized “child labor” (Powell). He even makes the association that the United States only became as economically stable as it is today because of the sweatshops it previously had. However, the poor working conditions which “maimed” workers due to “fast moving machinery” was likely not the cause of the United States’s wealth. The wealth of the United States came from its inventions and plentiful resources, not from the corrupted