Feeling very uncomfortable about cheap clothes

I have a moral difficulty with buying clothes now.

I have noticed that the price of clothing has dropped markedly in recent years.  This doesn't feel right. Logically, with the effects of inflation, I should be paying 2, 3 or 4 times as much for clothing as I did when I was a teenager in the eighties.  Instead I am faced with a wide choice of clothing options that cost many times less.  This feels wrong and quite frankly makes me feel uncomfortable.

I can accept that with the popularity of certain common clothes and advances in manufacturing techniques, clothing costs could be rationalised  to a certain degree. I remember jeans costing around $60 - $80 dollars, that was very expensive for a teenager back in the eighties. But jeans were something that we all wanted.  We didn't have a lot of choice of jeans and tended to have to buy them from specialist jeans shops. Last year, I bought a black pair of skinny jeans for $10 from Kmart. Hmmm almost 30 years down the track and the price has dropped from $60 to $10?

I can understand prices in technology dropping like that over time, but actual physical, manufactured items being so cheap, feels completely unsustainable. The raw materials, the manufacturing of the cloth, the transport to the factory, the production of the article, the transport to the warehouse, (including in most cases international transportation) then the transport to the shops.  Each stage requires mark up so each person makes some money out of the supply chain. How is this possible?  How do we manage to create fair and equitable  profit in each step of the chain?

This is where the discomfort comes from, as instinctively I know we can't. Some people in the chain are getting seriously squeezed.  What conditions do these people endure to enable me to buy a $10 pair of jeans?

It is not just jeans either. T-shirts for $5, shoes for $10, sometimes less. The raw materials alone, should surely cost more than that. Then add in wages and transportation cost and profit margin.  It makes me feel like we are rushing towards a mighty abyss. The day of reckoning must one day come.

We can't  hide from the fact that there are people in third world countries who are working in awful conditions, being paid bugger all, to produce this clothing. All this cheap stuff from Big W, Kmart and Target flash sweatshop and human suffering to me like a neon sign. 

So now I have the dilemma of what can I do about it?  Not buy the cheap clothing?
That, unfortunately is a little too simplistic.
1. How does me stopping buying cheap clothing affect the sweat shop workers livelihoods? Even if their wages are disgustingly low, surely some wage is better than none.
2. If I actively buy more expensive clothing where is the guarantee that they too are not still produced by people in third world country sweatshops?

My teenage daughter suggested only shopping in Op shops.  Then my money would  pay forward in a good way by helping charity.

That's an OK idea, but I've never been a particularly good Op shopper.  Maybe it's something to do with being the youngest in my family and the recipient of too many hand me downs as a youngster. I don't know. But I struggle to find styles and sizes I like and that suit me in Op shops. I do shop there occasionally, but I never feel that I find the plums like other people seem to do.

I think what I'd really like is some good moral labelling, so that when I walk into a shop I can make a choice about whether I agree with the way the product has been produced. I buy organic food where I can so as to support the concept of encouraging organic farming as a viable food production method. In a similar way, I'd like my dollars to be able to go towards encouraging a fairer system of the manufacture of my goods.

I would also like one of those major chains to show some initiative and leadership and move beyond the model of dirt cheap is best and support a more sustainable and fairer system. I'd like to see them proudly and bravely stand up and denounce this trade in human suffering and insist that their suppliers source goods from companies that pay their workers reasonable wages and provide decent working conditions.  Of course the goods are going to cost us more. But then it is up to us consumers to get on board and support those retailers doing the right thing and spend our money with them.  Surely once one retailer makes the move and shows how it can be done, the others will be shamed into following suit.