Slavery

Brittany Spears, this isn't funny

Slavery still exists. Some say it is pretty much legal everywhere, in the form of capitalism, prison labor, bonded labor, and of course outright slavery.

Here is the Wikipedia article, in it's entirety:
Although outlawed in nearly all countries today, slavery is still practiced in some parts of the world. According to a broad definition of slavery used by Kevin Bales of Free the Slaves, an advocacy group linked with Anti-Slavery International, there are 27 million people (though some put the number as high as 200 million) in virtual slavery today, spread all over the world. This is, also according to that group:
-The largest number of people that has ever been in slavery at any point in world history.
-The smallest percentage of the total human population that has ever been enslaved at once.
-"Price" of slaves range from as low as US$40 in Mali for young adult male laborers, to a high of US$1000 or so in Thailand for HIV-free young females suitable for use in brothels. This represents the price paid to the person, or parents. This represents the lowest price that there has ever been for a slave in raw labor terms — the price of a comparable male slave in 1850 America would have been about US$1000 in the currency of the time (US$38,000 today). Thus slaves, at least of that category, now cost one thirty-eighth of their price 150 years ago, although this does not refer to the price of an 1850 slave in Africa.

As a result, the economics of slavery is stark: the yield of profit per year for those buying and controlling a slave is over 800% on average, as opposed to the 5% per year that would have been the expected payback for buying a slave in colonial times. This combines with the high potential to lose a slave (have them stolen, escape, or freed by unfriendly authorities) to yield what are called disposable people — those who can be exploited intensely for a short time and then discarded, such as the prostitutes thrown out on city streets to die once they contract HIV, or slaves forced to work in mines.

Although outlawed in most countries today slavery is, nonetheless, practiced in secret in many parts of the world — with outright enslavement still taking place in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In June and July 2007, 570 people who had been enslaved by brick manufacturers in Shanxi and Henan were freed by the Chinese government. Of those rescued, 69 of them were children. In response, the Chinese government assembled a force of 35,000 police to check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, sent dozens of kiln supervisors to prison, punished 95 officials in Shanxi province for dereliction of duty, and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing an enslaved worker.

In Mauritania alone, it is estimated that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved, many of them used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was criminalized in August 2007. In Niger, slavery is also a current phenomenon. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are enslaved, almost 8% of the population. Child slavery has commonly been used in the production of cash crops and mining. According to the U.S. Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labor' in 2002.

Which countries still allow slavery?
Answer 1
YES, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!The 13th Amendment states: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."An increasing number of prisons in the U.S. are run by corporations, using their prisoners as workers and selling their labor to corporations. Federal safety and health standards do not protect prison labor, nor do the National Labor Relations Board policies. The corporations do not even have to pay minimum wage.J.C. Penney, Victoria's Secret, IBM, Toys R Us and TWA are among the US corporations that have profited by employing prisoners. Put together long mandatory sentences for minor drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for profit, the sale of convict labor to corporations, and a charge for prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labor - a social condition otherwise known as slavery.

Answer 2
This question is a difficult one to answer. There are several factors to consider. First, a definition of slavery: slavery is the forced labor, through mental or physical threat or bondage, that is not paid or compensated in any form. News media and international organizations often refer to this as human trafficking. This is similar to the transatlantic slave trade that occurred between Africa, Europe and the colonies (and later the United States). However, not all slaves are kidnapped. Some children are sold into slavery to pay their parents' debts, some people are forced into slavery to pay off their own debts, some are prisoners of war, and some are tricked into slavery (some slave traders tell poor, frustrated people in LDCs that they will be able to find a job in a new country; when they arrive, they find the only job available is bond labor).

Slaves come in all ages, races and genders. They are used as forced prostitutes, soldiers, and laborers. International organizations such as Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, and the United Nations estimate that between 20 and 27 million people are in a situation of forced labor today. For comparison, this is more people in bond labor at one time than ever before.

The legality of slavery is a harder question to answer. Most countries have laws against slavery, but that does not preclude the usage of bond laborers in that country, even by the official government. Other times, human trafficking takes place on the black markets: governments either turn a blind eye, are unaware of the trafficking, or are impotent to stop it.

Internationally, the Declaration of Human Rights, which forbids human trafficking and forced labor, is considered to be the end all of international law in regards to slavery. The DHR is part of the United Nations constitution, drafted in 1948. While many states agree to follow the rights laid out in the DHR, it is not an internationally signed agreement. In fact, there are no signatories; in 1948, 48 countries voted to ratify the DHR, with 0 nays and only 8 abstentions, but they did not sign it. Therefore, unlike agreements like the Kyoto Protocols or the Geneva Conventions, countries that are in contempt of the DHR can not be legally punished; it is not official international law. Forced labor unfortunately takes place on every continent in the world except Antartica. Human trafficking even takes place in the US. Here are some links that might be helpful to you:
http://www.iabolish.com/ http://www.antislavery.org/ http://www.unhcr.org/ http://www.hrw.org/

Answer 3
Basically any country run on capitalist principles. If your wages just cover your rent and food, then you are a slave as that is all slaves got.

(What percentage of Americans are "slaves," by this definition?)
Britney, by the way, sang "I'm a slave for you." That's why I said that.