Before Class on Tuesday, 10/12
Watch (14:27): Blumberg (2013) (see notes)
Read: Lumen Learning “Absolute and Comparative Advantage” & “Comparative Advantage and Gains from Trade”
Before Class on Friday, 10/15
Have tried or completed all of Weekly Review 6
Material Links
Blumberg, Alex. (2013) “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt.” Planet Money. NPR. https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title
Lumen Learning “Absolute and Comparative Advantage” https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-macroeconomics/chapter/absolute-and-comparative-advantage/ & “Comparative Advantage and Gains from Trade” https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wm-macroeconomics/chapter/reading-absolute-advantage-2/
Notes on Blumberg:
Prioritize “People,” “Boxes”, and “You” if you have to skip some chapters but they are all very engaging and highly encouraged!
Time Breakdown by Chapter :
Intro (0:45)
Cotton (02:32)
Machines (01:33)
People (06:21)
Boxes (01:37)
You (01:40)
What I watched: Blumberg, Alex. (2013) “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt.” Planet Money. NPR. https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title
Question: The video stated that United states exports more cotton than any country in the world, one of the reasons is due to technology, Do you agree? (look at how we use technology now compared to a couple of years ago)
Piece of info. I learned: Once cotton is collected, it gets twisted and turned into yarn. Once turned into yarn, it then turned into sheets of fabric.
Favorite part and least favorite: My favorite part shows how the minimum wage of Bangladesh is doubled from 39$ to 68$ a month. due to work conditions and wages, the people of Bangladesh were fed up with the way conditions were in factories around their country.
My least favorite part about the video is where they showed factories on fire. In my perspective, it was something very sad to see but it also helped raise awareness to me. working in a factory can be really dangerous, which is why factory workers from all over the world should keep protesting for better conditions and wages.
Week 8 International Trade
Blumberg, Alex. (2013) “Planet Money Makes a T-Shirt”. Planet Money. NPR. https://apps.npr.org/tshirt/#/title: People I learned that Bangladesh has the Monthly minimum wages in the garment industry of the T-shirt producing countries even though they work long in textile industries and he also learned that no country is ready to replace Bangladesh as the cheapest place in the world to make clothes.
Do you think that the high population of people living in Bangladesh would be one of the reasons why they have the lowest minimum wage of the T-shirt exporting countries?
My favorite part was hearing in a video an expression of a Colombian worker who said “when I make the shirts I think what kind of people could use the shirt”
I think that’s great because it’s a tiring job, long hours and low pay. , but even she has such good thoughts.
My least favorite part of the video was learning that people in Bangladesh work long hours in T-shirt production and that they have a low salary, and it seems unfair to me.