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I am in strong agreement with everything you said in this and your last post. I just spent a week traveling around the Ukraine, where the average worker's monthly income is a little over $200. Many Americans can blow that much in a single day of shopping, but Ukrainians have to make it last the whole month for food, clothing, and shelter. Needless to say, the difference in lifestyle is very great, but the bottom line is they can satisfy their needs, save for the future and enjoy what life has to offer. The problem there is that they are being flooded by mass produced imports from large corporations that are advertised as being "better" than local, handmade products. The push is on to make them consume; even before their income has risen to a level to be able to afford it, they should become consumers. I had an interesting chat with a Mary Kay cosmetics rep on the bus and she had totally bought into the "Western imports are great" pitch.
What is needed is to return to local manufacturing of locally available materials to make useful products for the local economy. If lots of biomass is available locally, then there is no need to be carting in fossil fuel from half-way around the world just to turn a profit for a major oil company. Local brick and tile manufacturers should be supported instead of rushing to Home Depot to buy floor tile 'Made in China'. The ease at which products can be shipped and transported has caused all sorts of problems and only now are the unintended consequences of trade being seen.
Trade causes the natural cycling of nature to be disrupted in ways that can only be appreciated after the damage is done. It wastes energy by searching out the lowest wage area to manufacture goods and then the highest price area to dump those goods. As an example, the New York City manhole covers that are "Made in India" may save money, but they 1) deplete India's natural resources of iron and fuel that will never be recycled back to them; 2) use copious amounts of fossil fuels to make the 12,000 mile journey from the factory; 3) put coal miners in West Virginia and steelworkers in Pittsburgh out of work; and 4) exploit the local workers in India. Think of all the social problems that could be solved by a little less free trade!
But corporations will keep shoving free trade down the throats of everyone they can. Mary Kay and the tobacco companies can't extract very much money from the average Ukrainian worker's $200, but they sure want to get their foot in the door, get people used to paying them tribute and then they will jack up the prices as time permits. The free trade advocates are probably scheming right now how they can conduct an advertising campaign to get people to replace their kvas, a locally brewed beverage, with beer made and bottled at corporate owned production facilities. :beer:
Time to change that maxim "think globally, act locally" to "buy locally, boycott globally".
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