Sweatshops? Don't Sweat 'Em! NY Times Columnist Tells 'O' Magazine Readers

We were totally down with the message of the O magazine August cover story "Chill: 21 Things You Should Stop Worrying About Right Now" (Sample entry: 'Worry Lines — stop worrying about 'em!' LOLZ.) But we really related to the question, "When I buy clothing made in Third World countries, am I exploiting the poor?" We sort of worry about that too! And boy did the O Magazine editors bring in the big guns to get us to convince us to just chill out about it. Wrote Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist Nick Kristof in the mag:

Buying cheap clothes from foreign factories actually helps the workers.

How to say funnily, "Well yeah but kinda not that simple??" Mercifully, WWD's annual "Where The Money Is" survey of the salaries of the guys who get to buy Italian couture thanks to the fruits of sweatshop labor came out today. And yeah, Wal-Mart and Target executives did well, but those companies are actually kinda hard to run. Here are our favorites:

MICHAEL S. JEFFRIES, 62, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, ABERCROMBIE & FITCH CO. Total value: $26.2 million Base salary: $1.5 million; Bonus: NA; Stock and options awards: $14.1 million; Other: $10.6 million

Another year like this and Mike Jeffries could afford another $40+ million class-action race discrimination settlement out of his own pocket!

PAUL MARCIANO, 55, CEO AND VICE CHAIRMAN, GUESS INC. Total value: $17.1 million Base salary: $1 million; Bonus: $0; Stock and options awards: $603,532; Other: $15.5 million

What's "Other" mean? Guess!

BRAD MARTIN, 55, CHAIRMAN, SAKS INC. Total value: $12.9 million Base salary: $1 million; Bonus: $0; Stock and options awards: $9 million; Other: $2.8 million

Now, Saks sells a lot of clothes not made in Third World countries, but this guy, in retail circles, has long been widely mocked for his ineptitude. But not for his shitty compensation package!

True, there are problems with the fact that buying cheap clothes from foreign factories helps white guys not smart enough to succeed in any other industry a lot more, but whatevs. We need to just chill.

The Money List [WWD]
Related: Seven Things You Can Stop Worrying About Right Now! ['O' The Oprah Magazine]

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