Thursday's paper delivery day bumper sticker highlight: "Buy USA." Nothing special, I suppose, except that the car with the bumper sticker was driving through the Wal-Mart parking lot.
That's the same Wal-Mart whose shelves are lined with products up to 70 percent of which come from China (for a discussion of the probability of this figure, go here). It's the same Wal-Mart that is, all by itself, China's eighth-largest trading partner. It's the same Wal-Mart whose purchases from China are growing 20 percent a year.
So that bumper sticker -- a subtle protest? Or just clueless?
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My bet would be 'clueless'. The vast majority of people only see the price, and nothing more. Folks should try catching the Frontline bit Is Wal*Mart Good For America?.
Probably just clueless. Sometimes on the way to Office Max,my car is stuck at the crosswalks outside Wal-Mart, so people-watching is the only option. The people I see going in and out of Wal-Mart look like the very people who, in a political sense, ought to object to many of Wal-Mart's policies, but the low prices are apparently all that matters. That's on the "ought to be liberal" side. The flip side of the coin are the older conservative folks who join AARP for the discounts, and are happily oblivious to the AARP political agenda which would appall them if they bothered to find out about it.
One sees contradictions like this fairly often. I know it is a complicated world (and not many easy answers) but I think a large portion of this country's population has been financially squeezed to the point where they are forced to shop wherever they think they can save a nickel on each item they buy. Economically they are drowning, and they are forced to grab for any "life rope." Pretty sad.
Anonymous: sadly, that 'life rope' they're grasping at is the same rope that they're hanging themselves with - by buying all that cheap (price & quality) Chinese-made stuff, they're exporting the jobs (and thus, the money) needed to support their OWN jobs. The only winners in the deal are the executives of the companies that shift all their manufacturing to China, Malaysia, India, what-have-you-istan.
It might not be so bad if the Chinese leadership weren't deliberately rigging their financial policies so as to maximize the value of the U.S. dollars coming into the country, and doing everything they can to minimize the amount of foreign goods they import in favor of violating trademarks and copyright to 'develop' their own equivalent products.
Well, Mr. Rye, I suppose you people-watched all those people at WalMart that day and the words "minimum wage" or "working poor" never crossed your mind. If people are just getting by, then low prices mean something to them, if not you.
Anyway, I note that at another place you were equally condescending about people who use Veterans Benefits. They don't mean anything to you, so you presumed to know that otehr people don't need them either.
Enough.
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