Or perhaps passing the buck? Hey Olympic Torch protesters, if you want to send a message to China about their violations of civil liberties and human rights, pollution or currency manipulation, stop shopping at Wal-Mart! You can protest the torch all you want but you are still enabling China to do its thing when you buy products made in China. Protesting the torch procession is a waste of time. Put your money where your mouth is.
I guarantee every single one of those protesters were wearing shoes made in China along with probably another garment or two and their Ipods.
You're making about as much difference as the idiots who put the "Support the Troops" magnets on the back of their gas guzzling SUVs.
5 comments:
Two points:
You are right about people who buy an assload of Chinese-made items, then protest China mercilessly. The amount of merchandise we purchase from China has made them grow from a third world commie country to what may develop into the heir apparent of the USSR.
However, (and you knew I was going to disagree with you somewhere) the difference is that as we become more dependent on China, their economy becomes more dependent on us. Assuming we can get Washington DC's head out of its ass, then we might be able to use that leverage to affect real change over there. Simply put, it's economic warfare that will hopefully replace tossing bombs.
I would say you are sort of half right. China has other customers besides the US and Walmart. Although Walmart is the single largest importer from China we aren't the only show in town for them. That being said, we are their biggest customer and they know that a war with us would mean a trade embargo which would cripple their economy.IT would be a boom for us as all that manufacturing would come back to the US. That being said, what made us strong in WW2 was that we had all these factories that could be converted to military use, China now has all those factories and that's scary.
If I don't shop at Wal Mart, how will I ever save 4 cents on a box of Tide?
Well that is the risk you run. Actually, I'm going to guess the Tide is more expensive at Walmart. They get you in with the $40 DVD players but the way they make their money is that you buy a bunch of other day to day items, assuming its cheap because you are at Wal-Mart but you end up paying more for those things.
Unfortunately, wal-Mart type consumerism(?)is rampant in America. On the consumers end, I believe is mainly a case of ignorant greed.
But, should we let it stop us from protesting human rights violations? Absolutely, not.
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