NEWS: Where Lowest Price Is The Leash

CULTURE: Where Lowest Price Is The Leash

So now it's War on Dollar Stores.

In China, the fake meds, fraudulent foodstuffs and tarnished toothpaste scares are making very real the danger of turning this whole trade imbalance thing into a global economic disaster of epic proportion. Not only for poor people but for those who enable the low-income lifestyles that some world manufacturing standards have become incongruent with.

Luckily, many of you have been privy to other familiar -- and also catchy -- Wars on. Honestly, who but the criminally elite could forget the political box-office tallies of War on Drugs or the equally memorable War on Terror? These were blockbusters in their own right but War on Dollar Stores will own the trilogy like The Two Towers owned LOTR.

See, just because social inequalities may force you to discount shop, it doesn't mean you have to like it. Or should anyone else for that matter.

Who then, or what, is to blame for the implosion of consumer relations with Our Good Friends® The Chinese?

The Consumer - Incandescent light bulbs sort of fuck up the hydro grid and sometimes fakes get made with poison. What's the problem? Consumers seem to like the idea of buying four of 'em for a buck. Thing is, being the low price leader on environmental decay doesn't seem to be helping out with carbon footprints or cancer. If we want to regreen the earth, we need to get more environmentally sustainable products into the hands of educated consumers who can afford them. A dollar store is more likely to sell a recycling bin than encourage the use of one. WTF?

The Chinese - In China, they found a guy who the government there managed to sentence to death for his role in overseeing pharmaceutical production scams. Harsh. For 'the Worker' or Communist, global perceptions of the sweatshop laborer need to be squashed like beef at a block party. More importantly,as serious as the matter is, nobody should to be killed. The tragedy of dead dogs and cats is enough. We don't need to be adding humans to the list.

Culture - The disposable lifestyles forced upon the poor are made worse when the products that are most affordable and widely available are the most poorly manufactured. This plastic broken shit is loading up the landfills. As freedom-quenching and democratically liberating as it seems to drive forty yards across the parking lot to China Buffet once done flipping through decals at Dollar USA, there simply has to be a better way to bring people together other than feeding them and jamming 2 for $1 firecrackers into their hands before heading home to watch 'the news'.

Santa Claus - The Santa I know would never stuff a sack full of lead-soaked toys down any chimney. It's hard to celebrate and justify excess living during the holidays when so many people have so little.

Michael Bay - Putting him on this list is topical and trendy if not a slightly transparent attempt to get people who give a shit about international trade tariffs to read this far into this. But seriously, what does Michael Bay have to do with tariffs? Americans have a lot more clout when the entertainers step in to get political and wave the tariff flag. It only took a few puffs of smoke from a cigar-chomping Gov. Schwarzenegger to help enact criminal legislation against Chinatown DVD pirates in Canada. If Bay and Spielberg sick the robots on Beijing, all bets are off.

Now before anyone starts firing up the ol' shoe factory downtown in anticipation of a rush to buy local, remember that up until a generation ago, America was the world's sole consumer shopping superpower. Yet as the trend experts, business elite and alcohol-soaked professors have reiterated to us time and time again, for globalization to be efficient and equitable (and to provide developing nations with the basic resources they need) a more modest standard of living for Westerners must be accepted.

In reality, boycotting products for being MADE IN CHINA at this point seems like an exercise in futility. Imagine a dog getting angry because it's chained to a doghouse outside. The dog is angry to be chained, so it stands in the rain, boycotting the doghouse and getting soaked and sick in the process. Furthermore, the Boycott China thing would be more palatable if those trumpeting it didn't have at least a hint of racism in their cries.

Educating ourselves as consumers is ultimately the best way that global citizens can work together to ensure that manufacturers provide us with sustainable and safe products. Demanding more details about the things we buy -- country-of-origin labels on food and access to production and cartage data on goods -- will naturally lead to more informed choices about with whom we spend our money worldwide.

If they can do it with Fair Trade coffee, they can do it with chainsaws.

It is kind of hard to boycott a country that is such a huge customer of US commodities. There are many factors that have led to the current rate of inflation in the US over the past 10 years. Many people like to go directly to the cover story, "The War on Terror". However, the large unspoken factor which is adversely affecting America's economy is this new version of a "China Syndrome"... and it's not even nuclear. China has all but bought out the American steel industry. If oil makes the world go around, just remember that whatever is running on petroleum is usually made out of steel.

I do not care how many Wal*Mart stores or Hooter's restaurants are built in China. That does not make them "Our Good Friends" [I have been seeing this sarcastic jab throughout the media]. They do business with the US and that's about it. Nothing about the present socialist culture of China interests me. Of course, the irony is that they have to engage in some form of capitalism because let's face it... it sure is expensive to feed over a billion people. How many more North Koreans have to go hungry before Kim Jong Il figures this shit out?

~Peace

Yet despite rising fuel costs and the lower standards to health and safety, ingredients unfit for human or animal consumption, cow stomach mucosa.
North American companies continue to move production of pet foods and chocolate bars and who knows what else I haven't heard of, to China.

So not only are they making products that cost less, but they're taking the jobs of people who might otherwise be able to afford to buy better quality items into lower income jobs.

Lets just give power to produce everything we love and cherish to the country that gives the least of a rat's ass. Which may very well be in my next hershey bar.

Now that's fucking hysterical! Of course, if you have the opportunity, it's cool to watch chocolate being made in a small gourmet confectionery. Of course, that is why after eating some real quality chocolate, Hershey bar's taste like ass... and now I know why.

Hershey bar's taste like arse even if you haven't eaten quality chocolate

um. Sources?!

There are four, count 'em, four errors in this sentence fragment. At least. And only two of them are typos.

Regarding steel and China, here are just a couple of sources:

The China Syndrome from WSJ.com and also,
An article released by Wiley Rein LLP

I am also involved in an industry that is highly dependent on steel so naturally we like to follow the steel market.

I am not sure about the poo in the Hershey bars, but heck, it was just so darned entertaining.

And whoever put that "whom" in there should be spanked with a grammar text.

Wow, that was so incoherently writtten that I'm not sure whether or not I agree with you.

This article made my head hurt.

More importantly,as serious as my head is, nobody should to be hurt.

Someone already tried boycotting China. It's nearly impossible for most people, including me.

I try to avoid Chinese-made goods, but, when you work your way through college at a McJob, it becomes easier said than done. Especially when that job is a third shift one, and, if you need something quickly, the only feasible option is to hold your nose and get it from the local Wal-Mart supercentre. I try to buy from local businesses, especially the fair trade market and the local hippie store. But, dude, if my toaster craps out on me, I need a new one soon. If it's after 9:00 PM, then that means I'm going to Wal-Mart on my way home from work.

Now yr a man who truly appreciates toast.

Nice pic! Anyway, I buy tools at Harbor Freight not just because they're cheap, but because they have tools that Sears, Snap-on, etc JUST DON'T HAVE.

I have about 20 HF tools in my garage right now that I couldn't find anywhere else for any price. Like a vise brake, an X-Y platform vise for my bench press, a very large bench vise, metric sockets over 14mm (which Sears USED to sell), a one-ton bench arbor press, a set of metric, UNC, and pipe thread gauges, etc etc.

Now HF tools ARE cheap crap, and I'd love to buy better stuff. I just can't.

China is filling needs in the world economy that America isn't.

(In case you don't know who Harbor Freight is, they sell cheap imported knockoffs from China "just off the boat" so to speak)

I don't appreciate it enough to make a special trip to get a new toaster... My trips to Wal-Mart are always after I get off work in the morning, and there just happens to be a Wal-Mart on my way home from my McJob.

Dude, toast is awesome. As I am a college student, I eat a lot of toast. I also eat a lot of Ramen and Easy Mac, and I drink a lot of beer...

no ,shit those wallmart pins is made in china