Is Romney actually braggin about having sweatshop workers?

[Merc]

Mitt Romney admits to using Chinese slave labor at Bain. - YouTube

I'm not decided on this video. It seems like Romney is trying to make what sounds like a bad (but common) story sound somewhat glorious. I can see he is clearly trying to make America sound better but his overall tone and such is really odd to me. Like he's not really discussing the key problems with his story, just that it's 'amazing' that people live like this and that it's somehow 'special'.

Thoughts?

 

[CaptainObvious]

To me all he was saying is how different life is in America compared to China and how what we would consider a really bad situation they considered it a great place to work. I didn't hear anything about him bragging about having sweatshop workers.

 

[Rowan]

I actually know several immigrants from china. A few of their relatives actually work in sweatshops and when I said "Holy crap thats terrible" they responded with "Actually its better than where they were at"

Its kinda shocking and it makes me feel that things should possibly be done about it. Though sweatshops are still not a very good place.

 

[CaptainObvious]

The problem is people look at a situation and call it a sweatshop and are disgusted when they find out how much some of these people make without understanding the economic situations some of those people are in. For example, for the longest time many companies had factories in Reynosa Mexico and people would get upset because some of these people made like $50/day. What they don't understand is Mexico doesn't have unemployment compensation like the US so they NEED that job and $50 in the US is not the same in Mexico, their standard of living is much lower.

 

[MenInTights]

There is a slave trade in China where people from villages are lured into factories and work for food and shelter and never paid what they are promised. There are also factories that are relatively good to their employees, although none of us would work there. It seemed Romney actually believed this factory was the latter.
Was it really, or was some Chinese official blowing smoke up his ass? I wouldn't even try to guess. My philosophy is to stay away from Chinese factory products as much as possible, but that's really impossible these days. I don't think the West will ever have the power to change things over there.