Just read this post by journalist Claude Adams. It really outlines why the poor remain poor in Haiti and how more factory jobs are not the answer. I’ve printed the first two paragraphs. Click here for the full article. All for now, Margaret

Twenty-five years ago, Haiti produced almost all of the world’s
baseballs. Women would stand in the factories all day, hand-stitching
the cowhide, 108 stitches per ball. It cost about nine cents to produce
a baseball, and one woman could stitch three dozen per day.

Few if any of the stitchers ever saw a baseball game, which is alien to
Haiti. Even if they wanted to they could never afford a ticket. They
earned $3.10 a day. It wasn’t much, but what do you expect in a tropical
dictatorship? Haiti at the time was run by a ruthless kleptocrat called
Baby Doc Duvalier.

Times have changed. Haiti is a full-fledged democracy today, and
Haitians don’t make baseballs anymore. They make T-shirts. The
sweatshops are a little cooler and cleaner; the work is more mechanized,
and the assembly lines are a lot more productive. But one thing remains
the same as it was in the bad old days of Duvalier: the men and women on
the line still earn about $3 a day or less—barely enough to buy a bottle
of milk and a loaf of bread in the supermarket.