UIS lecture to explore "The Unbelievable Truth About Sweatshops" and their economic impact

WHAT: The University of Illinois Springfield will host Benjamin Powell, professor of economics at the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University and director of the Free Market Institute, to discuss “The Unbelievable Truth About Sweatshops”. The event is free and open to the public.

WHEN: Tuesday, February 23, 2016 at 6:00 p.m.

WHERE: UIS Brookens Auditorium, located on the lower level of Brookens Library

DETAILS: Powell will explain how third world sweatshops provide the best available opportunity to workers and how they play an important role in the process of development that eventually leads to better wages and working conditions.

Using economic theory, he will argue that much of what the anti-sweatshop movement has agitated for would actually harm the very workers they intend to help by creating less desirable alternatives and undermining the process of development. Powell doesn't put "profits" or "economic efficiency" above people. Improving the welfare of citizens of third world countries is the goal, and he explores which methods best achieve that goal.

Powell is the author of Out of Poverty: Sweatshops in the Global Economy (2014) and The Economics of Immigration: Market-Based Approaches, Social Science, and Public Policy (2015) and many other books. A book sale and signing will follow the event.

This lecture is sponsored by the UIS Office of Undergraduate Education and is funded by the Carrol C. Hall Endowment Fund. This fund aims to further educate young Americans on capitalism as an economic system and philosophy.

For more information, contact William Kline, UIS associate professor of business administration, at 217/206-8138 or wklin2@uis.edu.