The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to Stay Emotionally Healthy and Spiritually Alive in the Chaos of the Modern World

by John Mark Comer

In the 1960s, 95 percent of our clothes were made in America, and Americans spent on average 10 percent of their annual budget on clothing and owned very few items. Today only 2 percent of our clothing is made in the US, and we spend only around 4 percent of our annual budgets on it—a decrease of 500 percent. How did our clothing get so cheap? Well, multinational corporations started making our clothes in places like Vietnam and Bangladesh, where government corruption is rife and officials do little or nothing to stop the victimization of workers. Things like minimum wage, health care, and unions are alien. Workers are likely to work six to seven days a week in a sweltering factory, often in unsafe conditions with little or no protection.53 And we’re talking about a lot of people here. One in six people in the world work in the garment industry. That’s just south of 1.5 billion people. For those who care about feminism, approximately 80 percent of those workers are women. Fewer than 2 percent of them make a living wage. No wonder we call a cheap item a “steal.” That’s exactly what it is. Theft.