Business Week's story Shoppers concerned about Chinese goods misses some obvious points when it quotes "Joyce Simple, a church secretary, interviewed on a recent shopping trip to a Wal-Mart". Joyce says "I'm scared to death. We are dependent on our government inspecting things, I would be careful of anything that came from China."

Gee didn't anyone tell Joyce who the #1 importer from China is and the huge percentage of WalMart inventory that comes from China - last I heard it was close to 80% inspite of their red-white and blue flag waving activities. Oh well, ignorance is bliss but if she really wants to avoid Chinese goods she should shop else where and put money where her mouth is.

Later on in the article it says "There's no question that too many Chinese manufacturers and food producers put the bottom line ahead of safety". Oh really, well I think there may be a certain carrot being dangled in front of them by major retailers like WalMart who put the bottom line above everything else as almost any article or interview with a former WalMart supplier would reveal. So if there was anyone who chose to turn a blind eye or pray to god (literally) that quality goods would be delivered at bargain basement prices, that would be WalMart.

After all for the corporation there is nothing to lose - most of the time they would be okay and if there was a problem then well, it is easy for them to point the finger at the government and say it was someone elses for not inspecting the goods. Thus they are simply leveraging the wonderful economic crutch of "externalities" whereby society gets to foot the bill for all of industries blunders - from pollution, global warming, industrial accidents, to poisoned consumers - while they reap all the profits from cutting corners at every opportunity.

You see when it is convenient big government is a big evil monster that must be destroyed because its always telling us what to do with pesky laws and regulations, and collecting those nasty taxes and driving prices up. At other times those same people will tell us it is of course the governments job to protect us from them. Naturally they wont say it literally, but when things like ground plastic in pet food show up because they went with the cheapest bid (hmmm, rather like NASA has always had to do) and they want the government to foot the bill for testing every load of food that arrives because they can't trust their corner cutting suppliers, well that's the implication.

So you see, shopping at Wal*Mart is just perpetuating corporate welfare - to those that need it least, and its perpetuating businesses that do what everyone does best - looking after #1 above all and screwing over their neighbors for nickels and dimes.

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