Couldn't the same thing be said for NYC? Look at living conditions in a turn-of-the-century NYC tenement, and you'll be appalled. Millions of immigrants arrived with literally nothing except the clothes on their backs and toiled for pennies a day so the fat cats could have their mansions on 5th avenue. Yet most people don't say that NYC is an example of how not to build a city...
I don't really know the details of Dubai's labor situation, but aren't they also there voluntarily? I know laws are different in the Middle East, but I thought slavery was still illegal in the UAE.
If you're laid off or fired, and you owe money, you will be stopped at the border from leaving. It takes about a week for the notification from your employer to get into the financial system, which is why many westerners drive to the airport and leave their cars in the parking lot with the keys in them - never to return to Dubai.
That doesn't sound all that different from turn-of-the-century America, where debtors were often forced to work for their creditor until the money was paid off. I guess the difference is that now it seems like everyone's a debtor, but if you choose to live by the standards someone from a century ago, you have much more freedom and purchasing power, not less.
(Seriously, when did living debt-free go out of style? If my grandparents wanted something big like a summer home, they saved for it, they didn't go out and get a mortgage.)
The difference is that in America's history employers worked in good faith (aside from slavery). In Dubai (and to some extent, China) migrant workers are defrauded and deceived by their employers out of their rightfully due pay.
The story linked in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719 has some anecdotes about how some of the workers get lured to Dubai and then stuck there. Saudi Arabia (one of the countries I've lived in) did similar things to their working classes.
