it's pretty much the only way to make sure you avoid that nasty, nasty capitalism. you can pretty much guarantee that somewhere along the line someone is making a profit at the expense of someone else.

But is it exploiting the workforce if the national minimum wage at the time was being applied?

The rice is for both domestic and export - Thailand is pretty much the largest rice exporter in the world.

Western business have some degree of blame, but the fact remains that there is a difference between a living wage and a nationally adopted minimum wage: the same is true in the UK

Paying the national minimum wage means you are 1p the right side of illegality. It has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of exploitation.

I found a book in a charity shop yesterday a large-format paperback that cost me more than the 1968 cover price of 12 shillings and 6 pence (I paid 69p). It's the history of the TUC from 1868 to 1968 and the first part is available to read online rlHERErl.

I suggest people should read it, British working conditions 150 years ago are very similar to those we pay to make our throwaway items

An increase in the labour cost to produce a t-shirt in Bangladesh has absolutely zero effect on the fixed and variable costs of a UK (or other Western developed nation) retailer.

The TUC has determined that a doubling of the rate paid to Bangladeshi garment workers would add all of 2p to the cost of a t-shirt rlLINKrl. Of course you could argue that the TUC are taking a simplistic view and are not factoring in the applied percentage profit margins at each stage of production, distribution and sale. But I would counter that with: other than "that's the way it's always worked", why should that be the case? There is simply no sensible reason, other than sheer greed, why those workers wages cannot be doubled.