A. Counterplan text: Just governments ought to require companies pay a living wage to 3rd world factory workers except in South Africa.HOLMES1, citing Peter Montalto, explains:

But a report compiled by Nomura emerging markets economist Peter Attard Montalto says that South Africa would need to set aside about R20-billion a month or 6.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) to correct the underlying factors that such a wage would seek to address. According to the

report, the ANC posits that setting a minimum wage would help to tackle the growing differences between the country’s average wage and its median wage. Over the past few years, South Africa’s average wage has consistently increased above inflation, but the median wage (which articulates what the person right in the middle of the highest

and lowest earners is taking home) has increased at a rate below inflation. In 2012, the median wage increased by a little over 3%, whereas inflation hovered around 5.5%, and the average wage

increased by over 8%. The difference points towards greater salary increases for those who are earning above the median wage line. It’s “cementing South Africa’s inequality problem ”, says Montalto. But reducing that gap would require the government to oversee a huge correction. In effect, it would call for the median wage to grow at the same rate as the average wage. So instead of growing at the roughly 3% it did in 2012, the median wage would need to grow at roughly double the rate of inflation, or at least 12%; something Montalto says “looks like a serious challenge”. Such a move would require significant increases in state spending and massive redistribution of resources, he says. In short, it would be “wholly unaffordable”.

B. Competition: Obviously competitive because you can’t simultaneously do it and not do it in South Africa. And, time frame perms are nonsensical because this issue isn’t linked to anything improvable. Furthermore, the evidence indicates that over time, the problem hasn’t alleviated.

C. Net benefits

First is self actualization.

The people of South Africa are actively harmed by the imposition of living wages by Western ideals. DUGGER2:

The women’s spontaneous protest is just one sign of how acute [In] South Africa’s long-running unemployment crisis has become. With their own industry in ruinous decline, the victim

of low-wage competition from China, and too few unskilled jobs being created in South Africa, the women feared being out of work more than getting stuck in poorly paid jobs. In the 16 years since the end of apartheid, South Africa has followed the prescriptions of the West, opening its market-based economy to trade, while keeping inflation and public debt in check. It has won praise for its

efforts, and the economy has grown, but not nearly fast enough to end an intractable unemployment crisis. For over a decade, the jobless rate   has been among the highest in the world, fueling crime, inequality and social unrest in the continent’s richest nation. The global economic downturn has made the problem much worse, wiping out

more than a million jobs. Over a third of South Africa’s workforce is now idle. And 16 years after Nelson Mandela led the country to black majority rule, more than half of blacks ages 15 to 34 are without work — triple the level for whites.

The issue with the aff’s ev is that it only talks about sweatshops done in the model of Alta Garcia, run by idealized Western companies. The reality is that the Third World companies are far worse off. However, the requirement of a living wage has prevented the individuals from self actualizing, or realizing that they are intrinsically valuable, through the closing of factories which didn’t comply with the mandate of living wage. Some money, even a little money, is far preferable to no money. Yet that is what the promise of living wages does. There is no one to force companies to pay the living wage; it’s either pay it or be closed down. The workers, however, need a source of income. And, by requiring living wages, companies must enforce it, or else it’s no longer topical.

Second is racism.

Minimum wage laws in South Africa have been used as the basis for racial discrimination in the workplace. Empirically proven. SOWELL3:

In South Africa during the era of apartheid, white labor unions urged that a minimum-wage law be applied to all races, to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale. Some supporters of the first federal minimum-wage law in the United States — the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 — used exactly the same rationale, citing the fact that Southern construction companies, using non-union black workers, were able to come north and underbid construction companies using unionized white labor. These supporters of minimum-wage laws understood long ago something that today’s supporters of such laws seem not to have bothered to think

through. People whose wages are raised by law do not necessarily benefit, because they are often less likely to be hired at the imposed minimum-wage rate. Labor unions have been supporters of minimum-wage laws in countries around the world, since these laws price nonunion workers out of jobs, leaving more jobs for union members.

1 Thalia http://mg.co.za/article/2014-06-19-minimum-wage-is-no-magical-fix2 Celia http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/world/africa/27safrica.html?pagewanted=all&_r=2&3 Thomas http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the-minimum-wage-laws/

Racism inhibits the ability of people to actualize themselves with relation to the Other. PIERCE4:

“Discursive-democratic” identity politics however, is distinct from identity politics aimed at eliminating oppression. The distinction derives from the thought that collective identities, being [are] crucially important to the constitution of personal identities and political interests, will not cease to be politically

salient even under ideal conditions. Discursive-democratic identity politics thus aims to specify an appropriate relation between identity groups and the society/state at large. Here, I

suggest, is where an adaptation of the discourse ethic is illuminating. I argue that the kinds of group identity that are justifiable within the context of a

democratic social order are those that approximate the rules of discourse internally. They must be open and inclusive (to a certain degree), provide equal opportunity for the growth and development of their members, and be adopted sincerely and without coercion. The application of these conditions or “rules” to the process of [formulates] collective identity formation requires taking certain liberties with the discourse ethic as Habermas explicitly develops it, but I argue that such liberties are justified and perhaps even implied in a certain way by Habermas’ own analyses. […] In Multiculturalism, Taylor attempts to disclose the historical-theoretical underpinnings of contemporary debates about political representation of cultural minorities, as well as

controversies over multicultural curriculum. He explicates these issues in terms of two political principles: The “politics of equal dignity” requires the assumption that individuals (and later in the book, “cultures”) have of equal value. No one has assumed to be of greater value than anyone else simply by reason of birth, lineage, [or] social position, or etc. The “politics of difference” on the other hand, requires recognition of one’s individual identity, that

which makes that person[s] not only unique, but auth entic . This latter principle is derived from the former, in that part of what it means to treat individuals equally is recognizing the unique value of their particular identity. These two principles together make up the “politics of recognition”.

4 Andrew Jared Pierce, professor at Loyola University, Chicago, published by Loyola University, Loyola eCommons, “Identity, Oppression, and Group Rights” 2009 http://ecommons.luc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=luc_diss