This Frontline story is about 2 years old, but I think that we're finally starting to see the fruits of Walmart's race-to-the-bottom strategy with the recent spate of highly publicized safety issues. It's funny that the working class who complain about loss of jobs going to China is the very group of people who gobble up all this low quality garbage.
I think that it says something about our society that Consumer Reports has five times as many subscribers as Popular Mechanics. Or how politicians no longer talk about us as "workers" but "consumers". We're making the same mistake that the Drug Warriors make when we try to blame our problems on the supply side: "evil corporations", "evil unions", "evil foreigners", for the fact that America can't compete. It's the demand, stupid.
At one point in the show a factory manager complains that China manipulates the exchange rate. No shit. Of course they can manipulate the exchange rate for the same reason that your credit card company can manipulate your interest rate, because they have the money and you want to borrow it from them to keep consuming. When you spend more than you make you give the other guy a distinct advantage.
So you want to stop the cycle? Stop buying cheap crap. The government ain't gonna save you, they're more in debt than you are.
3 comments:
Wal-mart was long able to muscle manufacturers because it was the high volume retailer. Everybody was shopping at Wal-mart. But just as people are addicted to shopping at Wal-mart, Wal-mart is addicted to buying from China. If the economy weren't a fabrication of the banking community we might be in real trouble.
For those whose skills are only applicable in the fabricated economy of the banking system they're still going to be real in trouble.
That's a whole lot of people.
It's a very powerful illusion. Even more so than 'God'.
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