Thursday, February 4, 2010

No Walmart for Me

I just read a post about investments and had to vent somewhere, good place here! Better than being negative Nancy on someone elses post. I am anti-war, anti-slave labor, and anti-Monsanto, and anti-big pharm. Add that up and I would have nothing to invest in as far as the U.S goes. Those are really the big investments in the U.S. and I would never give a penny of my money to any of them.

For that matter I refuse to shop at Wal-mart. I adopted a daughter from China, I know what it is like for people to live in poverty. I know that my daughter could be starting about now, at the age of six, to work in a button factory. Her parents could have taken her to the city and dropped her off at a factory where she would work 12 hour days and they would give her rice three times a day and a place to sleep. The thought obviously brings tears to my eyes!

Do people even think about this when they go to buy their "stuff?" There is a great Vegee Tales story about this by the way. It is about Madam Blueberry who just has to keep buying more stuff. Finally her house falls out of the tree because she has so much crap. How have the powers that be convinced us that we cannot live without that one more essential item?

There are so many people living with nothing, how can we really rationalize our wants into needs? Needs are shelter, food, water and human interaction. I think the whole world needs to stand back, re-evaluate and get rid of the crap!

I have heard the argument that we are creating jobs for them by buying their crap. If we do not buy the crap they can go home from the factories. They can stay with their families and raise food, which is what they used to do. Anymore in China they don't even prefer boys, girls can work in the factories as well as the boys. No one is there to work the land and raise food. So now they all work so they can buy food from the government. Sound familiar?