Only too true, sadly: capitalism survives by out-sourcing exploitation. Gated communities spring up all over the place, in order to exclude the growing western underclass whose jobs, poorly-paid though they already were, have been exported to places like India where the cost of living (and therefore pay) is far lower.

Slavery was abolished chiefly because it was cheaper to employ "wage slaves"; you didn't have to find them somewhere to live, or pay for a doctor when they were ill. You could just let them starve; there were always more where they came from. Slaves were an investment that had to be maintained, like the horses and the dogs; they had to be fed properly. That cost money.

A society can best be judged by the way in which it treats its most disadvantaged members. On those grounds, few nations in the world have very much to be proud of; but I'd put the UK and the USA (and the supra-national corporations that control them) very low on the scale of decency at the moment.